Opinion ID: 148934
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did Officer MacPherson Violate Bryan's Clearly Established Rights?

Text: Having concluded that Officer MacPherson's actions violated Bryan's Fourth Amendment rights, we next must ask whether his conduct violate[d] clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). If an officer's use of force was premised on a reasonable belief that such force was lawful, the officer will be granted immunity from suit, notwithstanding the fact excessive force was deployed. Deorle, 272 F.3d at 1285; see also Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151 (asserting that the qualified immunity analysis asks whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted). We must, therefore, turn to the state of the law at the time Officer MacPherson tasered Bryan to determine whether Officer MacPherson reasonably could have believed his use of the taser against Bryan was constitutional. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. All of the factors articulated in Graham along with our recent applications of Graham in Deorle and Headwaters placed Officer MacPherson on fair notice that an intermediate level of force was unjustified. See Fogarty v. Gallegos, 523 F.3d 1147, 1162 (10th Cir.2008) (Considering that under Fogarty's version of events each of the Graham factors lines up in his favor, this case is not so close that our precedents would fail to portend the constitutional unreasonableness of defendants' alleged actions.); Boyd v. Benton County, 374 F.3d 773, 781 (9th Cir.2004) (asking whether a reasonable officer would have had fair notice that the force employed was unlawful). Officer MacPherson stopped Bryan for the most minor of offenses. There was no reasonable basis to conclude that Bryan was armed. He was twenty feet away and did not physically confront the officer. The facts suggest that Bryan was not even facing Officer MacPherson when he was shot. A reasonable officer in these circumstances would have known that it was unreasonable to deploy intermediate force. We do not need to find closely analogous case law to show that a right is clearly established. Moreno v. Baca, 431 F.3d 633, 641 (9th Cir.2005); see also Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002) ([O]fficials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.); Oliver, 586 F.3d at 907 (finding that a right can be clearly established where the officer's conduct lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to [the officer], notwithstanding the lack of fact-specific case law). However, as of July 24, 2005, there was no Supreme Court decision or decision of our court addressing whether the use of a taser, such as the Taser X26, in dart mode constituted an intermediate level of force. Indeed, before that date, the only statement we had made regarding tasers in a published opinion was that they were among the variety of non-lethal `pain compliance' weapons used by police forces. San Jose Charter of Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, 402 F.3d at 969 n. 8. And, as the Eighth Circuit has noted, [t]he Taser is a relatively new implement of force, and case law related to the Taser is developing. Brown v. City of Golden Valley, 574 F.3d 491, 498 n. 5 (8th Cir.2009). Two other panels have recently, in cases involving different circumstances, concluded that the law regarding tasers is not sufficiently clearly established to warrant denying officers qualified immunity. Mattos v. Agarano, 590 F.3d 1082, 1089-90 (9th Cir.2010); Brooks v. City of Seattle, 599 F.3d 1018, 1031 n. 18 (9th Cir.2010). Based on these recent statements regarding the use of tasers, and the dearth of prior authority, we must conclude that a reasonable officer in Officer MacPherson's position could have made a reasonable mistake of law regarding the constitutionality of the taser use in the circumstances Officer MacPherson confronted in July 2005. Accordingly, Officer MacPherson is entitled to qualified immunity. See Ctr. for Bio-Ethical Reform v. Los Angeles County Sheriff Dept., 533 F.3d 780, 794 (9th Cir.2008).