Pedro Miramontes v. Officer Klevos

MEMORANDUM

Pedro Miramontes claims the district court abused its discretion by not instructing the jury to consider the potential availability of other methods of subduing him.

As Instruction 9.22 explains, however, “it is not error for a trial court to decline to instruct explicitly on the availability of ‘alternative courses of action’ ” if the whole of the jury instruction fairly and accurately covers the legal issues presented. See Brewer v. City of Napa, 210 F.3d 1093, 1097 (9th Cir.2000). That was the case here. The court instructed the jury to “consider all of the circumstances known to them on the scene,” in assessing what was “objectively reasonable.” This “general reasonableness/'totality of the circumstances’ instruction! ]” is appropriate “in an excessive force case, despite the plaintiffs request for more detailed instructions addressing the specific factors to be considered in the reasonableness calculus.” Id. at 1097 ; see also Fikes v. Cleghorn, 47 F.3d 1011, 1013-14 (9th Cir.1995).

Nor does the court’s decision to include five specific considerations adapted from Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-97 , 109 S.Ct. 1865 , 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) render the…