A defendant may sue the correctional officer who shot him while he attempted to flee a courtroom, a federal judge in Colorado decided last week.
The officer’s “immediate resort to his firearm, and the large number of shots discharged, evince little to no consideration of whether such force was necessary, nor any effort to minimize the force used,” wrote U.S. District Judge William J. Martínez in a Jan. 20 order.
Brian Estrada was a pretrial detainee at Sterling Correctional Facility. On May 30, 2018, he was taken the Logan County Justice Center for a hearing on a charge that assaulted a law enforcement officer.