Opinion ID: 778526
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Body in the Camry

Text: 35 When Klem arrived at the toll plaza, he was unaware that his suspect had just shot and killed himself while sitting inside the stolen Camry. But it is uncontroverted that Klem knew there was only one perpetrator. Thus, had Klem known of Bailey's suicide, it would have been clearly unreasonable for him later to confuse Curley with the suspect. Assuming that a reasonable officer in Klem's position would have looked inside the Camry upon arriving at the scene, a key issue becomes whether Klem did, in fact, look inside the Camry's window. 36 Klem asserts that, upon arriving at the toll plaza, he approached the Camry, looked in its back window first, and then walked up toward the passenger side window and looked through it. In his deposition, he said that he took a quick view, one that lasted [j]ust a second, a split second, and that he did not see anyone inside the vehicle. At deposition, both Klem and Drayton, who both claimed to have looked into the Camry after the shooting, testified that the perpetrator's body was wedged in the floorboards of the car. Curley, however, alleges that Drayton had previously told investigators that the body was lying across the seat. 37 Curley denies that Klem could have looked inside the passenger side window of the Camry without seeing Bailey's body slumped in plain view across the front seat. Thus, he contends that Klem never actually looked inside the vehicle. Curley notes that Freader, the toll collector who had walked up to the Camry before Klem's arrival, testified that he had no trouble seeing Bailey's body and that it was sprawled on the passenger seat. According to Curley, the first two state troopers to reach the Camry found the body sprawled in plain view across the front seat, where the toll collector had seen it. Curley further notes that Trooper Drayton, who had Klem in his line of vision, admitted in his deposition that he never saw Klem look into the passenger side of the Camry. 38 The record reflects that the District Court, in conducting its qualified immunity analysis, accepted Klem's claim that he looked in the car and he did not see the suspect. Ap. at A15. Because the question of whether Klem actually looked in the passenger side window of the Camry is an issue of disputed historical fact relevant to the qualified immunity doctrine's reasonableness inquiry, we conclude that the District Court erred by deciding the issue on its own and not submitting it for resolution by a jury.