GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Lawyers for former Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr, who is facing murder charges in the April 2022 death of a motorist, will return to court on Wednesday morning.

An appeals panel will hear a case deciding whether Schurr should stand trial on those charges.

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Schurr has been fighting second-degree murder charges for shooting 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya after a traffic stop turned into a physical struggle. Body camera footage shows Schurr shooting Lyoya after he resisted arrested and reached for Schurr’s taser. Schurr has consistently maintained he feared for his life, and toxicology results later revealed Lyoya’s blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit.

Schurr’s lawyers have argued that Schurr was within his right to use lethal force after Lyoya attempted to flee the traffic stop and that Schurr followed his training as a police officer. Kent County Prosecutor Christopher Becker says a jury should decide whether Schurr used excessive force when fatally shooting Lyoya.

Judges in lower courts agreed with Becker but after those rulings, Schurr’s attorneys petitioned the Court of Appeals to weigh in on the matter. Judges Brock Swartzle, Colleen O’Brien and Kathleen Feeney will make up the panel overseeing the case Wednesday morning in Grand Rapids.

Matthew Borgula, one of Schurr’s attorneys, submitted a brief and stated that without a legislative statute defining when a police officer is authorized to use lethal force, the lower courts should have relied on previous common law rulings which justified use of lethal force to subdue a fleeing felon. “… Video makes clear that Lyoya and Schurr still believed it was capable of inflicting serious injury or death at that point, otherwise both would have abandoned the fight for it,” Borgula wrote. “Once Schurr lost control of the Taser, Lyoya instantaneously had what he and Schurr believed was the ability to inflict greater force or harm on Schurr than he had without the Taser.”