Opinion ID: 3035227
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: a state actor affirmatively used his or her

Text: authority in a way that created a danger to the citizen or that rendered the citizen more vulnerable to danger than had the state not acted at all.” Bright v. Westmoreland County, 443 F.3d 276, 281 (3d Cir. 2006), cert. denied, 127 S. Ct. 1483 (2007). The District Court held that genuine issues of material fact exist as to each of these four elements, and that therefore the Walters meet the “threshold question” in the qualified immunity analysis. Walter, 465 F. Supp. 2d at 418-22, 427. We agree that the third element is met–as a participant in Stacy’s arrest, Michael Walter was in a discrete class of persons more likely to be targeted by Stacy than was a member of the public in general. And we may assume without deciding that the first element, foreseeability of the harm, is met as well. But we conclude that the District Court erred in holding the second and fourth elements of the state-created danger test satisfied in this case. In particular, we hold that no reasonably jury could find that 22 Mitchell, DeSarro, and Jacobs acted with conscience-shocking culpability in planning and effecting Stacy’s arrest and confession, and we hold that the failure to warn the Walters in 2002 about Stacy’s behavior cannot be deemed an affirmative use of authority sufficient to predicate liability.
As the District Court recognized, “[t]he exact degree of wrongfulness necessary to reach the ‘conscience-shocking’ level depends upon the circumstances of a particular case,” Miller v. City of Phila., 174 F.3d 368, 375 (3d Cir. 1999), and depends in particular on “the extent to which a state actor is required to act under pressure.” Sanford v. Stiles, 456 F.3d 298, 301 (3d Cir. 2006). “In a ‘hyperpressurized environment,’ an intent to cause harm is usually required,” while “in cases where deliberation is possible and officials have the time to make ‘unhurried judgments,’ deliberate indifference is sufficient.” Id. at 309. In the middle ground, or “circumstances involving something less urgent than a ‘split-second’ decision but more urgent than an ‘unhurried judgment,’” there is a mid-level standard that requires gross negligence and arbitrariness–the state actor must “consciously disregard[] a great risk of serious harm.” Id. at 308 (internal citation omitted). Here, the District Court held that the mid-level culpability standard should apply to the circumstances of Stacy’s arrest at the Walters’ house in 2001, because “Mitchell 23 was forced on-the-spot to make a decision whether to allow [Stacy to talk to Walter] and potentially gain a confession (or alternatively be forced to break up a fist-fight), or disallow it and likely not gain a confession (and potentially hamper Stacy’s prosecution).” Walter, 465 F. Supp. 2d at 420.2 We agree that the mid-level culpability standard is appropriate for Mitchell’s actions at the Walters’ house, and we hold that no reasonable jury could find it met.3 First and foremost, Mitchell asked 2 Implicit in the District Court’s holding is its determination that–contrary to the Walters’ allegations in the Amended Complaint and their argument on appeal–Mitchell did not plan ahead of time to involve Walter in the process of extracting a confession from Stacy (and, by implication, neither did DeSarro or Jacobs). To the extent the Walters’ appeal gives us jurisdiction to review this factual determination by the District Court–because the Walters appeal from the grant of summary judgment–we affirm that the evidence does not support a finding that Mitchell, DeSarro, or Jacobs planned ahead of time to have Michael Walter personally extract a confession from Stacy. Mitchell testified that he did not so intend, and the Walters do not point to any testimony or other evidence contradicting him on this point. See Mitchell Dep. at 120 (“Q: Did the plan involve Mr. Walter conducting any of the interrogation? A: Never”). 3 We note that the District Court’s opinion on this point is not clear. After discussing the applicable standard of culpability for the day of Stacy’s arrest, the District Court moved directly to the events of 2002, and held that a jury could find the defendants 24 Walter if he was willing to talk to Stacy, and only allowed the conversation once Walter agreed. Second, even assuming that Mitchell’s decision involved a great risk to Walter’s safety, the facts as articulated by the District Court do not show that Mitchell consciously disregarded that risk, but rather that he weighed it against the possible benefits that could result, including a stronger case against Stacy. Thus, while Mitchell’s decision was clearly unfortunate, and may have been unreasonable under the circumstances, it was at most highly negligent. We also hold that DeSarro and Jacobs did not act with the culpability required by the state-created danger doctrine in the timeframe of Stacy’s arrest. Even assuming that both DeSarro and Jacobs approved the plan to have Michael Walter lure Stacy out to be arrested, and even assuming that this approval was the result of unhurried judgment, such that the lowest standard of conscience-shocking culpability applies, no reasonable jury could find that DeSarro and Jacobs acted with deliberate indifference to Michael Walter’s safety. Rather, DeSarro and Jacobs had to balance the risks of arresting Stacy at the Walters’ house against the risks of arresting him at his own house, where they believed (rightly, as it turned out) that Stacy had an arsenal of weapons at his disposal. were deliberately indifferent to Michael Walter’s safety in that later timeframe. See Walter, 465 F. Supp. 2d at 421. 25 In this regard our case is analogous to Matican v. City of New York, recently decided by the Second Circuit. 524 F.3d 151 (2d Cir. 2008). In Matican, the plaintiff participated in a sting to help police arrest a suspected drug dealer. Matican set up a drug buy with the dealer, and when the dealer arrived, Matican identified his car so that the police could search it and arrest him. Id. at 153-54. After being released on bail, the dealer found Matican on the street and slashed his face with a box cutter. Id. at 154. Matican sued the police, alleging that “the officers executed the sting operation in such a way that [the drug dealer] learned that Matican had set him up.” Matican v. City of New York, 424 F. Supp. 2d 497, 505 (S.D.N.Y. 2006). In affirming that this police conduct did not shock the conscience, the Second Circuit observed that the officers designing the sting “had two serious competing obligations: Matican’s safety and their own,” and they could reasonably have concluded that “the arrest of a potentially violent drug dealer demanded” the protocol used even though it “might jeopardize the informant’s identity in the future.” Matican, 524 F.3d at 159. In our case, as was the Second Circuit in Matican, we “are loath to dictate to the police how best to protect themselves and the public, especially when our ruling could be taken to require officers to use riskier methods than their professional judgment demands.” Id. Given that DeSarro and Jacobs did not intend for Walter to interrogate Stacy, but only for Walter to invite him over to the Walters’ house on a pretext, we hold that 26 their approval of the arrest plan was at most negligent, and does not shock the conscience.
Affirmative Use of Authority We also hold that Mitchell, DeSarro, and Jacobs are entitled to qualified immunity for their failure to warn the Walters in 2002 about Stacy’s behavior toward Mitchell, because a state actor’s failure to warn about the likelihood of a private act of violence–even a highly culpable failure to warn–cannot itself predicate liability. Rather, “under the fourth element of a state-created danger claim, ‘liability . . . is predicated upon the states’ affirmative acts which work to the plaintiffs’ detriments in terms of exposure to danger,’” and we “have never found a state-created danger claim to be meritorious without an allegation and subsequent showing that state authority was affirmatively exercised.” Bright, 443 F.3d at 282 (quoting D.R. by L.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vo. Tech. School, 972 F.2d 1364, 1374 (3d Cir. 1992) (en banc) (emphasis added by Bright court)). While “the line between action and inaction may not always be clear,” id., here the Walters’ allegations about the period leading up to Stacy’s July, 2002 trial undoubtedly fall on the side of inaction. The Walters allege in their Amended Complaint that after Stacy began exhibiting threatening behavior, Mitchell, DeSarro, and Jacobs made conscious 27 decisions not to re-arrest Stacy, not to seek revocation of his bail, and not to warn Michael Walter or arrange protection for him, and that those decisions shock the conscience.4 We have squarely held that “failing to more expeditiously seek someone’s detention,” and failing to arrest someone who poses a threat, are not themselves affirmative uses of authority within the meaning of the state-created danger doctrine. Bright, 443 F.3d at 284; Burella v. City of Phila., 501 F.3d 134, 147 (3d Cir. 2007). We have also held that a state actor’s assurance to a plaintiff that he had “nothing to worry about and that he [was] fine,” when in fact the plaintiff was quite ill and required emergency care, did not amount to an affirmative use of state authority because it did not restrain the plaintiff from acting on his own behalf to obtain private assistance. Ye v. United States, 484 F.3d 634, 641 (3d Cir. 2007); id. at 642 (“assurances of well-being are not ‘affirmative’ acts within the meaning of the fourth element of a state-created danger claim”). If a state-created danger claim cannot be predicated on a failure to arrest, neither can it be predicated on a failure to provide protection. See, e.g., Bright, 443 F.3d at 284 (“mere ‘failure to protect an individual against private violence’ does not violate the Due Process Clause” (quoting Deshaney, 489 U.S. at 197)). And if an assurance of well-being despite the presence of a threat is not a sufficiently 4 We note that the District Court found that Mitchell and DeSarro did in fact seek to have Stacy’s bail revoked, without success, just before Stacy murdered Michael Walter. Walter, 465 F. Supp. 2d at 414. 28 affirmative act, neither is the mere failure to warn of a threat. In holding that Mitchell, DeSarro, and Jacobs are entitled to qualified immunity for the events of 2002, we recognize that those events did not occur in a vacuum, and that the threat posed by Stacy in 2002 was likely due in part to the circumstances of his arrest in 2001, including the actions taken by the defendants at that time. But because those earlier actions were not taken with the required level of culpability, they cannot predicate a state-created danger claim. Indeed, our caselaw firmly supports the requirement that defendants act with culpability. Compare Phillips v. County of Allegheny, 515 F.3d 224, 241 (3d Cir. 2008) (“the complaint alleges that [defendants] were aware that Michalski was distraught over his break up with Ferderbar and yet they assisted him in getting confidential information on Ferderbar . . . .[thus] the complaint does sufficiently allege facts that these defendants . . . were deliberately indifferent in providing Michalski more confidential information” (emphases added)) and Rivas v. City of Passaic, 365 F.3d at 196 (“If [the defendants] misrepresented the assault, not only did they abdicate their duty to render medical assistance, but they placed Mr. Rivas in greater danger by falsely accusing him of acting violently,” and “[a] jury could find . . . that such conduct shocks the conscience” (emphases added)) with Bennett v. Phila., 499 F.3d 281, 289 (3d Cir. Pa. 2007) (“Maiden did not perform the duties vis-a-vis Porchia that were incumbent upon a dedicated social worker. Although we believe Maiden’s actions (or more accurately, inactions) were beyond the pale, we conclude that in 29 essence the [plaintiff’s] argument is no more than another effort to circumvent the state-created danger doctrine. We are not free to do that.” (emphasis added)) and Burella, 501 F.3d at 147-148 (“Jill Burella contends that the officers’ ‘continual refusal to enforce the court order and follow state law requiring Officer Burella’s arrest, together with their false direction that “there was nothing they could do,” as well as overall inadequate intervention were affirmative acts which together increased the likelihood of harm,’” but “it is apparent that what she actually contends is that the officers failed to act at all . . . ,” and “[t]hat failure, while deeply troubling and unquestionably tragic, does not give rise to a cognizable state-created danger claim.” (emphasis added)). Here, the District Court held that a jury could reasonably find that the defendants affirmatively used their authority in 2001, by “allowing Michael Walter to become involved in eliciting a confession from Joseph Stacy,” Walter, 465 F. Supp. 2d at 422, and could reasonably find that the defendants were deliberately indifferent in 2002 in their “failure to warn the Walter family of Joseph Stacy’s menacing behavior . . . .” Id. at 421. But for the reasons we have articulated above, these findings would not amount to a constitutional violation–they would not establish that the defendants committed a culpable act, only that they acted in 2001 and then, months later, shocked the conscience through inaction. See, e.g., Kaucher, 455 F.3d at 435 (affirming grant of summary judgment for defendants because plaintiffs “have not alleged an affirmative, culpable act 30 on the part of defendants sufficient to implicate the state created danger doctrine” (emphasis added)); Bright, 443 F.3d at 284 (rejecting plaintiff’s argument where plaintiff “seeks to bring the law enforcement delay within the scope of the state-created danger doctrine by pointing to an affirmative action of the state which preceded it”); Leidy v. Borough of Glenolden, 277 F. Supp. 2d 547, 560, 565 (E.D. Pa. 2003) (Even though “a jury could conclude that Police Chief Cooke’s supine, bureaucratic inaction constituted conscience-shocking deliberate indifference,” state-created danger claim was rejected because “the wrongs of which plaintiffs complain is that the State did not do enough to protect them . . . .” (emphasis added)), aff’d 117 Fed. Appx. 176 (3d Cir. 2004). Because the Walters cannot establish a constitutional violation, we need not move beyond this threshold question in the qualified-immunity analysis. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201; Ye, 484 F.3d at 643 n.6 (“As there was no constitutional tort, we need not reach the question of whether the law was clearly established . . . .”). Further, because we hold that all three defendants are entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity, we need not decide whether DeSarro and Jacobs are entitled to absolute immunity.