⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Fifth Circuit hears Martinez versus Hidalgo County. The appellants are family members of Guillermo San Miguel Sanchez, who was twenty-five when he was shot and killed inside his home by two Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies in two thousand twenty-one. His family sued the county and the deputies under Section nineteen eighty-three, the federal civil rights statute, and under the Texas Tort Claims Act. The district court granted summary judgment to all defendants and later denied the family's motion to alter that judgment under Rule fifty-nine e. The family appeals. Because the case reaches the Fifth Circuit on summary judgment, no court has found any of the disputed facts; at this stage the evidence is taken in the light most favorable to the family. The two main questions argued are whether the deputies violated the Fourth Amendment when they entered the home without a warrant, and whether their use of deadly force was objectively reasonable. Why the deputies were there is itself disputed: the family says the dispatch log records a call for a welfare check, while the county says a friend of his mother called authorities after he assaulted her. Both sides agree he came out of a bedroom holding a kitchen knife. They disagree about where it was pointed, and about whether he was advancing on the deputies or doing what they had told him to do. And they disagree about whether the audio on the deputies' body cameras is clear enough to establish who said what.

Martinez v. Hidalgo County (No. 25-40464) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argued August 3, 2026.