Court Opinion

ID: 9494058
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:28:28.362055+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:12.230278
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part and concurring in part in the judgment.
Both the majority and I agree that Officer William Wargo, of the Elkhart, Indiana police force, used constitutionally excessive force against Anthony Dye, when we take *303the contested facts in the light most favorable to Dye. Our disagreement centers on the legal effect of the release Dye signed, which the majority thinks lets both the City of Elkhart and its employee off the hook. I believe this conclusion fails to give proper effect to the facts surrounding the execution of the release and the Supreme Court’s instructions about the way we are to assess such documents. I therefore respectfully dissent with respect to the case against Wargo.
I
Before turning to the release itself, I believe it is necessary to give a somewhat more detailed account of the facts of the encounter between Dye and Wargo. I do so because I think Dye’s excessive force claim extends to more conduct than the majority would recognize, because parts of the majority’s account either omit critical facts favorable to Dye or dwell on facts that are peripheral, and because the analysis of the release must be undertaken with the context of the dispute in mind. Naturally, my account of the facts presents them in the light most favorable to Dye, the non-moving party.
In his § 1983 lawsuit, Dye named as defendants Wargo, the City of Elkhart, and (mysteriously) Frei, Wargo’s police dog. Only the claims against the first two defendants require our attention. (The majority hardly needs to belabor the point that, no matter how much of an animal lover one may be, a dog at this time is not a “person” amenable to a § 1983 suit). Dye asserted several excessive force claims against Wargo, all stemming from the confrontation in the early morning hours of March 22, 1997. Dye’s claim against the City of Elkhart is that his injuries resulted from its failure adequately to train Wargo (and Frei) and that this failure to train rose to the level of deliberate indifference to Dye’s right under the Fourth Amendment to be free from unreasonable seizures.
A. § 1983 Claims Against Wargo
As the majority has reported, the events that triggered this lawsuit began around 2:30 a.m. on March 22, 1997. Dye was driving his brother’s Chevrolet Corvette on Indiana Avenue, within the City of Elk-hart, headed toward his mother’s house. He was obeying the speed limit and all other traffic laws when he observed that he was being followed by a police car, which turned out to be driven by Officer Wargo. Dye reached the intersection of Indiana Avenue and Sterling Avenue and, still in compliance with all traffic laws, came to a full stop. He then turned right onto Sterling Avenue. Nonetheless, after he made the turn, he saw that the police car had turned on its flashing overhead lights. Dye realized that the officer was signaling to him to pull over, but he continued driving in the short-sighted hope that he might be able to reach his mother’s house and get inside before the police officer could stop him. His motivation was simple: Dye was a convicted felon and he was carrying an unlicensed 9mm handgun. With Wargo now in pursuit, Dye turned into the alley behind his mother’s house, drove until he came to her yard, pulled in and stopped the car.
The minute his car came to a halt, Dye opened the door and without looking back made a dash for the house. Wargo, who had pulled in behind him, saw Dye start running toward the house and released Frei. Wargo never ordered Dye to stop, nor did he warn Dye that he was about to release the dog. Frei overtook Dye before Dye reached the house. As he was trained to do, Frei bit Dye’s leg and held on. Wargo yelled to Dye that Frei would not release until Dye got down on the ground *304in a cross position. Dye did as he was told, and Frei released his grip. Wargo then told Dye to put his hands behind his back. As Dye attempted to comply, Frei attacked him again. Fearful and in pain, Dye stood up, attempting to get Frei to quit biting him and yelling to Wargo to call off the dog. Wargo did nothing, and Frei continued biting. Wargo told Dye that Frei would not stop biting him until he laid down again on the ground. Afraid of what the dog would do to him if he laid down again, Dye instead continued to fight the dog off. Wargo then sprayed Dye in the face with pepper spray and struck him in the back of the neck. Neither of these interventions brought Dye down. Instead, Dye lifted his shirt and pulled his gun from his waistband. Wargo yelled at Dye not to do it, but Dye fired at least twice. (He claims he was aiming for the dog, but I agree with the majority that this is beside the point for purposes of assessing Wargo’s conduct. Wargo obviously had no way of knowing whom or what Dye meant to be shooting.) Dye’s actions prompted Wargo to pull his own weapon. Once Dye began shooting, Wargo dropped to the ground and fired at Dye, striking him just under the left shoulder.
Wargo’s initial shot at last caused Dye to fall to the ground and drop his gun. He wound up face down on the ground with Frei still biting at him. Despite the fact that Dye was now unarmed and on his stomach, Wargo continued to fire, pausing at one point to put a new clip in his weapon. An officer who arrived at the scene in the midst of the shooting reported that while he watched, Wargo shot at Dye five or six times from a standing position about ten feet from Dye. Dye suffered multiple gunshot wounds, most of them flesh wounds on the back or sides of his limbs. He had a wound on the rear of his right arm, just below the elbow, as well as on the back of his left arm. Two bullets passed through Dye’s right leg and he suffered a flesh wound to his right calf. Wargo suffered only a pinched nerve in his neck, and Frei was unscathed.
Dye identifies four seizures during the course of these events that he contends were unreasonable for constitutional purposes: 1) Wargo’s dispatching Frei to capture Dye as he ran toward his mother’s house, without any warning or verbal command to Dye to surrender; 2) Frei’s attack on Dye as Dye tried to comply with Wargo’s command to put his hands behind his head; 3) Wargo’s use of the dog, pepper spray, and a hand strike in response to Dye’s refusal to get down on the ground; and 4) Wargo’s decision to continue firing at Dye as he lay on the ground, face down, and without a weapon. Wargo’s first defense to these claims is that the events of that evening did not occur as Dye claims, but this factual dispute cannot be resolved at the summary judgment stage. More productively, Wargo asserts that even if events transpired as Dye says they did, his use of force was at all times objectively reasonable and, to the extent it was not, he is entitled to qualified immunity because at the time of the incident there was no case law clearly establishing that his conduct was unconstitutional.
The majority agrees that if Dye’s version of the events is correct, then at least the fourth of these allegations would be actionable under § 1988. That much seems indisputable to me. In fact, in my opinion Dye’s account of Wargo’s actions states at least two excessive force claims for which Wargo would not be entitled to qualified immunity. The first is the one the majority has identified: Wargo’s decision to continue shooting at Dye after he was face down on the ground without a weapon. Even if Dye initially fired at Wargo and not the dog, as Dye testified during his plea colloquy in state court, *305once Dye was down and no longer posed a threat to Wargo, no reasonable police officer in 1997 could believe that he was entitled to continue firing at the backside of an unarmed and disabled individual. In addition, I would find that Dye also has a claim related to the second point he has identified, Frei’s unprovoked attack on Dye once Dye had surrendered to Wargo and was attempting to place his hands behind his back. At that point, Dye was under control and was trying to do what Wargo had asked. It has long been well established that a police officer may not continue to use force against a suspect who is subdued and complying with the officer’s orders. See Frazell v. Flanigan, 102 F.3d 877, 884 (7th Cir.1996) (jury could reasonably conclude that officer who struck subdued suspect in back with nightstick used objectively unreasonable force and was not entitled to qualified immunity); Ellis v. Wynalda, 999 F.2d 243, 247 (7th Cir.1993) (force that is reasonable while suspect poses threat is no longer reasonable once threat is no longer present); Priester v. Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919, 927 (11th Cir.2000) (denying qualified immunity to officer who in 1994 allowed his dog to attack suspect who was lying on the ground and not resisting). While Frei may not be a “person,” he certainly was an instrumentality of force that Wargo was using, and Wargo was responsible for the dog’s actions.
B. City of Elkhart
The majority concludes, and I agree, that the City of Elkhart is entitled to summary judgment on Dye’s failure to train claim. My only difficulty here is with one statement that could be misinterpreted if read out of context. The majority states, ante at 299, that “the Constitution does not require municipalities to conduct training programs.” In the abstract, such a statement might be true, but we deal in practicalities rather than abstractions. As the majority properly recognizes, in a case like Dye’s, proof of a failure to train could be used to demonstrate an unlawful municipal policy that tolerated the use of excessive force by Elkhart police officers. Ante at 299. Dye’s problem here, as the majority points out, is that he had nothing to back up his allegation that the City of Elkhart’s K-9 unit training was constitutionally inadequate at the time of his confrontation with Officer Wargo. In fact, what is in the record contradicts Dye’s speculations. For example, Dye asserts that there were whole- categories of activity for which the City of Elkhart failed to train Frei, including how to apprehend suspects while off a leash, but the training reports offer unrefuted evidence that such activities were part of Wargo and Frei’s training. Dye offers no evidence of any other incidents of excessive force similar to the one he allegedly experienced. There is thus no evidence that the City of Elkhart was aware that it had a problem or that its training was not adequately protecting the rights of civilians. I therefore agree with the majority that Dye’s failure to train claim cannot succeed.
II
With this background established, I turn to the release. Like the district court, the majority finds that it is enforceable as a matter of Indiana contract law, and that this is enough to doom Dye’s claim. At best, though, enforceability under state law is just the first step in the analysis. It is critical to take into account the fact that Dye executed this waiver of his federal statutory right to sue during plea negotiations with the prosecutor. According to his own testimony and the testimony of the attorney that represented him during the plea negotiations, Dye signed the waiver with the understanding that in exchange *306he would receive a more favorable plea agreement. These circumstances bring into play the Supreme Court’s decision in Town of Newton v. Rumery, 480 U.S. 386, 107 S.Ct. 1187, 94 L.Ed.2d 405 (1987). There the Court held that whether or not a waiver is enforceable is a matter of federal common law and that the salient question is whether enforcing the waiver is consistent with public policy. Because there are disputed issues of fact that pertain to these issues, I would remand this case for further proceedings.
In Rumery, a majority of the Court decided that a release signed by a defendant whose felony witness tampering charge had been dropped in exchange for the release should be enforced. In Part II of the opinion (which did command a Court), Justice Powell wrote:
We begin by noting the source of the law that governs this case. The agreement purported to waive a right to sue conferred by a federal statute. The question whether the policies underlying that statute may in some circumstances render that waiver unenforceable is a question of federal law. We resolve this question by reference to traditional common-law principles, as we have resolved other questions about the principles governing § 1983 actions.... The relevant principle is well established: a promise is unenforceable if the interest in its enforcement is outweighed in the circumstances by a public policy harmed by enforcement of the agreement.
480 U.S. at 392, 107 S.Ct. 1187 (citation omitted). In Part III-A of the opinion, which also garnered the votes of a majority of the Justices, the Court rejected the notion that waiver-release agreements were per se void as against public policy. Instead, Rumery adopted a case-by-case approach which requires courts to assess whether the waiver was entered into voluntarily, whether the prosecutor had a legitimate purpose for entering into the agreement, and whether enforcement of the waiver otherwise furthers the public interest. 480 U.S. at 398, 107 S.Ct. 1187.
Rumery’s principal holding that waiver-dismissal agreements are not per se unenforceable left many questions unanswered. Decisions from a number of our sister circuits have begun to provide some answers. For example, as Justice O’Con-nor’s separate opinion in Rumery suggested, it is the defendants in a federal civil rights suit who have the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that a waiver was entered into voluntarily, that there was no prosecutorial overreaching, and that the enforcement of the waiver furthers the public interest. See id. at 401, 107 S.Ct. 1187 (O’Connor, J.) (concurring in part and concurring in the judgment); Livingstone v. North Belle Vernon Borough, 12 F.3d 1205, 1214 (3d Cir.1993); Woods v. Rhodes, 994 F.2d 494 (8th Cir.1993); Lynch v. City of Alhambra, 880 F.2d 1122 (9th Cir.1989). This means that a district court properly applying the Rumery test cannot grant summary judgment in a release-dismissal case like this one unless it is clear as a matter of law that there are no material issues of fact with respect to these prerequisites to enforceability. Livingstone, 12 F.3d at 1215 (remanding for determination whether there were disputed issues of material fact regarding voluntariness); Woods, 994 F.2d at 500 (finding reasonable minds could not differ on whether release was voluntary or secured by prosecutorial overreaching); Lynch, 880 F.2d at 1129 n. 10 (recognizing that “the inquiry that the district court must perform undermines, to some extent, the very purpose of the release-dismissal” but finding that “such an inquiry is necessary to conform with the public policy requirement announced by the Supreme Court in Rumery”).
*307The district court in this case made none of the necessary factual findings or legal determinations required by Rumery. The majority, although it cites Rumery, seems to think that because Rumery rejected the proposition that releases are never enforceable, this must mean that they are always enforceable. Furthermore, the language the majority uses compels the conclusion that it has improperly placed the burden on Dye to show the flaws in the release, instead of putting the burden on the state to show that it meets Rumery’s standards. Its two paragraphs discussing Rumery are replete with phrases like “any argument Dye advances,” or “Dye has not cited,” or “Dye does not contend.” As I indicate briefly below, my review of the record convinces me that there are material issues of fact regarding Dye’s waiver that preclude granting summary judgment to the defendants on the basis of the waiver.
A. Voluntariness
Whether a criminal defendant voluntarily entered into a waiver-dismissal arrangement depends on the “particular facts and circumstances surrounding [the] case.” Livingstone, 12 F.3d at 1211. The majority in Rumery stressed that Rumery was a sophisticated businessman, that he was not in jail when he signed the agreement, that he was represented by counsel, that his counsel drafted the agreement, and that Rumery had three days to consider the deal. The Court also emphasized that Rumery’s decision to sign the agreement was “highly rational” because the benefits of the agreement were obvious: “he gained immunity from criminal prosecution in consideration for abandoning a civil suit that he may well have lost .” 480 U.S. at 394, 107 S.Ct. 1187. Finally, in a footnote, the majority indicated that it would have more confidence in the voluntariness of an agreement if it were presented to the court for approval. Id. at 398 n. 10, 107 S.Ct. 1187.
The facts of this case present a far more mixed picture. On the one hand, Dye was represented by counsel, the language of the agreement was clear, and he had sufficient time to read and understand it. This evidence favors a finding of voluntariness. On the other hand, Dye was in prison, there is no evidence that he was particularly sophisticated, he did not draft the agreement, the agreement was never presented to the court, and unlike Rumery, who faced a charge with a maximum seven-year sentence, Dye was facing an attempted murder charge. The pressures on Dye were thus considerably greater than those facing Rumery. Moreover, despite the majority’s attempt to rationalize the agreement as giving Dye the opportunity to “start fresh” after serving his sentence, a trier of fact might conclude that the benefits to Dye of signing this waiver agreement were illusory. Even on its face, the agreement required Dye to give up his right to bring a § 1983 suit against Officer Wargo and the City of Elkhart in exchange only for their not bringing state law tort actions against him (claims that would have been economically foolish given Dye’s likely judgment-proof status); Dye received no written promise that any charges against him would be dismissed. This hardly seems like a highly rational judgment, and it would make a reasonable jury question the voluntariness of Dye’s agreement to the deal.
The majority attempts to allay any concerns raised by the one-sidedness of the waiver by claiming that the prosecutor informed Dye during their plea negotiations that his signing the waiver would have no effect on the plea negotiations. This, however, is a contested fact in the record. There is no dispute that it was Dye’s counsel who suggested the idea of signing a *308waiver in exchange for a better plea bargain. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, however, both Dye and his attorney declared under oath that when Dye signed the mutual release it was their understanding, as a result of the plea negotiations with the prosecutor, that the waiver would indeed affect the plea negotiations and that Dye would receive a more favorable plea agreement in exchange for it. The majority seizes on the word “understanding” as a way of dismissing this testimony, but I would not reject it so readily. Nothing says that only written evidence is competent for Rumery purposes to illuminate the course of the negotiations that led to the contested release. And a factual exploration of these negotiations would not raise the specter of a mini-trial on the underlying lawsuit between Dye and War-go that the release was designed to avert. It is reasonable to infer from the testimony Dye and his lawyer offered that the prosecutor led Dye to believe that he would receive a more favorable plea agreement if he signed the release. There is no dispute that Dye received no such benefit.
Under traditional contract law, the fact that one party made promises during negotiations that later were not reflected in the plain language of the contract would not be a basis for voiding the contract on voluntariness grounds. But again, the question here is not whether the waiver is valid as a matter of contract law, but rather whether, as a matter of public policy, it should be enforced. For purposes of this analysis, as Rumery makes clear, the question of voluntariness is akin to the standards of “voluntary and knowing” in plea negotiations. And in the plea context, as Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(d) takes pains to emphasize, a court is not entitled to accept any plea of guilty until it determines that the plea was voluntary. Enforceability of a plea agreement under state contract law is entirely beside the point.
B. Legitimate Prosecutorial Purpose
In upholding the agreement before it, Rumery also relied on the fact that “the prosecutor had an independent, legitimate reason to make this agreement directly related to his prosecutorial responsibilities.” Id. at 398, 107 S.Ct. 1187. This finding was critical because all the Justices that joined the majority (and even more so the four dissenting Justices) recognized the risk that release-dismissal agreements could be abused by prosecutors seeking to protect public officials from civil liability. As Justice O’Connor explained in her concurrence, the availability of release agreements may tempt public officials to trump up charges in order to avoid meritorious civil claims, or tempt them “to ignore their public duty by dropping meritorious criminal prosecutions in order to avoid the risk, expense, and publicity of a § 1988 suit.” Id. at 400, 107 S.Ct. 1187.
In this case, Wargo’s only evidence of a “legitimate reason to make [the waiver] agreement directly related to prosecutorial responsibilities” is that the idea of a waiver was Dye’s and that the prosecutor told Dye that it would not be considered as part of the prosecutor’s charging decision. Again, however, the latter claim is disputed by the testimony of both Dye and the attorney that represented him in the plea negotiation with the prosecutor. Reading the record in the light most favorable to Dye, we have before us a case where the prosecutor encouraged Dye to sign a waiver agreement with the understanding that his having done so would improve his plea bargain, but that the prosecutor then went back on that verbal promise. The only reason why a prosecutor would use such a strategy is to induce a vulnerable defendant to sign a waiver that would shield public officials from future liability while at the same time not giving up any discretion *309to prosecute. This is neither a legitimate purpose nor one directly related to prose-cutorial responsibilities. Instead, it smacks of bad faith negotiations at best, fraud in the inducement to contract at worst. A waiver obtained by this route, cannot, as a matter of public policy, be enforced.
C. The Public Interest
Rumery recognizes that there is a substantial public interest in using § 1983 to expose and punish unconstitutional conduct by public officials. There is also a substantial interest in not approving practices that have a tendency to undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system. On the other hand, the public has an interest in avoiding frivolous civil litigation, and there will be situations in which entering into a release dismissal agreement will make sense both from the defendant’s point of view and from the point of view of prosecutors with limited resources and other strategic concerns.
If the undisputed facts showed that Dye freely executed this release; if the release had been presented to the court and everyone’s expectations about it had been clear; if there was no dispute about the central fact of the scope of the prosecutor’s promise (i.e. whether the release would affect the criminal charges or not), I could agree with the majority’s disposition of this case. And these counter-factuals show that there certainly will be cases that satisfy the Rumery standards — possibly many, if both sides take care to make an adequate record when they wish to use release-dismissal agreements. But the case I have described is not Dye’s case. I would remand this part of the case to the district court for a full factual exploration of the circumstances surrounding the release. After that, it might be possible to dispose of matters at a second round of summary judgment motions, or a trial might be necessary. I respectfully dissent from this part of the judgment.