Adam Bellotti (L’11) was just two weeks away from taking the Maryland bar exam when he received word that he’d just won a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Well, sort of. Bellotti, a student attorney in the Law Center’s Appellate Litigation Clinic, worked closely with Professor Steven Goldblatt and Supervising Attorney Kate Bushman last fall to draft the petition for rehearing in Henry v. Purnell.

“[Professor Goldblatt and Bushman] decided that they were going to petition for rehearing on this one, and they needed a student to work on the petition,” says Bellotti. “It sounded right up my alley, so I was happy to do it.”

Henry was a case that began in 2004, when Frederick Henry brought a federal section 1983 claim against Robert Purnell, a police officer who shot him — alleging that Purnell violated his Fourth Amendment right by using excessive force. Henry was unarmed when Purnell shot him outside his Maryland home.

Purnell, who was attempting to serve an arrest warrant for Henry’s failure to either pay child support or report to jail, would later assert that he had intended to pull his Taser from its holster instead of his service revolver.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland would throw out Henry’s case in 2008, granting summary judgment for Purnell because it believed the shooting was an “honest mistake” and therefore reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. But on appeal to the Fourth Circuit, Henry would argue that Purnell’s conduct was not reasonable, and that Purnell was not entitled to qualified immunity because his subjective intent to pull his Taser was not relevant.

While a panel of the Fourth Circuit sided with Purnell, holding that the police officer was entitled to qualified immunity because of his mistake, the court later agreed to rehear the case en banc, with all the judges on the court.

Which was anything but typical, Goldblatt says. “It got the whole group of 16 [clinic students] involved in a very special aspect of how federal courts of appeals resolve cases, important cases, and it gave them the chance to work on the inside of that.”

The en banc court ultimately agreed with Henry. “It is not the honesty of Purnell’s intentions that determines the constitutionality of his conduct; rather it is the objective reasonableness of his actions,” Circuit Judge Roger Gregory wrote for the court, in a 9-3 opinion. The case will now go to trial, absent a stay of proceedings by the Supreme Court.

Bushman says it’s a big win in the area of qualified immunity and section 1983. But student attorney Bellotti credits Bushman — who argued the case — with the victory. “Kate’s theory about how qualified immunity operates was the issue when we went to rehearing,” he says. “It was the big issue that won the day.”