UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 12-1922

CARLIN ROBINSON, individually, as Guardian and next Friend 

of I.Y., M.Y. and A.Y., and as Personal Representative of 

the Estate of Veronica Williams, Deceased; EUNICE GRAVES,

Plaintiffs - Appellees,

v.

DANIEL A. LIOI,

Defendant – Appellant,

and

BALTIMORE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT; CLEAVEN LAWRENCE WILLIAMS, 

JR.,

Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. Catherine C. Blake, District Judge. 

(1:12-cv-00192-CCB)

Argued: March 20, 2013 Decided: July 30, 2013

Before GREGORY and AGEE, Circuit Judges, and David A. FABER, 

Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of 

West Virginia, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
2

ARGUED: James Howard Fields, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. 

Cary Johnson Hansel, III, JOSEPH, GREENWALD & LAAKE, PA, 

Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Daniel Cox, THE 

COX LAW CENTER LLC, Frederick, Maryland, for Appellees.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
3

PER CURIAM:

Daniel Lioi (“Lioi”), a police officer with the Baltimore 

City Police Department (“BCPD”), filed an interlocutory appeal 

from the district court’s denial of his Rule 12(b)(6) motion to 

dismiss based on his assertion of qualified immunity against 

plaintiffs’ 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim. For the reasons set forth 

below, we affirm the judgment of the district court that, on the 

facts alleged, Lioi is not entitled to qualified immunity.

I.

Because this is an appeal from the denial of a motion to 

dismiss, the material facts as alleged in the complaint are 

taken as true, drawing all reasonable inferences in the 

plaintiffs’ favor. See Jenkins v. McKeithen, 395 U.S. 411, 421-

22, 89 S.Ct. 1843, 23 L.Ed.2d 404 (1969); Tobey v. Jones, 706 

F.3d 379, 383 (4th Cir. 2013). 

A.

Veronica Williams (“Veronica” or “Mrs. Williams”) and 

Cleaven Williams (“Cleaven” or “Mr. Williams”) were husband and 

wife. Shortly after they married, Cleaven began to abuse 

Veronica, both mentally and physically. The abuse escalated 

over time and, eventually, Veronica not only filed assault 

charges against Cleaven but also went into hiding.

On November 17, 2008, Mrs. Williams appeared before the 

Baltimore District Court in connection with her request for a 
4

protective order against her husband. Cleaven Williams was 

provided notice of the hearing and, at the conclusion of the 

hearing, the protective order was granted. As Veronica was 

leaving the courthouse that day, Cleaven attacked Veronica, 

stabbing her repeatedly in broad daylight just one block from 

the courthouse. A few days later, Veronica, who was four to six 

weeks pregnant at the time with the couple’s fourth child, 

suffered a miscarriage. That same day, Veronica died as a 

result of the injuries she sustained. Cleaven Williams was 

found guilty of his wife’s murder and is currently incarcerated.

As mentioned earlier, several weeks prior to her death, 

Veronica had filed assault charges against her husband. As a 

result of the assault charges, a warrant was issued for Cleaven 

Williams’ arrest. Lioi and other officers, in violation of the 

procedure for service of a warrant, withheld the warrant from 

the domestic violence unit that was responsible for serving it. 

Lioi also warned Cleaven Williams about the warrant and sent him 

text messages to help him avoid capture. Finally, when Cleaven 

Williams arrived at police headquarters on November 14, 2008, 

Lioi refused to serve or arrest him, falsely claiming that the 

warrant could not be found. Lioi was later suspended when 

homicide investigators discovered text messages between Lioi and 

Cleaven Williams warning Williams and giving advice on avoiding 

capture.
5

B.

Carlin Robinson, as Guardian and Next Friend of Veronica's 

children, and Eunice Graves, Mrs. Williams' mother, filed a 

civil suit against Lioi, the BCPD, and Cleaven Williams. The 

plaintiffs allege that, due to his prior relationship with Mr. 

Williams, Lioi departed from normal procedures in serving the 

arrest warrant and thereby enabled Mr. Williams to remain free 

at the time he killed his wife.

The plaintiffs asserted a claim against Lioi and the BCPD 

for violating Mrs. Williams' due process rights under 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983. They also brought a § 1983 claim under Monell v. 

Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), against the 

BCPD, as well as a claim against Lioi, the BCPD, and Cleaven 

Williams for conspiring to violate Veronica Williams' 

constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1985. Plaintiffs also 

asserted state law claims for wrongful death, survival action, 

battery, gross negligence, reckless endangerment, intentional 

infliction of emotion distress, common law conspiracy, 

conversion, and fraud and intentional misrepresentation. 

The court granted the motion to dismiss filed by the BCPD 

but denied Lioi’s motion to dismiss on the basis of qualified 

immunity. The instant appeal followed. See Mitchell v. 

Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985) (permitting interlocutory 

appeals of qualified immunity determinations).
6

II.

The defense of “[q]ualified immunity shields a government 

official from liability for civil monetary damages if the 

officer’s ‘conduct does not violate clearly established 

statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person 

would have known.’” Wiley v. Doory, 14 F.3d 993, 995 (4th Cir. 

1994); (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). 

In Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 195 (2001), the Supreme Court 

laid out a two-step process for resolving the qualified immunity 

claims of government officials. First, a court must decide 

whether the facts that a plaintiff has alleged or shown make out 

a violation of a constitutional right. See id. at 201. Second, 

a court must decide whether the right at issue was “clearly 

established” at the time of defendant’s alleged misconduct. See

id. Courts may exercise discretion in deciding which of the two 

Saucier prongs “should be addressed first in light of the 

circumstances in the particular case at hand.” Pearson v. 

Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009). A government official 

asserting a qualified immunity defense bears the burden of proof 

and persuasion. See Wilson v. Kittoe, 337 F.3d 392, 397 (4th 

Cir. 2003). We review the denial of a motion to dismiss on the 

basis of qualified immunity de novo. See Toby, 706 F.3d at 385.

 
7

A.

“As a general matter . . . a State’s failure to protect an 

individual against private violence simply does not constitute a 

violation of the Due Process Clause.” DeShaney v. Winnebago 

Cnty. of Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 197 (1989). There 

are, however, a few limited exceptions. One such exception is 

where the state creates or enhances the danger. See id. at 198.1

 1 The other exception noted by the DeShaney decision, 

commonly referred to as the “special relationship” exception, 

arises when the individual and the State have a special 

relationship such that the State has an affirmative duty to 

protect the individual from harm inflicted by third parties. 

This “special relationship” exception arises in a custodial 

context because “when the State takes a person into its custody 

and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes 

upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for 

his safety and general well-being.” DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199-

200; see also Waybright v. Frederick Cnty., 528 F.3d 199, 207 

(4th Cir. 2008) (A “special relationship is all but synonymous 

with a custodial relationship.”) (internal citations and 

quotations omitted). As the Court noted, “[i]t is the State’s 

affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act 

on his own behalf . . . which is the ‘deprivation of liberty’ 

triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its 

failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms 

inflicted by other means.” Id. at 200; see also Pinder v. 

Johnson, 54 F.3d 1169, 1175 (4th Cir. 1995) (en banc) (“Some 

sort of confinement of the injured party—incarceration, 

institutionalization, or the like—is needed to trigger the 

affirmative duty.”).

The district court rejected plaintiffs’ claim that the 

“special relationship” exception applied to their claim against 

Lioi because it found that Veronica Williams was not in the 

custody of the State at any relevant point. See J.A. at 178-79. 

Although the court acknowledges that plaintiffs have raised the 

“special relationship” exception claim on appeal, we need not 

address it because we agree with the district court that 

(Continued)
8

In DeShaney, the Winnebago County Department of Social 

Services (DSS) was sued for violating four-year-old Joshua 

DeShaney’s substantive due process rights by failing to protect 

the child from his father’s abuse. See id. at 192-95. The DSS 

had received a number of reports that Joshua was being abused by 

his father yet they failed to remove him from his father’s 

custody. See id. at 192-93. Eventually, Joshua was beaten so 

badly that he suffered serious brain damage. See id. at 193. 

The Supreme Court held that the DSS was not liable because 

“[w]hile the State may have been aware of the dangers that 

Joshua faced in the free world, it played no part in their 

creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more 

vulnerable to them.” Id. at 201. This language in DeShaney is 

commonly acknowledged as the genesis of the state-created danger 

doctrine.2

Citing DeShaney, this Court has recognized the statecreated danger doctrine, noting that “[w]hen the state itself 

creates the dangerous situation that resulted in a victim’s 

 

plaintiffs have a substantive due process claim against Lioi 

based upon the state-created danger exception. 

2 See Currier v. Doran, 242 F.3d 905, 923 (10th Cir. 2001) 

(“The clear implication of the Court’s language, which was 

written in 1989, was that a state could be liable when it 

affirmatively acts to create, or increases a plaintiff’s 

vulnerability to, danger from private violence.”).
9

injury, the absence of a custodial relationship may not be 

dispositive. In such instances, the state is not merely accused 

of a failure to act; it becomes much more akin to an actor 

itself directly causing harm to the injured party.” Pinder, 54 

F.3d at 1177; see also Waybright, 528 F.3d at 207-08 

(referencing Pinder’s acknowledgment of state-created danger 

theory but refusing to apply it under facts of case); Stevenson 

v. Martin Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 3 F. App’x 25, 31 (4th Cir. 2001)

(unpublished) (“In Pinder this court was faced with a case in 

which it had to decide the contours of DeShaney’s state-created 

danger exception.”). Although the Court ultimately rejected 

Pinder’s reliance on the state-created danger exception, see

Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1175, and although we have not since applied 

the exception, the Court’s discussion in Pinder is widely 

acknowledged as the seminal case in this circuit on the theory. 

See Waybright, 528 F.3d at 207-08; Stevenson, 3 F. App’x at 31; 

see also Mills v. City of Roanoke, 518 F. Supp. 2d 815, 819-20 

(W.D. Va. 2007) (“The leading Fourth Circuit case on the statecreated danger exception is Pinder v. Johnson, 54 F.3d 1169 (4th 

Cir. 1995).”). 

This Court has acknowledged that the state-created danger 

exception is a narrow one and that for the doctrine to apply, 

there must be affirmative action, not inaction, on the part of 

the State which creates or increases the risk that the plaintiff 
10

will be harmed by a private actor. See id. at 1175 (“It cannot 

be that the state commits an affirmative act or creates a danger 

every time it does anything that makes injury at the hands of a 

third party more likely.”); see also Cartwright v. City of 

Marine City, 336 F.3d 487, 493 (6th Cir. 2003) (noting that a 

“failure to act is not an affirmative act under the statecreated danger theory”); Butera v. District of Columbia, 235 

F.3d 637, 650 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“[A] key requirement for 

constitutional liability is affirmative conduct by the State to 

increase or create the danger that results in harm to the 

individual. No constitutional liability exists where the State 

actors had no hand in creating the danger but [simply] stood by 

and did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more 

active role for them.”); Stevenson, 3 F. App’x at 31 (“In order 

to create a danger, the state has to take some affirmative 

steps. Liability does not arise when the state stands by and 

does nothing in the face of danger. Failing to provide 

protection from danger does not implicate the state in the harm 

caused by third parties.”) (internal citations and quotations 

omitted); Holloway v. City of Suffolk, 660 F. Supp. 2d 693, 698 

(E.D. Va. 2009) (“Liability under the state-created danger 

exception means that the state has to take some affirmative step 

to create the danger from the third party, and the failure to 

provide protection from danger does not implicate the state in 
11

the harm caused by the third party.”). Thus, the lodestar of 

our analysis of the narrow state-created danger exception to the 

bright-line rule under DeShaney is the Pinder requirement that 

the government actor “itself directly caus[ed] harm to the 

injured party.” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177.

Despite Lioi’s attempt to characterize his behavior 

otherwise, it is clear that his conduct, as alleged, was far 

more than a mere passive failure to act; the type of omission 

claim which the court rejected in Pinder. To the contrary, Lioi 

is alleged to have conspired with Cleaven Williams “to evade 

capture” and “to remain free despite the finding of probable 

cause,” thereby directly enabling him to harm Mrs. Williams. 

(J.A. 20, at ¶¶ 20, 23.) To paraphrase Pinder, Lioi’s 

affirmative acts in the conspiracy with Cleaven Williams

“create[d] the dangerous situation that resulted in a victim’s 

injury.” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177. Lioi, as alleged, was “an 

actor itself directly causing harm to the injured party.” Id. 

Lioi conspired with Cleaven Williams to help Williams avoid 

being arrested. Lioi actively interfered with the execution of 

the warrant by not only failing to turn the warrant over to the 

proper unit with the BCPD responsible for its execution, but 

also by warning Mr. Williams and giving him advice about how to 

avoid service of the warrant. Furthermore, Lioi lied to avoid 

service of the arrest warrant by falsely contending that it 
12

could not be found. Such acts meet the state-created danger 

exception under Pinder.

While courts have applied the state-created danger 

exception in varying contexts, the Ninth Circuit’s decision in 

Wood v. Ostrander, 879 F.2d 583 (9th Cir. 1989), is particularly 

instructive. In Wood, a police officer stopped the car in which 

the plaintiff was a passenger, arrested the driver, and 

impounded the vehicle. 879 F.3d at 586. Though the stop 

occurred in a high-crime area, the police officer required the 

plaintiff to get out of the car and abandoned her to external 

dangers. Id. The police officer left with the vehicle and the 

abandoned plaintiff was subsequently raped. Id. 

The Ninth Circuit allowed the plaintiff’s § 1983 claim to 

proceed, denying the officer’s qualified immunity defense 

because “[a] reasonable police officer who acted as [the 

plaintiff] alleges [the police officer] acted should have 

understood that what he was doing violated [the plaintiff’s]

constitutional right to be free from an unjustified intrusion 

into her personal security in violation of her liberty interest 

under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. at 596. The court held 

that the plaintiff had raised a triable issue as to whether the 

officer “affirmatively placed the plaintiff in a position of 

danger.” Id. at 589. 
13

As in Wood, Lioi’s alleged affirmative acts with his coconspirator, Cleaven Williams, to avoid arrest directly enabled 

Mr. Williams to perpetrate the harm to Mrs. Williams. Lioi, 

therefore, “affirmatively placed [Mrs. Williams] in a position 

of danger.” Id. at 589. 

The Court finds unpersuasive Lioi’s argument that, because 

a police officer has discretion in the execution of arrest 

warrants, see Town of Castle Rock, Colo. v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 

748, 764 (2005), his conduct in this case did not violate 

Veronica Williams’ substantive due process rights and thus did 

not run afoul of § 1983. In Castle Rock, a father took his 

three daughters from their mother’s yard, in violation of a 

restraining order. Id. at 753. Despite repeated phone calls 

from the mother informing them that her daughters were missing 

and that the restraining order had been violated, the police did 

nothing. Id. at 753-54. Eventually, the daughters were found 

to have been murdered by their father. Id. at 754.

As to the mother’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim that the police 

officers violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause 

in failing to enforce the restraining order, the Court found she 

did not have a property interest in police enforcement of the 

restraining order. Id. at 768. The Court noted that “the 

benefit that a third party may receive from having someone else 

arrested for a crime generally does not trigger protections 
14

under the Due Process Clause, neither in its procedural nor in 

its substantive manifestations.” Id.

The instant case is distinguishable from Castle Rock. Lioi 

attempts to characterize his conduct in this case as a mere 

failure to act. However, according to the complaint, that is a 

gross mischaracterization. As discussed above, Lioi’s alleged 

conduct in this case was not confined to a failure to execute 

the arrest warrant. Lioi affirmatively acted to interfere with 

execution of the warrant by conspiring with Cleaven Williams to 

evade capture and remain at large. Whereas Castle Rock is, 

fundamentally, a case about inaction, Plaintiffs in the instant 

case have alleged affirmative misconduct on Lioi’s part such 

that his actions “directly caus[ed] harm to the injured party.” 

Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ claims are 

not foreclosed by Castle Rock.3

Lioi’s affirmative acts, as alleged, were on that “point on 

the spectrum between action and inaction,” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 

 3 In addition, the Castle Rock decision did not even 

consider the state-created danger exception nor did it consider 

plaintiff’s substantive due process claim as that claim was not 

before the court. See Caldwell v. City of Louisville, 200 F. 

App’x 430, 435 (6th Cir. 2006) (unpublished) (“There is nothing 

in Castle Rock that compels a conclusion the Supreme Court 

intended to eliminate the state-created danger exception to the 

DeShaney rule. This is not surprising since the Court did not 

have occasion to address or consider the plaintiff’s substantive 

due process claim as it was not before the Court.”).
15

1175, such that his acts created “the dangerous situation that 

resulted in [Mrs. Williams’] injury.” Id. at 1177. Based on 

the foregoing, the court agrees with the district court that 

plaintiffs have stated a substantive due process claim against 

Lioi based upon the state-created danger exception.

B.

When determining whether a constitutional right was clearly 

established, a court asks whether the right was clearly 

established at the time of the conduct in question. See Pinder, 

54 F.3d at 1173. A right is clearly established when the 

contours of the right are sufficiently clear such that a 

reasonable official would understand that what he is doing 

violates that right. Id. This inquiry is focused on whether 

the official was on notice that his or her conduct violated

clearly established law and that the state of the law provided 

fair warning that the conduct was unconstitutional. Id. 

A right is clearly established when it has been 

authoritatively decided by the Supreme Court, the appropriate 

United States Court of Appeals, or the highest court of the 

state in which the action arose. See Edwards v. City of 

Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 251 (4th Cir. 1999). The relevant, 

dispositive inquiry is whether it would be clear to a reasonable 

person that the conduct was unlawful in the situation he 

confronted. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 195. “Clearly established” 
16

does not mean that “the very action in question has previously 

been held unlawful,” but requires the unlawfulness of the 

conduct to be apparent “in light of preexisting law.” Wilson v. 

Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615 (1999).

The responsibility imposed on public officials to 

comply with constitutional requirements is 

commensurate with the legal knowledge of an 

objectively reasonable official in similar 

circumstances at the time of the challenged conduct. 

It is not measured by the collective hindsight of 

skilled lawyers and learned judges. * * * “Officials 

are not liable for bad guesses in gray areas; they are 

liable for transgressing bright lines.” Maciarello v. 

Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 295 (4th Cir. 1992), cert. 

denied, 506 U.S. 1080 (1993).

Jackson v. Long, 102 F.3d 722, 730-31 (4th Cir. 1996); see also

Williams v. Hansen, 326 F.3d 569, 578-79 (4th Cir. 2003) 

(holding that for purposes of qualified immunity, executive 

actors are not required to predict how the courts will resolve 

legal issues). “The linchpin of qualified immunity is objective 

reasonableness.” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1173. 

“In determining whether the specific right allegedly 

violated was `clearly established,’ the proper focus is not upon 

the right at its most general or abstract level, but at the 

level of its application to the specific conduct being 

challenged.’” Wiley v. Doory, 14 F.3d 993, 995 (4th Cir. 1994) 

(quoting Pritchett v. Alford, 973 F.2d 307, 312 (4th Cir. 

1992)). “Notably, however, the existence of a case holding the 

defendant’s identical conduct to be unlawful does not prevent 
17

the denial of qualified immunity.” Edwards, 178 F.3d at 251; 

see also Currier v. Doran, 242 F.3d 905, 923 (10th Cir. 2001) 

(“It is not necessary, however, for plaintiffs to find a case 

with exact corresponding factual circumstances; defendants are 

required to make `reasonable applications of the prevailing law 

to their own circumstances.’”)(quoting Murrell v. Sch. Dist. No. 

1, 186 F.3d 1238, 1251 (10th Cir. 1999)). 

Despite Lioi’s assertion to the contrary, the right to be 

free from state-created danger has been clearly established in

this circuit. See Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177; see also Waybright, 

528 F.3d at 207; Stevenson, 3 F. App’x at 31. The lack of a 

case directly on point does not alter the court’s conclusion in 

this regard. As the Supreme Court has noted:

The easiest cases don’t even arise. There has never 

been . . . a section 1983 case accusing welfare 

officials of selling foster children into slavery; it 

does not follow that if such a case arose, the 

officials would be immune from damages . . . 

liability.

United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271 (1997) (internal 

citations and quotations omitted); Pulliam v. Ceresini, 221 F. 

Supp. 2d 600, 605 n.5 (D. Md. 2002) (“The lack of decisional 

authority defining the constitutional right in this specific 

context does not imply that the unlawfulness of the conduct 

under the Constitution is not apparent.”).
18

For qualified immunity purposes, in 2008, a reasonable 

police officer in Lioi’s position would have known that a law 

enforcement officer affirmatively acting in a conspiracy with a 

third party to avoid arrest on assault charges could give rise 

to a constitutional violation when the third party acts in 

furtherance of the conspiracy to injure another person. As this 

Court has stated on repeated occasions, although qualified 

immunity protects law enforcement officers from bad guesses in 

gray areas, they are liable for transgressing bright lines. See

Maciariello v. Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298 (4th Cir. 1992). 

Lioi’s conduct as alleged in the complaint was not in a gray 

area; he crossed a bright line. 

III.

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district 

court denying qualified immunity to Lioi is

AFFIRMED.