Cite as: 518 U. S. 81 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
is provoked and lawful, the line between a legal arrest and an unlawful deprivation of civil rights within the aggravated assault Guideline is relatively thin. The stringent aggravated assault Guideline, along with its upward adjustments for use of a deadly weapon and bodily injury, contemplates a range of offenses involving deliberate and unprovoked assaultive conduct. The Guidelines do not adequately account for the differences between such 'heartland' offenses and the case at hand." Ibid.
The Court of Appeals rejected this analysis. It interpreted the District Court to have found that King had been the but-for cause of the crime, not that he had provoked it. According to the Court of Appeals, the District Court "ultimately focused not on provocation itself but rather on the volatility of the incident, and the close proximity between, on the one hand, the victim's misconduct and the officers' concomitant lawful use of force, and, on the other hand, the appellants' unlawful use or authorization of the use of force." 34 F. 3d, at 1459. The Court of Appeals thought these considerations did not justify departure for victim misconduct. It first quoted the test this Court formulated for excessive force cases under the Fourth Amendment:
" 'The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.' " Ibid. (quoting Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386, 396-397 (1989)).
The Court of Appeals reasoned that "before a use of force can be found excessive, the Graham 'calculus,' embracing the very factor which the district court found to be unusual in this case—the 'dynamic arrest situation'—has been taken into consideration." 34 F. 3d, at 1459. Indeed, it noted the
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