Glenn v. Washington County: Ninth Circuit Ruling and Settlement

Glenn v. Washington County is a Ninth Circuit civil rights decision arising from the 2006 police shooting of 18-year-old Lukus Glenn on his grandmother’s porch in Oregon. The court held in 2011 that a jury could find the deputies’ use of beanbag rounds and lethal gunfire unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, reversing summary judgment for the officers and establishing that police confronting a person in mental health crisis face heightened scrutiny when they choose to escalate rather than de-escalate. The case was reported at 673 F.3d 864, went to a jury verdict for the family in 2012, and closed with a $2.575 million settlement paid by Washington County.¹

The Shooting That Started the Case

At about 3:05 a.m. on September 15, 2006, Hope Glenn called 911 to report that her son Lukus was drunk, suicidal, and breaking windows with a shovel outside the family’s home near Tigard, Oregon. She told dispatch he was holding a pocketknife to his own neck. The family’s hunting rifles were locked away, and dispatch relayed that fact to responding officers along with an assurance to the caller that police would “try and talk to him.”²

Washington County Deputy Mikhail Gerba arrived at 3:11 a.m. He drew his pistol, positioned himself eight to twelve feet from Lukus, and began yelling commands including “drop the knife or I’m going to kill you.” Deputy Timothy Mateski arrived about a minute later and did the same. The parents, grandmother, and friends were ordered away and complied. Neither deputy carried a taser. Tigard Officer Andrew Pastore arrived with a beanbag shotgun and a taser, and at 3:14 a.m. Mateski ordered him to fire the beanbag rounds instead of the taser. Pastore fired all six rounds. As Lukus moved away from the beanbag fire toward an alcove near the house, Gerba and Mateski opened fire with their semiautomatic pistols, discharging a combined 11 rounds. Eight bullets struck him in the back, chest, stomach, shoulder, and legs. He bled to death on the porch.² His blood alcohol content was .18.³

The entire encounter, from the first deputy’s arrival to the fatal shots, lasted under four minutes.³

From District Court to the Ninth Circuit

In August 2008, Hope Glenn, as personal representative of her son’s estate, sued Washington County and Deputies Gerba and Mateski in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The complaint raised a federal civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, together with a state wrongful death claim.⁴

In June 2010, U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman granted summary judgment for the defendants, finding no constitutional violation and holding the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. Glenn appealed.²

What the Ninth Circuit Decided

On November 4, 2011, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel of Judges Raymond Fisher, Ronald Gould, and Richard Paez unanimously reversed. Judge Fisher’s opinion held that genuine issues of material fact remained on whether the officers’ use of force was constitutionally reasonable, and sent the case back for trial.⁴

The court applied the balancing test drawn from Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner: first, the severity of the intrusion on the plaintiff’s rights; second, the government’s interests, including the severity of any crime, the immediacy of the threat, and whether the subject was actively resisting; third, a weighing of the two.⁵

Each factor cut against the officers. Both the beanbag rounds and the lethal gunfire were classified as severe intrusions. Lukus was not a criminal suspect but an emotionally disturbed person whose family had called for help. A jury could conclude he posed little immediate threat to anyone but himself: his parents and friends had been moved away, and he had remained in roughly the same position until the beanbag rounds were fired. His refusal to drop the knife amounted to “static” resistance, which under the county’s own use-of-force continuum did not authorize less-lethal munitions like beanbag shotguns.⁴

Two doctrinal points from the opinion have shaped later cases. First, being armed does not justify force as a matter of law; courts must run a “context-specific analysis” of the totality of the circumstances. Second, when officers encounter a mentally ill or emotionally disturbed person rather than a dangerous criminal, the government’s interest in using force is “diminished,” and increasing force “may exacerbate the situation.” The court pointed to four principles from expert testimony for handling such calls: slow the situation down, avoid increasing anxiety, attempt to develop rapport, and recognize that time is on the side of the police.²

The opinion also addressed the paradox at the core of the case. The court observed that “it would be odd to permit officers to use force capable of causing serious injury or death in an effort to prevent the possibility that an individual might attempt to harm only himself.” Officers need not choose the least intrusive means, but the availability of clear alternatives, such as waiting, using a taser, or continuing to talk, weighs against a finding that the force actually used was reasonable.⁴

On qualified immunity, the panel remanded, explaining it could not decide whether the law was “clearly established” until a jury resolved the disputed facts.⁴ Washington County’s petition for rehearing en banc was denied, and in January 2012 the Ninth Circuit stated it would accept no further petitions.⁶

The Jury Verdict and Settlement

On remand, the case went to a jury before Judge Mosman in Portland in August 2012. The Glenn family sought more than $7 million. Plaintiffs’ counsel argued the shooting resulted from a cascade of errors; the defense argued Lukus posed a threat to his family and the officers.⁷

On August 30, 2012, the seven-member jury returned a unanimous verdict for the family, finding that Deputies Gerba and Mateski violated Lukus Glenn’s civil rights and failed to follow proper procedures, and awarded $2.5 million.⁸ Rather than pursue further appeals, Washington County settled for $2.575 million, covering all outstanding claims including attorney fees and costs. The Board of Commissioners approved the deal, and the county announced on November 20, 2012, that it would not appeal.¹

How Later Cases Have Used Glenn

Glenn, 673 F.3d 864, is now a fixture in Ninth Circuit excessive force analysis, particularly in cases involving mentally ill or emotionally disturbed subjects. Courts use it both to deny qualified immunity when officers escalate and to distinguish cases where the threat to others was more concrete.

In Ventura v. Rutledge (2020), the Ninth Circuit granted qualified immunity to an officer who used deadly force against an armed suspect, distinguishing Glenn because Lukus “had not previously attempted to hurt anyone else and had not moved toward anyone else prior to the time he was shot with a beanbag gun.”⁹ In Napouk v. LVMPD (2024), the court again distinguished Glenn, noting that the decedent there had repeatedly advanced on officers despite verbal warnings he acknowledged understanding. The court reaffirmed Glenn‘s rule that being armed does not automatically justify force, but clarified that the diminished governmental interest in using force against a mentally ill person applies only when the subject is “neither a threat to himself nor to anyone else.”¹⁰ In Cortesluna v. Leon (2020), the court applied Glenn‘s three-factor framework alongside Deorle v. Rutherford to evaluate beanbag rounds and physical force against a suspect.¹¹

Read alongside Deorle, which held in 2001 that beanbag rounds are “not to be deployed lightly,” Glenn is part of a broader Ninth Circuit doctrine treating beanbag rounds, tasers, and similar tools as “intermediate force” that demands careful justification.¹²¹³

Changes at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office

Neither deputy who fired at Lukus had completed the department’s crisis intervention course, which at the time was voluntary.³ In the years after the shooting, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office rebuilt its approach to mental health calls:

Crisis intervention training became mandatory for all patrol deputies.
A Mental Health Response Team, launched in February 2011, pairs specially trained deputies with mental health clinicians and operates seven days a week, funded by roughly $200,000 annually in state grants.
Policies and training were revised to stress evaluating a subject’s mental state and using de-escalation before resorting to force.
The department replaced its beanbag shotguns with 40mm sponge-round launchers and issued tasers to every patrol deputy.

Sheriff Pat Garrett said the changes reflected an “evolution” in how the office handles mental health calls and that the department would expect a “different outcome” from a similar incident today. By late 2012, the Mental Health Response Team had resolved more than 570 incidents without using force.¹⁴¹

1
Washington County, Oregon. Joint Press Release
2
FindLaw. Glenn v. Washington County
3
OregonLive. Previous Stories and the Tort Claim
4
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Glenn v. Washington County, No. 10-35636
5
vLex. Glenn v. Washington Cnty., 673 F.3d 864
6
OregonLive. 9th U.S. Circuit Court Denies Washington County Petition
7
Portland Tribune. Jury Rules in Favor of Glenn Family’s Wrongful Death Case
8
KATU. Lukus Glenn Trial: Jurors Grappled Over Details, Notes Reveal
9
U.S. Supreme Court. Reply Brief, Ventura v. Rutledge
10
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Napouk v. LVMPD, No. 23-15726
11
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Cortesluna v. Leon, No. 19-15105
12
FindLaw. Deorle v. Rutherford
13
City of La Mesa. Less-Lethal Weapons
14
OregonLive. Washington County’s Mental Health Response