Opinion ID: 2682680
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Gourley and Davis Merit Qualified Immunity

Text: With these principles in mind, we dismiss Harper’s Fourth Amendment claim against Davis and Gourley. The defendants briefed qualified immunity at summary judgment, and nobody disputes that defendants were discharging discretionary duties when they arrested Harper. See Harper, 2013 WL 3048322, at  (implicitly assuming that defendants met burden). Consequently, Harper had to show that the law in force on May 27, 2008 clearly proscribed defendants’ conduct. Neither he nor the district court did so. 11 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 12 of 19 To prove that the law clearly barred a defendant’s behavior, plaintiffs have two paths they can follow. First, they may cite case law that would have given defendant “fair warning” that his conduct was unlawful. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002). The facts of these cases need not be “materially similar” to the facts at hand, but they must be similar enough so “a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates [a constitutional] right.” Id. at 739; see also Coffin v. Brandau, 642 F.3d 999, 1015 (11th Cir. 2011). This Court considers only “cases from the United States Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit, and the highest court of the state under which the claim arose” in this analysis. Coffin, 642 F.3d at 1013. Alternatively, plaintiffs may argue that a general constitutional rule applied with “obvious clarity” to ban defendant’s conduct. Hope, 536 U.S. at 741. This approach recognizes that, at times, no binding precedent exists to prohibit a defendant’s specific acts. In such situations, officers have fair warning if their conduct “lies so obviously at the very core of what the [Constitution] prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to [the officer], notwithstanding the lack of caselaw.” Smith, 127 F.3d at 1419. i. The Alleged Violation Was Not Clearly Established in Case Law Harper took neither avenue to show that Davis and Gourley’s conduct was clearly unlawful. Harper, for one, cites no cases published before May 2008 that 12 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 13 of 19 plainly barred defendants from using significant force to arrest Harper and ensure he was not armed. And although the district court supplied cases of its own to fill the gap, none of these precedents measure up. Harper, 2013 WL 3048322, at . Lee v. Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188 (11th Cir. 2002), for example, considered a plaintiff who did no wrong but to honk her horn in a traffic jam. The defendant officer pulled plaintiff over and requested her driver’s license, but before plaintiff could retrieve her license, the officer yanked her from the car by the wrist. Id. at 1191. Then, after the officer cuffed plaintiff, he “led [her] to the trunk of [her] car and slammed [her] head down onto the trunk.” Id. We denied the defendant qualified immunity because “a reasonable officer could not possibly have believed” he had cause to slam the suspect’s head “after she was arrested, handcuffed, and completely secured, and after any danger to the arresting officer . . . had passed.” Id. at 1199. Here, by contrast, a reasonable officer might question whether “any danger had passed” when defendants tasered Harper. Unlike the Lee plaintiff—who did nothing wrong but to tap her horn—Harper had reportedly beaten his wife, pointed a gun at his nephew, fired rounds into the ceiling, threatened suicide, and fled armed into the woods before the police arrived. See id. at 1190−91. Furthermore, Harper stood in a tree just above Perkins (a position of tactical advantage) when defendants spotted him. Finally, as defendants hollered at Harper to show his 13 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 14 of 19 hands and descend, Perkins shouted, “He’s got the fuckin’ gun in the tree with him.” In this chaotic moment—with the suspect cornered but loose and an unsecured rifle somewhere nearby—a reasonable officer might use a “degree of physical coercion” bordering on deadly force to make an arrest and ensure the safety of his fellows. See Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. At least Harper was not “fully secured” such that force was “unnecessary to any legitimate law enforcement purpose.” See Lee, 284 F.3d at 1199. The trial court’s other cases, Slicker v. Jackson, 215 F.3d 1225 (11th Cir. 2000), and Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919 (11th Cir. 2000), also failed to warn defendants that tasering Harper was unconstitutional. In Slicker, the plaintiff was arrested for disorderly conduct at a police station. 215 F.3d at 1227. After cuffing the plaintiff, defendants kicked the plaintiff and knocked his head into the pavement. Id. Unlike Harper, the Slicker plaintiff had not committed a violent crime, had no weapon, and was fully secured when the cops beat him. In a similar vein, the Priester plaintiff, suspected of stealing $20 of snacks and crackers, obeyed defendants’ demands and prostrated himself on the ground before police loosed a German Shepherd on him. 208 F.3d at 923 n.1, 927. Again: no serious crime, no weapon, no apparent resistance to arrest. Lee, Slicker, and Priester do not clearly show that tasering Harper was unconstitutional. ii. The Alleged Violation Was Not “Obviously Clear” 14 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 15 of 19 Harper also fails to show that the law barred defendants’ conduct with “obvious clarity.” See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741. On summary judgment, the trial court quoted our decision at the motion-to-dismiss stage to show that tasering Harper was unreasonable. 2013 WL 3048322, at . In that opinion we found— based on scarce evidence in the complaint—that Harper “(1) was at least four feet up in a tree with his hands raised, (2) posed no threat to [the officers’] safety or the safety of others, (3) had no chance, and did not attempt, to flee, and (4) merely put his hands in the air in compliance with the instructions of at least one officer.” 459 F. App’x at 827. We concluded that tasering a suspect so situated obviously violated the Fourth Amendment. Id. (citing Oliver v. Fiorino, 586 F.3d 898 (11th Cir. 2009)). Harper would have us make the same finding now, but we refuse to do so. First, in our previous opinion, we had no occasion to consider the initial Graham factor, the crimes leading to Harper’s arrest: “As for the first factor of the excessive force test—the severity of the plaintiff’s crime—we have little basis to assess it, because he did not specify his crime in the complaint.” Id. at 826; Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. After discovery we know, however, that defendants were told Harper overdrank, beat his wife, fired a rifle in his home, threatened suicide, then fled with his weapon into the woods. Harper’s crimes were indeed so worrisome that Gourley, Davis, and the other officers donned bulletproof vests 15 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 16 of 19 before tracking. We doubt a reasonable officer would find it “readily apparent” that defendants’ force was excessive under the circumstances. Smith, 127 F.3d at 1419. Discovery evidence also leads us to reconsider another Graham factor: whether a reasonable officer would think Harper made no attempt to escape arrest. See 490 U.S. at 396. On this score, the trial court highlighted that Harper tried to surrender but could not raise his hands and descend the tree at the same time. 2013 WL 3048322, at . “[V]iewing the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiff,” the trial court reasoned, “Plaintiff was as compliant as possible.” Id. Yet this analysis misses an important point. In qualified immunity cases, we ask not whether the suspect intended to surrender, but rather whether a reasonable officer on the scene would think the suspect was surrendering. See Troupe v. Sarasota Cnty., 419 F.3d 1160, 1168 (11th Cir. 2005) (“Although the facts must be taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs [at summary judgment], the determination of reasonableness must be made from the perspective of the officer.”). One must remember that Gourley and Davis found Harper in a tree. This initial position betokened flight, not gentle surrender. See Crenshaw v. Lister, 556 F.3d 1283, 1291−93 (11th Cir. 2009) (approving use of canine against suspect who tried to surrender but remained concealed in underbrush). And while we concede that the officers’ twofold commands made compliance difficult, we disagree that 16 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 17 of 19 defendants behaved unreasonably under the circumstances. To arrest their suspect, the officers had to coax Harper from the tree; to ensure the suspect did not shoot them, the officers needed Harper to show his hands. We cannot hold in hindsight that defendants’ commands were improper or that it was readily apparent that tasering Harper was unwarranted. See Garczynski v. Bradshaw, 573 F.3d 1158, 1167 (11th Cir. 2009) (refusing to evaluate what officers “could or should have done in hindsight” to deescalate suicide situation). Finally, we disagree that a reasonable officer would think Harper posed no “immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others.” See Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. In finding that Harper posed no danger to defendants, the trial court noted that Harper’s “hands were raised and empty” when the officers deployed their Tasers, and Harper “had abandoned the gun far enough away that he would have had to move away from his current perch to access it.” 2013 WL 3048322, at . But once again, this analysis views the evidence from Harper’s perspective, not an officer’s. Even if Harper were entirely unable to harm defendants—whether because his rifle was out of reach, because he was trying to show his hands, or because he planned to surrender—a reasonable officer in defendants’ shoes would have thought Harper was dangerous. Before the search, Gourley and Davis learned that Harper was drunk and had a gun. Then, in the tense seconds after the officers found their suspect in the tree, and as Harper fumbled to show his hands and come 17 Case: 13-13190 Date Filed: 07/11/2014 Page: 18 of 19 down, Perkins exclaimed, “He’s got the fuckin’ gun in the tree with him.” Gourley tasered Harper immediately, and Davis followed suit just seconds after. Even drawing reasonable inferences in Harper’s favor, we cannot say it was obviously clear that defendants’ acted excessively to neutralize the perceived threat. To echo our holding in Carr v. Tatangelo, a “reasonable but mistaken belief that probable cause exists for using [significant] force is not actionable under § 1983.” 338 F.3d 1259, 1269 (11th Cir. 2003); see also Penley v. Eslinger, 605 F.3d 843, 854 (11th Cir. 2010) (finding reasonable the shooting of a teenager armed with a realisticlooking plastic gun). 5