Opinion ID: 2787500
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The continued tasering of Mr. Nall

Text: Considering the facts of the incident taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the constitutional question is whether as of June 26, 2010 it was a clearly established violation of a No. 14-3120 Goodwin v. City of Painesville, et al. Page 15 suspect’s constitutional rights to subject him to a prolonged tasering after he had stopped resisting officers’ efforts to arrest him. Caselaw reveals that such a right was clearly established. The Officers contend that Officer Soto is entitled to qualified immunity not just on his initial decision to taser Mr. Nall, but for the duration of the first and second tasering on the basis that there is no clearly established law stating that a suspect has a right to be free of more than one Taser application when the suspect “objectively, reasonably appears to resist arrest.” Officer Soto claims that he made a reasonable mistake of fact about how long his Taser would discharge when triggered and that Mr. Nall objectively appeared to resist arrest during the tasering. But as discussed in Section III.A.1, Officer Soto had been trained that electricity would continue to flow past the five second mark, and Ms. Nall testified that Officer Soto stood over Mr. Nall and continued tasering him as he was obviously convulsing and powerless to respond to the officers’ commands. Though it is the Nalls’ version of the facts that govern our inquiry here, even if a jury were to credit the Officers’ account of events concerning Mr. Nall’s alleged initial resistance in the doorway, it could still determine that the extended tasering of Mr. Nall was gratuitous because it extended far past the point that he had ceased resisting. In 2008, this court held that “the gratuitous or excessive use of a taser” violates a clearly established constitutional right. Landis, 297 F. App’x at 463. The plaintiff in Landis had intentionally blocked a highway with construction equipment while intoxicated, led police officers on a foot chase, and grabbed an officer by the throat, id. at 455-56, actions that warranted the use of force to effect his arrest if necessary. But when the officer tasered the plaintiff several times in rapid succession, the plaintiff had one handcuff on, an officer holding his free arm, an officer kneeling on his back, and had pitched face forward into a shallow pool of water, where he drowned. Id. at 456-58. Our determination in Landis that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity regarding the use of a Taser, id.at 463-64, provided notice that application of a Taser to a suspect who has ceased virtually all resistance constitutes excessive force, even if the suspect had resisted violently earlier in the encounter. Landis also demonstrates that whether a suspect has ceased resisting does not simply turn on whether the suspect has already been placed in handcuffs. No. 14-3120 Goodwin v. City of Painesville, et al. Page 16 In Shreve, we held that officers could invoke qualified immunity for using pepper spray against a suspect who hid in a closet obscured from view and disobeyed officers’ repeated orders to come out, but that it was a violation of a clearly established constitutional right for the officers to strike the woman with a stick and a knee for a prolonged period of time as she lay on the ground incapacitated by pepper spray, even if she continued to resist having her hands cuffed. Shreve, 453 F.3d at 686-88. The Shreve court concluded that the officers’ force was far in excess of what the woman’s minimal resistance after she was removed from the closet justified. Id. at 686-88. We also denied qualified immunity to an officer who sprayed mace in a suspect’s face twice, first after the suspect walked away from him during a car stop and refused orders to stop, and then again after he got back in his car and refused to exit. Adams v. Metiva, 31 F.3d 375, 378 (6th Cir. 1994). Addressing the second use of mace, we held that “a reasonable person would know that spraying mace on a blinded and incapacitated person sitting in a car would violate the right to be free from excessive force” and denied qualified immunity on that basis. Id. at 387. We have held that “the right to be free from physical force when one is not resisting the police is a clearly established right,” Wysong v. City of Heath, 260 F. App’x 848, 856 (6th Cir. 2008), and that officers “could not reasonably have believed that use of a Taser on a nonresistant subject was lawful,” Kijowski v. City of Niles, 372 F. App’x 595, 601 (6th Cir 2010). Landis, Shreve, and Adams indicate that these principles apply after a suspect has ceased resisting, even if the suspect did offer some resistance at the outset. We acknowledge that the “calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396-97. In some contexts this would counsel against holding an officer to a standard where it is necessary to evaluate changes in a suspect’s behavior over a period of seconds, but with a Taser seconds count. Officer Soto had been trained about the potentially grave consequences of prolonged application, especially to the chest area. Furthermore, by Plaintiffs’ account the change in Mr. Nall’s physical state was drastic and No. 14-3120 Goodwin v. City of Painesville, et al. Page 17 immediately apparent to Officer Soto. On these facts, it is reasonable to hold the officer accountable for noting changes in Mr. Nall’s physical state over the 26-second tasering period.