recognizing that “multiple courts of appeals had approved the use of taser guns to subdue individuals who resist arrest ot refuse to comply with police orders”
How later courts described this case
- recognizing that “multiple courts of appeals had approved the use of taser guns to subdue individuals who resist arrest ot refuse to comply with police orders”
- noting that for a right “to be clearly established, [a court] must conclude that the firmly settled state of the law, established by a forceful body of persuasive precedent, would place a reasonable official on notice that his, actions obviously violated a clearly established constitutional right” and that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals “has not yet spoken in a precedential opinion about taser use” (let alone the threat of taser use)
- remanding case to the lower court to more specifically identify the right at issue, because the court’s formulation of the right “as the Fourth Amendment right to be free from the excessive use of force ... lack[ed] the required level of specificity and [did] not address the question that needs to be answered in this context because it does not describe the specific situation that the officers confronted”
- remanding denial of qualified immunity on account of district court not defining right at issue with required level of specificity
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
______________
No. 15-1943
______________
MARY ESTEP, in her own right and as personal
representative for the Estate of Craig Baum, deceased
v.
POLICE OFFICER MACKEY; BOROUGH OF CRESSON; TOWNSHIP OF
CRESSON; BOROUGH OF PORTAGE; OFFICER KELLY BOLVIN; BOROUGH OF
SOUTH FORK; POLICE OFFICER DONALD WYAR
Police Officer Mackey,
Appellant
______________
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA
(D.C. No. 3-11-cv-00207)
District Judge: Hon. Kim R. Gibson
______________
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
January 29, 2016
______________
Before: VANASKIE, SHWARTZ, and RESTREPO, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: February 12, 2016)
______________
OPINION
______________
SHWARTZ, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff Mary Estep, on behalf of Craig Baum, sued police officer Robert Mackey
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that his use of a taser against Baum constituted
excessive force. Mackey appeals the District Court’s order denying him summary
judgment based on qualified immunity. Because the District Court did not clearly define
the right at issue in light of the facts of this case and assess whether such a right was
clearly established at the time the allegedly violative conduct occurred, we will vacate the
order denying summary judgment and remand.
I
Mackey and Donald Wyar are police officers employed by the Pennsylvania
Boroughs of Cresson and Portage. Wyar received a tip that a large quantity of heroin was
being transported from Pittsburgh to Portage in a green car by Baum and Ryan
Konsavich. Wyar told Mackey about the tip and asked if he knew the suspects. Mackey
was aware of Konsavich’s reputation for drug involvement, but did not know Baum.
On September 20, 2009, Mackey claims that he saw Konsavich with a man and
woman in a green car at a convenience store in Cresson. Mackey says that he spoke to
This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7
does not constitute binding precedent.
2
the man, who Mackey asserts was Baum, and that the man told him that he was enjoying
his last few days of freedom before being sentenced for armed robbery. Mackey called
Wyar to notify him that he had seen Konsavich with a man and woman in a green car and
that the woman was driving. However, the woman, Baum’s girlfriend Regine Robine,
testified that she did not see Mackey at the convenience store.
Later that night, Wyar saw the same green car swerve and almost hit a road sign,
leading him to stop the vehicle that Baum and Robine occupied. Wyar requested backup
from Mackey and a female officer.
Wyar gave Robine a written warning for the traffic violation and told her that she
was free to go, but then asked her whether she had been in Pittsburgh earlier that day,
causing her to become upset. Wyar asked if she had been driving under the influence of
any substances, and Robine said that she had taken Xanax. Robine then consented to a
search of the car.
Wyar removed Baum from the car, patted him down, found no weapons, and put
him in the back seat of the police car for the duration of the search. In the green car,
Wyar found a torn stamp bag and a straw typically used to snort heroin, but not the large
quantity of heroin that he expected based on the tip he had received. The officers called
for a K-9 unit to come search further for any drugs.
The parties dispute what occurred next. Mackey claims that Baum and Robine
admitted to using heroin on their way back from Pittsburgh, and that Wyar then told
3
Baum that he was under arrest. In contrast, Plaintiff contends that Baum was never told
that he was under arrest, citing the fact that Wyar’s police report does not indicate an
arrest, that Baum was not handcuffed, and that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest
him. Instead, Plaintiff asserts that Baum was essentially a passenger in a traffic stop who
voluntarily agreed to a search.
The subsequent events, however, are uncontested. Baum and Robine voluntarily
consented to strip searches and the female officer took Robine into the police station for
the search. Mackey walked Baum towards the police station, which was just thirty feet
away, without handcuffing him. Mackey removed his taser from its holster and told
Baum that if he ran, he would be tased. Mackey then walked Baum to the police station
with one hand on his arm and the taser in his other hand. Mackey let go of Baum to
unlock the door to the station and Baum jerked away and began to run across the street.
While Baum was in the middle of the street, six to eight feet ahead of Mackey, Mackey
fired his taser, which attached to Baum’s back, for a five-second interval. The electricity
from the taser caused Baum to lose muscle control, fall to the ground, and strike his head
on the curb.1 Baum sustained a traumatic brain injury which later rendered him
incapacitated.
1
When asked why he had run, Baum admitted that he had stuffed heroin down his
pants; the officers recovered the heroin.
4
On Baum’s behalf, his guardian Mary Estep filed claims under § 1983 against
Mackey for excessive force, as well as the Boroughs of Cresson and Portage for
municipal liability for failure to train and supervise their officers. The District Court
granted summary judgment in favor of the Boroughs but denied summary judgment to
Mackey on the excessive force claim and for qualified immunity, citing genuine issues of
material fact that must be resolved by a jury, including whether the incident took place in
the context of an arrest, and whether Baum posed a threat to the safety of the officers or
others. Mackey appeals.
II2
Usually, we have appellate jurisdiction to consider only a district court’s final
orders. 28 U.S.C. § 1291. However, § 1291 also permits interlocutory review of “certain
collateral orders . . . because they finally determine claims of right too important to be
denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate
consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Forbes v. Twp. of Lower
Merion, 313 F.3d 144, 147 (3d Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks, alterations, and
citation omitted). This “collateral-order doctrine” allows us to review certain orders that
deny a defendant’s motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds
because qualified immunity “is an immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to
liability and is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial.” Id.
2
The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
5
(internal quotation marks, alterations, and citation omitted, emphasis in original). We
may conduct interlocutory review of orders that deny summary judgment on qualified
immunity grounds based upon an issue of law. Id. If, however, the denial turned on an
issue of fact, then we lack jurisdiction to consider the appeal. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S.
304, 319-20 (1995); Doe v. Groody, 361 F.3d 232, 237 (3d Cir. 2004). Here, the District
Court’s order turned on its view that there were disputed issues of material fact, but it
reached this conclusion without identifying with the requisite level of specificity the right
that was allegedly violated and whether that right was clearly established at the time of
the conduct at issue. This omission constitutes a legal error that requires us to vacate the
order denying summary judgment. Forbes, 313 F.3d at 149-50; Grant v. City of
Pittsburgh, 98 F.3d 116, 121 (3d Cir. 1996).
Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense that shields government officials
“from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly
established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have
known.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). A clearly established right is one that is “sufficiently clear
that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that
right.” Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015) (internal quotation marks and
citation omitted).
6
This analysis requires a court to identify the right at issue and determine if that
right was clearly established at the time of the officer’s action. With respect to the first
task, courts “must define the right allegedly violated at the appropriate level of
specificity.” Sharp v. Johnson, 669 F.3d 144, 159 (3d Cir. 2012). The Supreme Court
has instructed courts “not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality.”
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2084 (2011). Rather, the right at issue must be
framed “in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense, in light of the case’s
specific context, not as a broad general proposition.” Spady v. Bethlehem Area Sch.
Dist., 800 F.3d 633, 638 (3d Cir. 2015) (quotation marks and citations omitted).
In this case, the District Court defined the right at issue as the Fourth Amendment
right to be free from the excessive use of force. This formulation lacks the required level
of specificity and does not address the question that needs to be answered in this context
because it does not describe the specific situation that the officers confronted. See
Mullenix, 136 S. Ct. at 309. As a result, we will remand to the District Court to allow it
to more specifically identify the right at issue.
After the District Court formulates the right, its second task will be to determine if
that right was clearly established at the time the taser was used against Baum. While
there need not be a case on point, “existing precedent must have placed the statutory or
7
constitutional question beyond debate.”3 al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2083. Put differently,
while a court need not find that “the very action in question has previously been held
unlawful,” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987), to be clearly established, it
must “conclude that the firmly settled state of the law, established by a forceful body of
persuasive precedent, would place a reasonable official on notice that his actions
obviously violated a clearly established constitutional right.”4 Spady, 800 F.3d at 639. If
the District Court determines that such a right was clearly established, it would then
determine whether the facts it already correctly found to be in dispute are material to
assessing whether that right was violated.5
3
There could be situations in which no reasonable officer could conclude that the
use of a taser was reasonable force. In such a circumstance, “the police do not need
judges to explain the obvious to them before they can be held accountable for an
unreasonable or excessive use of force.” Brown v. Burghart, No. 10-3374, 2012 WL
1900603, at *11 (E.D. Pa. May 25, 2012) (internal quotation marks and citations
omitted). We express no view as to whether this case falls into this category.
4
Our Court has not yet spoken in a precedential opinion about taser use and we
decline to do so here, as the District Court has not specifically identified the right
allegedly violated and whether it was clearly established at the time Baum was tased. As
stated in the text, the identification of the right depends upon the factual circumstances of
the case.
5
We note that the District Court has already identified disputed facts that are
material to evaluating the reasonableness of force as a general matter under the factors set
forth in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989) and Kopec v. Tate, 361 F.3d 772,
776-77 (3d Cir. 2004), such as whether Mackey had any knowledge about Baum’s
criminal history when he encountered him, whether Baum was under arrest at the time he
fled, whether there was probable cause for an arrest, and whether he posed any threat to
the officers on the scene, particularly in light of the fact he had been patted down and
found to possess no weapons. If the District Court determines that the right at issue was
clearly established, and these facts are relevant to determine whether Mackey violated
this right, then a jury should decide them.
8
III
For the foregoing reasons, we will vacate the order denying qualified immunity
and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
9