Opinion ID: 4156909
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Identifying Obvious-Clarity Cases

Text: The Hope Court explained “a general constitutional rule already identified in the decisional law may apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question, even though the very action in question has not previously been held unlawful.” 536 U.S. at 741, 122 S. Ct. at 2516 (citation, internal quotation marks, and alteration omitted) (emphasis added). “Concrete facts are generally necessary 14 “In this circuit, the law can be clearly established for qualified immunity purposes only by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, or the highest court of the state where the case arose.” Lee, 284 F.3d at 1197 n.5 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In this case, the highest state court is the Florida Supreme Court. 21 Case: 15-10206 Date Filed: 03/30/2017 Page: 22 of 46 to provide an officer with notice of the ‘hazy border between excessive and acceptable force.’” Fils, 647 F.3d at 1291 (quoting Lee, 284 F.3d at 1198-99). “But, where the officer’s conduct is so outrageous that it clearly goes ‘so far beyond’ these borders, qualified immunity will not protect him even in the absence of case law.” Id. at 1291-92 (quoting Reese v. Herbert, 527 F.3d 1253, 1274 (11th Cir. 2008)) (emphasis added). [I]n the absence of fact-specific case law, the plaintiff may overcome the qualified immunity defense when the preexisting general constitutional rule applies “with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question,” and it must have been “obvious” to a reasonable police officer that the pertinent conduct given the circumstances must have been unconstitutional at the time. Vinyard, 311 F.3d at 1352 (quoting Hope, 536 U.S. at 741, 122 S. Ct. at 2516). In considering an excessive-force case, a court should determine whether an officer’s conduct in making an arrest is objectively reasonable or if it is an overreactive, disproportionate action for the situation relative to the response of the apprehended person. The latter is the sort of unconstitutional conduct that deprives an officer of qualified-immunity protection in an obvious-clarity case. Under the plaintiff’s version of the alleged excessive-force occurrence, an obvious-clarity case is presented, when “no factually particularized, preexisting case law [i]s necessary for it to be very obvious to every objectively reasonable officer” confronting the same situation that the officer’s conduct “violated [the plaintiff’s] constitutional right to be free of the excessive use of force,” precluding qualified22 Case: 15-10206 Date Filed: 03/30/2017 Page: 23 of 46 immunity protection. Id. at 1355 15; see Slicker v. Jackson, 215 F.3d 1225, 1232 (11th Cir. 2000) (“[I]n an excessive force case, qualified immunity applies unless application of the standard would inevitably lead every reasonable officer to conclude the force was unlawful.” (citation, internal quotation marks, and ellipsis omitted) (emphasis added)). “A genuine ‘excessive force’ claim relates to the manner in which an arrest was carried out, independent of whether law enforcement had the power to arrest.” 15 The conduct of officers toward individuals over whom they had control shows why they were determined to be obvious-clarity cases in the Supreme Court and our court. In Hope, an Alabama prisoner, who had napped en route to a chain-gang worksite and had gotten into an altercation with a guard who had awakened him, was placed in leg irons and returned to the prison, where he was handcuffed to a hitching post with his arms above his head for seven hours. 536 U.S. at 734-35, 122 S. Ct. at 2512-13. During this time, his shirt was removed, resulting in his skin being burned in the hot summer sun; he had little water, no bathroom breaks, and was taunted by guards. Id. The Hope Court readily concluded from the facts “the Eighth Amendment violation is obvious.” Id. at 738, 122 S. Ct. at 2514. The prison guards were not entitled to qualified immunity. In Lee, a black woman was pulled over by a white police officer for honking her horn at a car that was not proceeding in front of her in heavy traffic. 284 F.3d at 1190. Before the woman could reach for her bag to produce her driver’s license requested by the officer, he pulled her door open, took out his night stick, put it in her face, and made derogatory racial comments to her. Id. at 1191. The officer grabbed her left wrist, pulled her out of her car, shoved her hand against her back, and announced she was under arrest. Id. He then threw her hand on top of the hood of her car, frisked her, and went through her pockets. Id. After placing her in handcuffs, the officer took her to the trunk of her car, slammed her head onto the trunk, and spread her legs with his foot. Id. At no time during the incident did the woman resist. “On her arrest form, Lee was charged with battery on a police officer, failure to have a valid driver’s license, resisting arrest with violence, and failure to obey a police officer.” Id. at 1192. Additionally, she received a traffic citation for improper use of her car horn. Id. Analyzing the excessive-force claim, our court concluded the officer’s force was excessive and disproportionate, which precluded him from qualified immunity on Lee’s excessive-force claim. Id. at 1198, 1200. We noted slamming Lee’s head against the trunk of her car was “objectively unreasonable and clearly unlawful. This conclusion seems to us to be even more self-evident where . . . the crime involved nothing more than the improper use of a horn on a busy thoroughfare during rush hour traffic in a large metropolitan community.” Id. at 1200. 23 Case: 15-10206 Date Filed: 03/30/2017 Page: 24 of 46 Hadley, 526 F.3d at 1329 (citing Bashir v. Rockdale Cty., 445 F.3d 1323, 1332 (11th Cir. 2006)) (emphasis added). Courts must examine “the fact pattern from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene with knowledge of the attendant circumstances and facts, and balance the risk of bodily [or psychological] harm to the suspect against the gravity of the threat the officer sought to eliminate.” McCullough v. Antolini, 559 F.3d 1201, 1206 (11th Cir. 2009) (citing Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 383, 127 S. Ct. 1769, 1778 (2007)). Consequently, “the words of a federal statute or federal constitutional provision may be so clear and the conduct so bad that case law is not needed to establish that the conduct cannot be lawful.” Vinyard, 311 F.3d at 1350 (emphasis added). In an obviousclarity case, where the officer’s conduct is plainly objectively unreasonable, a court does not need prior case law to determine the force used by the officer was excessive and unlawful, because it was disproportionate.