Opinion ID: 1434394
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did Officer McPherson Violate Bryan's Clearly Established Rights?

Text: Having concluded that Officer McPherson's actions violated Bryan's Fourth Amendment rights, we next must ask whether his conduct violate[d] clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). If an officer's use of force was premised on a reasonable belief that such force was lawful, the officer will be granted immunity from suit, notwithstanding the fact excessive force was deployed. Deorle, 272 F.3d at 1285; see also Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151 (asserting that the qualified immunity analysis asks whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted). We must, therefore, turn to the state of the law at the time of the current incident to determine if Officer McPherson could have reasonably believed his use of the taser against Bryan was constitutional. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. All of the factors articulated in Graham along with our recent applications of Graham in Deorle and Headwaters placed Officer McPherson on fair notice that an intermediate level of force was unjustified. See Fogarty v. Gallegos, 523 F.3d 1147, 1162 (10th Cir.2008) (Considering that under Fogarty's version of events each of the Graham factors lines up in his favor, this case is not so close that our precedents would fail to portend the constitutional unreasonableness of defendants' alleged actions.); Boyd v. Benton County, 374 F.3d 773, 781 (9th Cir.2004) (asking whether a reasonable officer would have had fair notice that the force employed was unlawful). Officer McPherson stopped Bryan for the most minor of offenses. There was no reasonable basis to conclude that Bryan was armed. He was twenty feet away and did not physically confront the officer. The facts suggest that Bryan was not even facing Officer McPherson when he was shot. A reasonable officer in these circumstances would have known that it was unreasonable to deploy intermediate force. That there is no direct legal precedent dealing with this precise factual scenario is not dispositive. Rather, where an officer's conduct so clearly offends an individual's constitutional rights, we do not need to find closely analogous case law to show that a right is clearly established. Moreno v. Baca, 431 F.3d 633, 641 (9th Cir.2005); see also Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002) ([O]fficials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.); Oliver, 586 F.3d at 907 (finding that a right can be clearly established where the officer's conduct lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to[the officer], notwithstanding the lack of fact-specific case law). In the excessive force context, it is clearly established that force is least justified against nonviolent misdemeanants who do not flee or actively resist and pose little or no threat to the security of the officers or the public. Brown v. City of Golden Valley, 574 F.3d 491, 499 (8th Cir. 2009); see also Casey v. City of Federal Heights, 509 F.3d 1278, 1285 (10th Cir. 2007). No reasonable officer confronting a situation where the need for force is at its lowestwhere the target is a nonviolent, stationary misdemeanant twenty feet awaywould have concluded that deploying intermediate force without warning was justified. We thus hold that Officer McPherson's use of significant force in these circumstances does not constitute a reasonable mistake of either fact or law. Deorle, 272 F.3d at 1286. Officer McPherson is therefore not entitled to qualified immunity for his use of the Taser X26 against Bryan.