Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-09-01130/USCOURTS-ca7-09-01130-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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*

After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is

unnecessary.  Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.  See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2)(C).

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted July 28, 2010*

Decided July 28, 2010

Before

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

No. 09‐1130

LOUIS R. HARRIS, JR.,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

KEVIN SMITH, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Southern District of Indiana,

Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:05‐cv‐889‐WTL‐JMS

William T. Lawrence,

Judge.

O R D E R

Louis Harris, Jr., was wanted on outstanding warrants and for questioning in a

child‐molestation investigation, and, after a lengthy chase culminating in an attack by a

police dog, he finally surrendered.  In this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Harris alleges

that various officers from the Anderson and Elwood, Indiana, Police Departments violated

his rights under the Fourth Amendment by illegally entering his home and then using

excessive force to arrest him.  The district court granted summary judgment for all but one

defendant, and a jury found in favor of the final officer.  On appeal Harris challenges the

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 09‐1130 Page 2

grant of summary judgment as well as the district court’s denial of his motion in limine to

exclude from trial evidence regarding the child‐molestation investigation.  We affirm the

district court’s judgment in all respects.

Harris was suspected in Missouri of molesting his girlfriend’s daughter, but the

investigation was suspended when Harris, his girlfriend, and her daughter abruptly left

town to avoid the authorities.  After Harris’s girlfriend, Sheila Garrett, used food stamps in

Anderson, Indiana, the state’s Division of Family and Children learned of their

whereabouts.  The agency told detective Kevin Smith of the Anderson Police Department

about the suspected child abuse, gave him the address where it believed the family was

staying, and requested that he investigate.  Smith spoke with a detective from Missouri who

told him that the local prosecutor expected a warrant to soon issue, but upon discovering

that Harris had outstanding warrants in Indiana for contempt of court and failure to appear,

Smith decided it would be prudent to arrest Harris immediately.    

Smith drove to the address that the Division of Family and Children had provided

and saw a van registered to Garrett.  When he returned later, he saw a woman matching

Garrett’s description leave the van and enter the home, so he approached the door,

accompanied by a few other officers and a police dog.  Garrett answered, along with two

other women residing there.  Garrett denied that Harris was inside but, according to the

defendants, one of the three women consented to a search of the house.  At that point, two

officers went inside, along with a restrained police dog, providing a canine warning before

entering.  Harris emerged from the bathroom, identified himself, and began to drop to his

knees as directed when the officers told him he was being placed under arrest for the

outstanding warrants.  But after briefly feigning surrender, Harris abruptly ran out the back

door.  The officers released the police dog to pursue him, but he managed to escape and also

evaded an additional officer who later pursued him by car.  He was not apprehended until

later that evening when Officer Lenny Popp of the Elwood, Indiana, Police

Department—who was monitoring the chase on his police scanner and knew that Harris

was suspected of child molestation and wanted on outstanding warrants—caught him in

the woods with the help of another police dog.  

Harris filed suit under § 1983 against Detective Smith and the other Anderson police

officers at the scene of the attempted arrest at his residence, alleging that they illegally

entered the home and used excessive force once inside.  He also sued Officer Popp, alleging

that Popp permitted the police dog to attack him even after he had submitted to arrest,

resulting in serious injuries to his arm.  The district court granted summary judgment for

each of the Anderson police officers but permitted Harris to go to trial on his claim against

Popp, with the assistance of counsel recruited by the court to represent him.  Harris filed a

motion in limine to exclude from trial any evidence regarding the child‐molestation

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investigation and subsequent conviction.  The district court excluded evidence of the

conviction but permitted Popp to introduce evidence of the investigation.  The jury found in

Popp’s favor, and this pro se appeal followed.

We begin with Harris’s claims against the Anderson police officers, reviewing de

novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment in their favor.  See Johnson v. Scott, 576

F.3d 658, 660 (7th Cir. 2009).  Harris first renews his argument that it was illegal for the

defendants to enter the house to arrest him.  An officer may enter a residence to execute a

valid arrest warrant if the suspect lives there and the officer has “reason to believe” he is at

home.  Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 603 (1980); United States v. Jackson, 576 F.3d 465,

467‐68 (7th Cir. 2009).  Harris concedes that the outstanding warrants were valid, but he

asserts that the officers had no reason to believe that he was inside the home because

Garrett denied that he was there and they had no information otherwise.  The officers had

reason to believe that Harris was living at the residence: The Indiana Division of Family and

Children told Officer Smith that Harris, Garrett, and her daughter were staying together at

the Anderson address, and Smith surveilled the house earlier in the day and saw Garrett

drive up in her van and go inside.  Whether this information also supplied reason to believe

that Harris himself was present, despite Garrett’s insistence otherwise, is a separate

question, see, e.g., El Bey v. Roop, 530 F.3d 407, 416‐19 (6th Cir. 2008); United States v. Bervaldi,

226 F.3d 1256, 1263‐67 (11th Cir. 2000), but one we need not answer.  The defendants

provided evidence at summary judgment that one of the female residents present that day

consented to their entry, and Harris did not offer any contrary evidence to raise a genuine

factual dispute on the issue.  When police receive consent to enter a home to make an arrest,

their entry is reasonable and does not violate the Fourth Amendment.  United States v. Walls,

225 F.3d 858, 862 (7th Cir. 2000).  

Harris also renews his argument that the Anderson police officers used excessive

force in attempting to arrest him.  He asserts that, when he first emerged from the

bathroom, one officer pointed a shotgun at him with “extreme aggression,” while the police

dog, though restrained, “lunged” toward him.  In assessing whether the use of force during

an arrest was proper, we ask whether the officer’s actions were objectively reasonable in

light of the conditions he faced.  Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989); Johnson, 576 F.3d

at 660.  But before determining whether an officer used excessive force, we must first be

satisfied that a seizure took place, meaning that the party challenging the use of force

actually yielded to the officer’s authority.  California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626 (1991);

McCoy v. Harrison, 341 F.3d 600, 605 (7th Cir. 2003).  “[A] fleeing suspect—even one who is

confronted with an obvious show of authority—is not seized until his freedom of movement

has been terminated by an intentional application of physical force or by the suspect’s

submission to the asserted authority.”  Kernats v. OʹSullivan, 35 F.3d 1171, 1178 n.4 (7th Cir.

1994); see Steen v. Myers, 486 F.3d 1017, 1021 (7th Cir. 2007); Reeves v. Churchich, 484 F.3d

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1244, 1252‐53 (10th Cir. 2007).  Here, Harris was confronted with a display of authority and

momentarily feigned surrender by beginning to drop to his knees, but he quickly bolted for

the door and managed to evade police until Officer Popp caught him later in the woods.  A

defendant who fakes compliance with an officer’s orders and then flees the scene has not

been seized, let alone unreasonably so, for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.  See United

States v. Baldwin, 496 F.3d 215, 218‐19 (2d Cir. 2007); United States v. Valentine, 232 F.3d 350,

359 (3d Cir. 2000); United States v. Washington, 12 F.3d 1128, 1132 (D.C. Cir. 1994).

Moreover, the right to make an arrest “necessarily carries with it the right to use

some degree of physical coercion or threat thereof to effect it,” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396, and

the defendants’ decision to enter Harris’s home with a restrained police dog after warning

that they were doing so and to briefly display a weapon as Harris emerged suddenly from

the bathroom was not excessive.  Any threat of violence from the shotgun or the dog, which

was restrained until Harris fled, lasted but a few moments and was reasonable given

Harris’s previous flight from law enforcement and his possible involvement in a crime of

aggression.

We turn, then, to Harris’s argument regarding Officer Popp.  Harris does not renew

any evidentiary objections he may have made at trial or challenge the jury’s verdict in favor

of Popp; he argues only that the district court erred in denying his pretrial motion to

exclude evidence of the child‐molestation investigation against him.  Because “decisions

regarding the admission and exclusion of evidence are peculiarly within the competence of

the district court,” we review such decisions only for abuse of discretion.  Adams v. City of

Chicago, 469 F.3d 609, 612 (7th Cir. 2006) (internal citation omitted).  On review, the relevant

inquiry is not how we would have decided the evidentiary issue in the first instance but,

rather, whether any reasonable person could agree with the district court’s ruling.  Griffin v.

Foley, 542 F.3d 209, 217‐18 (7th Cir. 2008).

Federal Rule of Evidence 403 permits the exclusion of evidence if its probative value

is substantially outweighed by, among other things, the danger of unfair prejudice.

Evidence of child molestation can pose a significant risk of prejudice, see, e.g., United States

v. Ham, 998 F.2d 1247, 1252 (4th Cir. 1993) (“[N]o evidence could be more inflammatory or

more prejudicial than allegations of child molestation.”), and in some cases the relevance of

such evidence will be so minimal that its prejudicial effect is not justified, see id. at 1253

(excluding evidence of child molestation and other inflammatory allegations where it was

relevant only as indirect proof of motive for murder and would have made the motive only

“slightly more likely”).  But the relevant inquiry under Rule 403 is whether the danger of

prejudice substantially outweighs the probative value of the evidence, and, in light of the

deferential nature of our review, the district court’s decision to admit the evidence here was

not an abuse of discretion.  The reasonableness of an officer’s use of force depends on the

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totality of circumstances confronting him, “including the severity of the crime at issue,

whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officer[] or others, and

whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”  Graham, 490

U.S. at 396; see Abdullahi v. City of Madison, 423 F.3d 763, 768 (7th Cir. 2005).  Here, Officer

Popp had learned that Harris was a suspected child molester on the lam who was wanted

on other outstanding arrests and had successfully evaded police by both car and foot.  Each

of these details was probative of the totality of circumstances confronting Popp when he

entered the woods in pursuit of Harris and thus the reasonableness of his use of a police

dog.  We therefore conclude that the district court was within its discretion to permit the

jury to hear evidence of the suspected crime that Officer Popp himself could take account of

during the arrest.

We have considered Harris’s remaining arguments, but they lack merit and do not

warrant further discussion.  The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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