Opinion ID: 867217
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Clearly Established Law

Text: ¶26 We now turn to the second step of the qualified- immunity analysis — whether the right was clearly established at the time of Ochser’s arrest. An officer’s “conduct violates clearly established law when, at the time of the challenged conduct, the contours of a right are sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is 13 doing violates that right.” al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2083 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted); see also Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202 (stating “[t]he relevant, dispositive inquiry . . . is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted”). ¶27 The requirement that the right be clearly established “gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions,” al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2085, and “ensure[s] that before they are subjected to suit, officers are on notice their conduct is unlawful,” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 206. Thus, “the right allegedly violated must be defined at [an] appropriate level of specificity before a court can determine if it was clearly established.” Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615 (1999). In al-Kidd, the Supreme Court rejected the court of appeals’ finding of “clearly established law lurking in the broad history and purposes of the Fourth Amendment” because “[t]he general proposition . . . that an unreasonable search or seizure violates the Fourth Amendment is of little help in determining whether the violative nature of particular conduct is clearly established.” 131 S. Ct. at 2084 (internal quotation marks omitted); see id. (“We have repeatedly told courts . . . not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality.” (citations omitted)). Only “in an 14 obvious case” may standards “cast at a high level of generality” constitute clearly established law. Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199 (2004). ¶28 To determine whether a right was clearly established at the time of an officer’s conduct, we “look to cases from the Supreme Court and this court, as well as to cases from other courts exhibiting a consensus view.” Bame v. Dillard, 637 F.3d 380, 384 (D.C. Cir. 2011); see also Weatherford, 206 Ariz. at 532-33 ¶¶ 8-9, 81 P.3d at 323-24 (in evaluating immunity claims in § 1983 actions, we look first to Supreme Court decisions and then may choose to follow Ninth Circuit authority that “has announced a clear rule” of law and that “appears just”). Although “[a] case directly on point” is not required, al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2083, and the facts of other cases need not be “materially similar” to the case at hand, Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002), “existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate,” al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2083. Stated differently, “in the light of preexisting law[,] the unlawfulness must be apparent.” Hope, 536 U.S. at 739. ¶29 Ochser relies heavily on Berg v. County of Allegheny, 219 F.3d 261, 267-68 (3d Cir. 2000), which considered qualified immunity for an officer who executed an arrest pursuant to a warrant mistakenly issued for the wrong person. A records clerk 15 accidently transposed two digits from a criminal complaint for a person named Banks, resulting in a warrant being generated for Berg, who had completed his parole three years earlier. Id. at 266. When a constable came to arrest him, Berg produced his release documents, but the constable refused to examine the paperwork. Id. at 267. The court found no probable cause for Berg’s arrest and proceeded to analyze whether qualified immunity applied, stating “an apparently valid warrant does not render an officer immune from suit if his reliance on it is unreasonable in light of the relevant circumstances.” Id. at 273. The court explained that “[s]uch circumstances include, but are not limited to, other information that the officer possesses or to which he has reasonable access, and whether failing to make an immediate arrest creates a public threat or danger of flight.” Id. The Third Circuit remanded the case to the district court for additional fact-finding to determine, as a matter of law, whether the constable’s reliance on the warrant was unreasonable in light of the circumstances, including the fact that the constable was possibly predisposed to arrest because he earned a fee for each arrest. Id. at 273-74. ¶30 Ochser also relies on Peña-Borrero v. Estremeda, 365 F.3d 7, 10 (1st Cir. 2004), in which a man not only informed his arresting officers that the warrant they held had already been executed, but also produced a copy of an identical arrest 16 warrant bearing a stamp that showed prior execution. Calling the stamped warrant “unequivocal documentary evidence,” the First Circuit concluded a jury could find that the officers acted unreasonably in making the arrest. Id. at 11, 13. The court explained that a failure to seek additional verification in the face of the stamped warrant “reflected a much more deliberate disregard for whether the warrant remained valid.” Id. at 13. Emphasizing the importance of reasonable verification, the court noted that “[i]f any doubts remained after appellant displayed the stamped warrant, a quick phone call to the precinct presumably would have resolved them.” Id. ¶31 Berg and Peña-Borrero are analogous to this case and support our conclusion that the deputies’ conduct here was unreasonable. Like Berg, this case involves readily accessible documentation that called the warrant’s validity into question. And in those cases, as here, the officers did not face safety concerns or have an urgent need to immediately arrest. ¶32 But the court in Berg did not actually decide the issue of reasonableness, and the constable’s possible predisposition to arrest complicated the reasonableness analysis. And because the officers in Peña-Borrero retrieved the proffered documents from the arrestee’s trunk, the First Circuit had no need to address whether the officers would have been unreasonable had they not done so. Peña-Borrero, 365 F.3d 17 at 10. Rather, Peña-Borrero turned on the officers’ failure to undertake reasonable verification after an inspection of the documents revealed the substantial likelihood that the warrant was already executed. ¶33 Nonetheless, the Fourth Amendment requires that an arrest “be reasonable under the circumstances.” al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2080 (emphasis added). Courts have explained that relevant circumstances include whether the officer knew or should have known that the warrant had been quashed. See Torres Ramirez v. Bermudez Garcia, 898 F.2d 224, 226, 228 (1st Cir. 1990) (rejecting summary judgment in a vacated-warrant case when entry in officer’s log book and notations on the warrant itself could allow a jury to conclude the officer knew or should have known the warrant had been quashed); see also Martin v. Russell, 563 F.3d 683, 685 (8th Cir. 2009) (stating, without deciding, that “[i]f [an arrest warrant] was vacated and the officers knew or should have known that it was, then the arrests would have been unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment because they would have been unwarranted and unreasonable”). Courts have also considered whether an officer knew that the law enforcement agency’s warrant database was unreliable. See McMurry v. Sheahan, 927 F. Supp. 1082, 1090-91 (N.D. Ill. 1996) (concluding an arrest was unreasonable when the arrestee repeatedly protested the arrest warrant was previously quashed and the 18 arresting officer should have known his computer check was unreliable because the warrant database was known to be an utter failure). ¶34 The law as a whole at the time of Ochser’s arrest in May 2004, however, did not clearly establish the unconstitutionality of the deputies’ actions. No opinions of the United States Supreme Court are closely on point. In Baker, a man assumed his brother’s identity on bail release. 443 U.S. at 140-41. When the man failed to return, a warrant was issued in the brother’s name for the man’s arrest. Id. at 141. Officers arrested the brother, despite his claims of mistaken identification, and the brother was detained for several days. Id. The Supreme Court rejected the brother’s § 1983 due process claim. Id. at 144-45. The Court explained that “[t]he Constitution does not guarantee that only the guilty will be arrested” and that it did “not think a sheriff executing an arrest warrant is required by the Constitution to investigate independently every claim of innocence.” Id. at 145-46. ¶35 Baker did not involve a quashed warrant. Several federal courts, however, have extended Baker’s reasoning to the quashed-warrant context. In rejecting a woman’s claim that her arrest violated due process when she protested to the arresting officers that her warrant had been quashed, the Fourth Circuit relied on the facial validity of the warrant and Baker’s 19 guidance that an officer need not “investigate independently every claim of innocence.” Mitchell v. Aluisi, 872 F.2d 577, 578-79 (4th Cir. 1989). The Tenth Circuit similarly concluded that an arresting officer need not check the arrest warrant when requested to do so, because “[u]nless a warrant is facially invalid an officer has no constitutional duty to independently determine its validity.” Hill v. Bogans, 735 F.2d 391, 393 (10th Cir. 1984). Relying on Mitchell, a district court considering an arrest pursuant to a canceled warrant found it “well established that when an arrest and subsequent detention are undertaken pursuant to a facially valid warrant, there is no violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Peacock v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 199 F. Supp. 2d 306, 309 (D. Md. 2002). ¶36 Other courts, in contrast, have distinguished Baker in the quashed-warrant context. In a case involving a woman arrested pursuant to a warrant in the face of her protests that the warrant had been recalled, the Seventh Circuit stated that “[i]t seems clear” the woman “sustained a violation of constitutional rights by being arrested and detained pursuant to an invalid warrant.” Murray v. City of Chicago, 634 F.2d 365, 366 (7th Cir. 1980); see also Wilson v. City of Boston, 421 F.3d 45, 57 (1st Cir. 2005) (finding it “well established in other federal courts . . . that an arrest made on the basis of a facially valid warrant which turns out to have been cleared 20 before the arrest violates the Fourth Amendment”). ¶37 These two lines of cases, however, involved arrestees who baldly asserted, without supporting documentation, that their arrest warrants were invalid. They are therefore not particularly helpful in determining whether an arresting officer’s actions are reasonable in the face of a serious, provable challenge to a warrant’s validity. ¶38 More pertinent to our analysis, however, is Lauer v. Dahlberg, 717 F. Supp. 612 (N.D. Ill. 1989), aff’d, 907 F.2d 152 (7th Cir. 1990). There, an arrest warrant had been quashed the day before the arrest was made, but that information had not yet been disseminated. Id. at 613. The arrestee proffered to the arresting officer an uncertified copy of the warrant recall order. Id. at 614. The court rejected the notion that officers need “to investigate further than confirming the active status of the warrant over the police radio.” Id. “To hold otherwise,” the court stated, “would be to place impossible burdens upon police officers. Judgments as to authenticity of recall orders, which like all other documents are subject to error, alteration, and forgery, are ordinarily best made in the station house or the courthouse, rather than by a police officer in the field.” Id. ¶39 Unlike Lauer, this case involves a certified copy of the court order quashing the warrant. Although certified copies 21 provide significant intrinsic assurances of authenticity, the concerns of alteration and forgery expressed in Lauer nonetheless extend to certified copies, particularly when proffered by an arrestee. Lauer and Peña-Borrero could thus reasonably be read as merely requiring officers to make “a quick phone call to the precinct” to verify. Peña-Borrero, 365 F.3d at 13. ¶40 Given the conflicting case law at the time of Ochser’s arrest in May 2004, we cannot conclude that “every reasonable official would have understood” that the deputies’ conduct here was unreasonable and violated Ochser’s Fourth Amendment rights. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2083 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202. The existing precedent did not place the question of reasonableness under these circumstances “beyond debate.” al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2083. Accordingly, the deputies are entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law.