Opinion ID: 70554
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Bridgwater

Text: If Bridgwater is entitled to qualified immunity even under Reyes’s version of events, then summary judgment was appropriate because the dispute of facts would be immaterial; otherwise, summary judgment was improperly granted. See, e.g., Goodson, 202 F.3d at 739. Thus, this issue turns on whether there is a material issue of fact. Bridgwater is entitled to qualified immunity at this procedural stage if, under Reyes’s version of events, his use of deadly force was not “clearly excessive 4 After the district court’s decision, the Supreme Court reconsidered and made nonmandatory its previous requirement that courts always evaluate whether the conduct as shown at summary judgment in fact violated a constitutional right before evaluating whether the right at issue was clearly established. See Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808, 818 (2009) (limiting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001)). As Ontiveros notes, however, Pearson regarded the Saucier methodology as “often beneficial,” and there is no error in the district court’s prePearson approach. See 564 F.3d at 382; see also Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 818. 5 Case: 09-10076 Document: 00511011019 Page: 6 Date Filed: 01/22/2010 No. 09-10076 or clearly unreasonable.” See Ramirez v. Knoulton, 542 F.3d 124, 128 (5th Cir. 2008) (internal punctuation omitted). Unlike some areas of constitutional law, the question of when deadly force is appropriate – and the concomitant conclusion that deadly force is or is not excessive – is well-established. Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11–12, 21 (1985) (holding that deadly force is not justified unless a suspect poses a risk of serious harm at that point in time). We recently explained that the focus of the inquiry is “the act that led [the officer] to discharge his weapon.” Manis v. Lawson, 585 F.3d 839, 845 (5th Cir. 2009). Here, the summary judgment standard requires that the court conclude that there was, in essence, no such act, i.e., that the raised knife and threatening step forward did not occur. Bridgwater argues that Ramirez supports his defense of qualified immunity. Ramirez, however, is distinguishable in critical respects. In Ramirez, police stopped a car driven by a suspect whom they knew to be armed. The suspect refused to comply with the officers’ instructions and displayed a gun, but never raised it or aimed it at the officers. Ten seconds after the suspect exited the car, one officer fired at and seriously injured the man. 542 F.3d at 127. The Fifth Circuit reversed a magistrate judge’s conclusion that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity, pointing out that the suspect “repeatedly refused the officers’ commands and ultimately stood, armed, several yards from the officers. [He] brought his hands together in what we believe could reasonably be interpreted as a threatening gesture.” Id. at 131. There are two major distinctions between Ramirez and the present case. First, under the facts presented by the Ceballos Family, Ceballos did not make “a threatening gesture” (or motion) as did the suspect in Ramirez. Second, Ceballos was armed with a knife, not a gun. The latter distinction limits the usefulness of Ramirez’s exhortation that the court examine the situation from the perspective of “the reasonable beliefs of officers standing yards away from 6 Case: 09-10076 Document: 00511011019 Page: 7 Date Filed: 01/22/2010 No. 09-10076 a defiant, disturbed, and armed man.” See id. at 130. The immediacy of the risk presented by a man armed with a kitchen knife at his side is far less than that of a man armed with a gun: a gun can kill instantaneously at the distance that the man shot by the officer in Ramirez stood, whereas Ceballos would have had to first either advance toward Bridgwater or at least raise the knife before he could inflict any harm. See Mace v. City of Palestine, 333 F.3d 621, 625 (5th Cir. 2003) (finding no constitutional violation in the situation of “an intoxicated, violent and uncooperative individual who was wielding a sword within eight to ten feet of several officers in a relatively confined space”; in that situation, the decedent raised the sword and then was shot); see also Chappell v. City of Cleveland, 585 F.3d 901, 910 (6th Cir. 2009) (qualified immunity granted where teenager refused to drop knife and instead advanced on the officers, who were in close proximity, with the knife raised). Ramirez does not control this case. The Supreme Court has required courts to be deferential to the choices made by police officers in high-risk situations. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989). That deference, however, cannot extend so far as to ignore an officer’s violation of the core, established rule that deadly force may not be used “[w]here the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others.” Garner, 471 U.S. at 11. It violates the Fourth Amendment to use deadly force absent such a threat. Here, there was no “immediate threat” as Garner requires. The evidence, viewed as required in this procedural posture, does not support the district court’s conclusion that there was no constitutional violation. At the summary judgment stage, where the court must resolve conflicting evidence in favor of the plaintiff, the court must assume that Ceballos stood, in his own home, with a kitchen knife at this side, swaying slightly side to side, at a safe distance away from the officers when Bridgwater opened fire. When Bridgwater arrived on the scene, furthermore, he was responding to a 911 call reporting a “domestic 7 Case: 09-10076 Document: 00511011019 Page: 8 Date Filed: 01/22/2010 No. 09-10076 disturbance with possible violence”; he was not, that is, anticipating making a felony arrest, or even necessarily any arrest at all.5 The facts that distinguish the present case from Mace and Ramirez directly address the core issue: whether the officer reasonably perceived an immediate threat. In the language of Manis, there was no “act” to justify shooting. If Bridgwater’s conduct was constitutionally permissible, then the Fourth Amendment allows an officer to use deadly force against a person not suspected of any serious crime who is in his own home—that the officers have entered by breaking down the door—standing at a safe distance holding a kitchen knife merely because he is holding the knife and does not put it down despite police instruction to do so. Cf. Bacque v. Leger, 207 F. App’x 374, 376 (5th Cir. 2006) (unpublished)6 (finding evidence officers shot a suspect “while he stood motionless with his knife at his side . . . at least ten to forty feet away” sufficiently material to preclude any resolution as a matter of law). Such a threat is by definition not “immediate” because the individual must still do something—the Manis “act”—before the latent threat materializes into any risk of harm. In that interval, there would have been time for Bridgwater to respond. Under these facts and in this situation, Bridgwater’s use of deadly force absent an immediate threat from Ceballos was a constitutional violation. 5 While we have of course found the use of deadly force constitutional in circumstances that do not involve felony arrests, see, e.g., Manis, 585 F.3d at 842, the “severity of the crime at issue” is among the factors that comprise the totality of the circumstances under Graham. 490 U.S. at 396; cf. Tarver v. City of Edna, 410 F.3d 745, 753 (5th Cir. 2005) (noting that the “severity of the crime at issue was minimal” in an arrest over a custody dispute), Fogarty v. Gallegos, 523 F.3d 1147, 1160 (10th Cir. 2008) (holding that “the amount of force should [be] reduced accordingly” in proportion to the severity of the crime). The severity of the “crime” here was likely at most a misdemeanor, and it is not even clear that Ceballos was the suspect. 6 Although unpublished opinions are not precedent, we cite this decision for its persuasive value under similar facts. 8 Case: 09-10076 Document: 00511011019 Page: 9 Date Filed: 01/22/2010 No. 09-10076 A summary judgment based upon qualified immunity would still be appropriate if the constitutional violation we have found was not contrary to clearly established law. As Ontiveros explains, in evaluating this prong, “the court must ask whether, at the time of the incident, the law clearly established that such conduct would violate the [constitution]. This inquiry focuses . . . on the specific circumstances of the incident—could an officer have reasonably interpreted the law to conclude that the perceived threat posed by the suspect was sufficient to justify deadly force?” 564 F.3d at 383 n.1 (citing Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199–200 (2004)). Indeed, unless the violation is “obvious,” there must be relevant case law that “squarely governs” the situation with which the officers were presented and gives “fair notice” that such conduct would violate the law. Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 200 n.4, 201; see also Ontiveros, 564 F.3d at 383 n.1 (“Excessive force incidents are highly fact-specific and without cases squarely on point, officers receive the protection of qualified immunity.”). These cases do not, however, require what Bridgwater contends – a case with exactly the same facts finding a constitutional violation. Instead, they require that the law clearly set parameters under which an objectively reasonable officer would know what is permissible and what is excessive.7 See Kinney v. Weaver, 367 F.3d 337, 350 (5th Cir. 2004) (en banc) (“The central concept is that of ‘fair warning’: The law can be clearly established ‘despite notable factual distinctions between the precedents relied on and the cases then before the Court, so long as the prior decisions gave reasonable warning that the conduct then at issue violated constitutional rights.’” (quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 740 (2004))); see also, e.g., Craighead v. Lee, 399 F.3d 954, 962 (8th Cir. 2005) (“[T]he issue is not 7 While the officer’s subjective mindset is not the question, it is noteworthy that even Bridgwater is not contending he could simply kill Ceballos for holding a knife at his side and not putting it down. Instead, he contends that Ceballos stepped forward and raised the knife and that these actions justified the shooting. 9 Case: 09-10076 Document: 00511011019 Page: 10 Date Filed: 01/22/2010 No. 09-10076 whether prior cases present facts substantially similar to the present case but whether prior cases would have put a reasonable officer on notice that the use of deadly force in these circumstances would violate [the Constitution].”) The cases on deadly force are clear: an officer cannot use deadly force without an immediate serious threat to himself or others. Here, the facts are unclear; was there such an immediate threat? Bridgwater’s version of the facts would say “yes,” while the other witnesses’ versions would say “no.” The case presented here is not one where the law is not clearly established but rather one where the facts are not clearly established. As such, summary judgment was improper. Accordingly, we reverse the summary judgment in favor of Bridgwater on qualified immunity grounds as to the § 1983 claims of the Ceballos Family.