Rafael Mazuz v. The State of Maryland Philip P. Tou

KELLEY, District Judge,

concurring:

I am pleased to join in the majority’s well-reasoned opinion holding that Officer Tou did not violate Mazuz’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, unlawful arrest and detention, or the use of excessive force. I write separately only to emphasize the proper roles of the court and the jury in deciding claims of qualified immunity.

In denying defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment, the district court stated:

The plaintiffs argument ... is not unreasonable in the sense that [Tou] had been there the week before and should have known better. He knew where the numbers were. He scoped it out to see exactly where they were.

He described the door in detail to get the warrant. He did not have the warrant with him when he came in that evening and indeed he says on deposition, that “maybe if I had had that warrant in hand, I would have seen and not gone in.” And I think that’s enough, frankly, to raise a question of material fact in this case. It squeaks by.

Not to say that the plaintiff prevails in this case ultimately, but a jury will decide whether or not there was objective unreasonableness in this case. As I say, no issue of qualified immunity here really, because it is well established that one doesn’t enter into a premises where one doesn’t have a warrant.

So this is really a question of whether on these particular facts there was objectively reasonable or unreasonable behavior and a trier of fact could differ on that. So the motion as to count seven, which is the 1983 claim ... and the Article 26 state claim is denied.

J.A. 402 (quotation marks and emphasis added).

As the quoted language makes clear, the district court planned to submit to a jury the issue of Officer Tou’s objective reasonableness in entering Room 5108 and restraining its occupants. This is an incorrect apportionment of decision-making responsibility. Whether an officer’s conduct was objectively reasonable, and hence protected by qualified immunity, is a question of law solely for the court. Willingham v. Crooke, 412 F.3d 553, 559-60 (4th Cir.2005); see Knussman v. Maryland, 272 F.3d 625 , 634 (4th Cir.2001). Only disputed issues of fact material to the court’s objective reasonableness decision are submitted to the jury. Willingham, 412 F.3d at 559-60 ; see Knussman, 272 F.3d at 634. The court then uses the jury’s factual findings, typically communicated in the form of answers to special interrogatories, to decide whether to grant qualified immunity. Willingham, 412 F.3d at 560 ; see Warren v. Dwyer, 906 F.2d 70, 76 (2d Cir.1990) (“If there are unresolved factual issues ... the jury should decide these issues on special interrogatories .... ”). *

*233 Qualified immunity is not a mere defense; it is instead “ ‘an entitlement not to stand trial or face the other burdens of litigation.’ ” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 , 200, 121 S.Ct. 2151 , 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001) (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 , 105 S.Ct. 2806 , 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985)). As a result, both the Supreme Court and this Court repeatedly have “emphasized the importance of resolving the question of qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage rather than at trial.” Wilson v. Kittoe, 337 F.3d 392, 397 (4th Cir.2003); see also Saucier, 533 U.S. at 200-01, 121 S.Ct. 2151 .

The instant case did not involve any disputed issues of fact material to the ultimate legal question whether Officer Tou acted in an objectively reasonable manner. The parties agreed on what transpired; they disagreed only on what the facts meant. The district court therefore could have, and should have, dismissed Officer Tou as a defendant prior to trial.

The district court's misapprehension undoubtedly arose from the unsettled state of the law in this area. Unlike the Fourth Circuit, several Courts of Appeal hold that objective reasonableness is a jury issue. See, e.g., Maestas v. Lujan, 351 F.3d 1001, 1008-10 (10th Cir.2003); Fisher v. City of Memphis, 234 F.3d 312, 317 (6th Cir.2000); Snyder v. Trepagnier, 142 F.3d 791, 799-800 (5th Cir.1998). Past decisions of this Court tended to favor judicial *233 resolution of the objective reasonableness inquiry. See, e.g., Knussman v. Maryland, 272 F.3d 625 , 634 (4th Cir.2001). However, as recently as last year this Court used language which implied that a jury could decide the ultimate issue in a qualified immunity case. See Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471 , 477 n. 7 (4th Cir.2005) ('TT]he reasonableness itself — and specifically the question of what a reasonable jury could determine regarding reasonableness — is an issue that we consider de novo.”). These decisions, when combined with pattern jury instructions on the topic of objective reasonableness, left the district courts and litigants with conflicting guidance as to who should decide what. It was only this Court's June 2005 decision in Willingham that fully and finally settled the issue in the Fourth Circuit.