A Baltimore County, Md., judge this week overturned a jury’s decision that granted more than $38 million to the family of a woman who was fatally shot by the police after an hourslong standoff that had been partly streamed live on Instagram.

The woman, Korryn Gaines, 23, was shot several times by a Baltimore County police officer in August 2016 as she sat in her apartment with her 5-year-old son, Kodi Gaines, nearby. Her son was struck in the face by the officer’s gunfire.

Almost exactly a year ago, a jury found that the first shot the officer had fired at Ms. Gaines was not reasonable and awarded damages on the grounds that the police had violated the Gaineses’ civil rights and had committed battery on the mother and son.

But the decision on Thursday by the judge, Mickey J. Norman of Baltimore County Circuit Court, determined that the police officer who shot Ms. Gaines, Royce Ruby, was entitled to qualified immunity, a legal protection used to defend government officials from civil liability while they are acting in an official capacity. Critics of the doctrine have argued that it has denied justice to victims of abuse, especially when it is used in police shooting cases.

In deciding that the protection applied to Officer Ruby, who is now a corporal, Judge Norman determined that the officer did not violate Ms. Gaines’s civil rights, as the family claimed.

In his 78-page decision, Judge Norman wrote that in evaluating whether Officer Ruby used excessive force, “the facts must be examined from the perspective of the officer.” The judge noted that Ms. Gaines did not surrender to the police or put a shotgun down and that, six hours into the standoff, Ms. Gaines moved from the living room to behind a wall in the kitchen, a position that Officer Ruby said was a “tactical advantage.”

In February 2018, an all-female jury awarded Kodi Gaines more than $32.8 million; Karsyn Courtney, Kodi’s younger sister, who was not in the apartment at the time of the shooting, was awarded more than $4.5 million; and Korryn’s mother and father were awarded $300,000 each, as was the estate of Korryn Gaines.

Kenneth Ravenell, a lawyer representing Kodi, said in an email that he planned to appeal the decision. Mr. Ravenell called the judge’s opinion “factually wrong and legally flawed in many respects,” but would not elaborate. The family had not yet collected the money because of Baltimore County’s appeal of the jury’s decision.

A spokesman for the Baltimore County executive’s office declined to comment.

The police standoff started in Randallstown on Aug 1., 2016, when officers tried to serve Ms. Gaines with an arrest warrant after they said she had failed to appear in court on charges related to a traffic stop. The police were also serving an arrest warrant on her boyfriend, Kareem Courtney, 39, who the police said was wanted on an assault charge.

According to the sequence of events laid out in the judge’s decision, when county police officers encountered Ms. Gaines on the floor of her living room with a shotgun, they called in a SWAT unit and hostage negotiators. The judge wrote that the police understood that Ms. Gaines might have had mental health issues.

Officer Ruby testified during the trial that he saw Ms. Gaines raise her shotgun at the officers. He said that after he fired the first shot at Ms. Gaines, her shotgun discharged twice. He testified that he opened fire at her a second time because he believed she was going to shoot again.

Mr. Ravenell said last year that Officer Ruby fired his first shot from outside the apartment knowing that Kodi Gaines, the 5-year-old, was in the kitchen with his mother but without being able to see him. The family’s legal team disputes that Ms. Gaines raised her shotgun at the officers and, according to the judge’s decision, has argued that the law enforcement officials were sheltered from harm behind a brick wall and their protective gear.

In his decision, Judge Norman determined that the officer “cannot be expected to coolly engage in a protracted analysis of all the information known to him in a rapidly changing circumstance, putting the officer in the position of having to make an immediate choice.”

The judge also dismissed the claim that Officer Ruby committed battery against Kodi Gaines because it was not his intention to shoot the young boy. He wrote that a bullet fragment from the officer’s first shot struck Kodi’s cheek, but did not penetrate it.

Follow Julia Jacobs on Twitter: @juliarebeccaj.

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