Officer Jon Grubbs Still Owes $21 Million After the Eleventh Circuit Refused to Erase Jerry Blasingame’s Taser Judgment

La sentenza contro l'ufficiale di polizia Atlanta, Jon Grubbs, e' ancora di 21 milioni. gli stati uniti La Corte d'Appello per l'Undicesimo Circuito ha detto così il 30 giugno 2026, in un parere sostituito che ha sostituito uno precedente dallo stesso anno. Jerry Blasingame, l'uomo che Grubbs ha sparato con un Taser, non ha vissuto per leggerlo. Morì il 7 settembre 2023, cinque anni dopo una caduta da un argine interstatale lo lasciò paralizzato dal collo giù. La sua proprietà, attraverso il rappresentante personale Keith Edwards, è il partito che ha mantenuto vivo il caso.

Una giuria aveva scritto un numero molto più grande. Dopo il processo, il verdetto era di $ 100 milioni: $60 milioni contro la città di Atlanta e $40 milioni contro Grubbs, diviso in modo uniforme tra danni compensativi e punitivi. Stati Uniti Giudice distrettuale Steve C. Jones ha preso la città su una proposta della regola 50, ha tenuto il premio di compensazione di $20 milioni contro l'ufficiale, e ha tagliato il premio punitivo da $ 20 milioni a $1 milione. Grubbs chiese al tribunale di cancellare ciò che era rimasto. La maggioranza ha rifiutato. Il dissenso gli avrebbe dato l'immunità qualificata. La matematica che rimane è i $21 milioni che il titolo è stato utilizzato da allora.

July 10, 2018, on an on-ramp

La fermata è avvenuta il 10 luglio 2018, accanto ad un on-ramp per Interstate 20 ad Atlanta. Blasingame aveva 65 anni. Era disarmato. Gli agenti hanno detto che era in panhandling, chiedendo soldi ai conducenti. L'opinione dell'undicesimo circuito, Edwards v. Grubbs, ora riportato a 179 F.4th 909, descrive quello che è successo in sequenza normale. Grubbs ha premuto il grilletto su un Taser in modalità freccetta. Le sonde hanno colpito Blasingame sul retro. Era stato allontanato. Non c'era nessun avvertimento. Andò zoppicando e cadde giù un ripido argine, sull'ordine di 30 a 40 gradi, una goccia di circa 24 piedi, e ha colpito una scatola di utilità di metallo su un cuscinetto di cemento in fondo.

Era incosciente sulla scena. E' morto dalla testa. La lesione spinale lo ha lasciato quadriplegico. Circa un mese dopo, mentre era ancora ricoverato in ospedale, la città gli scrisse citazioni per la sollecitazione pedonale e l'ostruzione. Le citazioni non gli hanno ridato le gambe. Fanno parte del disco, perché mostrano come il dipartimento ha scritto un uomo che non poteva camminare. Il video della telecamera del corpo della fermata esiste. Chiunque lo guardi deve sapere cosa stanno per vedere: un ciclo di Taser e una caduta, non un inseguimento che finisce in un tackle a terra piana.

Law360’s report on the June 30 decision mettere la scissione in una riga. La maggioranza ha affermato la sentenza come modificata. Il parere è del giudice Adalberto Jordan, unito agli Stati Uniti Giudice distrettuale Charlene Edwards Honeywell, seduto per designazione. giudice Kevin Newsom dissented su immunità qualificata. Egli avvertì che la corte era vicina a dichiarare la legge chiaramente stabilita dal precedente che non esisteva ancora nella forma che la maggioranza stava usando. Quel dissenso e' il miglior argomento legale dell'agente, e non ha ottenuto due voti.

Why qualified immunity did not cover this shot

Qualified immunity protects an officer unless he violated a constitutional right that was clearly established at the time. The majority said the right here was clearly established by Tennessee v. Garner and by the circuit’s own decision in Bradley, a case about tasing an unarmed, non-dangerous person on an elevated surface. Garner is the Supreme Court case that says police may not use deadly force to stop a fleeing, unarmed suspect who is not a threat. The court treated a Taser fired into a man’s back at the top of a drop as deadly force, because Grubbs used force that created a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury. The difference between a firearm and a Taser did not matter once the location made the fall the injury.

The panel said it did not need a second theory about “obvious clarity,” because Garner already supplied the notice. It also noted that an Eighth Circuit case, Stewart v. Garcia, had gone the other way on a Taser used against a person on a fence in April 2018. The Eleventh Circuit did not follow it. Taking the facts in the estate’s favor, Blasingame was running with his back to the officer and had no chance to brace. A reader does not have to like large verdicts to follow that sentence. The constitutional question was whether this particular use of force, in this particular place, was excessive. The majority said yes, and said any reasonable officer had fair warning.

The city is a different question, and the estate lost it. Edwards argued that Atlanta’s failure to enforce its body-camera policy, or some other municipal custom, was the moving force behind the violation. The district court, and then the appeals court, said the evidence did not get there. Rule 50 took the $60 million municipal verdict off the table. That is why a $100 million headline became a $21 million judgment against one officer. The city is out. The officer is not. Edwards also lost, by abandonment or by affirmance, the fight to reopen medical expenses under Rule 60(b), and the court said Judge Jones did not abuse his discretion by postponing a ruling on attorney’s fees until the merits appeal was done.

The punitive cut, and a second en banc petition

The panel agreed that some punitive damages were constitutional and that $20 million was not. Using the Supreme Court’s guideposts from BMW v. Gore, it called Grubbs’s conduct reprehensible but not overly egregious, looked at comparable penalties, and affirmed the reduction to $1 million. The judges said they would not invent a number between $1 million and $20 million without briefing. They called balls and strikes. The strike was the original punitive award. The ball that stayed fair was the $1 million the trial judge had already written.

Procedure on the appeal is easy to garble, so the dates matter. An earlier 2026 opinion, reported at 169 F.4th 1261, was withdrawn and replaced. On June 30, the same day the new opinion issued, the court denied as moot a rehearing petition aimed at the old opinion, and it vacated an order that had been withholding the mandate. On July 21, Grubbs filed a new petition for rehearing en banc, aimed at the substituted opinion. The court logged paper copies the next day. CourtListener’s public docket for No. 24-12787 shows that July 22 receipt as the last known filing. There is no published order granting that second petition. There is also no published order denying it. As of late September, the June 30 opinion is still the decision on the books, and the en banc request is a request, not a stay of the facts the majority found.

The Northern District of Georgia case underneath all of this is No. 1:19-cv-02047. The consolidated appeal numbers include 24-12787 and 24-12925, along with earlier docket numbers from the long trip up and down. Eight years from a Taser pull to an appellate affirmance is not unusual in a civil-rights case. It is still an indictment of how slowly a paralyzed man’s estate has to move to keep a judgment.

A paycheck is not $21 million

Atlanta Black Star reported in July that Grubbs was still on the force and that collection against him was expected to run at about $700 a month, through garnishment or liens. The same story put his 2024 pay at about $92,000, roughly $5,500 a month after taxes, so the garnishment is on the order of 13 percent of take-home pay. At $700 a month, the paper’s arithmetic says the $21 million would take something like 2,500 years. That figure is a way of saying the judgment is larger than a career. It is not a court order that he pay for 2,500 years. Liens, insurance, and any future settlement can change the cash. What they cannot change, unless a rehearing goes his way, is the legal result: the force was excessive, the city is out, and the officer’s judgment stands.

The AEGIS Alliance has been writing the other side of the badge as well. In Ohio, a village chief resigned while a 70-count indictment from his years as a teacher was still untried. Those cases are not the same. One is a criminal accusation with a presumption of innocence. This one is a civil judgment after a jury, a trial judge, and a federal appeals court. The difference is the point of a police accountability file. Verdicts and indictments do not belong in the same sentence without a label.

Blasingame was asking drivers for money. He ran. He was not given a last verbal chance. The fall did the rest. His estate now holds a piece of paper worth $21 million against a man whose reported wages will not pay it. Readers of crime news e Stati Uniti d'America at The AEGIS Alliance should watch the en banc docket, not a promise that the check is in the mail. The Eleventh Circuit has already said what the Constitution required on that embankment. The rest is collection.