Raheem Jacobs v. Cumberland County

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

______________

No. 19-3269

______________

RAHEEM JACOBS

v.

CUMBERLAND COUNTY; WARDEN ROBERT

BALICKI; JOHN DOE CORRECTIONS OFFICERS 1-6,

FICTITIOUS INDIVIDUALS; MICHAEL WILLIAMS;

NEIL ARMSTRONG; MICHAEL ANDERSON;

EMANUAL MORRERO; MANUAL VELESQUEZ

Michael Williams,

Appellant

______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of New Jersey

(D.C. Civil Action No. 16-cv-01523)

District Judge: Honorable Joseph H. Rodriguez

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Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a):

December 8, 2020

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Before: MCKEE, PORTER, and FISHER,

Circuit Judges.

(Filed: August 10, 2021)

______________

A. Michael Barker

Barker Gelfand & James

210 New Road

Linwood Greene, Suite 12

Linwood, NJ 08221

Counsel for Appellant Michael Williams

Kevin P. McCann

Shanna McCann

Chance & McCann

201 West Commerce Street

Bridgeton, NJ 08302

Counsel for Defendants Neil Armstrong,

Michael Anderson, Emanual Morrero, and

Manual Velesquez

Surinder K. Aggarwal

Stone Conroy

25A Hanover Road

Suite 301

Florham Park, NJ 07932

Counsel for Appellee Raheem Jacobs

2

OPINION OF THE COURT

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PORTER, Circuit Judge.

Raheem Jacobs got into a fight with another inmate

while he was a pretrial detainee at Cumberland County Jail.

Several minutes after the fight, a group of corrections officers

forcibly removed him from the dorm. Jacobs claims that as the

officers removed him, they violated his Fourteenth

Amendment right to be free from excessive force amounting to

punishment. The officers moved for summary judgment on the

ground of qualified immunity. After reviewing the record

(including a security video from the dorm) the District Court

determined that a reasonable jury could find that the officers

used gratuitous force and that any reasonable officer would

have known that such force was unlawful. The court thus

denied qualified immunity and summary judgment to the

officers. One of the officers, Michael Williams, unsuccessfully

moved for reconsideration. Williams now appeals. We will

affirm both District Court orders.

I

Jacobs was held in the C dorm of Cumberland County

Jail as he awaited trial for a weapons charge. On the morning

of February 25, 2015, Jacobs got into a fight with Bruce Hanby,

one of the other inmates housed in the C dorm. Less than thirty

seconds after the fight ended, a group of corrections officers

entered the dorm and identified Hanby as one of the fighters.

The officers removed Hanby and took him to the medical unit.

About fifteen minutes later, Williams and four of his fellow

officers (Neil Armstrong, Michael Anderson, Emanual

Morrero, and Manual Velesquez) returned for Jacobs. When

3

the officers arrived, they found Jacobs in the shower. The

officers told Jacobs to finish showering, get dressed, and gather

his belongings so that they could take him to the medical unit.

As they waited for Jacobs to finish up, the officers

standing outside the shower talked and laughed together while

other officers chatted with the inmates. After a few minutes,

Jacobs exited the shower and returned to his bunk. He donned

his jumpsuit and then rummaged through items on his bed for

about thirty seconds. The officers continued chatting with each

other in an apparently casual manner, but eventually their focus

shifted back to Jacobs. Officer Williams started speaking in the

direction of Jacobs as Jacobs continued to look through papers

and items on his bed. Then, in an instant, Officer Armstrong

grabbed Jacobs and pulled him away from the bed as Williams

and Anderson approached.

The parties dispute what prompted the officers to

descend on Jacobs. Jacobs claims that he was shuffling through

papers and searching for his family’s phone numbers so that

his bunkmate could call the family and let them know what

happened. While Jacobs doesn’t recall exactly what he and the

officers said, he posits that the officers grabbed him because

he was “taking too long.” App. 153.

The officers tell a different story. Armstrong says that

he asked Jacobs if he was looking for a weapon and Jacobs

replied, “Maybe.” App. 217. Williams never mentioned a

weapon in his deposition, but his story is similar. He claims

that after he saw Jacobs shuffling through the papers, he said,

“[M]y man, get your stuff together, let’s go,” and immediately

approached the bed to get a better view of what Jacobs was

searching for. App. 186. As he approached, he asked Jacobs

4

what he had in his hand and Jacobs responded with “something

to the effect of F you guys, . . . you guys are crazy.” App. 191.

The jail security video recorded no audio, so we cannot

determine what was said. But what happened next is clear from

the video. After being grabbed by Armstrong, Jacobs did not

resist as Armstrong tried to handcuff him. As Jacobs stood

compliant with his hands behind his back, Williams

approached and stood face to face with Jacobs. Within seconds,

Williams delivered a strike to Jacobs’s neck and a punch to the

side of his head. After the first two blows, Armstrong put

Jacobs into a neck hold and forced him to the floor as Williams

delivered a backhand slap to Jacobs’s face.

The security video failed to fully capture the next two

portions of the incident. First, as Armstrong and Jacobs

tumbled to the floor, they fell out of the security camera’s view.

The video shows Officer Anderson dropping to the floor to

assist Armstrong, but it does not capture Armstrong’s and

Anderson’s actions during the twenty-second period that

Jacobs remained on the floor. According to Jacobs, the officers

pinned him to the floor and punched and kneed him as they

cuffed his hands behind his back. Second, as Officers Morrero

and Armstrong escorted Jacobs to the medical unit, they used

an elevator with no security camera. Jacobs alleges that as his

hands were still cuffed behind his back the officers threw him

face-first into the elevator wall and continued beating him.

On the day of the incident, each officer submitted a use-

of-force report. None of the reports mentioned a threat of a

weapon or Williams striking Jacobs. Jail and law-enforcement

officials opened an investigation and determined that Williams

used excessive force. After review, the Cumberland County

Prosecutor’s Office charged Williams criminally.

5

Jacobs sued the officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and

alleged, among other things, that the officers used excessive

force in violation of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment

rights.1 The officers moved for summary judgment on the

ground of qualified immunity. At summary judgment, a district

court must construe the evidence and draw all reasonable

inferences in the light most favorable to the party opposing the

motion. Bland v. City of Newark, 900 F.3d 77, 83 (3d Cir.

2018). In qualified-immunity cases, that “usually means

adopting . . . the plaintiff’s version of the facts,” Scott v. Harris,

550 U.S. 372, 378 (2007), unless “no reasonable jury could

believe it,” id. at 380. But the existence of a security video

presents an “added wrinkle.” Id. at 378. In cases where there is

a reliable video depicting the events in question, courts must

not adopt a version of the facts that is “blatantly contradicted”

by the video footage. Id. at 380.

Applying those standards, the court first analyzed

Williams’s conduct. The court noted that several documents

from the investigation suggested that Williams’s force was

excessive. And far from blatantly contradicting Jacobs’s

version of events, the District Court found that the security

video appeared largely consistent with Jacobs’s side of the

story.

1

Jacobs also filed a § 1983 conspiracy claim against the

officers. The District Court denied summary judgment on the

conspiracy claim for Officers Anderson, Armstrong,

Velesquez, and Williams. Because the conspiracy claim was

not addressed in the appellate briefing, we consider the issue

forfeited. See Kost v. Kozakiewicz, 1 F.3d 176, 182 (3d Cir.

1993).

6

The remaining officers fared no better. Because the

security video failed to capture (1) what Jacobs, Williams, and

Armstrong said before the incident; (2) what happened on the

floor of C dorm; and (3) what happened on the elevator, the

court adopted Jacobs’s version of those disputed events. Using

that version of the facts, the District Court concluded that each

use of force violated Jacobs’s constitutional rights2 and that

any reasonable officer would have known that such gratuitous

force violated clearly established law. After unsuccessfully

moving for reconsideration, Officer Williams timely

appealed.3

II

The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.

§ 1331. We have jurisdiction to review the District Court’s

denial of qualified immunity under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the

collateral-order doctrine. Bland, 900 F.3d at 82. Under the

collateral-order doctrine, we have jurisdiction to “review

whether the set of facts identified by the district court is

sufficient to establish a violation of a clearly established

constitutional right.” Dougherty v. Sch. Dist. of Phila., 772

F.3d 979, 986 (3d Cir. 2014) (quoting Ziccardi v. City of

Philadelphia, 288 F.3d 57, 61 (3d Cir. 2002)). But we lack

jurisdiction to “review questions of ‘evidence sufficiency.’”

2

The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of

Officer Velesquez because it was undisputed that he never

touched Jacobs during the incident.

3

The other officers failed to timely appeal. Although they

moved to join Williams’s briefing in this case, they never filed

a notice of appeal. Accordingly, they are not parties to this

appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 3(c)(1)(A); Torres v. Oakland

Scavenger Co., 487 U.S. 312, 314–15 (1988).

7

Blaylock v. City of Philadelphia, 504 F.3d 405, 409 (3d Cir.

2007) (quoting Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313 (1995)).

“That is, if a district court determines ‘that there is sufficient

record evidence to support a set of facts under which there

would be no immunity,’ we must accept that set of facts on

interlocutory review.” Id. (quoting Schieber v. City of

Philadelphia, 320 F.3d 409, 415 (3d Cir. 2007)). We will thus

accept the District Court’s rendering of the facts unless it is

“blatantly contradicted” by the security video. Scott, 550 U.S.

at 380.

Given that set of facts, we analyze Officer Williams’s

qualified-immunity defense de novo. Bland, 900 F.3d at 83.

Our qualified-immunity analysis consists of two questions:

(1) whether this set of facts shows Williams violating a

constitutional right, and (2) “whether the right was clearly

established, such that ‘it would [have been] clear to a

reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful.’” El v. City

of Pittsburgh, 975 F.3d 327, 334 (3d Cir. 2020) (alteration in

original) (quoting Lamont v. New Jersey, 637 F.3d 177, 182

(3d Cir. 2011)).

III

Before we can decide whether the evidence depicts a

violation of a constitutional right, we must first clarify what

constitutional provision governs Jacobs’s claims. The Fourth

Amendment protects citizens from objectively unreasonable

uses of force in the context of arrests, investigatory stops, or

any other seizure. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395–

97 (1989). And the Eighth Amendment protects convicted

prisoners from any force applied “maliciously and sadistically

for the very purpose of causing harm.” Whitley v. Albers, 475

U.S. 312, 320–21 (1986) (quoting Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d

8

1028, 1033 (2d Cir. 1973)). But it is the Due Process Clause of

the Fourteenth Amendment4 that protects pretrial detainees like

Jacobs. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535 (1979).

In Bell, the Supreme Court explained that “pretrial

detainees, who have not been convicted of any crimes, retain

at least those constitutional rights that we have held are

enjoyed by convicted prisoners.” Id. at 545 (emphasis added).

Later, in Graham, the Court explained that it was “clear” that

the Fourteenth Amendment protects pretrial detainees from

“the use of excessive force that amounts to punishment.”

Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n.10. But it was not always clear what

the punishment standard entailed.

Courts were left to decide whether the punishment

standard was objective (like the Fourth Amendment’s

objective-reasonableness test) or subjective (like the Eighth

Amendment’s malicious-and-sadistic standard). For example,

in Fuentes v. Wagner, we held, in part, that “the Eighth

Amendment cruel and unusual punishments standards . . .

apply to a pretrial detainee’s excessive force claim arising in

the context of a prison disturbance.” 206 F.3d 335, 347 (3d Cir.

2000) (citations and emphasis omitted). Thus, in the context of

a disturbance, we required pretrial detainees to show not only

that force was excessive, but also that the force was applied

maliciously and sadistically. Id. In such a case, the Eighth and

Fourteenth Amendment inquiries became identical.

4

The Supreme Court has not yet determined whether pretrial

detainees can bring excessive-force claims under the Fourth

Amendment. See Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389, 408

(2015) (Alito, J., dissenting); Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n.10.

9

In 2015, the Supreme Court clarified that the subjective

Eighth Amendment standard does not apply to pretrial

detainees. See Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389, 400

(2015). “The language of the two Clauses differs, and the

nature of the claims often differs. And, most importantly,

pretrial detainees (unlike convicted prisoners) cannot be

punished at all, much less ‘maliciously and sadistically.’” Id.

(quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 398 n.11). Instead, the Court

held that “a pretrial detainee must show only that the force

purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively

unreasonable.” Id. at 396–97 (emphasis added). The Court thus

clarified that the Fourteenth Amendment, like the Fourth,

exclusively employs an objective-reasonableness standard.5

IV

A

Turning to the question of whether Williams used

objectively unreasonable force, “[a] court (judge or jury)

cannot apply this standard mechanically.” Id. at 397. Instead,

it requires “careful attention to the facts and circumstances of

each particular case.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. Those

circumstances include “the relationship between the need for

the use of force and the amount of force used; the extent of the

plaintiff’s injury; any effort made by the officer to temper or to

limit the amount of force; the severity of the security problem

at issue; the threat reasonably perceived by the officer; and

whether the plaintiff was actively resisting.” Kingsley, 576

5

In doing so, the Court abrogated the portion of Fuentes that

applied the Eighth Amendment’s malicious-and-sadistic

standard to pretrial detainees.

10

U.S. at 397.

We analyze these circumstances “from the perspective

of a reasonable officer on the scene.” Id. Running a jail is “an

inordinately difficult undertaking.” Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S.

78, 84–85 (1987). “Safety and order at these institutions

requires the expertise of correctional officials, who must have

substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions to the

problems they face.” Kingsley, 576 U.S. at 399 (internal

quotation marks omitted) (quoting Florence v. Bd. of Chosen

Freeholders, 566 U.S. 318, 326 (2012)). Officers facing

disturbances “are often forced to make split-second

judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and

rapidly evolving.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted)

(quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 397).6 And “[n]ot every push or

shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a

judge’s chambers,” violates an inmate’s constitutional rights.

6

As Kingsley demonstrates, courts applying the objective

standard in the Fourteenth Amendment context may find useful

guidance in Fourth Amendment excessive-force cases. See

Kingsley, 576 U.S. at 397–400. Although the factual scenarios

in the two contexts may differ, the Fourteenth Amendment

standard is now almost identical to the Fourth Amendment

standard. Compare id. at 396–97 (the Fourteenth Amendment

excessive-force inquiry requires a pretrial detainee to “show

only that the force purposely or knowingly used against him

was objectively unreasonable”), with Graham, 490 U.S. at 397

(the Fourth Amendment excessive-force inquiry asks “whether

the officers’ actions are ‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the

facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to

their underlying intent or motivation”); see also Lombardo v.

City of St. Louis, 141 S. Ct. 2239, 2241 n.2 (2021).

11

Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 9 (1992) (internal quotation

marks omitted) (quoting Johnson, 481 F.2d at 1033).

Here, even when the circumstances are viewed from the

perspective of a reasonable officer, the evidence construed in

the light most favorable to Jacobs could lead a reasonable jury

to find that Williams used objectively unreasonable force.

First, jurors could conclude that Williams and his fellow

officers were not facing a disturbance or any other threat to jail

security. Although a fight between inmates is a type of jail

disturbance, the disturbance subsided well before the officers

returned to retrieve Jacobs.7 After the fight ended, roughly

fifteen minutes passed before the officers returned for Jacobs.

When they returned, they found the inmates orderly and

compliant. Moreover, the security video shows that

circumstances were calm as the officers waited for Jacobs to

finish getting ready.

A reasonable factfinder could also conclude that Jacobs

posed no threat throughout the encounter. The security video

shows that Jacobs was standing with his hands behind his back

and submitting to Armstrong’s compliance hold when

Williams approached the bunk. As the District Court observed,

a reasonable jury viewing the security footage could find that

Williams struck Jacobs while Jacobs was defenseless and

obeying orders.

In sum, this version of events does not present a

question about the appropriate degree of force. Under this set

7

We note that even though the ongoing-disturbance exception

in Fuentes was not yet abrogated at the time of the officers’

conduct, it would still not apply in this case because there was

no disturbance when the officers returned for Jacobs.

12

of facts, a jury could find that there was no penological need

for any additional force—making each of Williams’s strikes

wholly gratuitous and objectively unreasonable.8

B

As for the second prong of qualified immunity, a

government official is protected from suit unless he “violated

a statutory or constitutional right that was clearly established

at the time of the challenged conduct.” Thomas v. Tice, 948

F.3d 133, 141 (3d Cir. 2020) (quoting Reichle v. Howards, 566

U.S. 658, 664 (2012)). “Clearly established means that, at the

time of the officer’s conduct, the law was sufficiently clear that

every reasonable official would understand that what he is

doing is unlawful.” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct.

577, 589 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting

Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011)).

In each case, we must focus on “whether the violative

nature of particular conduct is clearly established.” Mullenix

v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at

8

Of course, Williams has his own side of the story. He claims

that he and his fellow officers perceived a legitimate threat

because of things Jacobs said. If Williams’s version of events

were true, that would certainly bear on the reasonableness of

his actions. But as we have already explained, we must accept

the District Court’s presentation of the facts in the light most

favorable to Jacobs unless a video “blatantly contradict[s]” that

version of the facts. Scott, 550 U.S. at 380. Based on the silent

video, the only thing we can know for sure is that Jacobs and

Williams exchanged words. The dispute over what was said is

precisely the type of genuine factual dispute that we lack

jurisdiction to review. See Johnson, 515 U.S. at 313, 320.

13

742). Thus, the central question is whether the existing law

gave the officer “fair warning” that his particular conduct was

unlawful. Schneyder v. Smith, 653 F.3d 313, 329 (3d Cir. 2011)

(quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 740 (2002)).

Sometimes an officer can receive fair warning if “a

general constitutional rule already identified in the decisional

law . . . appl[ies] with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in

question, even though ‘the very action in question has [not]

previously been held unlawful.’” Hope, 536 U.S. at 741

(quoting United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271 (1997)).

But in excessive-force cases, it can be difficult for officers to

know how previous judicial opinions apply to new, tense

situations. See Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 205 (2001). The

reasonability of force often hinges on the details of an

individual case, making the specificity of caselaw “especially

important.” Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 12. In such cases, “officers

are entitled to qualified immunity unless existing precedent

‘squarely governs’ the specific facts at issue.” Kisela v.

Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1153 (2018) (quoting Mullenix, 577

U.S. at 15). The caselaw does not have to be “directly on

point,” but existing precedent must have placed the question of

unlawfulness “beyond debate.” al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741. Cases

with closely analogous facts can thus help “move a case

beyond the otherwise ‘hazy border between excessive and

acceptable force’ and thereby provide an officer notice that a

specific use of force is unlawful.” Kisela, 138 S. Ct. at 1153

(quoting Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 18).

Here, Williams’s conduct is nowhere near the “hazy

border between excessive and acceptable force.” Id. (quoting

Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 18). When the evidence is construed in

the light most favorable to Jacobs, we have no difficulty

concluding that the unlawfulness of the conduct was “beyond

14

debate,” al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741. Any reasonable officer

would have known that Williams’s strikes were unlawful under

this set of facts.

First, the Supreme Court has made clear that officers

may not expose inmates to gratuitous force divorced from any

legitimate penological purpose. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 738;

Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346 (1981). That alone

would provide officers with at least “some notice” that the

treatment of Jacobs was unlawful. Hope, 536 U.S. at 745.

Additionally, the specific conduct here—striking a physically

restrained and nonthreatening inmate—was clearly unlawful

under the precedent of this Court and our sister circuits. See

Giles v. Kearney, 571 F.3d 318, 326 (3d Cir. 2009) (“[A]t the

time of the incident in 2001, it was established that an officer

may not kick or otherwise use gratuitous force against an

inmate who has been subdued.”); Estate of Davis v. Delo, 115

F.3d 1388, 1394–95 (8th Cir. 1997) (“We agree that the law

was well established that striking an unresisting inmate . . . in

the head while four other officers were restraining his limbs

. . . is a violation of the Eighth Amendment.”); Skrtich v.

Thornton, 280 F.3d 1295, 1303 (11th Cir. 2002) (“By 1998,

our precedent clearly established that government officials

may not use gratuitous force against a prisoner who has been

already subdued or, as in this case, incapacitated.”); Cowart v.

Erwin, 837 F.3d 444, 454 (5th Cir. 2016) (“We have little

difficulty concluding that in 2009, the time of the incident, it

was well-established, in sufficiently similar situations, that

officers may not ‘use gratuitous force against a prisoner who

15

has already been subdued . . . [or] incapacitated.’” (alteration

in original) (quoting Skrtich, 280 F.3d at 1303)).9

* * *

At the time of the relevant conduct, it was clearly

established that officers could not gratuitously beat an inmate.

Construing the evidence in the light most favorable to Jacobs,

any reasonable officer would have known that the conduct here

was unlawful. We will therefore affirm both the District Court

order denying summary judgment and the District Court order

denying reconsideration to Officer Williams.

9

These cases arose out of the Eighth Amendment context.

Together, they show that it was clearly established that

Williams’s conduct would violate the Eighth Amendment’s

more stringent malicious-and-sadistic standard. Because the

conduct would violate that standard, Jacobs’s status as a

pretrial detainee simply means that the constitutional violation

here is more obvious because “pretrial detainees (unlike

convicted prisoners) cannot be punished at all, much less

‘maliciously and sadistically.’” Kingsley, 576 U.S. at 400

(quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 398 n.11). At the time of

Williams’s conduct, it was clear that the Fourteenth

Amendment protected pretrial detainees from excessive force

amounting to punishment. See Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n.10.

But even if a reasonable officer could mistakenly believe that

the circumstances here were governed by the Eighth

Amendment standard (as many jail interactions are) it would

not change the outcome because the conduct would violate

clearly established law under either standard.

16