Appeals court orders dismissal of family's suit over Anchorage police shooting of Kristopher Handy

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered an end to the Handy family's excessive-force lawsuit, directing an Anchorage federal judge to grant immunity to the four officers who shot Kristopher Handy nine times, killing him. The case never reached discovery or a jury; it ended on the officers' motion to dismiss.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, made up of Judges Consuelo M. Callahan, Carlos T. Bea and Patrick J. Bumatay, held that Officers Jacob Jones, Jacob Ostolaza, Noel Senoran and James Stineman are protected by qualified immunity, the rule shielding officers from suit unless they broke a legal rule that was clear at the time. It vacated, or wiped out, Chief District Judge Sharon L. Gleason's order refusing to dismiss.

Monte Handy, Kristopher Handy's father, filed the federal civil rights lawsuit on Aug. 12, 2024 as personal representative of his son's estate, the person a court lets sue for the dead. Ardell Handy joined him, as did Cacy Gould for three of Handy's children, minors identified in court papers only by initials. They alleged the officers used excessive force under the Fourth Amendment and deprived the family of the right to familial association, their constitutional interest in each other's company.

The shooting happened in the early hours of May 13, 2024, outside Handy's West Anchorage apartment. A neighbor called 911 repeatedly about a disturbance between Handy and his girlfriend, and told the dispatcher Handy was at the end of the driveway with a shotgun, waiting for police. The court said officers had been told Handy may have assaulted his girlfriend before they arrived. Ordered out, he came out carrying the shotgun, refused repeated orders to drop it, waved it over his head and cursed at the officers as he walked toward them.

Much of that account comes from video Anchorage police themselves released, a Critical Incident Summary of dash and body camera footage, 911 calls and the police chief's commentary. The family's own complaint incorporated the video by reference, so the panel read the footage as it depicts events, construing anything ambiguous in the family's favor.

Gleason had found that a jury could see the shooting differently. She noted Handy was walking at a "casual pace," that the neighbor never saw him raise the gun, and that officers warned him about a police dog but never warned that deadly force would be used.

The panel rejected each point. Handy remained "armed, agitated, and capable of immediately firing at the Defendants," Callahan wrote for the court, and could have fired the shotgun from the hip without raising it. "The undisputed evidence compels the conclusion that Handy posed an immediate threat to the officers," Callahan wrote. No case the district judge relied on, the panel held, requires holding fire until a suspect aims a gun.

The panel rested on a second, independent ground too: even assuming a constitutional violation, the law was not clearly established, no existing case putting the officers' conduct beyond debate. Alaska's Office of Special Prosecutions had already reviewed the shooting in 2024 and declined to charge the officers, concluding they acted in self-defense or defense of others under state law.

The account above is the winning side's; Gleason's findings reach a reader only where the panel quoted them.