Court Opinion

ID: 9753419
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:13:36.965499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:12.528879
License: Public Domain

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                                                            [PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 20-11994
                           ____________________

        TIMOTHY ALLEN DAVIS, SR.,
                                                       Plaintiff-Appellant,
        versus

        CITY OF APOPKA,
                                                   Defendant-Appellee

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Middle District of Florida
                   D.C. Docket No. 6:15-cv-01631-RBD-LRH
                           ____________________
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        2                       Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        Before BRANCH, GRANT, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
        ED CARNES, Circuit Judge:
               During a domestic dispute, Timothy Allen Davis, Sr. shot
        his unarmed twenty-two-year-old son, killing him. He was ar-
        rested and prosecuted for murder but was acquitted after a jury
        trial. Davis then filed a lawsuit against the City of Apopka, Florida
        and some of its police officers. He asserted a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim
        that he was arrested without probable cause, a Florida state law
        claim for false arrest based on the same contention, and a § 1983
        claim that the officers’ search of his home violated his Fourth
        Amendment rights.
                The search claim was tried to a jury, but before that trial the
        district court dismissed the federal and state arrest claims under
        Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Davis challenges those
        rulings, based on his contention that the operative complaint
        shows that after his wife called 911 to report that her husband shot
        their son, the three officers who were dispatched to the scene of
        the shooting should have believed Davis when he said that he had
        acted in self-defense. The complaint also claims that if the officers
        didn’t believe him, they should have conducted a more thorough
        investigation before making the arrest.
               On the § 1983 claim that the officers had searched his house
        in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the jury returned a verdict
        in favor of the City. Davis challenges the denial of his motion for
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                          3

        a new trial on that claim based on the failure to give a municipal
        liability jury instruction that he requested.
               Before we get to the facts as alleged in the complaint, we
        need to point out a few more procedural aspects of the case. First,
        the officers involved in the search and arrest are no longer parties.
        They were dismissed after Davis settled with them. The City is the
        only remaining defendant. Davis’ position is that the City is liable
        for the conduct of its Chief of Police because he was the final poli-
        cymaker, and he personally and directly participated in the arrest
        and the search of Davis’ home. The City does not deny that Chief
        Manley was the final policymaker, although it vigorously denies
        that there is any liability, insisting that none of Davis’ claims is
        valid.
                This is not the first time this case has been before our Court.
        See Davis v. City of Apopka, 734 F. App’x 616 (11th Cir. 2018) (un-
        published). In the first appeal, Davis argued that the district court
        had erred in dismissing his arrest claims. A panel of this Court re-
        manded the case for the district court to address in the first instance
        Davis’ argument that, in light of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground”
        law, Fla. Stat. §§ 776.012(2), 776.032, the officers lacked actual prob-
        able cause to arrest him because his use of deadly force was legally
        justified. Davis, 734 F. App’x at 621–22.
              On Davis’ § 1983 unlawful search claim, the panel concluded
        that Chief Manley “was a final policymaker such that his order to
        search Davis’ home without a warrant rendered the City liable
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        4                       Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        absent any established custom or practice.” Id. at 619. The panel
        determined:
               The district court, rather than addressing Davis’s allegation
               that the warrantless search was conducted upon the direc-
               tion of the Chief of Police, addressed and rejected Davis’s
               alternative allegation that the City had a custom of improper
               training or permitting the Chief of Police to override estab-
               lished protocols and standard operating procedures. But Da-
               vis stated a claim for relief against the City based on a single
               decision by a final policymaker.
        Id. at 620.
               On remand, the district court followed this Court’s man-
        date. It determined that there was actual probable cause to support
        Davis’ arrest and that even in light of Florida’s Stand Your Ground
        law, the facts as alleged did not “conclusively establish the suffi-
        ciency of the defense [of self-defense] so as to negate probable cause
        in the context of a false arrest claim.” (The court did not believe
        that the absence of self-defense was an element of murder under
        Florida law.) The district court once again dismissed Davis’ § 1983
        and state law claims that the officers arrested him without probable
        cause.
               The case was tried on the § 1983 claim that the search of his
        home violated Davis’ rights under the Fourth Amendment. The
        jury returned a verdict in favor of the City, finding that Chief Man-
        ley did not knowingly direct, participate in, adopt or ratify the un-
        lawful search of Davis’ home. Davis filed a motion for a new trial,
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                         5

        contending that, among other things, the district court had erred
        in refusing to give a jury instruction on a custom and policy theory
        of municipal liability. The court denied that motion. Among the
        reasons for the denial was its interpretation of our mandate as cast-
        ing out of the case Davis’ custom and policy theory of municipal
        liability, leaving only the “final policymaker” basis for potential li-
        ability. The district court’s decision not to give the requested cus-
        tom and policy jury instruction is Davis’ only basis for challenging
        the denial of his motion for a new trial.
              We will first address Davis’ § 1983 and state law claims that
        he was arrested without probable cause.
             I. THE DISMISSAL OF THE FEDERAL AND STATE
                       WRONGFUL ARREST CLAIMS
               We review de novo the district court’s Rule 12(b)(6) dismis-
        sal of Davis’ federal and state claims involving the arrest.
        McGroarty v. Swearingen, 977 F.3d 1302, 1306 (11th Cir. 2020). In
        doing so, we “accept[] the factual allegations in the complaint as
        true and constru[e] them in the light most favorable to” Davis. Id.
        (quotation marks omitted).
               A. What the Complaint Does and Does Not Allege
               Davis’ third amended complaint is the operative one. It al-
        leges that on the night of October 1, 2011, his wife called 911 and
        reported that her husband “had had a confrontation with their son
        and that she believed her husband had shot” him. The complaint
        does not allege that Ms. Davis told the 911 operator then, or told
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        6                       Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        any of the responding officers when they arrived at the scene, that
        the shooting had been in self-defense or that her husband had to
        shoot their son Timmy to protect himself.
               The complaint does allege that before the shooting occurred
        that night, Davis and Timmy had gotten into a heated argument
        outside their home. Timmy walked off down the street but re-
        turned home about fifteen minutes later and continued to argue
        with his father, who was trying to calm him down. In the upstairs
        bathroom, the fight turned physical. Timmy tackled Davis and re-
        peatedly punched him. Ms. Davis broke up the fight between her
        husband and son. Davis then went downstairs but was followed
        by Timmy. In hopes of scaring Timmy off, Davis “limped out of
        the garage and retrieved his firearm from his vehicle that was
        parked in the driveway.”
                According to his complaint, Davis was afraid, panicked, and
        fired a shot at Timmy, who was walking toward him. The com-
        plaint alleges that Davis fired the first “shot in Timmy’s direction
        to scare him off,” and then because that did not appear to work,
        Davis fired again with a different intent. The complaint states that
        Davis “fired a second time in self-defense.” That necessarily means
        that Davis is alleging that he fired the second shot deliberately, al-
        legedly with the intent to stop Timmy from seriously wounding or
        killing him. See Fla. Stat. § 776.012(2) (providing that a person’s
        use of deadly force is justified if that person reasonably believes his
        deliberate action is “necessary to prevent imminent death or great
        bodily harm to himself”). Davis does not allege that he acted
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        20-11994                   Opinion of the Court                                7

        accidentally in self-defense, if there even is such a thing. He doesn’t
        contend that he did not intend for his second shot to strike Timmy
        and seriously injure or kill him.
               And the second shot that Davis fired did hit Timmy in the
        chest, mortally wounding him.
               When they arrived at the scene a few minutes after Ms. Da-
        vis’ 911 call on the evening of October 1, the officers found Davis
        in the driveway, lying on top of Timmy.1 Timmy was bleeding
        from the chest. Davis had bruises and was bleeding, too, but he
        had not been shot. It was apparent that the two men had been in
        a fight and that the only one of them who had been shot was
        Timmy.
              When an officer asked Davis who had shot Timmy, Davis
        responded, “I did because my son beat me up and kept coming at
        me.” When the officer asked Davis where the gun was, he an-
        swered that it was in his front pants pocket. The officer handcuffed

        1 A “few minutes” after Ms. Davis’ 911 call, two officers from the Apopka Po-
        lice Department arrived at the Davis home, and “[w]ithin minutes” of their
        arrival the Chief of Police joined them there. The rank of the officers does not
        alter the standard for determining whether there was probable cause to arrest
        Davis. See Washington v. Howard, 25 F.4th 891, 902 (11th Cir. 2022) (“[T]he
        correct legal standard to evaluate whether an officer had probable cause to
        seize a suspect is to ‘ask whether a reasonable officer could conclude . . . that
        there was a substantial chance of criminal activity.’”) (quoting District of Co-
        lumbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 61 (2018)). For that reason and for ease of ref-
        erence, we describe the chief and the two officers who responded to the 911
        call as “the officers.”
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        8                      Opinion of the Court               20-11994

        Davis and took the gun from his pocket. While that was happen-
        ing, Timmy yelled at the officers, “Get away from daddy and leave
        my daddy alone!”
              Some neighbors had come over to the Davis house after
        they heard loud noises. Two of them knew that Davis and Timmy
        had argued outside the house, and thirty minutes later they had
        heard two gunshots, but it is undisputed that no neighbor wit-
        nessed the shooting or the events occurring immediately before it.
               The complaint acknowledges that while at the scene, one of
        the officers noticed a camera affixed to the garage and asked Davis:
        “I see you got cameras up here. Do they work?” Davis replied,
        “Yeah they do.” But the effort to obtain video evidence was
        thwarted through no fault of the officers. When asked if the cam-
        eras recorded, Davis answered: “Nah, it don’t record because I had
        the DVR hooked up to my computer and when the computer
        broke down and I got it fixed, I forgot to re-program [the DVR]
        back to my computer.” (Brackets in original.) The complaint does
        not allege that any surveillance camera recorded the shooting or
        the fight leading up to it.
              There is not now, nor has there ever been, any allegation in
        the complaint or elsewhere that Ms. Davis saw any part of the
        shooting itself. The allegation is that she saw “Timmy on the
        ground after he had been shot.” (Emphasis added.) The only two
        people the complaint alleges actually saw the shooting were Davis
        the shooter and Timmy the shooting victim.
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       9

                The complaint alleges that Ms. Davis was interviewed by an
        officer sometime the day after the shooting. During that interview
        she stated that before Davis shot Timmy, the two of them had been
        arguing and fighting upstairs in the home; Timmy was getting
        “progressively nastier and more vulgar”; and he had pushed his fa-
        ther. She heard Davis scream that his knees had been hurt. (It was
        a re-injury. Sometime before that night his knees had been injured
        seriously enough on his job that he had retired.)
                But the complaint does not allege that Ms. Davis told any
        officer at any time that when Davis went downstairs and got his
        gun and shot Timmy, Timmy had done anything that would have
        justified Davis shooting him. She could not have known if Davis
        shot Timmy in self-defense or out of anger or in retribution for the
        blows Timmy had inflicted on him while they were fighting. She
        was upstairs when Davis went downstairs. There is no allegation
        that she saw Davis get his gun out of his car that was parked in the
        driveway. She did not see him fire the first shot or the second one.
        She could not have known if the shooting was in self-defense.
        What she did know is what she told the 911 operator, which is that
        Davis “had a confrontation with their son” and then shot him.
               Timmy died at the hospital at 12:36 a.m. on October 2, 2011,
        about six hours after Davis had shot him. Following Timmy’s
        death, Davis was formally charged with first degree murder “in Or-
        ange County Felony Case Number 48-2011-CF-013424 in the State
        of Florida.”
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        10                         Opinion of the Court                        20-11994

               The complaint is not clear about whether the officers actu-
        ally arrested Davis at the scene on the evening of October 1 or
        sometime on October 2, after he had been taken to the hospital and
        interviewed further. Viewed in the light most favorable to Davis,
        the allegations are that he was arrested the evening of October 1 at
        the scene where he shot Timmy, not afterwards while he was at
        the hospital.2 That is, and apparently always has been, Davis’ po-
        sition. So for purposes of the probable cause analysis, that will be
        our position, too.3
                    B. The Governing Probable Cause Principles
              The existence of probable cause is an absolute bar to a § 1983
        claim of false arrest, Marx v. Gumbinner, 905 F.2d 1503, 1505–06
        (11th Cir. 1990), and to a claim of false arrest under Florida law,

        2 Davis remained at the hospital from the evening of October 1, 2011 until on
        or about October 7, 2011 when he was discharged and taken into custody at
        the Orange County Jail. He was released from jail on October 22, 2011, and
        remained on “home confinement” until February 14 or 15, 2013, when he was
        acquitted of the charge of murdering Timmy.
        3 Probable cause is measured at the time of the arrest, not at some time before
        or after. Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146, 152 (2004) (“Whether probable
        cause exists depends upon the reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the
        facts known to the arresting officer at the time of the arrest.”); see also, e.g.,
        United States v. Leonard, 4 F.4th 1134, 1146 (11th Cir. 2021) (“Probable cause
        is based on what a reasonable officer would think at the time of arrest –– not
        on what they could understand with the benefit of hindsight.”); Huebner v.
        Bradshaw, 935 F.3d 1183, 1187 (11th Cir. 2019) (assessing probable cause based
        on the facts known or available to the officers “at the time of the arrest”);
        United States v. Gonzalez, 969 F.2d 999, 1003 n.6 (11th Cir. 1992) (same).
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        11

        Bolanos v. Metro. Dade Cnty., 677 So. 2d 1005, 1005 (Fla. 3d DCA
        1996).
               Probable cause is “a fluid concept that is not readily, or even
        usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” District of Columbia
        v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 57 (2018) (quotation marks omitted). It is
        “incapable of precise definition or quantification into percentages.”
        Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003). A good place to
        begin a discussion of it is with a statement that Chief Justice John
        Marshall made a couple of centuries ago in Locke v. United
        States, 11 U.S. (7 Cranch) 339, 348 (1813). The Supreme Court
        quoted that statement with approval in Illinois v. Gates: “[T]he
        term ‘probable cause,’ according to its usual acceptation, means
        less than evidence which would justify condemnation . . . . It im-
        ports a seizure made under circumstances which warrant suspi-
        cion.” 462 U.S. 213, 235 (1983).
               Over the years caselaw has added some well-established
        principles to reinforce and refine Chief Justice Marshall’s definition
        of the term. One important principle that the Supreme Court has
        stressed is: “Probable cause is not a high bar.” Wesby, 583 U.S. at
        57 (quotation marks omitted); accord Kaley v. United States, 571
        U.S. 320, 338 (2014). We have ourselves held that probable cause
        “does not require anything close to conclusive proof or proof be-
        yond a reasonable doubt that a crime was in fact committed, or
        even a finding made by a preponderance of the evidence.” Paez v.
        Mulvey, 915 F.3d 1276, 1286 (11th Cir. 2019) (emphasis added).
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        12                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

                That is important because the preponderance standard,
        where it applies, means that the evidence must make a given fact
        or conclusion more likely true than not true. See United States v.
        Watkins, 10 F.4th 1179, 1184–85 (11th Cir. 2021) (en banc). Be-
        cause probable cause requires less than a preponderance of the ev-
        idence, it necessarily follows that probable cause does not require
        that it be more likely than not the person arrested for a crime is
        actually guilty of it.
                After all, probable cause can survive an acquittal. See, e.g.,
        Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797, 804 (1971) (holding that the Fourth
        Amendment’s reasonableness requirement was not violated by an
        arrest based on probable cause, even though the officers arrested
        the wrong person); Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 663–64
        (1987) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“Under the prevailing view in this
        country a peace officer who arrests someone with proba-
        ble cause is not liable for false arrest simply because the inno-
        cence of the suspect is later proved.”); see also Baker v. McCollan,
        443 U.S. 137, 145 (1979) (“The Constitution does not guarantee that
        only the guilty will be arrested. If it did, § 1983 would provide a
        cause of action for every defendant acquitted — indeed, for every
        suspect released.”); Gates v. Khokhar, 884 F.3d 1290, 1298 (11th
        Cir. 2018) (same).
              This Court has quoted with favor Judge Learned Hand’s
        wise observation that “the ‘reasonable cause’ necessary to support
        an arrest cannot demand the same strictness of proof as the ac-
        cused’s guilt upon a trial, unless the powers of peace officers are to
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       13

        be so cut down that they cannot possibly perform their du-
        ties.” Marx, 905 F.2d at 1507 (quoting United States v. Heitner, 149
        F.2d 105, 106 (2d Cir. 1945) (Hand, J.) as quoted in Draper v. United
        States, 358 U.S. 307, 312 n.4 (1959)); accord, e.g., Von Stein v.
        Brescher, 904 F.2d 572, 578 n.9 (11th Cir. 1990) (“‘Probable cause’
        defines a radically different standard than ‘beyond a reasonable
        doubt,’ and while an arrest must stand on more than suspicion, the
        arresting officer need not have in hand evidence sufficient to obtain
        a conviction.”); United States v. Pantoja-Soto, 739 F.2d 1520, 1524
        n.7 (11th Cir. 1984) (same).
                Probable cause exists if the totality of the circumstances
        known to the officers could persuade a reasonable officer that there
        is a “substantial chance of criminal activity” by the person who is
        arrested. Wesby, 583 U.S. at 57. A substantial chance is all that is
        required, “not an actual showing of such activity.” Id.; see also
        Washington v. Howard, 25 F.4th 891, 902 (11th Cir. 2022) (holding
        that the correct standard to evaluate whether an officer had proba-
        ble cause to arrest a suspect is to “ask whether a reasonable officer
        could conclude that there was a substantial chance of criminal ac-
        tivity”) (alteration adopted) (emphasis added) (quoting Wesby, 583
        U.S. at 61).
                Probable cause is not a technical concept that only the le-
        gally trained can apply. Actually, it’s designed to be just the oppo-
        site. The Supreme Court has reminded us that: “On many occa-
        sions, we have reiterated that the probable-cause standard is a prac-
        tical, nontechnical conception that deals with the factual and
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                20-11994

        practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and
        prudent men, not legal technicians, act.” Pringle, 540 U.S. at 370
        (quotation marks omitted); see also Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237,
        244 (2013); Gates, 462 U.S. at 231 (“Perhaps the central teaching of
        our decisions bearing on the probable cause standard is that it is a
        ‘practical, nontechnical conception.’”) (quoting Brinegar v. United
        States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949)).
                That means evidence of every element of a crime is not re-
        quired for a showing of probable cause. See Adams v. Williams,
        407 U.S. 143, 149 (1972) (“Probable cause does not require the same
        type of specific evidence of each element of the offense as would
        be needed to support a conviction.”); Gates, 884 F.3d at 1300; Jor-
        dan v. Mosley, 487 F.3d 1350, 1355 (11th Cir. 2007) (“No officer has
        a duty to prove every element of a crime before making an ar-
        rest.”). We have never imposed “a rigid requirement that an ar-
        resting officer must have specific evidence” of suspects’ “subjective
        intent” when their conduct “otherwise gives rise to probable cause
        to arrest.” Gates, 884 F.3d at 1300; Jordan, 487 F.3d at 1355 (“[N]o
        police officer can truly know another person’s subjective intent.”);
        United States v. Everett, 719 F.2d 1119, 1120 (11th Cir. 1983) (hold-
        ing that evidence of intent was not required for probable cause to
        arrest for passing or possessing counterfeit money). We have
        pointed out that arrests are different from criminal prosecutions,
        and “[p]olice officers are not expected to be lawyers or prosecu-
        tors.” Jordan, 487 F.3d at 1355 (quotation marks omitted). And
        “officers are not required to perform error-free investigations or
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       15

        independently investigate every proffered claim of innocence.”
        Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1229 n.10.
                Neither are officers expected to be judges. It is not unusual
        to find at the scene of a crime evidence pointing in different direc-
        tions, but “[a] law enforcement officer is not required to resolve
        every inconsistency found in the evidence.” Paez, 915 F.3d at 1286.
        That is especially true because on-the-scene officers are often
        “hampered by incomplete information and forced to make a split-
        second decision between action and inaction.” Crosby v. Monroe
        Cnty., 394 F.3d 1328, 1334 (11th Cir. 2004); see also Ryburn v. Huff,
        565 U.S. 469, 477 (2012) (reversing a court of appeals in an exigent
        circumstances case for “not heed[ing] the . . . wise admonition that
        judges should be cautious about second-guessing a police officer’s
        assessment, made on the scene,” and for not following the Court’s
        instructions that “[t]he calculus of reasonableness must embody al-
        lowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make
        split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncer-
        tain, and rapidly evolving”) (second alteration in original) (quota-
        tion marks omitted). The Supreme Court has been unequivocal
        about that. So has this Court.
               For example, last year we had before us a § 1983 case raising
        a Fourth Amendment claim that the probable cause supporting an
        arrest pursuant to a warrant “was later undermined by contrary ex-
        culpatory evidence.” Howard, 25 F.4th at 898. The perpetrator
        was shown a photograph of the plaintiff and identified her as a part-
        ner in the crime. See id. at 894–95. The plaintiff alleged that after
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        16                      Opinion of the Court                  20-11994

        she was arrested, the perpetrator saw her in person at the jail and
        told the investigating officer that the plaintiff was not the woman
        who had committed the crime with him. See id. at 895. We
        acknowledged that his later statement, if true, was exculpatory as
        to the plaintiff, but held that the officer “was not required to believe
        it or to weigh the evidence in such a way as to conclude that prob-
        able cause did not exist.” Id. at 902. We emphasized that “a police
        officer need not resolve conflicting evidence in a manner favorable
        to the suspect.” Id.
                In the same vein, when officers are making a probable cause
        determination they simply are not required “to rule out a suspect’s
        innocent explanation for suspicious facts.” Wesby, 583 U.S. at 61;
        see also Howard, 25 F.4th at 902 (quoting Wesby, 583 U.S. at 61).
        We have been nothing if not consistent about that rule. Thirty-
        three years ago we held in our Marx decision that “[the officers]
        were not required to forego arresting [the plaintiff] based on ini-
        tially discovered facts showing probable cause simply because [he]
        offered a different explanation.” 905 F.2d at 1507 n.6. And we em-
        ployed that same holding in our Huebner decision four years ago.
        See 935 F.3d. 1183, 1188.
               We are not alone. That same important principle about
        probable cause is the law of other circuits. See Loftin v. City of
        Prentiss, 33 F.4th 774, 781 (5th Cir. 2022) (“A suspect’s declaration
        of innocence is not a fact supporting a defense. And a soon-to-be
        arrestee’s naked assertion of self-defense under these circum-
        stances does not vitiate probable cause. Otherwise, every suspect
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                        17

        for a litany of violent crimes could avoid, or delay, arrest by simply
        proclaiming self-defense.”) (footnote omitted); Hinkle v. Beckham
        Cnty. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs, 962 F.3d 1204, 1221 (10th Cir. 2020)
        (“Even a plausible explanation does not require the officer to
        forego arrest pending further investigation if the facts as initially
        discovered provide probable cause.”) (citation and quotation marks
        omitted); Panetta v. Crowley, 460 F.3d 388, 395–96 (2d Cir. 2006)
        (“[T]he fact that an innocent explanation may be consistent with
        the facts alleged does not negate probable cause, and an officer’s
        failure to investigate an arrestee’s protestations of innocence gen-
        erally does not vitiate probable cause.”) (cleaned up); Curley v. Vill.
        of Suffern, 268 F.3d 65, 70 (2d Cir. 2001) (explaining that an officer
        is not required to “explore and eliminate” every plausible claim of
        innocence before making an arrest once he has “a reasonable basis
        for believing there is probable cause”) (quotation marks omitted);
        Ricciuti v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 124 F.3d 123, 128 (2d Cir. 1997)
        (holding that although the arresting officer could have believed the
        plaintiff’s version of events, claiming self-defense, he was not obli-
        gated to believe the plaintiff’s assertions that he was acting in self-
        defense or “make a full investigation into plaintiff’s state of mind
        prior to taking action”); Criss v. City of Kent, 867 F.2d 259, 263 (6th
        Cir. 1988) (While an officer can take a suspect’s explanation into
        consideration in deciding whether he has probable cause, the of-
        ficer “is under no obligation to give any credence to a suspect’s
        story nor should a plausible explanation in any sense require the
        officer to forego arrest pending further investigation if the facts as
        initially discovered provide probable cause.”) (citation omitted).
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        18                      Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

                This widespread, bedrock principle of probable cause law is
        particularly relevant in violent crime cases like this one where, as
        the Florida Supreme Court has pointed out, “suspects will often
        claim self-defense even when the facts would not appear to support
        such a claim.” Kumar v. Patel, 227 So. 3d 557, 560 (Fla. 2017).
        Given that, and “considering the well-established body of law de-
        tailing the responsibilities of law enforcement officers,” the Florida
        Supreme Court decided that, regardless of what the state’s Stand
        Your Ground statute says, the reality is that officers cannot be ex-
        pected to make on-the-spot self-defense determinations at the
        scene of a violent crime before deciding whether to make an arrest.
        See id. A more particular self-defense determination will have to
        await later proceedings, or as the Florida Supreme Court has put
        it, “a post-arrest and post-charging immunity determination [of the
        self-defense issue] . . . will be the best that we can do.” Id. (empha-
        sis added).
              Some of the most volatile circumstances that officers face
        and some of the most difficult decisions that they must make are
        on the scene in domestic violence cases. Probable cause determi-
        nations in that context often present special challenges coupled
        with the need for quick action to sort things out, to get the
        wounded medical treatment, and to protect everyone’s safety.
               The First Circuit explained it well: Deference to on-the-
        spot, reasonable judgments made by officers “may be particularly
        warranted in domestic disputes” because they “require police to
        make particularly delicate and difficult judgments quickly” and
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        19

        “violence may be lurking and explode with little warning.”
        Fletcher v. Town of Clinton, 196 F.3d 41, 50 (1st Cir. 1999); see also
        Terrell v. Larson, 396 F.3d 975, 979 (8th Cir. 2005) (“Domestic dis-
        turbances are notoriously volatile and unpredictable . . . .”) (quota-
        tion marks omitted); see generally Nieves v. Bartlett, 139 S. Ct.
        1715, 1725 (2019) (“Police officers conduct approximately 29,000
        arrests every day — a dangerous task that requires making quick
        decisions in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly
        evolving.”) (quotation marks omitted); Lozman v. City of Riviera
        Beach, 138 S. Ct. 1945, 1953 (2018) (“There are on average about
        29,000 arrests per day in this country. Dept. of Justice–FBI, Uni-
        form Crime Report, Crime in the United States, 2016 (Fall 2017)).
        In deciding whether to arrest, police officers often make split-sec-
        ond judgments.”).
               The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonable-
        ness, Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006), and we have
        stressed that in assessing whether officers acted reasonably “it’s not
        our role to armchair quarterback the officers’ decision,” United
        States v. Cooks, 920 F.3d 735, 742 (11th Cir. 2019); cf. Dempsey v.
        Bucknell Univ., 834 F.3d 457, 469 (3d Cir. 2016) (“[I]n reviewing
        probable cause determinations . . . the role of the courts is not that
        of the much-maligned ‘Monday morning quarterback’ . . . .”). In
        this area, “we cannot indulge ‘the 20/20 vision of hindsight.’”
        Cooks, 920 F.3d at 742 (quoting Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386,
        396 (1989)); see also Graham, 490 U.S. at 396 (explaining that the
        “reasonableness at the moment” standard applies in several Fourth
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        20                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        Amendment contexts, including the probable cause to arrest calcu-
        lus).
               Pragmatic deference in reviewing the actions of the men and
        women on the front lines of law enforcement is not a new concept.
        A half century ago the D.C. Circuit explained that: “Probable cause
        does not emanate from an antiseptic courtroom, a sterile library or
        a sacrosanct adytum, nor is it a pristine philosophical concept exist-
        ing in a vacuum, but rather it requires a pragmatic analysis of eve-
        ryday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal techni-
        cians, act.” United States v. Davis, 458 F.2d 819, 821 (D.C. Cir.
        1972) (citation and quotation marks omitted). Pragmatic deference
        was behind the Supreme Court’s instruction just five years ago that
        when reviewing an officer’s decision to arrest a suspect, we must
        avoid engaging in an “excessively technical dissection of the factors
        supporting probable cause.” See Wesby, 583 U.S. at 60 (quotation
        marks omitted).
                Given the principles applicable to probable cause determina-
        tions, it is little wonder that the Supreme Court has summarized it
        this way: “The probable cause decision, by its nature, is hard to un-
        dermine, and still harder to reverse.” Kaley, 571 U.S. at 339 (dis-
        cussing the standard in the context of a grand jury’s finding of prob-
        able cause). This is not one of those exceedingly rare cases where
        the probable cause decision is undermined to the point of reversal.
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                        21

         C. Is the Absence of Self-Defense an Element or Is Its Existence
               an Affirmative Defense, and Does it Matter in this Case?
               Davis contends that Florida’s Stand Your Ground law
        changed the probable cause calculus. He argues that because of
        that statute self-defense is no longer an affirmative defense under
        Florida law, but instead the absence of it is a requirement for prob-
        able cause to exist at the time of the arrest. In other words, he sug-
        gests that arresting officers must treat the absence of self-defense as
        an element of the crime of murder. See generally Brown v. City of
        Huntsville, 608 F.3d 724, 735 (11th Cir. 2010) (“Whether an officer
        possesses probable cause . . . depends on the elements of the al-
        leged crime and the operative fact pattern.”).
               Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, first enacted in 2005 and
        amended in 2014, provides: “A person is justified in using or threat-
        ening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using
        or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent
        death or great bodily harm to himself . . . .” Fla. Stat. § 776.012(2).
        That person is also “immune from criminal prosecution” for the
        use of such deadly force. Id. § 776.032(1). The statute defines
        “criminal prosecution” to include “arresting, detaining in custody,
        and charging or prosecuting the defendant.” Id.; see Dennis v.
        State, 51 So. 3d 456, 462 (Fla. 2010) (“Section 776.032(1) expressly
        grants defendants a substantive right to not be arrested, detained,
        charged, or prosecuted as a result of the use of legally justified
        force.”). And particularly important here, the statute prohibits an
        officer from arresting a person for using force “unless [the officer]
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        22                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used
        or threatened was unlawful.” Fla. Stat. § 776.032(2).
                In Rankin v. Evans, which came before the enactment of
        Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, we held that “[t]he existence of
        probable cause constitutes an affirmative defense to the claims of
        false arrest and imprisonment under Florida law.” 133 F.3d 1425,
        1436 (11th Cir. 1998) (emphasis added). But with a § 1983 claim of
        false arrest, “plaintiffs had the burden of demonstrating the absence
        of probable cause in order to succeed” on that claim. Id.
               Certain statements from the Florida Supreme Court’s opin-
        ion in Kumar v. Patel, 227 So. 3d 557 (Fla. 2017), which came well
        after the Stand Your Ground Act became part of Florida law, ap-
        pear to support Davis’ position that self-defense is no longer just an
        affirmative defense. But as Davis recognizes, those statements
        were dicta. The question in the Kumar case was not about the ex-
        istence of probable cause or the role it plays in a Stand Your
        Ground proceeding in a criminal case. The sole issue in Kumar was
        “whether an immunity determination pursuant to the Stand Your
        Ground law in a criminal proceeding controls in a civil proceed-
        ing.” 227 So. 3d at 558. That is the only issue on which the Court
        reached a holding. See id. at 561 (“hold[ing] that the Stand Your
        Ground law does not confer civil liability immunity to a criminal
        defendant who is determined to be immune from prosecution in
        the criminal case”).
               In the course of discussing the legislative intention to pro-
        vide for immunity from arrest as well as prosecution, the Kumar
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        23

        opinion contains this lengthy passage, which is quoted here in its
        entirety because some statements in it are best understood in con-
        text:
                      In both criminal and civil proceedings, the de-
              termination of whether a defendant is entitled to
              Stand Your Ground immunity has been made at pre-
              trial evidentiary hearings where the defendant must
              prove that the immunity attaches by a preponderance
              of the evidence. [Dennis, 51 So. 3d at] 460 (criminal
              case); Pages v. Seliman–Tapia, 134 So. 3d 536, 538
              (Fla. 3d DCA 2014) (civil case). We recognize that a
              pretrial hearing cannot afford the immunity purport-
              edly guaranteed by the plain language of this statute
              in the criminal context, for the simple reason that
              there appears to be no way to do so in most cases.
                     For example, the statute purports to grant im-
              munity from arrest, detention, and prosecution.
              § 776.032(1), Fla. Stat. But, in many situations, it
              would be impossible for law enforcement to secure a
              judicial immunity determination prior to arresting an
              individual suspected of killing or causing bodily harm
              to another (or attempting to do so). The law is clear
              that we expect officers to temporarily detain a person
              encountered under circumstances creating a reasona-
              ble suspicion of criminal activity. § 901.151, Fla. Stat.
              (2017). Then, if there is probable cause to believe that
              the person committed a felony, law enforcement is
              authorized to immediately effectuate the arrest, un-
              der section 901.15, Florida Statutes (2017), and should
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        24                     Opinion of the Court                20-11994

              clearly do so when there is probable cause to believe
              that a person has committed a serious crime of vio-
              lence against another. Cf. § 907.041(4)(c)5., Fla. Stat.
              (2017) (authorizing pretrial detention by court order
              when a suspect poses a risk of physical harm to the
              community). Probable cause to arrest for a crime of
              violence would include probable cause to believe that
              the suspect was not acting in self-defense; and, sus-
              pects will often claim self-defense even when the facts
              would not appear to support such a claim. This
              means that in most potential self-defense cases, a
              post-arrest and post-charging immunity determina-
              tion, made when a defendant’s counsel requests that
              determination, will be the best that we can do — pro-
              cedurally — considering the well-established body of
              law detailing the responsibilities of law enforcement
              officers, prosecutors, and judges.
        227 So. 3d at 559–60 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted).
               That passage can be read in two ways. One way to read it is
        that because “[p]robable cause to arrest for a crime of violence
        would include probable cause to believe that the suspect was not
        acting in self-defense,” id. at 560 (emphasis added), the absence of
        self-defense is an element of the crime. Which is to say that the
        language could be interpreted as meaning that the absence of self-
        defense is an element of murder under Florida law. But the Court’s
        use of the word “would” raises some doubt about that interpreta-
        tion. Why add a modal auxiliary verb? Why say “would include”
        instead of the more straightforward “includes”?
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       25

               One possible reason for using the tentative would is that the
        Court was rejecting the interpretation in which the absence of self-
        defense must be an element at the probable-cause-to-arrest stage.
        That interpretation is made more plausible by the very next thing
        the Court says, closely joined by a semi-colon, which is that “sus-
        pects will often claim self-defense even when the facts would not
        appear to support such a claim.” Id. As a result, the reasoning goes,
        “in most potential self-defense cases, a post-arrest and post-charg-
        ing immunity determination” of the self-defense issue “will be the
        best that we can do — procedurally — considering the well-estab-
        lished body of law detailing the responsibilities of law enforcement
        officers.” Id.
               To put it less formally, the Florida Supreme Court may have
        been saying in the Kumar passage that it knows what the Act liter-
        ally says, but that approach simply won’t work in “most” cases.
        And because it won’t, the self-defense determination in most cases
        must be made after arrest, which is when decisions about affirma-
        tive defenses are generally made. See, e.g., Paez, 915 F.3d at 1286
        (“[A]n affirmative defense to an alleged crime does not necessarily
        vitiate probable cause.”); Manners v. Cannella, 891 F.3d 959, 972
        (11th Cir. 2018) (holding that the plaintiff’s argument about the un-
        constitutionality of the fleeing and eluding provision of a Florida
        statute was “an affirmative defense, not one the officer was re-
        quired to consider at the outset of this encounter” during an at-
        tempted traffic stop); State v. Riehl, 504 So. 2d 798, 800 (Fla. 2d
        DCA 1987) (“In order to establish the probable cause necessary to
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        26                      Opinion of the Court                  20-11994

        make a valid arrest, however, it is not necessary to eliminate all
        possible defenses.”); see also Fridley v. Horrighs, 291 F.3d 867, 873
        (6th Cir. 2002) (stating that in the probable cause determination for
        arrest, a “police officer is not required to inquire into facts and cir-
        cumstances in an effort to discover if the suspect has an affirmative
        defense”). The absence of self-defense ordinarily is not an element
        of a violent crime to be determined at the time of arrest.
               It’s a close question whether the Stand Your Ground Act
        changed Florida law so that instead of self-defense being an affirm-
        ative defense, the absence of it became an element of every violent
        crime in which self-defense is claimed. But we don’t have to decide
        that question. Even if Florida’s Stand Your Ground law makes the
        absence of self-defense an element of murder, an officer could have
        reasonably concluded — based on the facts known to the officers
        at the scene of the arrest — that probable cause existed to believe
        that Davis did not shoot his son in self-defense. See Jordan, 487
        F.3d at 1355 (“No officer has a duty to prove every element of a
        crime before making an arrest.”). Davis’ allegations about what
        the officers saw and heard, the credibility determinations that they
        made, and the nature and extent of the investigation they con-
        ducted (or failed to conduct) do not plausibly state a claim that they
        lacked probable cause for an arrest.
        D. The Complaint Fails to State a Claim that the Officers Lacked
                               Probable Cause
               Davis contends that the facts alleged in his complaint show
        that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest him. He argues
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                        27

        that they deliberately turned a blind eye to exculpatory evidence
        supporting his self-defense claim. We disagree. Based on the al-
        leged facts known to the officers at the time of the arrest and the
        totality of circumstances they encountered when they arrived at
        the scene, there was probable cause to arrest Davis there.
               1. What the Officers Knew
               According to Davis, no reasonable officer could have
        thought there was probable cause to believe that the shooting was
        not justified by self-defense. He bases that contention in large part
        on his assertion that “the only evidence” the officers had when they
        arrested him was that he had claimed self-defense and he had some
        visible injuries.
                That assertion is unfounded, as the allegations in the com-
        plaint show. The inculpatory evidence began with Ms. Davis’ 911
        call that summoned officers to the scene of a shooting. She did not
        simply make a 911 call and ask that officers be sent to her house.
        She did not say, for example, “Send some officers, we have a prob-
        lem.” Or even, “Send some officers, we’ve had a shooting.” In-
        stead, what she told the 911 operator is, in the words of the com-
        plaint, “that Mr. Davis had had a confrontation with their son and
        that she believed her husband had shot” him. She did not tell the
        911 operator that her husband had to shoot her son or that the
        shooting was in self-defense. It has never been alleged that she said
        anything like that in the 911 call or to the officers when they arrived
        at the scene or at any other time.
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        28                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

               The fact that Ms. Davis’ 911 call arose from a domestic dis-
        pute and that she described the events leading up to the shooting
        as Mr. Davis having “had a confrontation with their son” is telling.
        She did not report that their son had a confrontation with her hus-
        band but just the opposite. The content of her 911 call was signifi-
        cant inculpatory evidence. Or so an officer reasonably could be-
        lieve.
                The inculpatory evidence continued to pile up once the of-
        ficers arrived at the scene minutes after the 911 call. They found
        Timmy on the ground with Davis lying on top of him. Not under
        him, not beside him, but on top of him. They found that Timmy,
        who was unarmed, had been shot in the chest. The officers also
        found that Davis had in his pocket the pistol he had used to shoot
        Timmy. And Davis admitted to the officers that he had shot
        Timmy.
               Of course, Davis claimed that he had fired the fatal shots in
        self-defense. We say “of course” because many of those who shoot
        others during or after confrontations claim that they did so in self-
        defense. See Kumar, 227 So. 3d at 560 (“[S]uspects will often claim
        self-defense even when the facts would not appear to support such
        a claim.”). It is an easy claim to make, especially when the only
        other eyewitness to the shooting is dead or dying.
                Davis’ argument that the officers were required to accept his
        self-serving claim of self-defense or to hold off on arresting him be-
        cause he made that claim flouts common sense, and more im-
        portantly, runs contrary to the holdings of the Supreme Court and
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       29

        this Court. As we have already discussed, the Supreme Court and
        this Court have consistently held in decisions spanning more than
        thirty years that where the initial facts show probable cause, offic-
        ers are not required to forego making an arrest because the suspect
        offers an innocent explanation for those facts. See supra at 15–16
        (discussing the Wesby, Howard, Huebner, and Marx decisions).
        Officers are not required to believe what the suspect says or to
        launch into an investigation of his claim. See supra at 14–16. Other
        circuits agree with that principle. See supra at 16–17.
               Based on the totality of the circumstances, an officer reason-
        ably could have concluded that there was a substantial chance that
        the shooting Davis confessed to was unlawful. See Wesby, 583 U.S.
        at 61 (The test for probable cause is whether “a reasonable officer
        could conclude . . . that there was a substantial chance of criminal
        activity.”) (emphasis added) (quotation marks omitted); accord,
        e.g., Howard, 25 F.4th at 902. That is enough.
              2. Davis’ Blind Eye Argument
               According to Davis, the officers “ignored evidence” that his
        use of deadly force “may have been justified.” He asserts that they
        “turned a blind eye to obvious and easily preservable evidence”
        that would have led any reasonable officer to believe that there was
        no probable cause to arrest Davis because he was the real victim.
        He argues that an officer may not choose to ignore exculpatory ev-
        idence that has been offered. True enough, as a general principle.
        But we see no blindness. Davis’ complaint points to none. He
        never specifies who offered what exculpatory evidence to which
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        30                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        officer; nor does he explain how, if that evidence is considered, no
        reasonable officer could have believed there was a substantial
        chance that Davis had committed a crime. All of the so-called “ex-
        culpatory” evidence that Davis argues was ignored either was not
        ignored, or points in both directions, or points in no relevant direc-
        tion, or otherwise falls short of negating probable cause when con-
        sidered in light of other allegations and undisputed evidence.
               As we said in Washington v. Rivera, “this is not a case in
        which [the officer] possessed some inculpatory evidence and some
        exculpatory evidence, and rendered herself willfully blind to the
        latter while devoting herself to believing in the former.” 939 F.3d
        1239, 1248 (11th Cir. 2019) (footnote omitted). Our Washington
        opinion acknowledged that the officer may have been negligent in
        her investigation, see id., but we found that “[s]he did not deliber-
        ately ignore proffered evidence of innocence.” Id. We distin-
        guished cases in which “officers consciously ignored information
        they already possessed that cast significant doubt on whether a de-
        fendant was guilty.” Id. And we concluded that the plaintiff in
        Washington had failed to show a violation of a clearly established
        Fourth Amendment right. Id. at 1245, 1249.
               Maybe Davis believes that the officers in this case turned a
        blind eye (or a deaf ear) to Timmy’s alleged demand, as the officers
        were taking the pistol from his father’s pocket and handcuffing
        him: “Get away from daddy and leave my daddy alone!” But that
        remark does not sweep away the totality of the circumstances sup-
        porting probable cause. The words Timmy is alleged to have said
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        31

        after being shot do not change the facts that he was indisputably
        unarmed, that Davis was indisputably the shooter, and that Davis
        indisputably shot Timmy in the chest, mortally wounding him.
                The complaint and Davis’ briefs to this Court emphasize the
        visible injuries he suffered during the “confrontation.” Davis as-
        serts that those injuries were exculpatory evidence that the officers
        ignored. But those injuries do not rule out probable cause. They
        might be used to paint Davis as a victim, but they also might be
        inculpatory evidence showing that Davis shot Timmy in anger and
        in retaliation for beating and injuring him.
                More importantly, even where officers see or hear some ex-
        culpatory evidence, the fact that they still conclude probable cause
        exists does not mean they ignored or turned a blind eye or deaf ear
        to the exculpatory evidence. The probable cause determination
        depends on the totality of the evidence, inculpatory and exculpa-
        tory. See Wesby, 583 U.S. at 57 (reiterating that probable cause
        depends on the totality of the circumstances); Howard, 25 F.4th at
        902 (“[I]nstead of focusing on a single piece of evidence in isolation
        and dismissing any evidence with an innocent explanation, we
        must look at the totality of the circumstances.”) (quotation marks
        omitted); Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1187; Paez, 915 F.3d at 1286 (ex-
        plaining that arresting officers making a probable cause determina-
        tion “are not required to sift through conflicting evidence or re-
        solve issues of credibility, so long as the totality of the circum-
        stances present a sufficient basis for believing that an offense has
        been committed”) (quotation marks omitted).
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        32                      Opinion of the Court                  20-11994

                Given the nature of human endeavors, in many situations
        where a crime has been committed there will be some contradic-
        tory evidence; it is not unusual for there to be evidence pointing in
        both directions. But it is plenty settled that before making an arrest
        a “law enforcement officer is not required to resolve every incon-
        sistency found in the evidence.” Paez, 915 F.3d at 1286. And in
        deciding whether probable cause exists, an officer is “not required
        to believe [exculpatory evidence] or to weigh the evidence in such
        a way as to conclude that probable cause did not exist.” Howard,
        25 F.4th at 902; see also id. (“[A] police officer need not resolve con-
        flicting evidence in a manner favorable to the suspect.”); Jordan,
        487 F.3d at 1355 (“No officer has a duty to prove every element of
        a crime before making an arrest.”).
                Decisions finding a lack of probable cause because officers
        turned a blind eye to exculpatory evidence involve evidence of-
        fered or given to officers that did not merely make it less likely
        probable cause existed but obviously and irrefutably established
        that it didn’t exist. Evidence that is speculative or ambiguous or
        dependent upon the self-serving statements of the suspect does not
        suffice to bring a case within that category. Instead, it must be con-
        crete evidence that obviously and definitively rules out probable
        cause: multiple tattoos on the perpetrator’s arm, which the suspect
        did not have, Cozzi v. City of Birmingham, 892 F.3d 1288, 1292–94
        (11th Cir. 2018); documents showing authorization to be in a
        house, which conclusively established innocence, Carter v. Butts
        Cnty., 821 F.3d 1310, 1320–21 (11th Cir. 2016); or a description of a
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                        33

        marijuana-seller in her twenties while the person arrested was in
        her forties, coupled with the officer’s own “serious doubts” that the
        person arrested was the perpetrator, Tillman v. Coley, 886 F.2d
        317, 318–21 (11th Cir. 1989). Accord Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1190 n.5
        (characterizing the tattoo evidence in Cozzi as “immediate and
        conclusive evidence that” the plaintiff was not the perpetrator).
                There are no allegations that the arresting officers in this
        case were offered and refused to consider concrete evidence that
        would have obviously and definitively ruled out probable cause,
        either at the time of arrest or during the additional investigation
        that followed. There was no exculpatory evidence of any kind
        known or offered to them that clearly and indisputably exonerated
        Davis. Whatever Davis may speculate about the information the
        officers could have uncovered if they had done more investigating
        at the scene, the officers were not required to refute his self-serving
        explanation that he had acted in self-defense. See Wesby, 583 U.S.
        at 61; Howard, 25 F.4th at 902; Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1188; Paez,
        915 F.3d at 1286; see, e.g., Loftin, 33 F.4th at 781 (“A suspect’s dec-
        laration of innocence is not a fact supporting a defense. And a
        soon-to-be arrestee’s naked assertion of self-defense under these
        circumstances does not vitiate probable cause. Otherwise, every
        suspect for a litany of violent crimes could avoid, or delay, arrest
        by simply proclaiming self-defense.”) (footnote omitted); cf. Ku-
        mar, 227 So. 3d at 559–60 (interpreting Florida’s Stand Your
        Ground law and explaining that “if there is probable cause to be-
        lieve that the person committed a felony, law enforcement is
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        34                      Opinion of the Court                  20-11994

        authorized to immediately effectuate the arrest . . . and should
        clearly do so when there is probable cause to believe that a person
        has committed a serious crime of violence against another”).
                Davis relies heavily on our decision in Kingsland v. City of
        Miami, 382 F.3d 1220 (11th Cir. 2004), but it is readily distinguisha-
        ble. In that case, the plaintiff alleged that the officers “turned a
        blind eye to immediately available exculpatory information” in an
        effort to “exonerate” one of their fellow officers. Id. at 1229 n.10.
        And she was right.
               We recently described in detail how “jarring” the Kingsland
        facts were. See Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1189. To understand just how
        different those facts are from the ones in this case, it’s worth repeat-
        ing our previous description of the Kingsland facts:
                       The plaintiff there, Misty Kingsland, was in-
               volved in a car accident with an off-duty police of-
               ficer, after which she climbed out of the wreck and sat
               down in a pile of shattered glass. Although a number
               of officers responded to the scene — ultimately as
               many as 20 — none of them approached Kingsland
               for a full 30 minutes, either to ask for her version of
               events or to inquire about her well-being. When they
               finally did, Kingsland told the officers that she had sus-
               tained injuries to her head and was dizzy and could
               not stand up. No one offered Kingsland any medical
               care — at the scene, or ever. Although one officer
               claimed to have detected an odor of cannabis emanat-
               ing from Kingsland and her vehicle, nobody ever
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                          35

              searched her truck, summoned drug-sniffing dogs, or
              found any pot. When Kingsland (presumably still
              dizzy and sick) failed her field-sobriety tests, the offic-
              ers put her in a cruiser and told her that she was being
              transported to the hospital for treatment and more
              tests; in fact, they took her into custody and drove her
              to a DUI testing facility. Once there, the officers ad-
              ministered multiple Breathalyzer tests, all of which
              came back negative — with a 0.000% alcohol content.
              Notably — and unsettlingly — in the face of the clean
              results, the officer completing paperwork asked a col-
              league what he should then write. Told to shift the
              focus back to marijuana — to write that Kingsland
              had a strong odor of cannabis emitting from her
              breath — the officer threw away the form he was
              writing on and started writing on a new form. After
              taking additional tests and providing a urine sam-
              ple — which also later came back clean — Kingsland
              was handcuffed, transported to jail (still no medical
              care) and charged with DUI.
        Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1189 (emphasis added) (citations and quota-
        tion marks omitted).
              Unsurprisingly, in Kingsland we reversed the grant of sum-
        mary judgment in favor of the officers, concluding that there were
        genuine issues of fact about whether their investigation was rea-
        sonable. 382 F.3d at 1225, 1230–34.
              In Huebner we explained that the Kingsland case was one in
        which the arresting officers not only failed to follow up and ignored
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        36                          Opinion of the Court                        20-11994

        exculpatory evidence but affirmatively misrepresented their inten-
        tions and may well have manufactured evidence to justify the ar-
        rest. 935 F.3d at 1190. And in Washington we explained that Kings-
        land did not “establish[] that every failure by an officer to discover
        ‘easily discoverable facts’ violates the Fourth Amendment.” Wash-
        ington, 939 F.3d at 1248. We stressed the jarring fact that a jury
        could have found in Kingsland that the officers fabricated evidence
        against the plaintiff. Id.; see also Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1189–90 (dis-
        cussing Kingsland as a case with “jarring” facts).
                The case before us is nothing like Kingsland. Davis’ com-
        plaint doesn’t allege any information that was “offered to” the of-
        ficers that they refused to consider even though it would have ne-
        gated probable cause. 4 The officers in this case did not manufac-
        ture evidence to create probable cause to arrest Davis. 5 They did
        not persist in exploring multiple bases for arrest until they finally
        found one they thought would work. Nor is there any implication

        4 In a sense, Davis did “offer” to the officers his own self-serving assertion that
        he had acted in self-defense, but as we have already discussed, binding prece-
        dent holds that in deciding whether to make an arrest, officers are not required
        to believe innocent explanations the suspect gives them. See supra at 15–16.
        A claim of self-defense does not establish innocence, and it does not negate
        probable cause. See supra at 15–16. Officers are not required to forego mak-
        ing an arrest until after they have investigated and ruled out any explanation
        a suspect offers them. See supra at 14–16.
        5 Davis alleges that an officer later made “false statements” in his application
        for a warrant to search Davis’ house, but he doesn’t allege that any of the of-
        ficers made false statements or manufactured evidence when they arrested
        him.
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                        37

        here, as there had been in Kingsland, that the officers attempted at
        the expense of the plaintiff to shield a fellow officer from liability
        or arrest. 382 F.3d at 1223 (pointing out that the other party in-
        volved in the wreck was an off-duty officer and that 20 other offic-
        ers ultimately showed up at the scene of the accident); see also
        Huebner, 935 F.3d at 1189 (describing the Kingsland facts).
                Davis’ allegations about bias focus on “personal animus and
        ill will” driven by “a deep-seated, bitter local youth football league
        and coaching rivalry” between Davis and the Chief of Police. That
        kind of subjective motivation makes no difference because “when
        reviewing an arrest, we ask whether the circumstances, viewed ob-
        jectively, justify the challenged action, and if so, conclude that ac-
        tion was reasonable whatever the subjective intent motivating the
        relevant officials.” Nieves, 139 S. Ct. at 1725 (alteration adopted)
        (emphasis and quotation marks omitted). “A particular officer’s
        state of mind is simply irrelevant, and it provides no basis for inval-
        idating an arrest.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). Nothing Davis
        alleges about the investigation would have negated the probable
        cause determination that the officers made when they arrested
        him. And whatever the officers might have decided about self-de-
        fense involved credibility determinations. The evidence the offic-
        ers found and learned about in this case was enough for a reasona-
        ble officer to believe, as these officers did believe, that there was a
        substantial chance Davis had committed a crime.
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        38                     Opinion of the Court                20-11994

              E. The Flaws in Davis’ Inadequate Investigation Theory
               Davis’ claims are based not only on the theory that the offic-
        ers ignored exculpatory evidence but also on the theory that they
        conducted an investigation that was so inadequate that it rendered
        the arrest unconstitutional. Davis hyperbolically asserts that there
        was “no investigation.” He speculates that if the officers had asked
        what Davis views as the right questions, of what Davis views as the
        right people, at what Davis views as the right time, the officers
        would have concluded that he was justified in killing Timmy, and
        therefore there was no probable cause to arrest him.
               But that theory guts the “practical, nontechnical” core of
        probable cause, Brinegar, 338 U.S. at 176; see also Harris, 568 U.S.
        at 244; Pringle, 540 U.S. at 370; Gates, 462 U.S. at 231, turning it
        into an impractical, expansive set of requirements for investigative
        procedures. It is also inconsistent with the facts and with prece-
        dent.
              1. Davis’ Theory is Inconsistent with the Facts
               Davis’ inadequate investigation theory is factually flawed.
        He insists that “the City could have determined Stand Your
        Ground immunity without a judicial hearing by interviewing sev-
        eral witnesses on the scene.” And he complains that the officers
        conducted interviews only after he was arrested. But, as Davis
        freely admits, those interviews were conducted. Either that same
        night or in the early morning hours of the next day, the officers
        interviewed Davis’ neighbors, his wife, their nine-year-old daugh-
        ter (who was home at the time of the shooting), and Davis himself.
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       39

        And, critically important, none of what any of those people said
        would have negated, or even seriously undermined, probable
        cause for the arrest.
                     a. The Interviews of the Neighbors, Who
                        Did Not Witness the Shooting
               It is beyond dispute that the two neighbors Davis insists
        should have been interviewed did not see the shooting. And Davis
        admits that both of them actually did give sworn statements to the
        officers. In their statements the two neighbors swore that: “Mr.
        Davis and Timmy argued outside and then Mr. Davis walked inside
        his residence while Timmy walked down the street,” and
        “[a]pproximately 30 minutes later, [the neighbors] heard two gun
        shots and saw Mr. Davis and Timmy walking out of their garage
        together.”
               Those allegations shed no light on the lawfulness of the
        deadly force Davis used against Timmy. None of what the neigh-
        bors allegedly said changes the probable cause calculus. The offic-
        ers knew that Davis and Timmy had been arguing, knew that they
        had come outside the house, knew that shots had been fired, and
        when they arrived, they saw that Davis was lying on top of Timmy
        and had visible injuries to his face. (Timmy, of course, had far more
        serious injuries, ones that proved fatal.) None of that was at issue.
        Questioning the two neighbors immediately after the shooting, in-
        stead of hours later, would not have changed anything.
               The self-defense question is whether, at the time he shot his
        son in the chest, a person in Davis’ position would have reasonably
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        40                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        believed that using deadly force was “necessary to prevent immi-
        nent death or great bodily harm to himself.” Fla. Stat. § 776.012(2).
        The issue is not whether a person in Davis’ position could have
        reasonably believed that deadly force was called for as retribution
        or vengeance because of what his son had already done to him.
        The doctrine of self-defense does not authorize lethal payback. See
        id.
                What matters to the self-defense question is what happened
        just before Davis fired two shots at Timmy. And no one alleges
        that either of the two neighbors saw what happened in the minutes
        before they heard those two shots. Instead, the complaint alleges
        that the two shots came about thirty minutes after the two neigh-
        bors had seen Davis and Timmy arguing outside.
                     b. The Interview of Davis’ Nine-Year-Old Daughter,
                        Who Did Not Witness the Shooting
               The complaint does not allege Davis’ nine-year-old daughter
        saw the shooting either. At one point, it alleges that she was “pre-
        sent during the incident,” but it never specifies that “the incident”
        included the actual shooting or the moments leading up to the
        shooting itself, instead of the earlier arguing and fighting. And it
        never specifies that she saw Timmy try to inflict serious injury or
        death on Davis. Given Florida law’s imminence requirement, see
        Fla. Stat. § 776.012(2), what happened just before the shooting is
        what matters to the self-defense question.
                There is a general allegation in the complaint that the daugh-
        ter’s interview with detectives “only served to corroborate [her
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                         41

        father’s] version of events,” but that allegation is far too conclusory
        to count under Iqbal and Twombly. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S.
        662, 678 (2009) (instructing that “a complaint must contain suffi-
        cient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that
        is plausible on its face’”) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550
        U.S. 544, 570 (2007)); Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 570 (explaining
        that the standard “requires more than labels and conclusions, and
        a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not
        do” because a plaintiff must move his claims “across the line from
        conceivable to plausible”); see also Holland v. Carnival Corp., 50
        F.4th 1088, 1096 (11th Cir. 2022) (holding that the plaintiff’s “con-
        clusory allegations” were “insufficient” to state a claim); Doe v.
        Samford Univ., 29 F.4th 675, 687–88 (11th Cir. 2022) (holding that
        the plaintiff’s allegations that certain “statements were ‘prejudicial’
        and ‘inflammatory’ are ‘not entitled to the assumption of truth’ be-
        cause these allegations are ‘labels’ and ‘unsupported by factual al-
        legations’”) (alteration adopted) (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678–79).
                The complaint specifies that when the “attack occurred in
        the upstairs bathroom,” Davis’ daughter was “just outside the
        home.” It also alleges that she saw Timmy in the garage (not up-
        stairs) with his shirt off, which would have corroborated Davis’
        own statement that Timmy was shirtless in the garage. Davis as-
        serts that Timmy had removed his sweatshirt and had thrown it on
        the ground, which Davis says that he interpreted as a “fighting ges-
        ture.” But even if that is true, that fact would not have prevented
        a finding of probable cause to believe that Davis did not act in self-
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        42                     Opinion of the Court                20-11994

        defense when he killed Timmy. Officers could reasonably believe
        that the act of taking off one’s shirt does not amount to imminently
        inflicting death or great bodily harm, and therefore does not negate
        probable cause. See Fla. Stat. § 776.012(2).
                     c. The Interview of Ms. Davis, Who
                        Did Not Witness the Shooting
               As for Ms. Davis, the complaint alleges that when she was
        interviewed by officers later, what she told them “only served to
        corroborate [her husband’s] version of events.” That general and
        conclusory statement fails the Iqbal and Twombly test for the same
        reason that the identical allegation about what their daughter told
        the officers also fails that test. See supra at 40–41.
               A later paragraph in the complaint does add some specifics,
        but none that would have precluded probable cause. It alleges that
        Ms. Davis corroborated her husband’s position by describing why
        Timmy was upset and how upset he had been, how the fight with
        his father started, how she heard it going on upstairs, and how she
        heard Davis scream that his knees had been hurt.
                Even if Ms. Davis had told all of that to the officers at the
        scene, they still would have had probable cause to arrest Davis for
        shooting his son. What she allegedly told them would not have
        changed the central facts that the officers already knew, which
        were: the two men had fought; after they fought, Davis shot
        Timmy in the chest; Davis admitted to shooting Timmy; and Davis
        still had in his pocket the pistol that he had used to shoot Timmy.
        Ms. Davis’ later statement allegedly would have added that Timmy
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       43

        pushed Davis first, and after the two men had fought, Davis had
        walked downstairs and shot Timmy. Her statement would in no
        way have prevented an officer from reasonably concluding that
        there was a substantial chance that shooting Timmy to death was
        not “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to”
        Davis. See Wesby, 583 U.S. at 57; Fla. Stat. § 776.012(2).
               The complaint also alleges that in her later interview Ms.
        Davis told the officers that after she went downstairs and saw
        Timmy on the ground after he had been shot, “he was apologizing
        to his father, telling Mr. Davis that he was sorry he had hurt Mr.
        Davis.” But the remorse Timmy allegedly expressed after he had
        fought with his father, had hurt his father’s knees, and had been
        shot by his father does not mean that no officer reasonably could
        have found probable cause to believe that Davis did not fire in self-
        defense. It does not mean that no officer could have reasonably
        found a substantial chance that Timmy was not inflicting or threat-
        ening to inflict serious injury or death on Davis when Davis shot
        him.
                     d. The Questioning of Davis Himself
               Davis argues that the officers should have questioned him
        further at the scene. They did question him there. In response to
        their questioning, Davis admitted that he had shot Timmy, and he
        admitted he still had on him the pistol he had used to do it. He told
        the officers that he had shot his son “because my son beat me up
        and kept coming at me.” In other words, he claimed he had shot
        Timmy in self-defense. If he had anything else he wanted to say to
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        44                     Opinion of the Court                20-11994

        the officers in his defense, all Davis had to do was say it. And, in
        any event, the officers were not required to believe anything he
        told them. See supra at 15–16.
                     e. The Decision to Rush Timmy to the Hospital In-
                        stead of Interviewing Him
               The final person Davis contends that the officers should
        have questioned is Timmy, who was dying when they arrived on
        the scene. Let’s be brief about this one. It was entirely reasonable
        for the officers to focus their efforts at the scene on disarming Da-
        vis, getting him off the top of Timmy, and getting the gravely
        wounded Timmy to the hospital. Which they did. Besides, even
        though he felt remorse about the events of that evening, there is
        no reason to believe Timmy would have told the officers that his
        father shot him in self-defense, and they would not have been com-
        pelled to believe him if he had. See supra at 15–16.
              2. Davis’ Theory is Inconsistent with Our Circuit Precedent
               Davis’ inadequate investigation theory not only cannot be
        squared with the facts, it also cannot be reconciled with our prece-
        dent. It conflicts with our precedent that an officer is not required
        to be able to prove every element of a crime before making an ar-
        rest. See supra at 14. And it conflicts with our precedent that an
        officer is not required to have specific evidence of a suspect’s sub-
        jective intent before making an arrest when the suspect’s conduct
        gives rise to probable cause. See supra at 14–15. And it conflicts
        with our precedent that an officer is not required to resolve every
        inconsistency in the evidence before making an arrest. See supra
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        20-11994                    Opinion of the Court                                45

        at 15–16. And it conflicts with our precedent that before making
        an arrest an officer is not required to believe, or to rule out, a sus-
        pect’s innocent explanation for suspicious facts. 6 See supra at 15–
        16.
                Davis’ investigative inadequacy theory also gives inadequate
        consideration to the fact that domestic violence cases are particu-
        larly difficult and tense situations requiring officers to make on-the-
        scene decisions quickly, often in confusing and evolving

        6 Davis’ theory of inadequate investigation also conflicts with the law of other
        circuits, which is consistent with our law. See Forest v. Pawtucket Police
        Dep’t, 377 F.3d 52, 57 (1st Cir. 2004) (“[T]he law is clear that once police offic-
        ers are presented with probable cause to support an arrest, no further investi-
        gation is required at that point.”); Torchinsky v. Siwinski, 942 F.2d 257, 264
        (4th Cir. 1991) (“It will, of course, always be possible to contend in court that
        an arresting officer might have gathered more evidence, but judges cannot
        pursue all the steps a police officer might have taken that might have shaken
        his belief in the existence of probable cause.”); Krause v. Bennett, 887 F.2d 362,
        371 (2d Cir. 1989) (“It bears repeating that probable cause does not require an
        officer to be certain that subsequent prosecution of the arrestee will be suc-
        cessful. It is therefore of no consequence that a more thorough or more prob-
        ing investigation might have cast doubt upon the situation.”) (quotation marks
        omitted); Schertz v. Waupaca Cnty., 875 F.2d 578, 583 (7th Cir. 1989) (“[O]nce
        police officers have discovered sufficient facts to establish probable cause, they
        have no constitutional obligation to conduct any further investigation in the
        hopes of uncovering potentially exculpatory evidence.”); Criss v. City of Kent,
        867 F.2d 259, 263 (6th Cir. 1988) (explaining that an officer doesn’t have to
        believe a suspect’s story even when it’s plausible and doesn’t have to “forego
        arrest pending further investigation if the facts as initially discovered provide
        probable cause”).
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        46                      Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        circumstances. See supra at 18–19. They are the prototypical ex-
        ample of cases in which we should heed our own caution that “we
        cannot indulge the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” and “it’s not our role
        to armchair quarterback the officers’ decision” at the scene. Cooks,
        920 F.3d at 742 (quotation marks omitted).
                If we had to choose one decision that shows how badly out
        of sync with our precedent Davis’ investigative inadequacy theory
        is, it would be Huebner. That decision came in a case involving an
        arrest for battery that grew out of a “sister-squabble” complete
        with “hair-pulling, wrist-scratching, face-punching, and rock-
        throwing.” 935 F.3d at 1185, 1189. Both sisters made 911 calls. Id.
        at 1185. A responding officer interviewed one of them and took
        her statement that the other sister had assaulted her. Id. Later, an
        officer arrested the other sister despite her protestations of inno-
        cence. Id. at 1186. He made the arrest without interviewing either
        of two witnesses the arrested sister claimed would corroborate her
        side of the story and exonerate her. Id.
               The arrested sister sued. One of her claims was that the ar-
        resting officer had “failed to conduct a reasonable investigation be-
        cause he relied solely on [the first] sister’s unreliable and uncorrob-
        orated statements and ignored exculpatory evidence.” Id. She ar-
        gued that the officer had “arrested her without the necessary prob-
        able cause” both “because he didn’t have reasonably trustworthy
        information indicating her guilt and because he failed to conduct
        an adequate investigation.” Id. at 1187.
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        47

                We held that the first sister’s 911 call and the statement she
        had given the officers provided probable cause to arrest the plaintiff
        sister. Id. at 1188. We rejected the plaintiff sister’s inadequate in-
        vestigation argument, explaining that the officer “was not required
        to forego arresting” her “based on initially discovered facts show-
        ing probable cause simply because [she] offered a different expla-
        nation.” See id. (quotation marks omitted). We emphasized that
        probable cause does not require officers to rule out a suspect’s in-
        nocent explanation for suspicious facts so long as the totality of the
        circumstances presented a sufficient basis for believing that an of-
        fense had been committed. Id. And we concluded that “the totality
        of the evidence” available to the officers “provided ample basis
        for concluding that [the plaintiff sister] had committed a battery as
        defined by Florida law.” Id. at 1188–89.
                Our decision in Huebner illustrates the flaws in Davis’ inad-
        equate investigation theory and spotlights just how far afield that
        theory is from the facts of Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1223–25, which he
        relies on. And from the facts of this case.
                             II. RECAP AND SUMMARY
               The Supreme Court has instructed us that a “probable cause
        decision, by its nature, is hard to undermine, and still harder to re-
        verse.” Kaley, 571 U.S. at 339. In this case Davis invites us to un-
        dermine the probable cause decision in more ways than one. He
        would have us raise the bar for probable cause above where the
        Supreme Court and this Court have set it. He would have us scrap
        the bedrock principle that officers making a probable cause
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        48                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        determination at the scene are not required to accept a suspect’s
        innocent explanation, such as a claim of self-defense, or to forego
        making an arrest until they have investigated and ruled out that
        explanation. He would have us armchair-quarterback and second-
        guess the decision of three officers who responded to a 911 call
        about a domestic shooting and arrived to find a gravely wounded
        young man lying on the ground with the shooter, still in possession
        of the firearm, on top of him.
                Davis asks us to assume the role of Investigator-in-Chief and
        criticize the investigation the officers made, finding it wanting
        based on his assertions that they should have done more or done it
        better. He assumes that if the officers had interviewed more peo-
        ple, or asked more questions of those they did interview, they
        might have found something to exonerate him. His invitation for
        us to post hoc superintend the investigation and accept his specu-
        lation about what might have been found runs directly contrary to
        binding precedent. And Davis never points to any probable-cause-
        precluding evidence that the officers would have uncovered if they
        had run the investigation the way he says they should have.
                As we have discussed, see supra at 34–37, our Kingsland de-
        cision finding an investigation constitutionally inadequate involved
        extreme facts that do not resemble those in this case. More on
        point is our Huebner decision, a domestic violence case in which
        the officer arrested the plaintiff despite conflicting statements, the
        plaintiff’s protests of innocence, and her insistence that two wit-
        nesses would exonerate her if only the officer would interview
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                       49

        them. See 935 F.3d at 1185–86. We rejected the Huebner plaintiff’s
        inadequate investigation claim. Id. at 1188–89.
               Davis has failed to state a claim under § 1983 that he was
        arrested without probable cause or that the officers’ investigation
        was constitutionally inadequate. See id. For the same reasons, he
        has failed to state a claim for false arrest under Florida law. See
        Rankin, 133 F.3d at 1435 (“[T]he standard for determining whether
        probable cause exists is the same under Florida and federal law.”);
        see also Harder v. Edwards, 174 So. 3d 524, 534 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015)
        (rejecting the plaintiff’s argument that an officer’s “investigation
        was too unreasonable to support probable cause, in that he con-
        ducted an inadequate investigation” before her arrest).
             III. THE DENIAL OF THE MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL
                           ON THE SEARCH CLAIM
               Davis also asserted a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim that the City vi-
        olated his rights under the Fourth Amendment because the officers
        conducted an unlawful search of his home. Davis alleged two the-
        ories of municipal liability arising from the search. One was based
        on the City’s alleged “custom and practice” of allowing Chief Man-
        ley “in individual investigations, to override established protocols,
        standard operating procedures, and clearly established state law ac-
        cording to his whim,” which caused a violation of Davis’ Fourth
        Amendment rights. Davis’ other theory of municipal liability was
        based on allegations about Chief Manley’s conduct as a “final
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        50                         Opinion of the Court                       20-11994

        policymaker” for the City. Davis alleged that Chief Manley “per-
        sonally and directly” led the officers to unlawfully search his
        house.7
               The district court granted the City’s motion to dismiss that
        claim, and Davis appealed. In that earlier appeal, Davis contended
        that the district court hadn’t addressed his allegation that Chief
        Manley was the final policymaker and that the Chief had directed
        the search of Davis’ home, making the City liable for the alleged
        constitutional violation regardless of any “custom or practice” of
        constitutional violations. Davis, 734 F. App’x at 618–19. This
        Court agreed with that contention. Id. at 619. We concluded that
        instead of addressing Davis’ “final policymaker” allegation based
        on Chief Manley’s role in directing the search, the district court had

        7 It’s well-established that a municipality cannot be held liable under 42 U.S.C.
        § 1983 on a theory of respondeat superior. See Scala v. City of Winter Park,
        116 F.3d 1396, 1399 (11th Cir. 1997) (citing Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436
        U.S. 658 (1978)). Instead, municipal liability must be based on a governmental
        policy or custom. Id.; see also Knight through Kerr v. Miami-Dade Cnty., 856
        F.3d 795, 819 (11th Cir. 2017) (explaining that a municipality or county “rarely
        will have an officially-adopted policy of permitting a particular constitutional
        violation” and so plaintiffs often “must show that the [municipality] has a cus-
        tom or practice” of permitting it and that the “custom or practice is the mov-
        ing force behind the constitutional violation”). We refer to that as custom or
        practice liability.
        Under certain circumstances, municipal liability may also be based on a single
        decision by a municipal official with final policymaking authority. See Scala,
        116 F.3d at 1399 (discussing Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469
        (1986)); see also Chabad Chayil, Inc. v. Sch. Bd. of Miami-Dade Cnty., 48 F.4th
        1222, 1229 (11th Cir. 2022). We refer to that as final policymaker liability.
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        20-11994                Opinion of the Court                        51

        “addressed and rejected Davis’s alternative allegation that the City
        had a custom of improper training or permitting the Chief of Police
        to override established protocols and standard operating proce-
        dures.” Id. at 620. We determined that Davis had “stated a claim
        for relief against the City based on a single decision by a final poli-
        cymaker.” Id. We left in place the district court’s determination
        about Davis’ failure to state a claim based on a custom or practice
        theory of municipal liability. See id. And we remanded for further
        proceedings consistent with our opinion. Id. at 623.
               Back in the district court, Davis’ unconstitutional search
        claim went to trial. Davis presented some evidence that the City
        had a custom or practice of allowing unconstitutional searches, but
        that evidence was still tied to Chief Manley as the final policy-
        maker. Davis called as a witness David Call, who had served as a
        lieutenant with the Apopka Police Department while Robert Man-
        ley was Chief of Police. (At the time of the trial, Call was retired.)
        Call testified that Chief Manley ran the police department and was
        the “policymaker.” He testified that Chief Manley was on the scene
        and “in charge” on the day Davis’ house was searched. And Call
        described Manley as “a hands-on-type chief” who “wanted to know
        what was going on” at the scene of crimes and investigations; he
        was “in charge.”
               Davis’ counsel asked Call if the police department had “a
        policy or procedure” of conducting unlawful searches before a war-
        rant was issued, and Call answered, “No.” But he went on to testify
        that officers unlawfully searched Davis’ home before obtaining a
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        52                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        warrant and that doing so is “the culture of the Apopka Police De-
        partment.” When asked what he meant by “culture,” he explained:
              It was common practice that a search warrant — if we
              obtained a search warrant or knowing we were going
              to get one, the house was entered and — not neces-
              sarily searched each and every time on each and every
              case, but it was a common practice to go ahead and
              go into those dwellings or homes or vehicles knowing
              that a search warrant was coming.
        He testified that Chief Manley was “aware of that” practice, and
        when asked whether Chief Manley would have known about the
        unlawful search of Davis’ home if he had been on the scene, Call
        answered, “Yes.”
                On cross-examination, Call testified, “I can’t say whether
        [Chief Manley] did or didn’t participate in the search” of Davis’
        home. He was impeached with his earlier deposition testimony as
        part of Davis’ criminal case where he swore that Chief Manley
        didn’t participate in the search of Davis’ home. On redirect, Call
        testified that his earlier deposition testimony about the chief’s lack
        of participation in the search was about whether the chief had gone
        into Davis’ home and actually “collected evidence.”
               Based on Call’s testimony, Davis sought a jury instruction
        on both a final policymaker theory of municipal liability and a more
        general custom or practice theory. Specifically, he asked for this
        instruction:
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        53

              Defendant City is not liable for violating Plaintiff Da-
              vis’ constitutional rights simply because it employed
              the law enforcement officers or officials, including
              Chief Manley. Rather, Defendant City is liable if
              Plaintiff Davis proves that Chief Manley, who was the
              final policy maker for Defendant City, ordered, di-
              rected, participated in, approved, or ratified the un-
              lawful search or that an official policy or custom of
              Defendant City caused the unlawful search.
              An “official policy or custom” means:
              (a) A policy statement or decision made by Defendant
              City’s final policy-maker, Chief Manley; or
              (b) A practice or course of conduct that is so wide-
              spread that it has acquired the force of law—even if
              the practice has not been formally approved.
              You may find that an “official policy or custom” ex-
              isted if there was a practice that was so persistent,
              widespread, or repetitious that the Defendant City’s
              final policy-maker, Chief Manley, either knew of it or
              should have known of it.
               The district court refused to give that instruction and instead
        gave another one that limited the basis for municipal liability to a
        final policymaker theory:
              [T]he City of Apopka is not liable for violating Mr.
              Davis’ constitutional rights simply because it em-
              ployed law enforcement officers or officials, includ-
              ing Chief Robert Manley, III.
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        54                     Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

              Rather, the City of Apopka can only be liable if Mr.
              Davis proves that Chief Manley, who was the final
              policymaker for the City of Apopka, directed, partici-
              pated in, adopted, or ratified the unlawful search.
               The jury returned a verdict in favor of the City, and after the
        court entered judgment on the verdict Davis sought a new trial.
        He contended, among other things, that the court abused its dis-
        cretion by declining to give his requested instructed on a custom
        or practice theory of municipal liability.
               The district court refused to grant a new trial. Referring to
        this Court’s mandate from Davis’ first appeal, the district court de-
        termined that we had reversed the part of its judgment based on
        Davis’ final policymaker theory of municipal liability for the alleg-
        edly unconstitutional search, while leaving in place the part of that
        judgment based on a custom and policy theory of municipal liabil-
        ity. The district court also noted that Davis’ summary judgment
        briefing lacked any “claims or evidence” about a custom or practice
        theory of liability. Custom or practice as a basis for the City’s lia-
        bility was “an issue not properly before the jury.” As a result, it
        would have been inappropriate to include a jury instruction on cus-
        tom or practice.
               Davis challenges that ruling, contending that the district
        court abused its discretion by declining to give his requested jury
        instruction on a custom or practice theory of municipal liability.
        The City contends that custom or practice liability was not
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        20-11994               Opinion of the Court                        55

        properly before the jury, and there was no reason to give Davis’
        requested instruction about it.
              “[W]e review for abuse of discretion both a refusal to give a
        requested jury instruction and a denial of a motion for a new trial.”
        United States v. Approximately $299,873.70 Seized from a Bank of
        Am. Acct., 15 F.4th 1332, 1336 (11th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted).
        A district court abuses its discretion by refusing to give a requested
        jury instruction “only when (1) the requested instruction correctly
        stated the law, (2) the instruction dealt with an issue properly be-
        fore the jury, and (3) the failure to give the instruction resulted in
        prejudicial harm to the requesting party.” Lamonica v. Safe Hurri-
        cane Shutters, Inc., 711 F.3d 1299, 1309 (11th Cir. 2013) (quotation
        marks omitted).
               The district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to
        give Davis’ requested instruction because the issue of custom or
        practice liability was not, as the court pointed out, properly before
        the jury. See id. In Davis’ earlier appeal, this Court recognized that
        the district court had rejected Davis’ allegations about a custom or
        practice of constitutional violations. See Davis, 734 F. App’x at 620.
        We held that Davis had “stated a claim for relief against the City
        based on a single decision by a final policymaker,” but we left in
        place the district court’s ruling about custom or practice liability.
        See id. And we remanded for further proceedings consistent with
        our opinion. Id. at 623. The district court, as it was required to do,
        followed this Court’s mandate when it determined that the issue of
        custom or practice municipal liability was not properly before the
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        56                      Opinion of the Court                 20-11994

        jury. See Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. v. Dolgencorp, LLC, 881 F.3d
        835, 843 (11th Cir. 2018) (“The law of the case doctrine and the
        mandate rule ban courts from revisiting matters decided expressly
        or by necessary implication in an earlier appeal of the same case.”)
        (quotation marks omitted).
                Not only that, but Davis points to no evidence other than
        Call’s testimony showing that a custom or practice theory of liabil-
        ity was part of the case. Davis’ theory of municipal liability was
        tied to Chief Manley throughout the case, and the jury instruction
        the district court gave properly reflected that. The instruction re-
        ferred to Chief Manley “ratif[ying]” an unlawful search, which was
        consistent with the testimony that Call gave. The jury specifically
        found that Davis had not met his burden of proving that Chief
        Manley “knowingly directed, participated in, adopted, or ratified
        the unlawful search” of Davis’ home.
                In light of this Court’s mandate and the evidence presented
        (and not presented) during the course of the proceedings, the dis-
        trict court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to give Davis’ re-
        quested instruction and in denying his motion for a new trial.
                                  IV. CONCLUSION
               The district court’s judgment is affirmed.
        AFFIRMED.