Opinion ID: 177847
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prong Two: The Right was Clearly Established

Text: Pietroski may still mount a successful qualified immunity defense if Raiche's Fourth Amendment right was not clearly established at the time Pietroski committed the violation. As set forth above, to determine whether the right was clearly established, we must consider two subsidiary issues: (a) the clarity of the law in general at the time of the alleged violation; and (b) the clarity of the law as applied to the casein other words, whether a reasonable person in the defendant's shoes would have understood that his conduct violated the plaintiff['s] constitutional rights. Maldonado, 568 F.3d at 269.
To determine whether the law is clear in general, we must define the right allegedly violated ... at the appropriate level of specificity. Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999). Once we have defined the right, we often consider whether the violation itself is clearly established; a violation is clear either if courts have previously ruled that materially similar conduct was unconstitutional, or if the conduct was such an obvious violation of the Fourth Amendment's general prohibition on unreasonable force that a reasonable officer would not have required prior case law on point to be on notice that his conduct was unlawful. Jennings, 499 F.3d at 16-17; see also United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271, 117 S.Ct. 1219, 137 L.Ed.2d 432 (1997). Here, the question may be defined specifically as whether prior existing case law or general Fourth Amendment principles gave Pietroski notice that it is unconstitutional for a police officer to exert against a person the considerable force used in this incident. We need not decide whether there are materially similar cases of controlling authority or a consensus of persuasive authority existing at the time of the incident which would have clearly established the law. Cf. Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 617, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999) (law is generally unclear where there is no controlling authority or general consensus directly on point). This is because Pietroski's excessive conduct was such an obvious violation of the Fourth Amendment's general prohibition on unreasonable force that a reasonable officer would not have required prior case law on point to be on notice that his conduct was unlawful. Jennings, 499 F.3d at 16-17. A reasonable officer with training on the Use of Force Continuum would not have needed prior case law on point to recognize that it is unconstitutional to tackle a person who has already stopped in response to the officer's command to stop and who presents no indications of dangerousness. [3] Such conduct is a major departure from reasonable behavior under both the Graham factors and the officer's training. Indeed, Pietroski jumped immediately to the extreme end of the open-hand force category on the Use of Force Continuum, tackling rather than otherwise subduing Raiche, slamming his head to the pavement, and destroying his motorcycle. Given the overall state of the law at the time of Raiche's arrest and the violence of Pietroski's conduct, it was clearly unconstitutional for a police officer to apply the force that Pietroski did under the circumstances.
Not only was the law generally clear that Pietroski's conduct violated Raiche's right to be free from unreasonable seizures, but it was also sufficiently clear that an objectively reasonable [officer] would have believed that the action taken violated that clearly established constitutional right. Jennings, 499 F.3d at 18 (internal quotation marks omitted). As our previous discussion makes clear, the record does not reveal any circumstances that would support Pietroski's use of force as reasonable, but it does reveal that an officer with Pietroski's training should not have used the force that he did. Thus, Pietroski cannot claim that he was reasonably mistaken as to the degree of force he should have used, and he has no recourse to qualified immunity. Id. We sympathize with the challenging work of police officers, which often forces them to make split-second judgmentsin circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolvingabout the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation. Graham, 490 U.S. at 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865. However, we do not find such circumstances here. An objectively reasonable police officer would have believed that tackling Raiche from his motorcycle and slamming him into the pavement would violate his constitutional right to be free from excessive force. We have found that the record contains sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict that Pietroski used excessive force to arrest Raiche in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Additionally, we have found that the law at the time was clearly established enough to caution Pietroski that the force he exercised against Raiche was excessive. Finally, we have found that an objectively reasonable officer under the specific circumstances in which Pietroski found himself would have believed that the force that Pietroski used to make the arrest was excessive. Therefore, Pietroski is not entitled to qualified immunity against Raiche's excessive force claim under § 1983. We affirm the denial of Pietroski's motion for judgment as a matter of law on Raiche's § 1983 excessive force claim.