Mildred Robinson v. Daniel Arrugueta

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED

________________________ U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

No. 04-10856 JULY 7, 2005

________________________ THOMAS K. KAHN

CLERK

D. C. Docket No. 03-01350-CV-MHS-1

MILDRED ROBINSON, Individually,

and on behalf of and as next friend to Steven

Walters, Jr., Sean Paul Walters, Anthony Walters,

and Jabhari Walters, minor children of decedent,

Steven Walters,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

DANIEL ARRUGUETA,

BRIAN M. SULLIVAN,

KEVIN HARTMANN,

RICK VAZQUEZ,

DONALD L. TITUS, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

_________________________

(July 7, 2005)

Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge TJOFLAT and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellant Mildred Robinson, as next-of-kin of Steven Walters,

deceased, and on behalf of Walters’s minor children, appeals the district court’s

grant of summary judgment in favor of Daniel Arrugueta, a law enforcement

officer, in her action alleging use of excessive force resulting in Walters’s death.

I.

The relevant facts and procedural history are as follows. Members of the

Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (“HIDTA”) Task Force arrested two

individuals on June 6, 2001 near a parking lot on Ponce de Leon Avenue (“Ponce”)

in Atlanta for selling nine ounces of heroin to an undercover agent. One of the

suspects agreed to cooperate by assisting the agents in apprehending his suppliers.

He arranged to meet his suppliers later that day, under the pretense of delivering

the funds he received from the sale of heroin.

That afternoon, the HIDTA agents gathered by a doughnut shop on Ponce

where the delivery was to take place. The cooperating suspect identified a Ford

Escort carrying three passengers as the vehicle in which his suppliers were driving.

Arrugueta, a special agent employed by the Immigration and Naturalization

Service, followed the Escort in an unmarked vehicle. The Escort drove past the

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doughnut shop, made a U-turn, and then stopped three to four feet behind a civilian

car waiting at a traffic light on the corner of Ponce and Argonne Avenue. The

driver of the vehicle and a passenger then exited the Escort and began walking

toward the doughnut shop. All units converged upon them. Both suspects were

arrested promptly thereafter.

Walters, the remaining suspect who apparently had also exited the Escort

and then re-entered, was sitting somewhere in between the front right passenger

seat and the driver’s seat.1 Arrugueta had exited his car and stood in between the

Escort and the car in front of it. The distance between Arrugueta and the Escort

was only two to four feet at the most. Arrugueta pointed his gun at Walters,

verbally identified himself as “Police,” and told him to put his hands up. Walters

made eye contact with Arrugueta, but defied the order to raise his hands. Instead,

Walters grinned at Arrugueta as the Escort slowly began to move forward at a

likely speed of around one to two miles per hour. Thus, Arrugueta had, at most,

2.72 seconds to react before getting crushed between the two cars.2 As Arrugueta

tried to get out of the way of the moving car, he shot Walters through the

1

The district court judge found, for the purposes of the qualified immunity analysis, that

Walters was sitting between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. The majority of the witnesses,

however, placed him directly in the driver’s seat.

2

One mile equals 5,280 feet. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour. 5,280 ft. ÷ 3,600 s. =

1.47 ft./s. If the vehicle could move 4 feet at the most towards him before he was crushed, then

he had 2.72 seconds (i.e. 4 ft. ÷ 1.47 ft./s. = 2.72 s.) to react.

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windshield. The Escort stopped immediately thereafter. Walters was then

removed from the car and given medical attention. The paramedics were not able

to save him.

Walters’s mother, Mildred Robinson, brought suit in the district court as

Walters’s next-of-kin and on behalf of Walters’s minor children. Robinson’s

complaint contained seven different Counts. Count I of the complaint alleged that

Arrugueta violated Walters’s Fourth Amendment rights by unreasonably using

deadly force in violation of Bivens v. Six Unkown Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct.

1999 (1971).3 Arrugueta moved for summary judgment as to Count I arguing the

claim was barred on qualified immunity grounds. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457

U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). The district court granted

Arrugueta’s motion. Robinson now appeals.

II.

A. Standard of Review

We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, drawing

all inferences in favor of Robinson. Korman v. HBC Fla., Inc., 182 F.3d 1291,

3

This appeal only concerns Count I of the complaint. Count II alleged that Arrugueta and

the other HIDTA agents conspired to deprive Walters of his Fourth Amendment rights. Counts

III and IV asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the HIDTA agents who were

employed by state and local enforcement agencies. Counts V, VI, and VII asserted claims

against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2671 et seq. The

district court either dismissed or granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all of

these counts.

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1293 (11th Cir. 1999).

B. Grant of Qualified Immunity

In Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 2156, 150 L.Ed.2d

272 (2001), the Supreme Court set out a two-step analysis to determine whether an

officer is eligible for qualified immunity. The first step is to determine whether the

facts “[t]aken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, . . . show

the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right[.]” Id. If the conduct did not

violate a constitutional right, the inquiry ends there. If the conduct violated a

constitutional right, a court must move on to the second step and determine

“whether the right was clearly established.” Id. Under the first step, the district

court found that Arrugueta had violated Walters’s Fourth Amendment right to be

free from excessive force. The court found, however, that under the second step

the right violated was not clearly established and thus Arrugueta was entitled to

qualified immunity.

We first examine whether the district court correctly found that Arrugueta’s

conduct violated a constitutional right. The Fourth Amendment protects

individuals from “unreasonable” seizures. Deadly force is “reasonable” for the

purposes of the Fourth Amendment when an officer “(1) ‘has probable cause to

believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer

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or to others’ or ‘that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or

threatened infliction of serious physical harm;’ (2) reasonably believes that the use

of deadly force was necessary to prevent escape; and (3) has given some warning

about the possible use of deadly force; if feasible.” Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d

1323, 1329-30 (11th Cir. 2003) (quoting Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S 1, 105

S.Ct. 1694, 85 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985)); see also Crosby v. Monroe County, 394 F.3d

1328, 1333 (11th Cir. 2004) (“the ‘reasonableness’ inquiry in an excessive force

case is an objective one: the question is whether the officer’s actions are

‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him,

without regard to his underlying intent or motivation.”).

The district court relied on the following facts, taken in the light most

favorable to Robinson, in making its determination that Arrugueta’s conduct

violated the Fourth Amendment: (1) at the time of the shooting, Walters was in

between the passenger’s seat and the driver’s seat, (2) the car was rolling slowly

downhill, and (3) Arrugueta could have avoided the vehicle by stepping aside.

Though the facts must be taken in the light most favorable to Robinson, the

determination of reasonableness must be made from the perspective of the officer.

The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the

perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20

vision of hindsight . . . The calculus of reasonableness must embody

allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-

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second judgments–in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly

evolving–about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular

situation.

Menuel v. City of Atlanta, 25 F.3d 990, 996 (11th Cir. 1994), quoting Graham v.

Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-97, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 1872 (1989).

The law existing in Georgia at the time of this incident instructed that a car

driven in a threatening manner can be considered a deadly weapon. Webb v. State,

256 Ga. App. 653, 654, 569 S.Ed.2d 596, 597 (2002) (“[O]ne who aims a motor

vehicle at another person may be convicted of aggravated assault regardless of

whether the victim sustained any injuries or was even touched by the vehicle.”).

Furthermore, under Georgia law, a law enforcement officer is justified in using

deadly force to prevent death or great injury to himself/herself or to third parties.

See O.C.G.A. §§ 16-3-23 and 17-4-20.

Here, Arrugueta was standing in a narrow space between the two vehicles,

Walters was disobeying Arrugueta’s orders to put his hands up, the Escort was

suddenly moving forward and Arrugueta had to make a split-second decision of

whether he could escape before he got crushed. At the most, Arrugueta had only

2.72 seconds to react to what he perceived as a threat of serious physical harm

from Walters.

Our precedent instructs us to take into account that “[r]econsideration [after

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the uncertainty and the excitement of the moment have passed] will nearly always

reveal that something different could have been done if . . . the future [was

known] before it occurred.” Carr v. Tatangelo, 338 F.3d 1259, 1270 (11th Cir.

2003). Even if in hindsight the facts show that Arrugueta perhaps could have

escaped unharmed, we conclude that a reasonable officer could have perceived that

Walters was using the Escort as a deadly weapon. Arrugueta had probable cause to

believe that Walters posed a threat of serious physical harm.

In the case of Brosseau v. Haugen, – U.S. –, 125 S.Ct. 596, 600, 160

L.Ed.2d 583 (2004), the Supreme Court held that it was objectively reasonable for

Officer Brosseau to use deadly force against a suspect in an attempt to prevent the

suspect’s escape and potential harm to others. Here, Arrugueta perceived that

Walters was attempting to crush him and endanger his life. Because it is

constitutionally reasonable for an officer to use deadly force when a suspect is

threatening escape and possible harm to others, it is also constitutionally

reasonable for an officer to use deadly force when he has probable cause to believe

that his own life is in peril.4 Thus, we conclude that Arrugueta is entitled to

qualified immunity under the first step of the Saucier analysis.

Even though our inquiry ends at the first step of the analysis, we note that

4

Brosseau is a recent opinion, which the district court judge did not have the benefit of

relying upon when deciding this case.

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the district court was correct in finding that, under the second step, the law was not

clearly established, and thus, Arrugueta is entitled to qualified immunity under this

step as well. See Vaughan, 343 F.3d at 1332; see also Brosseau, __ U.S. __, 125

S.Ct. at 599 (“Qualified immunity shields an officer from suit when she makes a

decision that, even if constitutionally deficient, reasonably misapprehends the law

governing the circumstances she confronted.”).

Robinson argues that the law is clearly established in this area. See Garner,

471 U.S. at 12, 105 S.Ct. at 1701 (“Where the suspect poses no immediate threat

to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend

him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.”). Robinson contends that

Walters posed no immediate threat to Arrugueta because the Escort was moving

slowly and Arrugueta had enough time to get out of the Escort’s way. The

Supreme Court, however has emphasized that the inquiry into whether the law is

clearly established “must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case,

not as a broad general proposition.” Brosseau, 125 S.Ct. at 599, quoting Saucier,

533 U.S. at 201. We conclude that, at the time of the shooting, no clearly defined

preexisting law would have indicated to Arrugueta that his use of force under this

specific factual situation was unlawful.

C. Material Issues of Disputed Facts Do Not Foreclose the Grant or Denial

of Summary Judgment Based on Qualified Immunity

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Robinson contends that genuine issues of material fact exist concerning the

events that led Arrugueta to fire his gun and, therefore, Arrugueta, is not entitled to

summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity. The Supreme Court has

instructed, however, that “[t]o deny summary judgment any time a material issue

of fact remains on the excessive force claim–could undermine the goal of qualified

immunity to ‘avoid excessive disruption of government and permit the resolution

of many insubstantial claims on summary judgment.’” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202

(quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727 (1982)).5

When conducting a qualified immunity analysis, district courts must take the

facts in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury. Saucier, 533

U.S. at 20. When a district court considers the record in this light, it eliminates all

issues of fact. By approaching the record in this way, the court has the plaintiff’s

best case before it. With the plaintiff’s best case in hand, the court is able to move

to the question of whether the defendant committed the constitutional violation

alleged in the complaint without having to assess any facts in dispute. Thus,

5

We note that qualified immunity is “immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to

liability.” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815 (1985). “[The] important

purposes of qualified immunity are thwarted if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial.”

Harrell v. Decatur County, GA, 22 F.3d 1570, 1578 (11th Cir. 1994) (Dubina, J. dissenting)

vacated by 41 F.3d 1494 (11th Cir. 1995) (adopting Judge Dubina’s dissenting opinion). The

purpose of qualified immunity is to ensure that officials are not deterred or distracted from

carrying out their official duties because of fear of a later lawsuit. Id.

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because material issues of disputed fact are not a factor in the court’s analysis of

qualified immunity and cannot foreclose the grant or denial of summary judgment

based on qualified immunity; we decline to entertain Robinson’s arguments

concerning the allegedly disputed facts.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of

summary judgment to Arrugueta based on qualified immunity.

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