Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-12-03639/USCOURTS-ca7-12-03639-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Fritz Degner
Appellee
Stan Hendrickson
Appellee
Michael B. Kingsley
Appellant

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 12-3639

MICHAEL B. KINGSLEY,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

STAN HENDRICKSON, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 3:10-cv-00832-bbc — Barbara B. Crabb, Judge.

____________________

SUBMITTED JULY 24, 2015∗ — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

____________________

Before RIPPLE and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges, and 

STADTMUELLER, District Judge.∗∗

 ∗ After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. The appeal therefore is submitted on the briefs 

and record. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

∗∗ Of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, 

sitting by designation.

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PER CURIAM. This matter is before the court on remand 

from the Supreme Court of the United States. On June 22, 

2015, the Court vacated our judgment and remanded the case 

to us for further proceedings. Pursuant to our Circuit Rule 54, 

the parties now have submitted statements of their respective 

positions. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we now 

vacate the judgment of the district court and remand this case 

to the district court for a new trial. 

A.

We assume familiarity with the decision of the Supreme 

Court, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 135 S. Ct. 2466 (2015), and with 

the earlier decision of this court, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 744 

F.3d 443 (7th Cir. 2014), and therefore we only briefly summarize those proceedings here. Bringing his action under 42 

U.S.C. § 1983 against various officials at the Monroe County 

Jail in Sparta, Wisconsin, Mr. Kingsley claimed that jail officials had used excessive force in applying a Taser to him while 

he was held as a pretrial detainee at the facility. The jury 

found for the defendants. Mr. Kingsley appealed to this court, 

claiming that he had been prejudiced by the instructions 

given to the jury. In particular, Mr. Kingsley maintained that 

the district court had erred by instructing the jury that he was 

required to establish the subjective intent of the officers. In affirming the judgment of the district court, we determined that 

the jury “instructions were not an erroneous or confusing 

statement of the law of this circuit.” Kingsley, 744 F.3d at 445.

Specifically, we held that relevant Supreme Court precedent 

directed us to evaluate an excessive force claim by a pretrial 

detainee using the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth 

Amendment. Looking to our own cases, we concluded that 

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No. 12-3639 3

“some consideration of [the] intent” of the officers was supported in our cases, but that “it is limited in significant measure by the fact that it is discernable from objective considerations.” Id. at 452 (emphasis in original). One of our number 

dissented.

Resolving a split among the circuits on that issue, the Supreme Court vacated our decision and held “that a pretrial 

detainee must show only that the force purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively unreasonable” and 

that no showing regarding the defendant’s state of mind is 

required. Kingsley, 135 S. Ct. at 2473. The court then remanded 

the case to this court and directed us to determine whether 

the district court’s error could be characterized as harmless 

based “in part on the detailed specifics of th[e] case.” Id. at

2477. The Court then remanded the case to this court and directed that we address that issue. 

In his Rule 54 statement, Mr. Kingsley submits that we 

ought to remand this case to the district court for a new trial 

on his excessive force claim against Sergeant Stan Hendrickson and Deputy Fritz Degner. The defendants take a different 

position; in their view, the decision of the Supreme Court entitles them to qualified immunity. Alternatively, they submit 

that any error in the instructions was harmless.

B.

With this background, we now follow the direction of the 

Supreme Court and address the question of harmless error. 

“[I]n order to obtain a new trial based on an incorrect jury instruction, [an appellant] must establish both that the instrucCase: 12-3639 Document: 57 Filed: 09/08/2015 Pages: 8
4 No. 12-3639

tions failed to properly state the law and that he was prejudiced by the error because the jury was likely to be misled or 

confused.” Davis v. Wessel, 792 F.3d 793, 798 (7th Cir. 2015) 

(alterations in original) (internal quotation marks omitted).1

As the Supreme Court noted,2 this question is usually a factintensive inquiry that requires assessment of the entire record. 

We have undertaken the required scrutiny of the record 

and are convinced that the error in this case cannot be characterized as harmless. True, many of the factors to which the 

district court invited the jury’s attention were the same factors 

that a jury would assess under the objective standard now 

mandated by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, those factors 

were suggested to the jury not in the context of applying them 

to an objective test but as circumstantial evidence from which 

an inference of reckless or malicious intent might be drawn.

Moreover, given the evidence of record, the jurors might well 

have decided that, although the officers had acted in an objectively unreasonable manner, they did not have the subjective 

intent required by the erroneous instruction. That is, the jurors might well have concluded that the officers acted in an 

objectively unreasonable manner in their effort to handle a 

manacled prisoner, a conclusion supported by the testimony 

of Mr. Kingsley’s expert. Nevertheless, the jury also might 

have concluded that the officers, while unreasonable in their 

approach, did not have a reckless or malicious intent. 

 

1 See also Johnson v. Gen. Bd. of Pension & Health Benefits of United Methodist 

Church, 733 F.3d 722, 733 (7th Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 92 (2014).

2 Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 135 S. Ct. 2466, 2477 (2015).

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Under the Supreme Court’s holding, Mr. Kingsley should 

prevail if he is able to establish that the officers acted in an 

unreasonable manner—without regard to their subjective intent. The evidence of record would have supported a finding 

for him under that theory, but the jury was told that it also 

had to find the officers had a proscribed intent. This last requirement increased, significantly, his burden of proof. The 

error was not harmless. 

C.

The defendants next suggest that they should be able to 

avoid retrial because they are entitled to qualified immunity.

Their argument is a nuanced one. In their view, the decision 

of the Supreme Court, resolving a circuit split in its decision 

in this case, altered the substantive law of liability. Because

there was a division among the circuits on the state of the law

at the time that they acted, they contend that they cannot be 

held liable for their actions. 

Although the matter of qualified immunity was brought 

to the attention of the Court, its instructions to us make no 

mention of our returning to this issue. In any event, we do not 

believe that this defense is a viable one here. In § 1983 actions, 

“[q]ualified immunity shields government officials from civil 

damages liability unless the official violated a statutory or 

constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of 

the challenged conduct.” Taylor v. Barkes, 135 S. Ct. 2042, 2044 

(2015) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under this standard, “[a]n officer cannot be said to have violated a clearly established right unless the right’s contours were sufficiently 

definite that any reasonable official in [his] shoes would have 

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understood that he was violating it, meaning that existing 

precedent ... placed the statutory or constitutional question 

beyond debate.” City & Cty. of San Francisco, Cal. v. Sheehan, 

135 S. Ct. 1765, 1774 (2015) (second and third alteration in 

original) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). To address this question, the Supreme Court has instructed us that we must define the right in question with a 

sufficient degree of particularity.3 Thus, in this case, the scope 

of the right in issue must be drawn more narrowly than the 

right of a pretrial detainee to be free from excessive force during his detention; instead, we must examine whether the law 

clearly established that the use of a Taser on a non-resisting 

detainee, lying prone and handcuffed behind his back, was 

constitutionally excessive.

Here, the facts surrounding the underlying incident are in 

sharp dispute. When those facts are construed in the light 

most favorable to Mr. Kingsley, see Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 

194, 201 (2001), a reasonable officer was certainly on notice at 

the time of the occurrence that Mr. Kingsley’s conduct did not 

justify the sort of force described in his account. According to 

Mr. Kingsley, he was not resisting the officers in a manner 

that justified slamming his head into the wall, using a Taser 

while he was manacled, and leaving him alone after use of 

that instrument. Our precedent makes clear that when the officers applied the Taser to Mr. Kingsley in May 2010, use of 

the Taser violated Mr. Kingsley’s right to be free from excessive force if he was not resisting. See Lewis v. Downey, 581 F.3d 

 3 See, e.g., City & Cty. of San Francisco, Cal. v. Sheehan, 135 S. Ct. 1765, 1775–

76 (2015); Brousseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198–99 (2004); Anderson v. 

Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639–40 (1987).

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No. 12-3639 7

467, 478–79 (7th Cir. 2009) (denying qualified immunity to officers who applied a Taser to a pretrial detainee lying “prone 

on [a] bed, weakened, and docile,” in response to his refusal 

of an order to get out of bed); Brooks v. City of Aurora, Ill., 653 

F.3d 478, 487 (7th Cir. 2011) (noting that prior cases had established the illegality of the use of pepper spray on an arrestee 

who was “already ... handcuffed and ... offering no physical 

resistance” or was “lying face down ... with both arms handcuffed behind his back” (internal quotation marks omitted)); 

see also Sallenger v. Oakes, 473 F.3d 731, 741–42 (7th Cir. 2007) 

(noting, in its evaluation of the officers’ conduct for immunity 

purposes, that the fact that the force was applied after the arrestee was handcuffed was a significant factor in denying immunity); cf. Forrest v. Prine, 620 F.3d 739, 745 (7th Cir. 2010) 

(finding force was not unconstitutionally excessive when 

Taser was applied “where the officers were faced with aggression, disruption, [and] physical threat” and where plaintiff 

“posed an immediate threat to safety and order within the 

jail” (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)).

If we were to accept the defendants’ argument here, we 

would untether the qualified immunity defense from its 

moorings of protecting those acting in reliance on a standard 

that is later determined to be infirm. Here, before and after the 

Supreme Court’s decision in this case, the standards for the 

amount of force that can be permissibly employed remain the 

same. To accept the defense of qualified immunity here, we 

would have to accept the dubious proposition that, at the time 

the officers acted, they were on notice only that they could not 

have a reckless or malicious intent and that, as long as they 

acted without such an intent, they could apply any degree of 

force they chose. As we have noted, however, the law clearly 

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established that the amount of force had to be reasonable in 

light of the legitimate objectives of the institution. 

Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is reversed, 

and the case is remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

REVERSED and REMANDED

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