Chanda Callaway v. Mason Adcock

USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 1 of 87 FOR PUBLICATION In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-13573 ____________________ CHANDA CALLAWAY, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus MASON ADCOCK, Defendant-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama D.C. Docket No. 2:20-cv-00598-ECM-CWB ____________________ Before GRANT, ABUDU, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges. ED CARNES, Circuit Judge: This appeal involves a claim that a police officer used exces- sive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment when he fatally shot a man. The plaintiff is Chanda Callaway, the aunt and USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 2 of 87 2 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 administrator of the estate of Channing Spivey, the man who was shot. 1 On behalf of the estate she claimed that the use of deadly force was excessive and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court concluded that the officer who fired the shots was entitled to qualified immunity and granted his motion for sum- mary judgment on that basis. A reasonable officer in the circumstances that this one found himself in could have believed that the use of deadly force was nec- essary to avoid a threat of serious physical harm or death to himself or others. It follows that the force used was not excessive in viola- tion of the Fourth Amendment. I. THE FACTS 2 The shooting happened on the evening of May 27, 2020. What led to it was Spivey’s irrational and violent behavior. The root cause of that behavior first came to light in early March 2020. That is when Spivey, who was then thirty-three years old, had a sei- zure at work and was hospitalized. Tests showed that he had a gli- oblastoma grade 4, which is the most aggressive and lethal form of 1 To simplify things, we will refer to Callaway, the administrator, as “the es- tate.” 2 We take these facts from the record as a whole, drawing them from testi- mony under oath in depositions, affidavits, and other sworn statements, in light of the standard of review applicable to decisions granting summary judg- ment. See infra at 32–33 (setting out the standard of review). USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 3 of 87 Opinion of the Court 3 brain cancer.3 Soon after his diagnosis, Spivey underwent surgery to remove the brain tumor, or as much of it as feasible. Surgery was followed by an “aggressive course of chemotherapy” adminis- tered five days a week during April and May of 2020. He also had radiation treatments. And he took a lot of prescription medication. After he was released from the hospital following his sur- gery, Spivey stayed at his aunt’s house for about a month, and she observed him. She summarized some of the serious problems he had: “Among the usual side-effects of this type of brain surgery and ten to twelve weeks of chemotherapy that Spivey experienced were confusion, irrational thought process, agitation, seizures, irritabil- ity, changes in personality and erratic behavior.” 4 3 See Torin Karsonovich, David P. Gasalberti, & Appaji Rayi, Low-Grade Glio- mas, NAT’L LIBR. OF MED., (Dec. 13, 2025), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560668/ [https://perma.cc/ RC3H-W9QT] (published in StatPearls [Internet]); Lauren Rose, Glioma vs. gli- oblastoma: What’s the difference?, Cancerwise (Feb. 18, 2022), https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/glioma-vs--glioblastoma--what- is-the-difference-in-these-brain-tumors-treatment-diagnosis.h00-159537378. html [https://perma.cc/34QB-H9FW]. While some laymen witnesses in this case referred to Spivey’s glioblastoma as being “stage 4,” when speaking of glioblastomas the medical profession uses “grade” instead of “stage” terminology. See Rose, supra. The most aggressive glioblastomas are grade 4. Id. 4 Channing Spivey’s brother, Westly Spivey, is mentioned a number of times in this opinion. To avoid confusion, we will follow the district court’s conven- tion of referring to Channing Spivey by his last name and referring to his brother Westly by his first name. And to minimize the number of brackets, we will substitute the name “Spivey” without brackets for “Channing” or USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 4 of 87 4 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 Another person who was around Spivey after his brain sur- gery was Zana Bloodsworth, his brother’s girlfriend. She blamed his abnormal behavior on the course of the radiation treatments he received, stating that “I knew something was off in his brain due to the radiation and stuff.” Because of how he began behaving, she thought the radiation had been “frying his brain.” Her opinion as a lay person may have been an oversimplification, but it was appar- ent to all those around Spivey that, whatever the cause, his behavior became abnormal, irrational, and aggressive. Spivey could no longer work after his surgery. After he left his aunt’s house, Spivey, Westly, and Westly’s girlfriend Zana Bloodsworth all moved into the house on North Glenwood Road, a rural two-lane highway just outside the little town of Luverne, Alabama.5 All three had been living with Callaway before they moved into the house she bought for them on Glenwood Road. Justin Robinson, a family friend, didn’t live there but he spent time with Spivey and the others. Westly, Bloodsworth, and Robinson all “Channing Spivey” wherever either of those names appears in documents or statements that we are quoting. We have, for example, done that in the quo- tation to which this footnote is attached. 5 Luverne had a population of 2,765 in 2020. See U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/search-results.html?q=luverne%2C+ala- bama&page=1&stateGeo=none&searchtype=web&cssp=SERP&_charset_ =UTF-8&search%3Atab=Infographics [https://perma.cc/8RLN-AGV7] (last visited July 10, 2026); City of Luverne, Ala., https:// luverne.org/business/de- mographics.html [https://perma.cc/ N74G-RW5E] (last visited September 7, 2026). USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 5 of 87 Opinion of the Court 5 had an opportunity to observe Spivey’s increasingly disturbing con- duct. Spivey didn’t like the way he looked after his operation. His head was shaved, and he had a large V- or L-shaped scar where the craniotomy had been performed, and there were staples in his head. The heavy course of treatments and the medications he was taking made him feel bad. As a result, Spivey decided to end all of his chemotherapy and radiation treatments and stop going to the doctor. So he quit. Spivey had been taking a large number of prescription med- ications; Westly said it was “a bunch –– it was a lot of them.” Among them were pain medicine and a mood stabilizer. Westly said, “[h]e just decided he just didn’t want to take [his medications] anymore,” so he didn’t. When asked why someone hadn’t seen to it that Spivey kept taking his medication, Bloodsworth explained: “He was a grown man. We couldn’t force him to do it if he didn’t want to do it. And he wasn’t going to do it.” His prescribed medi- cine was not all that Spivey quit; he had been smoking a little ma- rijuana but stopped that as well. His brother Westly was surprised, saying it was “something kind of weird, too, that he didn’t even want to smoke” anymore. On Sunday or Monday, May 24 or 25, Westly noticed that after Spivey abruptly quit taking all of his medications, including his pain medicine and his mood stabilizer, his behavior worsened. It became more erratic, more irrational, and more disturbing, as he USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 6 of 87 6 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 quickly spiraled toward the violent acts he would commit on Wednesday, May 27. Bloodsworth recounted how Spivey would “holler” and then be talking to you fine, and then he’d say something that you couldn’t understand: “[I]t was normal words – English words, but he just wasn’t making any sense.” The incoherent talking got worse in the days leading up to what happened on May 27. Westly noticed the same behavior and added that “I mean, he was in and out of making sense.” He said that Spivey “would get calm and talk like normal for a minute, and then all of a sudden like, he would just say something off the wall.” Westly explained how some things Spivey said “really didn’t make sense,” he was “blaming people for things he knew didn’t happen and all.” An ex- ample he gave is that Spivey started blaming their mother’s suicide years before on Robinson, their friend, which was something “re- ally off the wall.” Not only that but Spivey would walk outside “on the back side of the property,” and would be “praying aloud, like, talking to God.” He hadn’t done that before. Bloodsworth also related that Spivey “wasn’t really sleeping” from “the Sunday [May 24] through Wednesday [May 27].” In- stead, “[h]e would be loud and stuff and keep us up, like laughing really loud, you know, or hollering.” She recounted how “[h]e would just walk around the yard and just holler.” As for what he was hollering, “it was mostly religious stuff like talking to God.” She “remember[ed] him saying some stuff about a king or being a king.” USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 7 of 87 Opinion of the Court 7 Wednesday, May 27 was Spivey’s worst day. And it would prove to be his last. That morning he got into his Yukon truck, drove it down a country road into a field, started “doing donuts and ran it into a tree,” wrecking the truck. 6 As Bloodsworth described it: “He was doing donuts in this little small tiny field thing, and he, like, hit a tree. He, like, centered a tree.” Spivey left his wrecked truck and walked back to the house. When he got back to the house after the wreck, Spivey “swore it was his day.” He told Bloodsworth that “he had petted a spider,” said “[s]omething about a poisonous mushroom,” and “then something about seeing Elijah’s eye.” When asked if Spivey also talked about death at that time, Bloodsworth answered: “[H]e said something about thinking it was his day. I think that’s how he worded it . . . . [H]e said he thought –– he could have swore it was his day or something like that.” As the day wore on, Spivey’s behavior became more erratic and aggressive. He “was walking in and out of the house, like, yell- ing, like talking to the Lord.” 6 In the context of driving, a “donut” is a vehicle-driving maneuver character- ized by the “intentional and unnecessary operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that causes the vehicle to move in a zigzag or circular course or to gyrate or spin around.” Ala. Code § 13A-11-300(a)(2) (defining “motor vehicle donut”). Most jurisdictions outlaw the maneuver, at least on public roads, because it can cause rollovers or other types of wrecks. See, e.g., id. § 13A-11- 300(b)(1)(d). Which is what Spivey’s doing donuts did. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 8 of 87 8 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 In the two hours leading up to the shooting that night there were several episodes in which Spivey was violent or was aggres- sive. He broke a cup during one episode. And shortly after, while the others were watching a movie on the TV, Spivey walked in, picked up the TV, and threatened to throw it down and break it. “He said he was doing what he was told to do, was going to bust it,” that it was “of the devil, like talking about the TV, the nonsense TV has.” He was eventually persuaded to put the TV down. He also said the same thing about the air conditioner being of the devil. Spivey’s irrational behavior caused Bloodsworth to call 911. She walked outside and made her first call at 7:41 p.m.7 Bloodsworth told the 911 operator that they needed an ambulance because her boyfriend’s brother, a 34-year-old male with “stage 4” brain cancer, “for the past couple of days” was having “episodes where he just screams and hollers.” But while Bloodsworth was still on the phone with the op- erator, Westly told her that Spivey was going to calm down. He wanted her to give Spivey another chance. Westly later explained 7 The record in this case includes an audio recording of Bloodsworth’s two 911 calls. The record also includes a written “Computer-Assisted Dispatch” (CAD) report that memorializes in condensed form some information about those 911 calls and the times they were made. It also memorializes some infor- mation about another 911 call made by a deputy sheriff. More about that call later. See infra at 15–16 n.12. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 9 of 87 Opinion of the Court 9 that he hadn’t wanted Spivey to be taken to the hospital, “because he didn’t want to be there, and he was a grown man.” Westly thought his brother shouldn’t be forced to go to the hospital “just because he was acting irrational.” And Westly “didn’t see where he was of harm to us at the time.” At Westly’s request, Bloodsworth told the 911 operator that Spivey had started calming down, and they wanted to give him an- other chance. She said they no longer wanted an ambulance, but she would call back “if it happens again.” Bloodsworth then went back inside the house and hadn’t been there long when she heard the noise of Spivey punching a hole in the living room ceiling. As she explained, that was it for her: “About that time I heard the crunch of the ceiling, and then I was like, okay, he needs medical treatment. I’m calling 911. And I wasn’t going to let Westly or anybody tell me any different.” Bloodsworth called the 911 operator that second time at 7:49 p.m, which was just eight minutes after she had placed the first 911 call. In this second call she reported that Spivey was “screaming,” was “aggressive,” had “tried to break the TV,” and had “punched a hole in the ceiling.” She warned the operator: “[T]here’s a chance that he may not want to go,” but “take my word for it,” he is not “in the right mindset right now.” The operator (who also served as dispatcher) told Bloodsworth that she would send both a law en- forcement officer and emergency medical services (EMS) to the USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 10 of 87 10 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 scene. 8 And she did. She dispatched an EMS team to the Spivey house at 7:51 p.m., and the ambulance arrived there at 7:54 p.m. When she dispatched the ambulance with the EMS team and a deputy sheriff, who was in a separate vehicle, the opera- tor/dispatcher told them that the subject had a terminal illness, needed medical treatment, and was “combative.” Deputy Brent Penny of the Crenshaw County Sheriff’s Of- fice was dispatched to the Spivey house at the same time the ambu- lance was. Penny understood that he was being asked to assist an EMS team with “a combative subject” who had “a brain tumor or something to that effect” and who had “broke[n] a TV and punched holes in the wall.” Penny, who had seven years of experience in law enforcement, raced to the scene in a sheriff’s department SUV with “emergency equipment activated.” Meanwhile, Bloodsworth, Westly, and Robinson waited out- side the house for the ambulance, while Spivey wandered around the yard, screaming, yelling, and praying out loud. At one point, Spivey took an unprovoked swing at Robinson, his brother’s friend. He also took a swing at his brother Westly, who described what 8 The record doesn’t clarify each EMS team member’s scope of duties and po- sition title. There’s either an absence of job titles or conflicting testimony about whether a person is a paramedic or EMT. See generally Ala. Code § 22- 18-1(1), (12)–(13), (16) (detailing different required training, licensure, and a different scope of practice for various levels of EMTs and paramedics). These job titles are often used interchangeably, and that is technically incorrect. To avoid those inaccuracies, we will use the umbrella term EMS team, which co- vers both EMTs and paramedics. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 11 of 87 Opinion of the Court 11 happened: “I don’t even think there was anything that set him off . . . he just looked at me and just swung.” Westly added: “That was the first time he’s ever swung at me ever.” Westly ducked to avoid the punch, grabbed Spivey, and held him down until he quit fighting. While they were outside, Spivey also put his arms under Westly’s and then locked his fingers behind Westly’s neck “[k]ind of like a headlock,” in what Bloodsworth considered an “aggres- sive” move. The EMS team arrived in an ambulance before Deputy Penny got to the Spivey house. Given the report that the subject was combative, they stopped on top of a hill two hundred yards up the road from the house and waited for the deputy to arrive. One of the dispatched EMS team members was Tim White, a friend of Captain Mason Adcock, who knew that Adcock lived nearby. Just before 8:00 p.m., while waiting in the ambulance up the road from the Spivey house for Deputy Penny to arrive, White called Adcock. At the time of White’s call, Mason Adcock was taking it easy after a day’s work as a police officer.9 It was past the dinner hour, and he was wearing gym-type shorts and a T-shirt, and relaxing in his recliner, watching TV. Adcock’s wife and fourteen-year-old stepson were there with him. Adcock was unaware of any problem at or near the Spivey house, until he spoke with White. 9 Adcock was a Captain and Assistant Chief of the Luverne Police Department, but there were only 13 officers in the department to cover all three shifts, so Adcock had patrol duties as well as administrative ones. About half of his time was spent on patrol and half on administrative matters. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 12 of 87 12 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 In their brief phone conversation, which lasted only “[o]ne to two minutes,” White told Adcock that the EMS team, “had re- ceived some type of call” about an issue at the Spivey residence, which was on the other side of Glenwood Road from the Adcock house. White said that the EMS team was now “staged” atop a hill a couple of hundred yards up the road away from the Spivey house, “waiting on a deputy to get . . . there.” White asked Adcock whether he had heard “the ruckus, racket, whatever, going on across the road.” Adcock hadn’t heard anything and didn’t know what White was talking about. He was acquainted with Spivey, and they would speak when they saw each other.10 He had heard Spivey was being treated for brain cancer, but that was second-hand information. He hadn’t talked with Spivey about it and didn’t know the status of it. And he also was unaware that Spivey was living with his brother Westly in the house across the road. White didn’t tell Adcock that Spivey was the one causing trouble there; he didn’t mention Spivey or anyone else’s name to Adcock. The conversation with White lasted one to two minutes and left Adcock, who had 15 years law enforcement experience, with an uneasy feeling. After the conversation, he got out of his recliner, put on long pants and boots, and clipped on the holster containing 10 The estate asserts in its brief that Adcock “knew” Spivey didn’t have a his- tory of violent behavior, but the record shows what Adcock actually testified is that he wasn’t “aware” of any history of violent behavior. There is a differ- ence between not being aware of something and knowing that it does not exist. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 13 of 87 Opinion of the Court 13 his firearm. When asked later if he had grabbed the weapon be- cause he thought he’d need it, Adcock answered: “I carry a gun al- most everywhere I go every day. So it’s not out of the ordinary for me to pick up my gun.” He normally didn’t carry a taser, so he didn’t have one available, and he left his baton (sometimes called a night stick) in the house because he did not think he would need it. Because of what White had told him, Adcock stuck his head out his door. When he did, he could hear “a lot of screaming, yell- ing, cursing, banging,” and “maybe glass breaking.” He wasn’t sure what he was hearing, but he was “hearing something over there” across the road. Back at the Spivey residence, as Bloodsworth, Westly, and Robinson waited for the arrival of law enforcement and an ambu- lance, Spivey had grown increasingly agitated. He was yelling as he walked around outside the house. Deputy Penny arrived in his official sheriff’s office vehicle, a black Ford Explorer SUV, and he parked near the driveway to the Spivey residence where four or five people were. Penny began to get out of the vehicle. But before he could make it out, Spivey got to the rear end of the SUV and shat- tered the back window with his bare hands. As Penny experienced it: “I got my door maybe about four inches open –– barely opened my door, then all of a sudden my back window was shattered.” When Penny got out of his freshly damaged vehicle, he saw Spivey, whom he described as a “tall person in just a pair of shorts.” Spivey came at Penny, causing him to start backing away immedi- ately. While backing away from Spivey, Penny reached for his taser USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 14 of 87 14 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 and ordered him to get on the ground. When Spivey didn’t obey that order, Penny fired his taser at him. The taser prongs hit Spivey, and he “went down.” But not for long. Five or fewer seconds after going down, Spivey pulled the taser prongs out of his body and got back up.11 Penny twice tried to tase Spivey another time, but he couldn’t get the taser to fire again. The EMS team, which had been waiting up the road for an officer, saw Deputy Penny arrive. The ambulance, with its lights on, started moving slowly towards the Spivey house. At that point, Spivey saw the ambulance and jogged over to it. When he got there, Spivey suddenly leapt onto the hood of the ambulance and shattered the windshield by striking it hard with his bare fists. When Spivey shattered the windshield some of the shards of broken glass hit the ambulance driver, Robert Knight, in his eyes, temporarily blinding him and imperiling his ability to drive the am- bulance. Because of the glass in his eyes, Knight was later attended to by an EMS team member. But immediately after Spivey shat- tered the windshield with his fists sending shards of glass into the ambulance, Knight managed to put the ambulance in reverse and “stepped on the gas,” which slung Spivey off the hood and into the ditch. 11 See generally Cantu v. City of Dothan, 974 F.3d 1217, 1224–25 (11th Cir. 2020) (explaining that “[i]n the ‘prong’ mode, a taser fires small prongs that are con- nected to the taser by thin wires . . . . The usual result of being tased with the device in the prong mode is temporary incapacitation and inability to move.”) (quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted). USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 15 of 87 Opinion of the Court 15 The people who were outside the Spivey house when Penny arrived watched the events unfold. All of them were pleading with Spivey to stop. Spivey ignored their pleas. He jumped up from the ground, turned, and “[h]is attention goes off of the ambulance crew and back on to” Penny who was “on the radio hollering for assistance.” Spivey “jogg[ed]” toward Penny, who later described how Spivey appeared as he approached him: “So as he’s running at me, I could tell that something wasn’t right. By his demeanor, he ap- peared to be under –– to my –– to what I believed to be under the influence of something.” Penny drew his pistol, and he gave Spivey “verbal commands to get on the ground,” while saying “I do not want to shoot you; I do not want to shoot you,” and he kept saying repeatedly: “[G]et on the ground; I do not want to shoot you.” But Spivey didn’t get on the ground. He kept after Penny. And Penny kept backing up, pleading with Spivey to stop and get on the ground. Spivey neither stopped nor got on the ground. He just kept coming.12 12 Penny’s unheeded commands to Spivey were captured in a 911 audio re- cording. Soon after Penny arrived at the Spivey house, he used his cell phone to call the dispatcher on a continuously recording open line. He put the phone in his pocket or vest, resulting in a recording of all the sounds that could be heard by the operator/dispatcher over the open line, not just Penny’s words, from the beginning through the time the shots were fired. The recording is in the record, see Doc. 57-7. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 16 of 87 16 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 Penny was frightened, even though he had his firearm drawn and he could see that Spivey was unarmed. When asked if he had been afraid when Spivey, with bloody fists, advanced on him, Penny answered: “For my life, yes.” Penny was afraid because he could tell from the way that Spivey “had just caved in the wind- shield of an ambulance with his bare fist, something wasn’t right with that situation.” Not only that but, as Penny explained, “I could tell just by the way he was looking at me like, and –– like he wanted to kill me.” See also infra at 80. That’s not all. In addition to the threating “look[]” Spivey gave Penny, the estate’s attorney stated into the record that: “Mr. Spivey’s head had been shaved, and there was the remainder of a scar running from the top of his head to right about the start of his forehead[.]” It is also undisputed that Spivey had “staples . . . all in his head.” Penny, who was terrified, drew his gun instead of attempting to use his pepper spray or baton. He testified he did so because he was concerned that Spivey could potentially overpower him and use his weapon against him. Penny, with his gun drawn, kept back- ing up from the oncoming Spivey, all the while warning him that if he didn’t stop and get on the ground Penny would shoot him. More specifically, Penny shouted: “Get on the fucking ground or I’m [gonna] shoot your ass!” And he also yelled, apparently to the onlookers, “I’m going to have to shoot him.” Spivey ignored all of Penny’s warnings and orders to stop and get on the ground. He USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 17 of 87 Opinion of the Court 17 kept coming at Penny. None of the onlookers got involved, except to plead with Spivey to stop. He ignored their pleas. During his encounter with Spivey that night, Penny repeat- edly called the operator/dispatcher and requested backup. No backup arrived in time. Bloodsworth, who had been witnessing the increasingly dis- turbing events heading toward a bad end, ran for help. 13 She knew that Adcock was a law enforcement officer who lived down the road and up a long driveway. She “took off running” down North Glenwood Road and up the driveway to Adcock’s house. She ran all of the way, which the attorneys agreed was between “a hundred and some-odd yards” and “200 yards.” Adcock heard a loud, rapid, banging on his front door. He drew his weapon, which he had holstered on his hip after Tim White’s phone call about trouble down the road. And Adcock opened the door to find Bloodsworth on his porch. He knew her by name and was aware that she lived at the house across the road, even though he didn’t know that Spivey had been living there with Westly and Bloodsworth. 13 Penny recalled that it was his idea for Bloodsworth to go to Adcock’s house to get him to help, while Bloodsworth recalled it was her idea. That difference in recollection is immaterial. Regardless of whose idea it was, Bloodsworth ran to Adcock’s home to get his help. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 18 of 87 18 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 Bloodsworth was bent over on Adcock’s porch with her hands on her knees, trying hard to catch her breath. Adcock saw that she was “cow[ered] down,” “frantic,” “distraught,” and “hys- terical.” He told her to “come inside; come inside; come inside,” and she did. When asked later what she had told Adcock, Bloodsworth answered: “I said, they need help. Spivey’s got brain cancer. I said, he’s acting out. He said he was going to shoot him. Don’t let him shoot him.” What she meant by that statement is that Adcock should not let Penny shoot Spivey, but she didn’t say that. She did not know Penny’s name or describe him, and she didn’t tell Adcock who had the gun or who had threatened to shoot whom. Adcock told Bloodsworth and his wife to stay inside the house, not to go outside. Then, within “a minute or less” after his conversation with Bloodsworth, Adcock grabbed a flashlight be- cause “it was getting about dark,” and he stepped outside, with his gun holstered at his side. That was one or two minutes before the shooting. He went out the back door and walked toward his front door to check whether “anybody had followed [Bloodsworth] to the front of the house.” Meanwhile, Penny, with his gun still drawn, had moved far- ther down the road. Spivey followed him. Stumbling, Penny had walked backwards in the direction of Adcock’s driveway, keeping his gun drawn and his eyes on Spivey, who was walking forward and continuing to pursue him. The distance from the Spivey drive- way to where Adcock’s long driveway began at the road is USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 19 of 87 Opinion of the Court 19 approximately 100 yards, and Adcock’s house is another 50 to 80 yards from there. As Penny retreated backwards from Spivey, he kept ordering Spivey to get on the ground and warning that he’d have to shoot him if he didn’t comply. Spivey ignored the orders and warnings. He kept coming after Penny. The 911 recording captures Penny pleading with the dispatcher for backup. He shouts, “Send me an- ybody” and says, “he’s advancing on me!” He tells the dispatcher, “I already tazed him,” and “it had no effect.” Backward-facing Penny and forward-facing Spivey moved in tandem down the road, while Westly and Robinson hung back closer to the Spivey property where they had witnessed Spivey’s vi- olence. The two of them later followed Spivey and Penny, but at a distance. Westly testified that he and Robinson did not “start[] eas- ing over” in that direction until Penny and Spivey “got kind of close” to Adcock’s property, because they thought Penny might fire his weapon, and they didn’t want to risk being shot. Penny was not getting any further away from Spivey. As he told it, “The more I was trying to get distance away, the more he was” closing the gap. “He kept closing it.” But as Penny also re- counted, somewhere in the road “I felt like I was close enough to [Adcock’s] driveway, that I holstered, turned, and took off running” to and then up Adcock’s driveway. Westly and Robinson went down the road in that direction, but they continued to keep their distance from Penny and Spivey. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 20 of 87 20 Opinion of the Court 22-13573 Penny ran the full 50 to 80 yards up Adcock’s driveway. The 911 recording of his call to the dispatcher indicates that Penny was running up Adcock’s driveway for approximately 20 seconds, based on the sound of heavy footsteps. As Penny approached Adcock’s house, he saw Adcock in his yard with a flashlight in his hand. Because Bloodsworth had not mentioned any names to him, Adcock did not know who he would see when he came out of his house. What Adcock heard when he got outside was Penny screaming for his help. The 911 audio recording establishes that after yelling Adcock’s name twice in rapid succession, Penny shouted “I’m gonna have to shoot him!” and then yelled Adcock’s name a third time. Penny shouted something that sounds like “Help!” About two seconds later, Adcock’s voice is heard on the recording for the first time. Adcock described how he and Penny exchanged frantic words: [H]e was yelling out my name; help me. I still didn’t know . . . who we were looking for or talking about or how many or anything like that. I yelled at Deputy Penny where is he at, and Deputy Penny’s in a sprint coming up the driveway. Then Adcock for the first time saw Spivey, who arrived in the drive- way not far behind Penny, both of them were running at “a trot,” with Spivey chasing Penny. As soon as he saw the two of them, Adcock started giving Spivey verbal commands to get on the ground. He was surprised to see Penny, he was surprised to see Spivey, and he was surprised to see Spivey chasing Penny. USCA11 Case: 22-13573 Document: 49-1 Date Filed: 09/22/2026 Page: 21 of 87 Opinion of the Court 21 Spivey’s appearance concerned Adcock. He saw that Spivey was not wearing any shoes, or a shirt, or pants; nothing but a pair of swim trunks. Alarmingly, he was “wet looking” because “he was covered in sweat and blood.” Adcock saw that Spivey “was bloody from head to toe.” There was blood on his “face, arms, chest, torso,” and “[e]ven down on his legs, possibly.” Adcock did not know why Spivey had all that blood on him. Added to Spivey’s alarming appearance was the fact that even though he was unarmed, Spivey obviously had struck terror in the heart of an armed deputy. The deputy wasn’t chasing Spivey; Spivey was chasing the deputy. And there was also the fact that Spivey was a large man