⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Fifth Circuit hears Antonio Torres's appeal in an excessive-force case against a Dallas police officer. After an encounter beside a pickup truck, Torres pulled away from an attempted handcuffing and ran. During the chase, he tipped a trash can into the officer's path. The officer fell and hurt his knee, but continued the pursuit. Torres reached a fence and turned around. The officer caught him and struck him twice in the head with a hand that still held metal handcuffs. Torres was bleeding, and he later sued over the force used against him. The central dispute is what was happening at the moment of those blows. Had Torres stopped resisting, or was the officer still bringing an actively resisting suspect under control? The district court granted the officer qualified immunity and dismissed the case. It did not decide whether the force violated the Fourth Amendment. Instead, it held that prior decisions did not clearly establish that the particular conduct was unlawful. The court later declined to reconsider that ruling. Qualified immunity therefore makes this more than a disagreement about whether the officer used too much force. The appeal also asks whether existing law gave sufficiently specific notice in these circumstances. Torres will argue that earlier flight cannot justify blows after resistance ends, and that the precedents need not involve the same weapon or number of strikes. The officer will emphasize the short, rapidly evolving chase, his injury, and what he could reasonably perceive as continuing resistance. He will argue that the cited cases do not clearly govern this encounter. Listen for what the body-camera recording permits the court to conclude, and how the judges separate past resistance from the need for force at the moment it was used.

Antonio Torres v. Jeremiah Cecil Byous (No. 26-10018) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argued November 4, 2026.