Opinion ID: 4535110
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Brandenburg Scenario

Text: Qualified immunity is an officer-friendly doctrine, designed to ensure that police, who have to make snap judgments to protect themselves and others in uncertain conditions, will not face undue Monday-morning quarterbacking from courts afterward. Qualified immunity therefore limits success in such suits to only those situations in which no reasonable officer, of all the universe of reasonable officers, would make a given decision. Review of a grant of summary judgment, on the other hand, is extremely friendly to the party that did not move for it, which in qualified immunity cases is often, but not always, the plaintiff, as here. Because juries, not judges, are supposed to be the trier of contested facts, and summary judgment involves a judge disposing of the case before it gets to a jury, summary judgment is reviewed taking all inferences as to facts that can reasonably be disputed in favor of the non-moving party. Only if that party’s claim cannot survive even with every factual inference in his or her favor, do we uphold the district court’s decision to terminate the lawsuit before it reaches a jury. As one can imagine, the interaction of 2 “Where, as here, there is ‘a videotape capturing the events in question,’ the court must ‘view[ ] the facts in the light depicted by the videotape.’” Green v. Throckmorton, 681 F.3d 853, 859 (6th Cir. 2012) (quoting Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 378–81 (2007)) (brackets in original). Unfortunately for our purposes, the dispositive factual question was not captured on the recording here. We refer to the cell-phone recording and the police cruisers’ dashcam recordings otherwise for the facts contained in them, which are not in dispute. 8 Case No. 19-1801, Henry, et al. v. City of Flint, et al. the standards for qualified immunity and for summary judgment can cause courts considerable difficulties. In one situation, however, this tangle falls away, yielding a simple question. Consider a stylized hypothetical. A candidate for governor is giving a speech denouncing the incumbent, during which he is arrested by the state police. The police claim that they arrested him because, during the speech, the candidate drew a gun and shot a member of the audience. The candidate sues, stating flatly that no such thing happened and that the police arrested him because of his criticisms of the governor. There is no question that if the politician did in fact shoot someone, the police were justified in arresting him and therefore qualified immunity should shield them from suit. Alternatively, there is no question that if the shooting did not happen, the politician was the victim of an unlawful arrest redressable at law. Absent sufficient proof to resolve on summary judgment whether the shooting did or did not happen, this presents a question of fact for trial. The case, in other words, turns not on the question of qualified immunity, but on a question of fact predicate to the question of qualified immunity. Such a scenario has occurred in less lurid circumstances in our caselaw. In Brandenburg v. Cureton, 882 F.2d 211 (6th Cir. 1989), there had been a confrontation between an armed man standing on his own property and officers off the property, leading to the officers shooting the man dead. The officers said he was pointing a rifle at them. If that were so, their actions in shooting him were surely justified. The contrary view was that he was simply carrying the rifle pointed at the ground—in which case the officers’ actions were not justified. See id. at 215. The law was clear, but there was a genuine issue as to the crucial fact. We remanded for the case to proceed, denying qualified immunity. Id. at 215–16. 9 Case No. 19-1801, Henry, et al. v. City of Flint, et al. Similar scenarios arose in somewhat different postures in Kennedy v. City of Villa Hills, 635 F.3d 210 (6th Cir. 2011), and Leonard v. Robinson, 477 F.3d 347 (6th Cir. 2007). In Kennedy, a police officer appealed the denial of qualified immunity by the district judge. 635 F.3d at 213. A homeowner had become embroiled in a zoning dispute with a local official who was both a building inspector and also a police officer. The homeowner went to the municipal offices and, following a confrontation, the building inspector/police officer arrested him. Id. at 212. We concluded that, when viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Kennedy—i.e., that the noise had not been unreasonable—then as a matter of law no reasonable officer could have had probable cause to arrest him.3 We therefore upheld the district court’s denial of qualified immunity, leaving the factual question for a jury to decide. In Leonard, we ruled that certain antiquated Michigan statutes (forbidding, e.g., blasphemous cursing and swearing) were so obviously unconstitutionally vague or otherwise in violation of the First Amendment that no reasonable officer could have thought they provided probable cause to arrest a business owner who was speaking, somewhat intemperately, at a city meeting. 477 F.3d at 358–60. Given that, we remanded for trial on the disputed issue of material fact as to whether the arresting officer had a proper motive, i.e. because the speaker was being genuinely disruptive, or an improper one, namely that there was a business dispute between the speaker’s wife and the local police chief. Id. at 360–63. Such cases and their disposition reflect our longstanding rule that “where the legal question of qualified immunity turns upon which version of the facts one accepts, the jury, not the judge, 3 The defendant officer had in that case actually conceded that a dispute of material fact existed and had appealed only on the ground that the law was not clearly established. Id. at 214. But we held that insofar as the facts were as Kennedy alleged, the state law and constitutional law in question was clearly established and that no reasonable officer could have thought an arrest was constitutional. Id. at 217. (“In a qualified-immunity analysis at the summary-judgment stage, we are constrained to view the facts favorably to” the plaintiff, and that “[o]nce we do so, there is no basis on these facts on which an officer could conclude that he had probable cause to arrest Kennedy.”). 10 Case No. 19-1801, Henry, et al. v. City of Flint, et al. must determine liability.” Green v. Throckmorton, 681 F.3d 853, 864 (6th Cir. 2012) (quoting McKenna v. Edgell, 617 F.3d 432, 437 (6th Cir.2010) (internal quotation marks omitted)). The question thus becomes whether our case fits into this scenario (which we will call the Brandenburg rule) in which qualified immunity either clearly applies or clearly does not, and which it is turns on a disputed question of fact. If this is such a Brandenburg rule case, remand for trial is appropriate. For while the legal question is clear either way (qualified immunity either would or would not attach), the factual question predicate to qualified immunity remains unclear. We now turn to examine whether this is such a case.