Opinion ID: 3168773
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Clearly Established at the Time of the Incident

Text: Although we conclude that Suszczynski violated Arango’s constitutional right to be free from excessive force, qualified immunity will still attach unless that 5 By way of comparison, in Scott, video tape evidence plainly contradicted the plaintiff’s version of the facts: that the plaintiff was driving carefully and posed no threat at the time the officer used force. See Scott, 550 U.S. at 380–81, 127 S. Ct. at 1776 (plaintiff’s version was “visible fiction” because that “version of events was so utterly discredited by the record that no reasonable jury could have believed him”). Here, there is no “blatant[] contradict[ion].” See id. at 380, 127 S. Ct. at 1776. Suszczynski only offers the deputies’ versions of events, and even the deputies gave inconsistent statements regarding what happened. Of course, a fact-finder may later determine that the deputies’ versions are more credible, at which point Suszczynski will get a second chance to raise his entitlement to qualified immunity after the fact-finder resolves these factual disputes. At this stage, however, we may not simply reject the Estate’s version of the facts. See Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. __, __, 134 S. Ct. 1861, 1867–68 (2014) (per curiam) (noting that a court may not “credit[] the evidence of the party seeking summary judgment and fail[] . . . to acknowledge key evidence offered by the party opposing that motion”). 13 Case: 14-13619 Date Filed: 01/12/2016 Page: 14 of 17 right was clearly established at the time Suszczynski violated it. See Lee, 284 F.3d at 1198. A right is “clearly established” if it would have been apparent to every reasonable officer in Suszczynski’s position that his use of force was unlawful. See id. at 1199. There are three ways in which the Estate may show that the right violated was clearly established: “(1) case law with indistinguishable facts clearly establishing the constitutional right; (2) a broad statement of principle within the Constitution, statute, or case law that clearly establishes a constitutional right; or (3) conduct so egregious that a constitutional right was clearly violated, even in the total absence of case law.” Lewis v. City of W. Palm Beach, 561 F.3d 1288, 1291– 92 (11th Cir. 2009) (citations omitted). The “salient question” is whether the state of the law at the time of the incident gave Suszczynski “fair warning” that his conduct was unlawful. See Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S. Ct. 2508, 2516 (2002). Arango’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from the use of deadly force when compliant and nonresistant was clearly established well before the night of the shooting in 2012. Case law from this court and the Supreme Court clearly established this constitutional right, and, even in a total absence of case law, Suszczynski had fair warning that his actions were unlawful. The Supreme Court identified a constitutionally protected right to be free from excessive force as early as 1985. See Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 105 S. Ct. 1694 (1985). The Court 14 Case: 14-13619 Date Filed: 01/12/2016 Page: 15 of 17 explained that deadly force is not justified “[w]here the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others”; the Court definitively held that, as relevant here, “[a] police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead.” See id. at 11, 105 S. Ct. at 1701. In addition, we have repeatedly stated that “the use of deadly force against a non-resisting suspect who posed no danger violates a suspect’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force.” See, e.g., Morton, 707 F.3d at 1283 (citing Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d 1323 (11th Cir. 2003)); Mercado, 407 F.3d at 1160 (noting that it is a “clearly established principle that deadly force cannot be used in non-deadly situations”). Our case law clearly establishes that the use of force against an arrestee who, inter alia, is not a threat, has not exhibited aggressive behavior, and has not actively resisted arrest is excessive. See Lee, 284 F.3d at 1198–1200; Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919, 927 (2000); see also Smith v. Mattox, 127 F.3d 1416, 1418, 1420 (11th Cir. 1997) (per curiam) (denying qualified immunity to an officer who broke the arm of individual who “docilely submitted” to the officer’s request to “get down,” even though the individual previously resisted arrest (internal quotation marks omitted)). Suszczynski was thus on fair notice at the time of the shooting from both the Supreme Court and Eleventh Circuit that the use of deadly force has constitutional limits, and that his use of deadly force would be justified only if a reasonable 15 Case: 14-13619 Date Filed: 01/12/2016 Page: 16 of 17 officer in his position would believe Arango posed an immediate threat of serious physical harm. Under the Estate’s version of events, these circumstances did not exist: witnesses for the Estate testified in their depositions that Arango was subdued, unarmed, and not resisting arrest when Suszczynski fatally shot him. In fact, the facts alleged reflect behavior so inherently violative of the Fourth Amendment that it should be obvious to any reasonable officer that this conduct was unlawful. The unprovoked shooting of a compliant individual is “conduct [that] lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct [should have been] readily apparent to the official.” See Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199. Indeed, this conduct lies “so far beyond the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force that [Suszczynski] had to know he was violating the Constitution.” See Smith, 127 F.3d at 1419. Even in the absence of the aforementioned precedent, the unlawfulness of Suszczynski’s alleged actions would be apparent to any reasonable officer—the deadly force used was “grossly disproportionate.” See Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199. Accordingly, qualified immunity does not apply.