Court Opinion

ID: 9555068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-10 18:00:41.699909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:41:05.938715
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-60548         Document: 00516852969             Page: 1      Date Filed: 08/10/2023

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit
                                                                                      United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                               Fifth Circuit

                                      ____________                                           FILED
                                                                                       August 10, 2023
                                       No. 22-60548                                     Lyle W. Cayce
                                      ____________                                           Clerk

   Jason Hines, Individually and as Wrongful Death Beneficiary and as
   Survivor of Austin Hines,

                                                                     Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                             versus

   Lowndes County, Mississippi; Eddie Hawkins; Thomas
   Culpepper; John Does 1-15; Thomas Honnoll,

                                               Defendants—Appellees.
                      ______________________________

                      Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Northern District of Mississippi
                                USDC No. 1:21-CV-52
                      ______________________________

   Before Clement, Elrod, and Willett, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
          This appeal involves two deputies who fired at a suspect, killing him,
   after he led a citywide chase, abandoned his vehicle, stole a police vehicle,
   sped narrowly past one officer, and then drove straight at another. The dis-
   trict court held that qualified immunity protects the deputies. We AFFIRM.

          _____________________
          *
              This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-60548      Document: 00516852969          Page: 2   Date Filed: 08/10/2023

                                    No. 22-60548

                                         I
          On April 1, 2020, a detective from the Lowndes County Sherriff’s
   Office saw a vehicle that failed to observe a stop sign. The vehicle had been
   reported stolen earlier that day, and the detective recognized the vehicle’s
   driver as Austin Hines (“Austin”). The detective turned on his lights, but
   Austin kept driving, and a chase ensued. The pursuit lasted about 20
   minutes, during which Austin:
          • led police through populated areas;
          • drove through yards and ditches;
          • ran civilians and police officers off the road;
          • swerved into the left lane of traffic, including through blind curves
            and over hills;
          • ignored multiple stop signs;
          • hit several civilian vehicles, including an 18-wheeler;
          • collided with a law enforcement vehicle; and
          • reached speeds of over 90 mph.

          Austin eventually lost control of the vehicle, wrecked it, and
   abandoned it. He continued on foot and soon encountered another detective.
   That detective fired a single shot at Austin after “see[ing] something in his
   hand,” but Austin escaped. The detective’s shot is not at issue here. After
   firing it, the detective called over the radio: “Shots fired. Shots fired. He’s
   got a gun.”
          Deputy Culpepper and Deputy Honnoll (the “Deputies”) were on
   foot in a nearby clearing, and they each heard the detective’s gunshot and his
   radio call. The Deputies and other officers began searching the clearing, but
   they could not locate Austin. Their body cameras captured what happened
   next. A police truck came careening through from the right side of the
   clearing, traveling in front of the Deputies and perpendicular to a pair of

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                                    No. 22-60548

   railroad tracks to their left. The Deputies ignored the truck at first, but then
   they saw Austin behind the wheel, and they realized he had stolen it. As the
   two Deputies gave chase on foot, Austin sped past a constable, only narrowly
   avoiding running him over. When Austin arrived at the railroad tracks, he
   turned left. That decision brought him back toward the general area of the
   clearing, but it also put him on a path directly toward Captain Higgins, who
   was on the tracks as part of the search.
          Seeing that Austin had aimed the stolen police truck “right towards
   [Captain] Higgins,” Deputy Culpepper opened fire at the truck. Deputy
   Honnoll opened fire too, for the same reason. In total, they fired about 18
   shots. The stolen truck came to a stop a few feet from Captain Higgins, and
   the officers called a ceasefire. Austin suffered multiple gunshot wounds and
   died as a result.
          Austin’s father (“Hines”) sued Deputy Culpepper and Deputy
   Honnoll in state court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that they violated
   Austin’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force. Hines also
   asserted state-law claims against both Deputies, sued additional defendants,
   and relied on additional causes of action that are not relevant here. The
   Deputies removed the case to federal court.
          The Deputies moved for summary judgment based on qualified
   immunity. The district court agreed, first concluding that “Honnoll’s and
   Culpepper’s use of force was reasonable,” because when they opened fire,
   they had reason “to believe Austin posed a serious threat to at least one
   officer.” Hines v. City of Columbus, No. 1:21-CV-52-DMB-RP, 2022 WL
   4587450, at *6 (N.D. Miss. Sept. 27, 2022). The district court next
   concluded—in the alternative—that “[e]ven had the facts alleged amounted
   to a constitutional violation, [Hines] cannot show Honnoll or Culpepper
   violated a clearly established constitutional right.” Id. at *7. The court

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   reasoned that “Austin was driving in the direction towards at least one other
   officer,” and that Hines had “failed to identify any clearly established law
   that would place beyond doubt the constitutional question in this case,
   whether it is unreasonable for an officer to use deadly force when he observes
   a fleeing vehicle driving towards a fellow officer.” Id. (internal quotation
   marks and citation omitted).
          The district court granted summary judgment for the Deputies on
   Hines’s § 1983 claim, and it remanded Hines’s state-law claims to state
   court. This appeal timely followed.

                                          II
          Summary judgment is appropriate when “there is no genuine dispute
   as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of
   law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A fact is material if it could “affect the
   outcome of the suit under the governing law[.]” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
   Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A dispute is genuine “if the evidence is such
   that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Id.
   We view all of the evidence “in the light most favorable to the nonmoving
   party,” and we “draw[ ] all reasonable inferences in that party’s favor.”
   Kariuki v. Tarango, 709 F.3d 495, 501 (5th Cir. 2013). Even so, “‘we assign
   greater weight, even at the summary judgment stage, to the . . . video
   recording[s] taken at the scene.’” Baker v. Coburn, 68 F.4th 240, 244 (5th
   Cir. 2023) (alteration in original) (quoting Betts v. Brennan, 22 F.4th 577, 582
   (5th Cir. 2022)).
          Once an official raises qualified immunity, “‘the burden then shifts to
   the plaintiff, who must rebut the defense by establishing a genuine fact issue
   as to whether the official’s . . . conduct violated clearly established law.’” Id.
   (quoting Brown v. Callahan, 623 F.3d 249, 253 (5th Cir. 2010)). “We review

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   the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same
   standard as the district court.” Id. at 244–45.

                                          III
          “Qualified immunity shields . . . state officials from money damages
   unless a plaintiff pleads facts showing (1) that the official violated a statutory
   or constitutional right, and (2) that the right was ‘clearly established’ at the
   time of the challenged conduct.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011)
   (citation omitted). When either prong is conclusive, a court need not address
   the other. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009). Under the second
   prong, “[t]he burden here is heavy: A right is ‘clearly established’ only if . . .
   precedent has placed the constitutional question beyond debate.” Harmon v.
   City of Arlington, 16 F.4th 1159, 1165–66 (5th Cir. 2021) (alteration adopted)
   (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “The dispositive question is
   ‘whether the violative nature of particular conduct is clearly established.’”
   Id. (alteration adopted) (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per
   curiam)). “The specificity requirement assumes special significance in
   excessive force cases, where officers must make split-second decisions to use
   force.” Id. “To overcome qualified immunity, the law must be so clearly
   established that every reasonable officer . . . would have known he could not
   use deadly force.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
          Under the qualified-immunity test’s second prong, the district court
   defined the particular conduct at issue as: “whether it is unreasonable for an
   officer to use deadly force when he observes a fleeing vehicle driving towards
   a fellow officer.” Hines, 2022 WL 4587450, at *7 (internal quotation marks
   and citation omitted). Hines does not dispute this framing on appeal, nor
   does he offer any alternative statement of the specific conduct at issue.
   Indeed, he mentions the “clearly established” prong only once, on the
   penultimate page of his opening brief.

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          Hines makes a cursory attempt to identify clearly established law that
   prohibits the specific conduct at issue, but he relies on only a single decision
   from this court: Lytle v. Bexar County, 560 F.3d 404 (5th Cir. 2009). There,
   we held that “[i]t has long been clearly established that, absent any other
   justification for the use of force, it is unreasonable for a police officer to use
   deadly force against a fleeing felon who does not pose a sufficient threat of harm
   to the officer or others.” Id. at 417 (emphases added). But Lytle is not analogous
   to this case. The Deputies knew that Austin was driving a vehicle toward
   Captain Higgins when they opened fire. Lytle did not clearly establish
   anything about what is reasonable when a suspect in a large truck drives
   directly toward an officer who is on foot. Because Hines has not shown that
   the Deputies’ unlawful actions (if any) violated Austin’s clearly established
   rights, we need not (and do not) address the test’s first prong.
          Hines’s arguments cannot overcome this conclusion. To begin, he
   cites a number of out-of-circuit cases in which “courts have found police
   officers’ shooting of fleeing motorists to be unreasonable.” But, like Lytle,
   these cases are not on point, because none of them involves a fleeing suspect
   who was accelerating toward someone when the officer fired. See, e.g., Adams
   v. Speers, 473 F.3d 989, 992 (9th Cir. 2007) (officer fired shots from “in front
   of the [suspect’s vehicle] as it rolled backwards away from him”); Smith v.
   Cupp, 430 F.3d 766, 770 (6th Cir. 2005) (autopsy showed that officer had
   fired only after the suspect passed him). Hines can prevail only if he identifies
   authority placing Austin’s rights “beyond debate.” Harmon, 16 F.4th at 1165.
   And he has failed to meet this burden.
          Hines next argues that a fact question remains as to whether the stolen
   police truck posed a threat to Captain Higgins. But the Deputies’ body-
   camera footage shows Austin driving the stolen truck right at the Captain.
   Even if Austin’s angle of approach was sometimes off by a few degrees, or if
   the Captain might have had time to take refuge on the opposite side of the

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   tracks, he was still in immediate danger when the Deputies opened fire to
   save him. See generally Hathaway v. Bazany, 507 F.3d 312 (5th Cir. 2007)
   (officer was justified in using deadly force against a car that was accelerating
   toward him).
          Finally, Hines uses the bulk of his brief to build an argument that asks
   us to look at things from Austin’s perspective (rather than the Deputies’
   perspective). Hines says that when Austin ignored the first stop sign, the
   vehicle he was driving was merely borrowed (even though it had been
   reported stolen). When Austin took off on foot and encountered the second
   detective, Austin did not have a gun, let alone shoot (even though a radio call
   then proclaimed “Shots fired. He’s got a gun.”). When Austin drove
   through the clearing—almost hitting several officers, and then toward
   another—he was just trying to get back to his girlfriend (even though the
   officers on the scene could not have appreciated this). And when Austin
   drove toward Captain Higgins, he was trying to run—not fight (even though
   he had earlier collided with a police vehicle). Even if Hines is right about all
   of that, the legal outcome is still the same. That is because “[e]xcessive force
   claims are evaluated for objective reasonableness based on the information the
   officers had when the conduct occurred.” Baker, 68 F.4th at 247 (emphasis
   added) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

                                         IV
          Hines has identified no law—much less clearly established law—
   holding that the Fourth Amendment prohibits officers from using deadly
   force against a suspect driving directly toward one of their colleagues during
   his attempt to escape. Accordingly, we AFFIRM.

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