Cite as: 533 U. S. 194 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U. S. 79 (1987)); see also Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U. S., at 228 ("Probable cause existed if 'at the moment the arrest was made . . . the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing' " a crime had been committed (quoting Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 91 (1964))). Excessive force claims, like most other Fourth Amendment issues, are evaluated for objective reasonableness based upon the information the officers had when the conduct occurred.
III
The case was presented to the Court of Appeals on the assumption that respondent's seizure and brief detention did not violate clearly established First Amendment privileges and did not violate the Fourth Amendment right to be free from arrest without probable cause, as distinct from the force used to detain. The sole question, then, is whether the force used violated a clearly established Fourth Amendment protection so that petitioner was not entitled to immunity.
Our instruction to the district courts and courts of appeals to concentrate at the outset on the definition of the constitutional right and to determine whether, on the facts alleged, a constitutional violation could be found is important. As we have said, the procedure permits courts in appropriate cases to elaborate the constitutional right with greater degrees of specificity. Because we granted certiorari only to determine whether qualified immunity was appropriate, however, and because of the limits imposed upon us by the questions on which we granted review, we will assume a constitutional violation could have occurred under the facts alleged based simply on the general rule prohibiting excessive force, then proceed to the question whether this general prohibition against excessive force was the source for clearly established law that was contravened
207
Page: Index Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007