Case: James Griffiths, Individually and as Employee of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority v. Rita Keith, Individually and as the Natural Parent of Arthur Keith and as Administrator of the Estate of Arthur Keith, Deceased, No. 25-362
Lower Court: Sixth Circuit
Docketed: 2025-09-26
Status: Pending
Question Presented: 1. Whether a police officer must wait until an armed, fleeing suspect turns and points his gun at the officer before using deadly force where, as here, the suspect refuses to comply with an officer's commands to drop his weapon, and proceeds to flee with the gun in his hand and could, at any moment, turn and fire upon the officer in a split second. 2. Whether the court of appeals violated existing Supreme Court precedent by merely citing the general rule in defining a clearly established right,...
The Court has now distributed Griffiths v. Keith for conference six times, most recently on March 27, 2026, following repeated reschedulings since early February. That pattern, combined with the filing of a petition for certiorari and two amicus briefs, suggests the case is receiving more than routine consideration.
The underlying facts involve a housing authority officer, James Griffiths, who shot and killed Arthur Keith after Keith refused commands to drop a firearm and fled while still holding it. Griffiths, represented by Stephen William Funk, petitioned for certiorari. Respondent Rita Keith, represented by Samuel Lydell Starks, filed her opposition brief on January 21, 2026, and petitioner replied on February 2, 2026.
The two questions presented track a familiar tension in qualified immunity doctrine. The first asks whether an officer may use deadly force against an armed, fleeing suspect who has not yet turned to fire. The second presses the Court on the specificity requirement for “clearly established” law, targeting the Sixth Circuit’s approach of citing only a general constitutional rule without identifying a sufficiently analogous prior case.
Multiple reschedulings at conference often indicate that a Justice is writing a dissent from denial or that the Court is considering a related case alongside this one. Practitioners and scholars watching the development of qualified immunity doctrine should monitor the official docket closely. A grant here would give the Court an opportunity to clarify both the substantive Fourth Amendment standard for armed-suspect encounters and the procedural requirements courts must follow when identifying clearly established law.