In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 17-1898

DANIEL JACKSON,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

SHAWN CURRY, et al.,

Defendants-Appellants.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Central District of Illinois.

No. 16-cv-1054 — Sara Darrow, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED DECEMBER 7, 2017 — DECIDED APRIL 19, 2018

____________________

Before BAUER, MANION, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

MANION, Circuit Judge. Daniel Jackson spent time in 

custody on a wrongful murder conviction. He sued Shawn 

Curry and Keith McDaniel, the police officers who 

interrogated him, for coercing his confession. The officers 

moved for dismissal on qualified immunity. The district court 

denied that motion, and the officers appeal. Lacking 

jurisdiction, we dismiss this appeal.
2 No. 17-1898

I. Background1

On the night of August 29, 2009, Clifford Harvey, Jr., and 

Easton Eibeck walked through Peoria, Illinois. Eibeck was 

high. Four men confronted Harvey and Eibeck. When one of 

the four reached for his waistband, Harvey and Eibeck ran. 

Eibeck heard a gunshot and kept running. The shooter killed 

Harvey. At the scene, police found the body, bullet fragment, 

and a screwdriver, but no weapon, shell casing, or 

eyewitness. Eibeck could generally describe, but not 

positively identify, the shooter to Curry the next day.

About six months later, Curry conducted a photo line-up 

and Eibeck identified Jackson. This led to Jackson’s 

warrantless arrest. He had consumed alcohol and drugs 

before his arrest. Curry and McDaniel interrogated Jackson 

for about two hours, on video. Jackson was high and woozy 

during the interrogation. He said he was not at the shooting.

McDaniel, who is black, told Jackson if he remained silent 

he would still be charged with murder. McDaniel told Jackson 

he would not receive a fair trial because he is a young black 

man, and the biased jury would convict him based on 

prejudice regardless of the facts. The officers allegedly lied 

about the evidence, falsely claiming multiple witnesses 

identified Jackson as the shooter. The officers suggested

Harvey threatened Jackson with a screwdriver and he shot in 

self-defense. The officers fed Jackson details and allegedly 

pressured him to make false inculpatory statements. During 

 

1 We draw the facts from Jackson’s complaint. See generally Veseley v. 

Armslist LLC, 762 F.3d 661, 664 (7th Cir. 2014). As this case comes to us at 

the pleadings stage, we “add the usual caution that these are just 

allegations.” Catinella v. Cty. of Cook, Ill., 881 F.3d 514, 516 (7th Cir. 2018).
No. 17-1898 3

the interrogation, Jackson showed signs of intoxication and 

diminished capacity, including slurred speech and 

uncoordinated movements. About two hours and fifteen 

minutes after the interrogation began, Jackson collapsed and 

fell to the floor. He did not respond to initial revival efforts. 

Jackson told responding paramedics he felt dizzy and his 

head had hurt for a couple hours. He went to the hospital.

Jackson stood trial. The State presented Eibeck’s 

identification of Jackson and video excerpts of Jackson’s 

interrogation. The jury convicted him of first-degree murder, 

and the judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison.

But Jackson claims he had nothing to do with the murder. 

The Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction, 

concluding the police lacked probable cause to arrest Jackson. 

People v. Jackson, 22 N.E.3d 526, 542 (Ill. App. Ct. 2014).

Jackson sued various Defendants for constitutional 

violations. All Defendants moved to dismiss. The only claim 

at issue here is Count II, which claims the officers coerced a 

confession in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The officers 

moved for dismissal of Count II based on qualified immunity. 

The district court denied that motion. The officers appeal.

II. Discussion

The threshold issue is whether we have jurisdiction. See In 

re Ortiz, 665 F.3d 906, 909 (7th Cir. 2011). We have jurisdiction 

over appeals from “final decisions” of district courts. 28 

U.S.C. § 1291. A denial of a motion to dismiss is generally not 

immediately appealable because it is not final. See United 

States v. Michelle’s Lounge, 39 F.3d 684, 702 (7th Cir. 1994), 

abrogated on other grounds by Kaley v. United States, 134 S.Ct. 

1090, 1095 n.4 (2014).
4 No. 17-1898

But the collateral-order doctrine provides a limited 

exception. An interlocutory order is immediately appealable 

if it “(1) [is] conclusive on the issue presented; (2) resolve[s] 

an important question separate from the merits of the 

underlying action; and (3) [is] effectively unreviewable on an 

appeal from the final judgment of the underlying action.” Doe 

v. Vill. of Deerfield, 819 F.3d 372, 375 (7th Cir. 2016) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). The collateral-order doctrine 

permits an immediate appeal of the denial of qualified 

immunity at the pleadings stage because “qualified immunity 

is immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability, 

and is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go 

to trial.” Armstrong v. Daily, 786 F.3d 529, 537 (7th Cir. 2015) 

(internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted). Qualified 

immunity shields government officials “from liability for civil 

damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly 

established statutory or constitutional rights of which a 

reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 

457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Qualified immunity is both a liability 

defense and a limited “entitlement not to stand trial or face 

the other burdens of litigation ... .” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 

511, 526 (1985).

But the exception providing jurisdiction over denials of 

qualified immunity is limited to pure legal questions. Hurt v. 

Wise, 880 F.3d 831, 839 (7th Cir. 2018). We only have 

jurisdiction when “the issue appealed concerned, not which 

facts the parties might be able to prove, but, rather, whether 

or not certain given facts showed a violation of clearly 

established law.” Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 311 (1995) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, defendants cannot 

immediately appeal factual determinations regarding 

qualified immunity. Id. at 307. “The appeal is limited in scope 
No. 17-1898 5

for the same reason it is permitted: the question of qualified 

immunity is conceptually distinct from the merits of the 

plaintiff’s claim that his rights have been violated.”

Armstrong, 786 F.3d at 537 (internal quotation marks omitted).

At this stage, the qualified-immunity defense only 

presents two legal questions: “first, whether plaintiff has 

alleged a violation of his constitutional rights, and second, 

whether the violation was clearly established in the law at the 

time of the defendant’s conduct.” Id. (citing Pearson v. 

Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009)). If the district court’s order 

denying qualified immunity turns on a pure legal issue, then 

it (1) conclusively determines defendant must bear the 

burdens of discovery; (2) is conceptually distinct from the 

merits of plaintiff’s claim; and (3) would prove effectively 

unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment. Mitchell, 472 

U.S. at 527–30. Such an order is a “final decision” within the 

meaning of § 1291. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 672 (2009). In 

other words, if the officers accept the facts and reasonable 

inferences favorable to Jackson for purposes of the qualifiedimmunity inquiry at this stage, and argue those facts and 

inferences do not establish a violation of a clearly established 

constitutional right, then we have jurisdiction to entertain that 

argument. Hurt, 880 F.3d at 839.

So we must decide whether the appeal raises any pure 

legal questions regarding the denial of qualified immunity. 

The officers raise three broad issues on appeal. First, they 

claim the district court erred by declining to review the video, 

which they claim shows Jackson did not manifest intoxication 

or unique susceptibility and the officers did not use any 

clearly unconstitutional tactics. Second, they claim the district 

court erred by applying a highly generalized formulation of 
6 No. 17-1898

the law to McDaniel’s comments regarding race, and they 

argue these comments did not clearly violate the Constitution. 

Third, they claim the state court’s admission of the confession 

into evidence at trial was a superseding cause entitling the 

officers to qualified immunity. We address whether we have 

jurisdiction over each issue in turn.

A. Video

The district court declined to review the interrogation 

video to make factual determinations about the officers’ 

alleged intimidation tactics and Jackson’s demeanor. Instead, 

the district court did what district courts normally should do 

at this stage: it accepted all well-pleaded factual allegations in 

the complaint as true, drew all reasonable inferences in favor 

of Plaintiff, and determined whether the claims plausibly 

suggest entitlement to relief. Generally, a district court cannot 

consider evidence outside the pleadings to decide a motion to 

dismiss without converting it into a motion for summary 

judgment. See Tierney v. Vahle, 304 F.3d 734, 738 (7th Cir. 2002).

We lack jurisdiction to review the district court’s decision 

not to watch the video at the pleadings stage. That decision 

itself does not involve a pure legal issue regarding qualified 

immunity, i.e., whether the officers violated Jackson’s clearly 

established constitutional rights.

Moreover, the further-removed issues about what the 

video shows are fact issues. The officers claim the video 

shows Jackson did not manifest intoxication or unique 

susceptibility. But this is a fact issue over which we lack 

jurisdiction, and an issue the video cannot conclusively 

resolve anyway. The video is bound to be subject to varying 

interpretations about how Jackson presented, and cannot 
No. 17-1898 7

conclusively establish or eliminate all indicia of impairment 

customarily relied on by officers, such as any odors 

emanating from Jackson or the details of his eyes. The officers

argue the controlling question is: in light of the claim and 

video, are there any salient facts to be developed by 

additional litigation? The answer is yes.

The officers also claim the video shows they did not use 

any single tactic, or combination of tactics, that were clearly 

unconstitutional. But again, the video is bound to be subject 

to varying interpretations. Besides, the district court did not

conclude that any single tactic in a vacuum, or even any 

combination of tactics in a bigger vacuum, were plausibly 

clearly unconstitutional. Rather, as required by qualifiedimmunity jurisprudence and the Fifth Amendment, the 

district court properly considered the totality of the 

circumstances, with deference appropriate at this stage, and 

concluded the officers plausibly violated clearly established 

rights. The video cannot show the totality of the 

circumstances, and it cannot resolve all fact questions.

The officers argue the principle mandating the earliest 

feasible resolution of qualified immunity plus the admonition 

to view facts “in the light depicted by the videotape,” Scott v. 

Harris, 550 U.S. 373, 381 (2007), required the district court to 

review the video before rejecting qualified immunity. But the 

video here is distinguishable from that in Scott, where the 

video “quite clearly contradict[ed]” respondent’s story. Scott, 

550 U.S. at 378. Scott involved a high-speed car chase that 

ended when an officer’s vehicle pushed respondent’s vehicle 

off the road. Respondent claimed that during the chase he 

remained in control of his vehicle, and posed little, if any, 

actual threat. The Eleventh Circuit adopted respondent’s 
8 No. 17-1898

view. Its description of the chase gave “the impression that 

respondent, rather than fleeing from police, was attempting 

to pass his driving test ... .” Scott, 550 U.S. at 378–79. But the 

Supreme Court recognized “[t]he videotape tells quite a 

different story.” Id. at 379. The video definitively contradicted 

the essence and essential details of respondent’s account.

But here, the officers do not claim the video completely 

belies Jackson’s claims. See Hurt, 880 F.3d at 840 (“The video 

evidence of [the] interrogations does not portray the kind of 

uncontestable facts that were before the Court in Scott.”). 

Rather, the officers claim their interpretation of the video 

contradicts Jackson’s claims: “Indeed, what Plaintiff describes 

as factual disputes about the interrogation are, in view of the 

videotape, actually mere differences in the parties’ 

characterizations of the same evidence.” (Appellants’ Reply 

Br. at 8.) The officers want to spin the facts shown by the 

video. And they do not account for the fact that the video does 

not show everything. It does not show everything the officers 

knew or should have known about Jackson. As noted, it does 

not convey smell or show ocular details. It does not show 

what the officers knew when they brought Jackson in. And 

what it does show is open to interpretation. After all, 

“differences in the parties’ characterizations of the same 

evidence” are the essence of fact disputes, over which we 

presently lack jurisdiction.

We lack jurisdiction to review the district court’s decision 

not to watch the video at this stage because that decision does 

not fit within the narrow exception to the general rule that 

only final orders are appealable.
No. 17-1898 9

B. Comments regarding jury bias

The officers claim the district court erred by applying a 

highly generalized formulation of the law to the comments 

regarding race, and they argue these comments did not 

clearly violate the Constitution. They argue the right to be free 

from a psychologically intimidating interrogation or from the 

tactic of exaggerating the consequences of not confessing are 

highly generalized formulations that cannot defeat qualified 

immunity. They maintain there is no case law barring 

McDaniel from giving his “view of an unfortunate reality 

check on the inherent injustices of the criminal justice 

system.” (Appellants’ Br. at 27.) They argue there was no 

closely analogous, particularized precedent placing the 

unconstitutionality of the statements beyond debate. The 

issue of whether these comments violated a constitutional 

right clearly established by particularized precedent seems

like a pure legal question regarding qualified immunity, 

susceptible to our jurisdiction.

The problem for the officers, however, is the district court 

did not do what they say it did. The district court did not 

conclude the comments regarding race, in isolation, violated 

a clearly established constitutional right. Rather, the district 

court concluded these comments, combined with all the 

alleged circumstances, including Jackson’s impairment and 

susceptibility, plausibly violated clearly established rights, 

thereby defeating qualified immunity, at least for now.

The Fifth Amendment protects people from coerced 

confessions: “No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal 

case to be a witness against himself ... .” U.S. Const. amend. 

V. The Fourteenth Amendment makes the Fifth 

Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause applicable against 
10 No. 17-1898

the States. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 6 (1964). The 

government violates the Self-Incrimination Clause by using 

coerced confessions at pre-trial hearings or trials in criminal 

cases. Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 767 (2003) (trial); 

Sornberger v. City of Knoxville, Ill., 434 F.3d 1006, 1026–27 (7th 

Cir. 2006) (pre-trial hearings). The evaluation of whether a 

confession is coerced involves consideration of the totality of 

the circumstances to determine whether the suspect 

confessed voluntarily, of his own free will, or whether the 

police overrode his volition. “The voluntariness of a 

confession depends on the totality of circumstances, 

including both the characteristics of the accused and the 

nature of the interrogation. If those circumstances reveal that 

the interrogated person’s will was overborne, admitting the 

resulting confession violates the Fifth Amendment.” Hurt, 880 

F.3d at 845 (internal citation omitted).

Contrary to the officers’ assertions, the district court did 

not conclude the race comments, in isolation, plausibly 

violated Jackson’s clearly established rights. Instead, the 

district court considered the totality of the circumstances 

alleged: Jackson was under the influence of alcohol and 

drugs, and was unwell. He repeatedly told the officers he was 

not at the shooting. They refused his requests to call his 

family, ignored his attempt to invoke Miranda, and employed 

lies, psychological intimidation, and false promises of 

lenience. He was particularly susceptible to these tactics, and 

his condition was so bad he collapsed, fell out of his chair, and 

did not respond initially to revival efforts. At the time of the 

interrogation, it was well established that someone under the 

influence of alcohol or drugs might be especially susceptible 

to coercion. See United States v. Huerta, 239 F.3d 865, 871 (7th 

Cir. 2001). In the context of the totality of these circumstances, 
No. 17-1898 11

McDaniel allegedly delivered a long soliloquy in which he 

exaggerated the consequences of not confessing and told 

Jackson the jury would be prejudiced against him and would 

convict him because he is a young black man, regardless of 

the facts. The district court considered all these circumstances.

In sum, the district court did not conclude McDaniel’s 

comments regarding race, in a vacuum, violated a clearly 

established right, but rather considered the totality of the 

alleged circumstances. So even if in a vacuum the race 

comments do not violate such a right, the district court 

committed no error because it did not hold they did. As the 

district court made no conclusion here raising a pure legal 

issue regarding qualified immunity, we lack jurisdiction.

C. Superseding cause

The officers argue admitting the confession into evidence 

at trial was a superseding cause entitling them to qualified 

immunity. But, as the officers admit, we have not accepted 

this argument in the context of a Fifth Amendment coercedconfession claim. We presently lack jurisdiction over the 

superseding-cause issue as it is not a pure legal question 

related to qualified immunity.

III. Conclusion

We lack jurisdiction regarding the decision not to watch 

the video at the pleadings stage, and regarding fact issues 

about what the video shows. We lack jurisdiction regarding 

the race comments because the officers do not appeal any 

pure legal issue regarding a conclusion actually reached by 

the district court about these comments. We lack jurisdiction 

regarding the superseding-cause issue because it is not a pure 

legal question related to qualified immunity.
12 No. 17-1898

Lacking jurisdiction, we DISMISS the appeal.