Court Opinion

ID: 9371464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-16 16:00:37.91489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:28.103339
License: Public Domain

Appellate Case: 22-6039     Document: 010110813819      Date Filed: 02/16/2023    Page: 1
                                                                                  FILED
                                                                      United States Court of Appeals
                       UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                         Tenth Circuit

                              FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT                        February 16, 2023
                          _________________________________
                                                                         Christopher M. Wolpert
                                                                             Clerk of Court
  STACY WILLIS, as personal
  representative of the Estate of Mitchell
  Everett Willis, deceased,

        Plaintiff - Appellee,

  v.                                                        No. 22-6039
                                                     (D.C. No. 5:18-CV-00323-D)
  JOHNATHON JOHNSON, individually;                          (W.D. Okla.)
  JAMES NEWKIRK, individually,

        Defendants - Appellants,

  and

  OKLAHOMA COUNTY DETENTION
  CENTER; BOARD OF COUNTY
  COMMISSIONERS OF OKLAHOMA
  COUNTY, OKLAHOMA; P. D.
  TAYLOR, Oklahoma County Sheriff,
  individually and in his official capacity;
  OKLAHOMA COUNTY SHERIFF'S
  DEPARTMENT; JOHN WHETSEL,
  individually; KODY WARD, individually;
  TIFFANY WILLIAMSON,

        Defendants.
                          _________________________________

                                       ORDER*
                          _________________________________

        *
          This order is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the
 case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its
 persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
Appellate Case: 22-6039     Document: 010110813819          Date Filed: 02/16/2023    Page: 2

 Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, TYMKOVICH, and CARSON, Circuit Judges.
                    _________________________________

        A district court’s qualified immunity ruling provides a limited exception to our

 general rule that a party may not appeal summary judgment denials. But our

 appellate jurisdiction depends on the appellant accepting the district court’s factual

 findings for purposes of the appeal.

        Defendants Johnathon Johnson and James Newkirk appeal the district court’s

 summary judgment order denying them qualified immunity. In their briefing and at

 oral argument, Defendants argued their version of the facts. At its core, their

 argument challenges the district court’s conclusion that Plaintiff Stacy Willis

 presented sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment. We thus dismiss their

 interlocutory appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

                                              I.

        We take the following facts from the district court’s opinion because we limit

 our qualified immunity review to considering “whether the set of facts identified by

 the district court is sufficient to establish a violation of a clearly established

 constitutional right.” Attocknie v. Smith, 798 F.3d 1252, 1256 (10th Cir. 2015)

 (quoting Morris v. Noe, 672 F.3d 1185, 1189 (10th Cir. 2012)). We do not consider

 whether the district court correctly identified the set of facts that the summary

 judgment record is sufficient to prove. Id.

        Law enforcement officers arrested Mitchell Willis for public drunkenness and

 disorderly conduct. Early in his detention, Willis started a physical altercation

                                               2
Appellate Case: 22-6039    Document: 010110813819        Date Filed: 02/16/2023    Page: 3

 outside a receiving cell while officers tried to serve him lunch. Several officers had

 to intervene to subdue him. Officers placed him in handcuffs and ankle shackles.

 Detention center medical staff cleared him to go to a cell. He walked there under his

 own power.

       Three officers, including Defendant Johnson, escorted Willis to his cell. Once

 inside the cell, they ordered Willis to lower himself to his knees. Willis complied.

 Johnson then assisted him to his stomach. At this point, Willis was face down in a

 prone position restrained by handcuffs and ankle shackles. The officers surrounded

 him to remove the handcuffs and shackles. To keep Willis on the floor Johnson used

 a three-point stabilization technique, which involves an officer placing his foot on the

 floor between a detainee’s neck and shoulder and lowering his shin across a

 detainee’s shoulder blade. During the uncuffing, another officer thought Johnson’s

 knee was in an incorrect position on Willis’s back and directed Johnson to reposition

 his knee. The officers removed the restraints and exited the cell.

       Over the next six hours, officers conducted sight checks every fifteen minutes.

 The detention center assigned Defendant Newkirk to perform them. He began just as

 Johnson left the floor. When performing sight checks, the Oklahoma County

 Sheriff’s Office trained officers to look for movement in the cell and other signs of

 life. Officers were then to document in a logsheet what the inmate was doing during

 each check.

       In his first sight check, Newkirk documented that Willis was awake. Newkirk

 then went to lunch and another officer completed sight checks in his absence. He

                                            3
Appellate Case: 22-6039    Document: 010110813819        Date Filed: 02/16/2023      Page: 4

 documented that Willis was “laying.” His next two entries record Willis as “sitting.”

 That officer told investigators that Willis was seated on the floor with his back and

 shoulders against the wall. Upon his return from lunch, Newkirk resumed the sight

 checks. He initially told investigators that Willis appeared to be lying on his stomach

 in the same position as when he left for lunch. At his deposition, Newkirk testified

 that Willis had moved closer to the door and was lying on his back.

       Video shows Newkirk completing his checks. For one sight check, he appears

 to look inside the cell three separate times. Several times, he kicked or knocked the

 cell door. He explained he would do this when a detainee appeared to be sleeping to

 get some sort of movement or reaction. Newkirk explained that if a kick or knock

 did not evoke a reaction, an officer should then call for a nurse and a gurney.

 Newkirk told an investigator that Willis did not respond to the knocks or kicks. He

 also told the investigator that it was difficult to determine whether Willis was

 breathing.

       Two hours after returning from lunch, Newkirk asked two others to look at

 Willis. One officer testified that Newkirk asked her to look at Willis’s position

 because he had been lying “in the same weird position.” The other officer looked in

 the cell and walked off without checking to see if Willis was breathing. Neither

 officer gave a definitive answer as to Willis’s condition.

       Three hours later, a detention center nurse arrived to dispense medication to a

 different inmate on the same floor. Newkirk told the nurse that he had been

 concerned about Willis for some time. The nurse found Willis unresponsive and told

                                            4
Appellate Case: 22-6039    Document: 010110813819        Date Filed: 02/16/2023       Page: 5

 Newkirk to call for a gurney. Detention center staff tried to resuscitate Willis but

 failed. Newkirk’s last seventeen sight check entries said “sleep.”

       The medical examiner concluded that Willis’s cause of death was blunt force

 trauma to his thoracic spine. An autopsy revealed a significant injury to Willis’s

 back. His spine was separated between the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae, which

 is about halfway from the top and bottom of the spine. His spinal cord was almost

 completely transected.

       After Willis’s death, his estate sued Defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for

 violating his constitutional rights. Plaintiff alleged that Defendant Johnson used

 excessive force during the removal of Willis’s handcuffs and that Defendant Newkirk

 showed deliberate indifference to his medical needs in the hours that followed.

 Defendants filed motions for summary judgment. In separate orders, the district

 court denied them.

       As to Defendant Johnson, the district court denied summary judgment because

 a review of the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff revealed a fact

 question existed as to whether Johnson acted reasonably. The district court first

 concluded that Plaintiff produced legally sufficient evidence showing that a

 reasonable detention officer would have known that placing excessive pressure on

 Willis’s spine as he lay on his stomach created a significant risk of spinal injury,

 which could lead to paralysis or death. In doing so, the district court pointed to

 evidence that the three-point restraint was not a necessary use of force. Plaintiff’s

 correctional expert opined that the three-point technique is used for stabilizing a

                                             5
Appellate Case: 22-6039        Document: 010110813819    Date Filed: 02/16/2023        Page: 6

 detainee during cuffing, not uncuffing. That report also cited testimony from the

 Oklahoma County Detention Center’s training director that he did not teach officers

 to use the three-point stabilization technique while uncuffing a detainee. The district

 court also concluded that Plaintiff put forth evidence suggesting Johnson was

 subjectively aware of the risks implicated by use of the three-point stabilization

 technique at the time of Willis’s detention. Finally, the district court found that

 Plaintiff’s evidence could show that Johnson’s knee contacted Willis’s back with

 enough force to cause the spinal injuries Willis sustained.

        As to Defendant Newkirk, the district court said that the facts taken in a light

 most favorable to Plaintiff showed Newkirk subjectively perceived Willis’s need for

 medical care, that Newkirk knew an excessive risk to Willis’s health existed, and that

 Newkirk disregarded that risk. Some of Plaintiff’s evidence suggests that Willis did

 not move positions for nearly six hours during Newkirk’s sight checks. He asked

 three people over that period to look in Willis’s cell. He knocked and kicked the cell

 door several times with no response. Newkirk had training to call for a nurse and

 gurney when knocking does not evoke a reaction. Yet Newkirk did not call for a

 gurney until after a nurse directed him to do so nearly three and a half hours after he

 first kicked the cell door.

        Both Defendants appeal their respective summary judgment rulings.

                                            II.

        We “typically do not have jurisdiction to review denials of summary judgment

 motions.” Cox v. Glanz, 800 F.3d 1231, 1242 (10th Cir. 2015) (quoting Serna v.

                                             6
Appellate Case: 22-6039    Document: 010110813819        Date Filed: 02/16/2023      Page: 7

 Colo. Dep’t of Corr., 455 F.3d 1146, 1150 (10th Cir. 2006)). But if the denial of

 qualified immunity to a public official involves abstract issues of law, the public

 official may immediately appeal the denial. Id. (quoting Fancher v. Barrientos,

 723 F.3d 1191, 1198 (10th Cir. 2013)). When that happens, we have jurisdiction to

 review “(1) whether the facts that the district court ruled a reasonable jury could find

 would suffice to show a legal violation, or (2) whether that law was clearly

 established at the time of the alleged violation.” Id. (quoting Roosevelt-Hennix v.

 Prickett, 717 F.3d 751, 753 (10th Cir. 2013)). “The district court’s factual findings

 and reasonable assumptions comprise the ‘universe of facts upon which we base our

 legal review of whether defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.’” Id. (quoting

 Fogarty v. Gallegos, 523 F.3d 1147, 1154 (10th Cir. 2008)). And when the district

 court “concludes that a reasonable jury could find certain specified facts in favor of

 the plaintiff, . . . we usually must take them as true—and do so even if our own de

 novo review of the record might suggest otherwise as a matter of law.” Id. (quoting

 Lewis v. Tripp, 604 F.3d 1221, 1225 (10th Cir. 2010)). Importantly, we lack

 jurisdiction to decide whether the pretrial record contains a genuine issue of material

 fact for trial. Id. (citing Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 320 (1995)).

       In their opening brief on appeal, Defendants complain that the district court

 assumed incorrectly that Johnson applied sufficient pressure to Willis’s spine to

 significantly injure it.1 Without support, Defendants contend that courts should not

       1
         Again, at oral argument, Defendants continued to challenge the facts as found
 by the district court. For example, Defendants argued that Johnson was following
                                            7
Appellate Case: 22-6039    Document: 010110813819        Date Filed: 02/16/2023     Page: 8

 limit themselves to considering facts only in favor of Plaintiff, nor are those the only

 facts that courts should consider. Defendants also argue that the district court failed

 to analyze the evidence from the perspective of a reasonable officer in a same or

 similar position. Defendants believe that the district court should have focused on

 Willis’s earlier combative actions and should have concluded that based on those

 actions, it wasn’t unreasonable for Johnson to anticipate or to be prepared for Willis

 to want to fight after loosening the handcuffs.

       Defendants’ argument amounts to a backdoor challenge to the district court’s

 factual analysis. As they did below, Defendants argue that their evidence establishes

 that Willis’s uncooperative and combative conduct justified Johnson’s use of force.

 But the district court held that Plaintiff presented evidence that, if true, would show

 Johnson used a technique that he knew was unnecessary to restrain Willis and that a

 reasonable officer would have known that technique posed a significant risk of

 paralysis and death. Defendants also continue to argue that Johnson’s knee could not

 have caused Willis’s back injury. But again, the district court found that Plaintiff put

 forth legally sufficient evidence to prove that Johnson’s knee contacted Willis’s back

 with force sufficient to cause the spinal injuries.2 Because Defendants chose to

 proper technique and denied evidence in the record that suggested that Johnson
 misapplied the three-point technique. Defendants did not believe whether he
 properly applied the three-point technique was a jury question.
       2
         At oral argument, when asked about the district court’s factual finding that
 evidence in the record suggested that Johnson’s knee contacted Willis’s back with
 force sufficient to cause the spinal injuries Willis sustained, Defendants’ attorney
 stated he didn’t believe such evidence existed in the record.
                                             8
Appellate Case: 22-6039     Document: 010110813819          Date Filed: 02/16/2023   Page: 9

 pursue on appeal whether a genuine issue of material fact exists on these issues, we

 lack jurisdiction to hear the appeal.

        Defendants engage in the same flawed argument with Newkirk. They argue

 that the district court disregarded the intervening actions of other detention officers

 and medical staff who had observed Willis laying, sitting, and awake while in his

 cell. They also argue that Plaintiff submitted no evidence to the district court that

 Willis’s medical needs were so obvious that Newkirk was deliberately indifferent to

 his medical care. Again, these evidentiary arguments fly in the face of the district

 court’s factual conclusion that Plaintiff produced legally sufficient evidence to show

 Newkirk subjectively perceived and then disregarded a significant risk to Willis’s

 well-being. And again, Defendants’ refusal to accept the district court’s factual

 findings is fatal to our appellate jurisdiction.

        Ultimately, Defendants’ presentation of the case assumes we will be their jury.

 We cannot do that. Because Defendants chose to grapple with the district court’s

 interpretation of the evidence rather than advance a legal argument, we have no

 jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal.

        APPEAL DISMISSED.

                                                Entered for the Court

                                                Joel M. Carson III
                                                Circuit Judge

                                                9