Court Opinion

ID: 9489012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:02:16.409522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:14.531259
License: Public Domain

DENNIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I join in the dissenting opinion of Judge Reavley but write further to express my opinion that the significant injury element of Johnson v. Morel, 876 F.2d 477 (5th Cir.1989) was void ab .initio as controlling precedent because it was clearly in conflict with the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) for the reasons set forth by Judge Rubin in his dissenting opinion in Johnson v. Morel, 876 F.2d at 480 and for the additional following reasons.
The Johnson v. Morel three element test, based on a threshhold significant injury requirement, was inherently inconsistent with the more fluid Fourth Amendment “objective reasonableness” standard set forth by the Supreme Court in Graham. In Graham, the Supreme Court held that (1) claims under § 1983 alleging that a law enforcement officer used excessive force in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other seizure of a free citizen were properly analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, and (2) under that Fourth Amendment standard:
Determining whether the force used to effect a particular seizure is “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment requires a careful balancing of “ ‘the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests’ ” against the countervailing governmental interests at stake. Our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has long recognized that the right to make an arrest or investigatory stop necessarily carries with it the right to use some degree of physical coercion or threat thereof to effect it. Because “[t]he test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application,” however, its proper application requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight. See Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. at 8-9, [105 S.Ct. 1694, 1699-1700] (The question is “whether the totality of the circumstances justified] a particular sort of ... seizure”). 490 U.S. at 396 [109 S.Ct. at 1871-72] (Citations omitted)
This Fourth Amendment standard which requires a balancing of “the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests” against “the countervailing governmental interests at stake,” a standard that is “not capable of precise definition or mechanical application” and must be considered under “the totality of the circumstances” and with the “sort of seizure involved,” is evidently incompatible with Johnson v. Morel’s attempt to apply a three-element stereotypical test indiscriminately to all Fourth Amendment excessive force claims *409lodged against law enforcement officials under § 1983. In fact, the Supreme Court in Graham expressly rejected the “notion that all excessive force claims brought under § 1983 are governed by a single generic standard” Id. 490 U.S. at 393, 109 S.Ct. at 1870-71 and reversed the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for applying in that Fourth Amendment case the four-factor generic test that had originated in Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028 (2nd Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1033, 94 S.Ct. 462, 38 L.Ed.2d 324 (1973), the generic rigidity of which resembled that of the Johnson v. Morel test and called for the consideration of: (1) the need for the application of force; (2) the relationship between that need and the amount of force that was used; (3) the extent of the injury inflicted; and (4) whether the force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain and restore discipline or maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1868-69.