Opinion ID: 2053837
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: qualified immunity from civil suit

Text: Appellants contend that Officers Powell and Winer, as well as the District of Columbia, are entitled to immunity from 42 U.S.C. § 1983 liability. See supra note 1. In Harlow, plaintiff brought suit for damages based on his allegedly unlawful discharge from employment in the Department of Air Force. Defendant, a senior aide to former President Nixon, argued that he was entitled to immunity from civil suit. The Supreme Court concluded that presidential aides were not entitled to absolute immunity; rather, they were entitled to qualified immunity. Governmental officials performing discretionary functions, accordingly, are shielded from liability for civil damages if their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights which a reasonable person would have known about. See Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738.
The Supreme Court built on Harlow 's qualified immunity doctrine, as applied to police conduct, in Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987), a § 1983 case where the Court attempted to clarify what Harlow meant by a clearly established constitutional right. Anderson was a warrantless search and seizure case, based on exigent circumstances, in which the Court held that a police officer is entitled to summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds if the officer can establish, as a matter of law, that he or she reasonably could have believed that the search comported with the Fourth Amendment, even though it actually did not. The Court did not question the proposition that freedom from illegal searches and seizures is a clearly established constitutional right. The Court, however, stressed the particularity with which a plaintiff must allege a violation of a constitutional right under § 1983: It simply does not follow immediately from the conclusion that it was firmly established that warrantless searches not supported by probable cause and exigent circumstances violate the Fourth Amendment that Anderson's search was objectively legally unreasonable. We have recognized that it is inevitable that law enforcement officials will in some cases reasonably but mistakenly conclude that probable cause is present, and we have indicated that in such cases those officialslike other officials who act in ways they reasonably believe to be lawfulshould not be held personally liable. The same is true of their conclusions regarding exigent circumstances. Id. at 641, 107 S.Ct. at 3039-40 (citation omitted). In short, Anderson stands for the proposition that [t]he contours of the [constitutional] right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he [or she] is doing violates that right. Id. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039. Absent such clear understanding, the law enforcement officer will be immune from § 1983 liability for reasonable but mistaken conduct. [4] The law accordingly has evolved to a point where, in order to be subject to § 1983 liability, an officer's acts must clearly violate a clearly established right. This point is further illustrated by another § 1983 case, Gooden v. Howard County, 954 F.2d 960 (4th Cir.1992). In Gooden, police officers took the wrong person into custody after hearing multiple screams and crashing coming from inside an apartment. The acoustics of the building, however, were such that the officers entered the wrong apartment and thus took the wrong person into custody. As in the present case, witnesses gave differing versions of what actually had happened. The court held that, no matter which version was actually true, the officers were immune from a § 1983 suit under Harlow 's qualified immunity. The Gooden plaintiff argued that there were three reasons for denying qualified immunity. Two are relevant to this case: (1) the presence of disputed facts as to what actually transpired on the evening of March 2; (2) the fact that the ultimate judgment of the officers with respect to Ms. Gooden was a mistaken one .... Id. at 965. The court rejected both arguments: In cases where officers are hurriedly called to the scene of a disturbance, the reasonableness of their response must be gauged against the reasonableness of their perceptions, not against what may later be found to have actually taken place. It will nearly always be the case that witnesses to a crime differ over what occurred. That inevitable confusion, however, need not signify a difference of triable fact. What matters is whether the officers acted reasonably upon the reports available to them and whether they undertook an objectively reasonable investigation with respect to that information in light of the exigent circumstances they faced. Id. Without question, then, qualified immunity can provide a valid defense to a § 1983 claim for excessive use of force. [5] In Slattery v. Rizzo, 939 F.2d 213 (4th Cir.1991), former Justice Powell, sitting as a circuit judge, noted that, aside from the Sixth Circuit, all other courts of appeals that have addressed this issue directly have held that qualified immunity is available in such cases. Id. at 215-16 (footnote omitted); see Thorsted v. Kelly, 858 F.2d 571, 573 (9th Cir.1988); Brown v. Glossip, 878 F.2d 871, 873-74 (5th Cir.1989); Finnegan v. Fountain, 915 F.2d 817, 822-23 (2d Cir.1990). [6] Slattery summarized the law in the following manner: A police officer should prevail on an assertion of qualified immunity if a reasonable officer possessing the same information could have believed that his [or her] conduct was lawful. Slattery, 939 F.2d at 216 (citing Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641, 107 S.Ct. at 3039-40). In this case, rather than the warrantless search in Anderson, there was the ultimate warrantless seizure: the shooting of Virtus Evans. Just as the Supreme Court acknowledged in Anderson that police officers can reasonably but mistakenly conclude that probable cause is present to justify a search, Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641, 107 S.Ct. at 3039, we now acknowledge that police officers will often find themselves in situations where they can reasonably but mistakenly conclude that they are entitled to make a warrantless seizure. Here, unfortunately, that seizure resulted in Virtus Evans' death. The gravity of this seizure, however, cannot properly distract us from the public policy of § 1983 advanced by Harlow and Anderson. Police officers must be able to act quickly and instinctively, albeit reasonably, when exigent circumstances call for immediate action. [T]he basic purpose of qualified immunity ... is to spare individual officials the burdens and uncertainties of standing trial in those instances where their conduct would strike an objective observer as falling within the range of reasonable judgment. Gooden, 954 F.2d at 965. In other words, police officers should not be hindered by the threat of civil liability from attempting to perform their duties to the best of their abilities, as long as they are not violating clearly defined, firmly established constitutional rights. The present case concerns facts similar to those of Gooden, and the reasoning of that case, too, applies here nicely. Even with the disputed versions of what actually happened here, this court cannot sustain a verdict that Officers Powell and Winer acted in violation of clearly established rights in these circumstances, considering the information they had available to them at the time. No one disputes that both officers believed Virtus Evans had a knife. Again, Officers Powell and Winer thus  could have believed that [their] conduct was lawful. Slattery, 939 F.2d at 216. Ms. Evans argues, however, citing Harlow, that the police officers acted negligently, thereby violating her son's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. [7] The discussion above should make clear that this level of generality as to the violation of the righta simple reference to the Fourth Amendmentwill not pass muster under § 1983. See, e.g., Anderson, 483 U.S. at 639-41, 107 S.Ct. at 3038-40. The violation of the right must be more precisely defined than that. We must look to a specific act of the officers to decide whether that act clearly violated a clearly established right. If, for example, the jury had found against the officers on the assault and battery claim, that verdict would have indicated that the officers clearly had violated Virtus Evans' Fourth Amendment rights, because a police officer, acting reasonably, could not have deliberately shot Evans without just cause and still believed that that particular act did not violate Evans' Fourth Amendment rights. Deliberately shooting someone without just cause clearly violates the Fourth Amendment, and thus would preclude qualified immunity from § 1983 liability. Unfortunately, Fourth Amendment search and seizure law is rarely that clear. This area of law is colored in shades of grey. An officer cannot always be certain that his or her actions do not violate the Fourth Amendment. This uncertainty results in rulings such as those in Gooden and Anderson, where the courts gave police officers some reasonable maneuvering room and found them immune from liability under § 1983. In this case, therefore, Ms. Evans must point to specific behavior by Officers Winer and Powell that clearly violated the rights of her son. Because the jury verdict precludes an argument based on deliberate acts of the officers, Evans' only remaining argument is to allege that the officers' conduct was negligent, and that this negligence sustains her § 1983 claim. As discussed below, however, this argument fails. [8] Ms. Evans claims that the officers' negligence manifested itself in two ways. First, she argues that the officers' shooting of Virtus Evans, while precluded by the jury verdict from being labelled deliberate, was nonetheless negligent. Second, she contends that the officers, especially Officer Powell, violated Virtus Evans' Fourth Amendment rights in the way in which the officers approached the entire situation, virtually forcing themselves into a position where they would have to defend themselves. [9] Assuming without deciding that the officers were, in fact, negligent under each of these theories, such negligence would not be enough to sustain Evans' § 1983 claim against the officers. Mere negligence did not violate a clearly established, sufficiently specific constitutional right of Virtus Evans in a way that created § 1983 liability. Both Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 106 S.Ct. 662, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986), and Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 106 S.Ct. 668, 88 L.Ed.2d 677 (1986) (decided the same day), establish that, at least for § 1983 claims based on Fourteenth Amendment deprivations of liberty, more than negligence is required to sustain a § 1983 action. Daniels, in fact, overruled the part of an earlier decision, Parrott v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), which had held that a § 1983 claim did not have a state-of-mind requirement. See Daniels, 474 U.S. at 329-31, 106 S.Ct. at 663-65. The Daniels state of mind requirement holds equally true for a Fourth Amendment seizure case: the law now, as Judge Dixon properly instructed the jury, is that the official must intentionally, or with reckless disregard, violate a clearly established right before a § 1983 claim is justified. See Daniels, 474 U.S. at 330-31, 106 S.Ct. at 664-65; Davidson, 474 U.S. at 347-48, 106 S.Ct. at 670-71. In this case, considering the evidence of the frightening circumstances surrounding the officers' entry onto the scene, coupled with the jury's finding for the officers on the assault and battery claim, we cannot see how the officers could be said to have violated a clearly established right of Virtus Evans, either intentionally or with reckless disregard, by following the course of action they did. Precisely because police officers must make such crucial, life-saving decisions so quickly, they are entitled to immunity from § 1983 claims under the circumstances presented here. Officers Winer and Powell, therefore, are immune from civil liability under § 1983.
The only alleged basis for tying the District of Columbia to the § 1983 claim is an alleged stipulation between the parties that, under the doctrine of respondeat superior, the District would be liable if the officers were found liable. Having concluded that the officers are immune from § 1983 liability in these circumstances, the District's liability is precluded. In any event, respondeat superior does not apply to § 1983 actions. See Monell v. New York City Dep't of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 691, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 2036, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978) (municipality cannot be liable under § 1983 under respondeat superior theory, but could be liable if it has policy or custom that violates § 1983); see also City of Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 815, 105 S.Ct. 2427, 2432, 85 L.Ed.2d 791, (1985) (rule of Monell requires municipality, in police shooting case, to have policy or custom of poor police training as basis for § 1983 liability; declines to impose liability under respondeat superior theory). The only way the District could be held liable under § 1983, then, would be if the District had an official custom or policy which led to a constitutional violation. See City of Oklahoma City, 471 U.S. at 818, 105 S.Ct. at 2433; Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. at 2037. The only possible custom or policy alleged here is a failure to train the police properly. This does not sustain the District's liability under § 1983 for two reasons: (1) plaintiff-appellee Evans admitted that she had not proved a failure to train claim; and (2) in recently concluding that the Chief of Police was immune from a § 1983 claim for failure to train, this court said there must be evidence from which a trier of fact could find a widespread pattern of misconduct by subordinate officers which [the Chief] reasonably may be said to have disregarded. Fulwood v. Porter, 639 A.2d 594, 600 (D.C.1994). Evans has alleged no such widespread pattern here. Furthermore, Evans conceded that she had no independent § 1983 claim against the District. In sum, neither the District nor the defendant police officers, Powell or Winer, can be held liable under § 1983.