Opinion ID: 170063
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Officer Sweet's Liability

Text: Officer Sweet grabbed and then tackled Mr. Casey without ever telling him that he was under arrest. Nor did he give Mr. Casey a chance to submit peacefully to an arrest. While the reasonableness of his force must be judged from the officer's perspective, Mr. Casey also testified that he repeatedly asked, What are you doing? as he was grabbed and tackled. App. 100. Given this, a reasonable officer should, at a minimum, have ordered Mr. Casey to submit to an arrest or used minimal force to grab him while informing him that he was under arrest. Taking the facts in the light most favorable to Mr. Casey, Officer Sweet's treatment was not reasonable for a nonviolent misdemeanant who was neither dangerous nor fleeing. This conclusion is reinforced by comparison with our recent decision in Mecham v. Frazier, 500 F.3d 1200 (10th Cir.2007). There, we held that officers had not violated the Fourth Amendment in using pepper spray to arrest a woman who was uncooperative during a traffic stop. Although we acknowledged that the unfortunate conduct of the officers was possibly wrong in hindsight, we held that it was justified by two of the three factors under Graham  safety concerns and Ms. Mecham's resistance to arrest. Id. at 1204-06. In particular, Ms. Mecham repeatedly ignored the officers' warnings that she would be arrested, thus turning what should have been a routine encounter . . . into a fifty-minute ordeal. Id. at 1204. Even when given one last warning to get out of her car or face arrest, she refused. She also remained in control of her car on a narrow shoulder of a busy interstate highway, and thus may have been a danger to herself or others. Id. at 1205. In contrast, the confrontation with Mr. Casey did not give Officer Sweet reason to fear for his safety. Nor did Officer Sweet give Mr. Casey any indication that he was, or would soon be, under arrest. Furthermore, Mr. Casey's arrest was transformed from a routine encounter only by Officer Sweet's use of force. In light of Graham and Mecham, a reasonable jury could find Officer Sweet's use of force to be excessive and therefore unconstitutional. Mr. Casey sued Officer Sweet not only for directly using excessive force against him, but also for his failure to intervene and prevent the use of excessive force by his fellow officers. Aplt's Op'g Br. 25. Mr. Casey raised this claim below, although the district court did not discuss it in dismissing his § 1983 claim. Casey, 2006 WL 2711760. Genuine issues of material fact remain on this argument for § 1983 liability as well. As we have held, a law enforcement official who fails to intervene to prevent another law enforcement official's use of excessive force may be liable under § 1983. Mick v. Brewer, 76 F.3d 1127, 1136 (10th Cir.1996). In Mick, a police officer was accused of pulling the defendant out of her car, throwing her to the pavement, stepping on her, and dragging her across the ground, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. We held that a Secret Service agent who was present could be constitutionally liable for his failure to intervene if he watched the incident and did nothing to prevent it. Id. at 1137. We cited several cases from our Circuit and others holding that there is an affirmative constitutional duty to stop other officers from using unconstitutionally excessive force. Id. at 1136 (citing Lusby v. T.G. & Y. Stores, Inc., 749 F.2d 1423, 1433 (10th Cir.1984), vacated on other grounds sub nom. City of Lawton v. Lusby, 474 U.S. 805, 106 S.Ct. 40, 88 L.Ed.2d 33 (1985); O'Neill v. Krzeminski, 839 F.2d 9, 11 (2d Cir.1988); Fundiller v. City of Cooper City, 777 F.2d 1436, 1441-42 (11th Cir.1985)). [4] Here, Mr. Casey alleges that Officer Sweet did nothing to prevent Officer Lor from Tasering him and other officers from beating him. Moreover, because Officer Sweet initiated the confrontation as the first officer on the scene, his duty to keep the arrest from getting out of hand is particularly clear. Also, Officer Sweet had trained Officer Lor in Taser use, and told her to put her Taser away after she used it a second time, which indicates that he had some authority over her. [5] Officer Sweet should have known that the force used by the other officers was excessive given that Mr. Casey had not tried to fight or to flee, and given the triviality of his offense. Knowing that, he had some responsibility to keep his initial use of force from turning into a melee.
Because Officer Sweet asserts qualified immunity, we must decide not only whether Mr. Casey has asserted a violation of his constitutional rights, but also whether Officer Sweet's actions violated clearly established law. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 207, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted. Id. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. For reasons we will discuss, a reasonable officer must have known that he could not behave as Mr. Casey alleges that Officer Sweet did. The difficult part of this inquiry is identifying the level of generality at which the constitutional right must be clearly established. Since 1989, Supreme Court precedent has unambiguously held that excessive force claims are regulated by the Fourth Amendment, and that uses of force that are not objectively reasonable are unconstitutional. Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865. In 1992, we held that Graham itself was enough to constitute clearly established law in an excessive force case. Mick, 76 F.3d at 1135. More recently, however, the Supreme Court has held that Graham 's general proposition . . . is not enough to turn all uses of excessive force into violations of clearly established law. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201-02, 121 S.Ct. 2151. In other words, the fact that it is clear that any unreasonable use of force is unconstitutional does not mean that it is always clear which uses of force are unreasonable. Ordinarily, we say that for a rule to be clearly established there must be a Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision on point, or the clearly established weight of authority from other courts must have found the law to be as the plaintiff maintains. Medina v. City & County of Denver, 960 F.2d 1493, 1498 (10th Cir.1992). However, because excessive force jurisprudence requires an all-things-considered inquiry with careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, Graham, 490 U.S. at 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865, there will almost never be a previously published opinion involving exactly the same circumstances. We cannot find qualified immunity wherever we have a new fact pattern. See Anderson v. Blake, 469 F.3d 910, 914 (10th Cir.2006) ([A] general constitutional rule . . . can apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question, even though [such conduct] has not previously been held unlawful. (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted)). Indeed, the Supreme Court has warned that officials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002). The Hope decision `shifted the qualified immunity analysis from a scavenger hunt for prior cases with precisely the same facts toward the more relevant inquiry of whether the law put officials on fair notice that the described conduct was unconstitutional.' Gomes v. Wood, 451 F.3d 1122, 1134 (10th Cir.2006) (quoting Pierce v. Gilchrist, 359 F.3d 1279, 1298 (10th Cir.2004)). We have therefore adopted a sliding scale to determine when law is clearly established. The more obviously egregious the conduct in light of prevailing constitutional principles, the less specificity is required from prior case law to clearly establish the violation. Pierce, 359 F.3d at 1298. Thus, when an officer's violation of the Fourth Amendment is particularly clear from Graham itself, we do not require a second decision with greater specificity to clearly establish the law. Holland ex. rel . Overdorff v. Harrington, 268 F.3d 1179, 1193 (10th Cir.2001), illustrates the point. There, sheriffs who deployed a SWAT team that h[e]ld . . . children directly at gunpoint after the officers had gained complete control of the situation, were held liable under Garner and not entitled to qualified immunity. Even though we had not ruled on a similar factual situation before, we held that the officers were not entitled to immunity from an excessive force claim because there were no substantial grounds for a reasonable officer to conclude that there was legitimate justification for his conduct. Id. at 1197. We have located no case in which a citizen peacefully attempting to return to the courthouse with a file he should not have removed has had his shirt torn, and then been tackled, Tasered, knocked to the ground by a bevy of police officers, beaten, and Tasered again, all without warning or explanation. But we need not have decided a case involving similar facts to say that no reasonable officer could believe that he was entitled to behave as Officer Sweet allegedly did. Graham establishes that force is least justified against nonviolent misdemeanants who do not flee or actively resist arrest. 490 U.S. at 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865. Mick establishes that Officer Sweet is responsible not only for the force he used against Mr. Casey but for failing to take some steps to mitigate the fracas that ensued. 76 F.3d at 1136. In light of those two rules, a reasonable officer could not have found a legitimate justification for Officer Sweet's conduct on the facts now before us. Holland, 268 F.3d at 1197. Therefore, he is not entitled to immunity from trial.