Opinion ID: 78488
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was the right clearly established?

Text: Even though the actions of Officers Fiorino and Burk violated the Constitution, we also must ask whether Oliver has shown that the right violated was clearly established at the time of the violation. Pearson, 129 S.Ct. at 814-15. The Supreme Court has declared that the inquiry must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition. Id. The relevant inquiry to determine whether a right is clearly established is to ask whether it would be `sufficiently clear that a reasonable officer would understand that what he is doing violates that right.' Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999) (quoting Anderson, 483 U.S. at 639, 107 S.Ct. 3034). In order to determine whether a right is clearly established, we look to the precedent of the Supreme Court of the United States, this Court's precedent, and the pertinent state's supreme court precedent, interpreting and applying the law in similar circumstances. McClish v. Nugent, 483 F.3d 1231, 1237 (11th Cir.2007). We have said many times that `if case law, in factual terms, has not staked out a bright line, qualified immunity almost always protects the defendant.' Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, Fla., 208 F.3d 919, 926 (11th Cir.2000) (quoting Smith v. Mattox, 127 F.3d 1416, 1419 (11th Cir.1997)). However, in some cases, we may find that the right is clearly established, even in the absence of case law. One such instance is where the case is one of obvious clarityi.e., 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 official], notwithstanding the lack of fact-specific case law on point. Vinyard v. Wilson, 311 F.3d 1340, 1355 (11th Cir.2002) (quoting Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199). Under this test, the law is clearly established, and qualified immunity can be overcome, only if the standards set forth in Graham and our own case law inevitably lead every reasonable officer in [the defendant's] position to conclude the force was unlawful. Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199 (internal quotation marks omitted). No decision from the United States Supreme Court, or from this Court, or from the Florida Supreme Court, has clearly established that an officer's repeated use of a Taser constituted excessive force under circumstances like these. Indeed, neither the United States Supreme Court nor the Florida Supreme Court has even addressed the use of Tasers in an excessive force inquiry, and this Court has only squarely done so in one published decision, Draper v. Reynolds, 369 F.3d at 1270, which, as we have said, is not directly on all fours with this case. The question then boils down to this: whether it would be clear to every reasonable officer, even in the absence of case law, that the force usedrepeatedly tasering Oliver over a two-minute period without warningwas excessive under the circumstances. We agree with the district court's determination that the force employed was so utterly disproportionate to the level of force reasonably necessary that any reasonable officer would have recognized that his actions were unlawful. The need for force was exceedingly limited. Again, Oliver was not accused of or suspected of any crime, let alone a violent one; he did not act belligerently or aggressively; he complied with most of the officers' directions; and he made no effort to flee. Tasering the plaintiff at least eight and as many as eleven or twelve times over a two-minute span without attempting to arrest or otherwise subdue the plaintiff including tasering Oliver while he was writhing in pain on the hot pavement and after he had gone limp and immobilized was so plainly unnecessary and disproportionate that no reasonable officer could have thought that this amount of force was legal under the circumstances. When measured against these facts, the officers violated a clearly established right. The district court properly rejected qualified immunity for Officers Burk and Fiorino. Accordingly, we affirm. AFFIRMED.