Opinion ID: 4510490
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Shooting an Unarmed Man

Text: The plaintiffs first argue that Officers Froese and Chaffee violated clearly established law by shooting Mr. Smart despite the fact that Mr. Smart was unarmed and posed no threat to anyone. We conclude that a reasonable jury could find that Officers Froese and Chaffee violated Mr. Smart’s constitutional rights but ultimately conclude that the alleged violation was not clearly established. a. Whether a reasonable jury could find facts supporting a violation of a constitutional right The threshold question is, taking the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, whether a jury could conclude Mr. Smart was unarmed. Officers Froese and Chaffee both testified they saw Mr. Smart holding and firing a gun. Officer Brad Crouch and bystander Adron Jones also reported they saw Mr. Smart holding a gun. And it is undisputed that a .45 caliber handgun was recovered about ten feet from where Mr. Smart fell and that two shell casings found along the path Mr. Smart ran were forensically linked to that handgun.7 On the other hand, the plaintiffs adduced testimony from witnesses who said they did not see Mr. Smart fire a gun during the incident, or that they never knew Mr. Smart to 7 The plaintiffs suggested for the first time at oral argument that the police, knowing they shot an unarmed man, planted the gun and perjured themselves as part of a cover-up. But this theory was not raised in the opening brief before this court and we do not consider it. See City of Colo. Springs v. Solis, 589 F.3d 1121, 1135 n.5 (10th Cir. 2009) (“[A]rguments not raised in the opening brief are waived.”); Fed. Ins. Co. v. Tri-State Ins. Co., 157 F.3d 800, 805 (10th Cir. 1998) (“Issues raised for the first time at oral argument are considered waived.”). 13 own a gun. For example, Sergeant Gulliver testified he never saw a gun in Mr. Smart’s hand, although he was quick to clarify he was “not saying it’s not possible he had a gun.” Supp. App. at 167. Mr. Wilson—a longtime friend of Mr. Smart—could not see Mr. Smart when the shooting began, but testified he never knew of Mr. Smart owning or carrying a gun. The plaintiffs also observe that DNA testing excluded Mr. Smart as a contributor for some (though not all) of the samples recovered from the .45 handgun and that a medical examiner found no gunshot residue on Mr. Smart’s hands during the autopsy.8 Finally, Ms. James, who was within sight of Mr. Smart when the shooting began, testified she did not see him shooting a gun or holding his arm out, and she claimed the initial gunshots came from some distance away from where she and Mr. Smart were standing. Officers Froese and Chaffee argue this evidence, while it does not positively corroborate the claim that Mr. Smart had a gun, is entirely consistent with the possibility that he did have a gun. To be sure, the fact that one bystander did not see Mr. Smart shooting a gun does not necessarily controvert another’s claim that he did shoot a gun. But the plaintiffs’ inability to conclusively prove a negative (i.e., that Mr. Smart did not brandish or shoot a gun) does not prevent their evidence from creating a genuine dispute of fact. 8 The plaintiffs also point to testimony that other people in the crowd, like Ms. James, were shot by police officers. But this evidence does not negate the possibility that Mr. Smart fired a gun; it simply means at least one police officer also fired a gun. 14 We addressed a similar situation in Pauly v. White, 874 F.3d 1197, 1202–05 (10th Cir. 2017), where police officers fatally shot a suspect who they testified had fired on them. Although the plaintiffs there could not point to any evidence squarely contradicting the officers’ claims that the suspect had shot at them, we nevertheless held the plaintiffs’ circumstantial evidence (particularly the lack of a bullet casing in the room where the suspect allegedly fired a gun) created a dispute of material fact: Indeed, “considering the physical evidence together with the inconsistencies in the officer[s’] testimony, a jury will have to make credibility judgments, and credibility determinations should not be made on summary judgment.” Moreover, “since the victim of deadly force is unable to testify, courts should be cautious on summary judgment to ensure that the officer is not taking advantage of the fact that the witness most likely to contradict his story—the person shot dead—is unable to testify.” Id. at 1217–18 (citations omitted) (quoting Abraham v. Rason, 183 F.3d 279, 294 (3d Cir. 1999)). We concluded that in such cases, we “must look at the circumstantial evidence that, if believed, would tend to discredit the police officer’s story, and consider whether this evidence could convince a rational factfinder that the officer acted unreasonably.” Id. at 1218 (quoting Scott v. Henrich, 39 F.3d 912, 915 (9th Cir. 1994)). Here, the plaintiffs’ forensic evidence, the multiple eyewitnesses who did not see Mr. Smart holding a gun (particularly Ms. James, who was standing only a few feet from Mr. Smart), and the testimony from Mr. Smart’s longtime friend, Mr. Wilson, that Mr. Smart never owned or carried a gun, all “tend to discredit the police officers[’] story” at least as strongly as in Pauly, creating a dispute of fact as to whether Mr. Smart had a gun on the night of the shooting. Id. at 1218 (quoting Scott, 39 F.3d at 915). We therefore must assume for purposes of summary judgment that Mr. Smart was unarmed. See 15 Gutierrez, 841 F.3d at 900. Importantly, however, the assumption that Mr. Smart was unarmed does not resolve whether the officers violated his constitutional rights. The salient question is whether the officers’ mistaken perceptions that Mr. Smart was the shooter were reasonable. See Thomas v. Durastanti, 607 F.3d 655, 666 (10th Cir. 2010) (explaining “reasonable perceptions are what matter[]” in concluding officer’s decision to shoot at suspect’s car as the car started driving away was “reasonable, even if mistaken”). “An officer may be found to have acted reasonably even if he has a mistaken belief as to the facts establishing the existence of exigent circumstances.” Id.; see also Pearson, 555 U.S. at 231 (“The protection of qualified immunity applies regardless of whether the government official’s error is ‘a mistake of law, a mistake of fact, or a mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact.’” (quoting Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 567 (2004) (Kennedy, J., dissenting))). The district court analyzed the officers’ decision to use deadly force under the three non-exclusive factors the Supreme Court has identified in considering whether police officers’ use of deadly force is justified. See Smart, 2018 WL 3744063, at –15. These factors are: (1) “the severity of the crime at issue”; (2) “whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others”; and (3) “whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989). We have held the Graham framework allows the use of deadly force where “a reasonable officer . . . would have had probable cause to believe that there was a threat of serious physical harm to themselves or to others.” Sevier v. City of Lawrence, 60 F.3d 695, 699 (10th Cir. 16 1995). If Mr. Smart was in fact shooting into a crowd, deadly force would plainly be justified under this standard. But because we assume for purposes of summary judgment that Mr. Smart was not the active shooter, the relevant question here is whether the officers acted reasonably in light of the mistaken perception that Mr. Smart was the active shooter. Several pieces of evidence, when construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, cast some doubt on the reasonableness of the officers’ belief that Mr. Smart was an active shooter: first, Ms. James’s testimony that the shots did not come from where Mr. Smart was standing suggests that Officers Froese and Chaffee should not have concluded Mr. Smart fired the shots they heard. Second, Ms. James’s testimony that Mr. Smart was not holding a gun or extending his arm suggests the officers should not have concluded Mr. Smart was holding “a big black gun,” as Officer Froese apparently did, or holding his arm out in the manner Officer Chaffee described. See King v. Hill, 615 F. App’x 470, 475 (10th Cir. 2015) (unpublished) (determining a jury could find officer’s mistaken belief that suspect was holding a gun unreasonable where plaintiff’s evidence suggested suspect’s hands were visible and he had no gun); Walker v. City of Orem, 451 F.3d 1139, 1160 (10th Cir. 2006) (concluding “[p]laintiff’s version of events suggests that [police officer] acted precipitously in shooting [plaintiff]” where evidence suggested “angle of [suspect’s] hands and the amount of light on the scene” would have allowed police to see suspect’s hands). On the other hand, there is also evidence that supports the officers’ conclusion that Mr. Smart was an active shooter: Mr. Smart “ran north” while the “bulk of the crowd” 17 ran south, “reinforc[ing] the officers’ perception that [Mr.] Smart was the shooter.”9 Response Br. at 30. A bystander with no connection to the police officers, Adron Jones, also testified he saw a man he believed was Mr. Smart “running” with “[a] gun in his hand.” Supp. App. at 195. That another eyewitness believed Mr. Smart was running with a gun, although not known to the officers at the time, bolsters the officers’ reasonableness in drawing the same conclusion from the observable circumstances. Considering all the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, the jury could conclude that the officers unreasonably concluded that Mr. Smart was the active shooter. That is, the jury could conclude that the officers violated Mr. Smart’s constitutional right to be free from excessive force. b. Whether the alleged violation was clearly established To rebut the presumption of qualified immunity, however, Mr. Smart must also establish that the constitutional right was clearly established. For these purposes, “[t]he 9 Although we have never held that a suspect running in the opposite direction of a crowd constitutes reliable evidence that a suspect is an active shooter, this “splitsecond judgment[],” Phillips v. James, 422 F.3d 1075, 1080 (10th Cir. 2005) (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 397), deserves at least some weight in determining whether the officers reasonably identified Mr. Smart as the shooter. To be sure, as the district court observed, this observation could conceivably weigh against the officers’ decision to use deadly force: it shows Mr. “Smart was not attempting to close the distance between himself and the officers (or bystanders); rather, he was running away. This . . . suggests [Mr.] Smart did not pose a threat to the safety of the officers or others.” Smart, 2018 WL 3744063, at . Nevertheless, given that he was in a crowded area and the officers reasonably believed he was still carrying a gun, the fact that he happened to be running from the officers does little to undermine or support the reasonableness of the officers’ perception that he posed an immediate threat to bystanders. 18 dispositive question is ‘whether the violative nature of particular conduct is clearly established.’” See Mullenix, 136 S. Ct. at 308 (quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742). Here, an analysis of the officers’ “particular conduct” requires taking into account the fact that they were apparently facing a chaotic active shooter situation, where the lives of bystanders may have depended on the officers’ split-second judgment. See id. The state of the law on March 10, 2012, did not provide fair warning to Officers Froese and Chaffee that it was unconstitutional for them to open fire on a fleeing person they (perhaps unreasonably) believed was armed in what they believed to be an active shooter situation. On this prong of the analysis, we assume that Mr. Smart was unarmed, and that Officers Froese and Chaffee were unreasonable to think otherwise. We nevertheless conclude that their decision to open fire on Mr. Smart did not violate clearly established law. Plaintiffs rely on two decisions as support for their argument that the officers violated clearly established law by unreasonably misidentifying Mr. Smart as the active shooter. But neither case would have provided guidance to Officers Froese and Chaffee under the particular circumstances here. In Zuchel v. Spinharney, 890 F.2d 273, 274 (10th Cir. 1989), officers responded to reports of a suspect kicking the front door of a restaurant and breaking the glass. When the police arrived, the suspect was in a heated exchange with four teenagers, one of whom saw the suspect pull a pair of fingernail clippers from his pocket. Id. The teenager yelled to the police that the suspect had a knife and the police shot and killed the suspect as he approached the officers. Id. We denied qualified immunity, noting a jury could have 19 concluded that the suspect was ten to twelve feet away from the officers when they shot him, “was neither charging . . . nor stabbing at [an officer],” “was shot after [he] stopped and was trying to explain what was going on,” and another officer testified she could not see a weapon in the suspect’s hand. Id. at 275 (internal quotation marks omitted). In King v. Hill, officers shot a suspect they believed “had a long gun under [his] coat.” 615 F. App’x at 472. We held a jury could find the officers violated clearly established law despite their belief the suspect had a gun, noting a jury could find the suspect “raised his hands in a non-threatening manner in response to police commands, and at the time he was shot [he] was not making any threatening motions towards the officers,” who were “between 25 and 75 yards away.” Id. at 472, 476. It is true that Zuchel and King both involve police shooting a suspect they mistakenly believed to be armed and dangerous. But neither provides meaningful guidance here. Unlike the officers in those cases, Officers Froese and Chaffee saw a suspect brandishing and firing a gun—although they may have been mistaken in identifying that suspect as Mr. Smart. And these events transpired in a large, chaotic crowd of potential victims. Thus, although Zuchel and King establish that officers can violate clearly established law by acting on a grossly mistaken belief that a suspect poses a deadly threat, neither case—nor any other Tenth Circuit or Supreme Court case our research has uncovered—would have given fair notice to officers deciding whether to engage a perceived active shooter in a crowded area.10 10 Further bolstering this conclusion is the Supreme Court’s instruction that qualified immunity ought to “give[] government officials breathing room to make 20 Plaintiffs invoke various decisions from other circuits, but those decisions also do not clearly establish a constitutional violation on these facts. For example, in Cole v. Carson, 935 F.3d 444, 453 (5th Cir. 2019), the Fifth Circuit—sitting en banc— denied qualified immunity to officers who fatally shot without warning a teenager with a gun pointed at his own head who “posed no threat” to the officers. Id. at 453. The court found the law to be clearly established because it was dealing with “an obvious case.” Id. But there is nothing obvious about this case, which arises in the uniquely fraught context of a perceived active shooter situation on a crowded street. The dissent cites several cases it argues “clearly establish the unlawfulness of shooting a person who does not present a reasonable threat to the safety of officers or the public.” Dissent at 15. But none of these cases offers meaningful guidance to officers engaging a suspected active shooter because none of them involves the need to neutralize a hostile gunman surrounded by potential victims. See Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 3 (1985) (holding officers acted unreasonably by shooting burglary suspect in the back as he fled); Walker, 451 F.3d at 1160 (holding officers acted unreasonably where they shot a man who held a box cutter to his own wrist, was not threatening the officers, and whose crimes “were not particularly severe”); reasonable but mistaken judgments.” City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 135 S. Ct. 1765, 1774 (2015) (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 743 (2011)). We agree with the district court that this consideration is particularly compelling in active shooter situations like this one, where “[o]fficers [are] confronted with a chaotic situation and the need to quickly disarm the shooter to protect innocent bystanders.” Smart, 2018 WL 3744063, at . 21 Carr v. Castle, 337 F.3d 1221, 1224–25 (10th Cir. 2003) (holding officers acted unreasonably by shooting a fleeing assault suspect who was holding a piece of concrete which the officers testified he had dropped before they started shooting); see also Clawson v. Rigney, 777 F. App’x 381, 385 (11th Cir. 2019) (unpublished) (holding officer acted unreasonably by shooting suspect who was moving away from officers, was armed with a knife, “was at least fifteen feet” away from an officer on the other side of a hedge, and “by all accounts, was not armed with a gun”). Abstracting these holdings to the situation here “defines the qualified immunity inquiry at too high a level of generality” and conflates the two prongs of the test. See Mullenix, 136 S. Ct. at 311. In fact, the Supreme Court has repeatedly chastised courts for relying in such a manner on its broad statement of the law in Garner. See id. at 309; Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199 (2004).11 In summary, there is evidence from which the jury could conclude that the officers were mistaken in their belief that Mr. Smart was the active shooter. And there is also evidence from which the jury could conclude, with the benefit of hindsight, their mistake was not reasonable. But there is no clearly established law 11 The dissent critiques us for using the label “active shooter” because “no one suggests that the gunshots continued once the chase began.” Dissent at 16. But Latyra James testified that “everybody [was] running around [like] crazy,” and “the gunshots just kept getting closer and closer.” App. at 271–72. None of the cases cited by the dissent addressed a similar situation involving hundreds of people and mass panic. And even if the dissent is correct that “the unknown shooter was no longer ‘active’ by the start of the chase,” dissent at 16, the state of the law on March 10, 2012, did not put Officers Froese and Chaffee on notice that they needed to wait for more gunshots before responding to what was certainly an active threat. 22 that establishes, under the unique facts presented during an active shooter situation, that the officers should have been on notice their actions were unconstitutional.