Hostage Shot Multiple Times by Police Has Civil Rights Suit Axed

Georgia state troopers didn’t violate the constitutional rights of a hostage they shot multiple times while he was driving the getaway truck for an armed and deadly suspect under duress, the Eleventh Circuit said.

The troopers acted reasonably under the circumstances and, even if they didn’t, they weren’t on notice that they could be liable for using deadly force, the opinion by Judge Stanley Marcus said Aug. 12.

The troopers were pursuing William Arnold, who had shot his pregnant girlfriend, taken his grandmother hostage, been in a standoff with police, escaped, threw his girlfriend’s body out of his truck, and ...