Court Opinion

ID: 9601068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:36:02.037633+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:54.951807
License: Public Domain

BYE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe an out-of-state arrest by a police officer violates the clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights of the arrestee. I also believe genuine questions of material fact remain in dispute about whether it was objectively reasonable for an officer in Deputy Murray’s position to have believed he was arresting Stephen Engleman in Arkansas rather than Oklahoma. I therefore respectfully dissent.
First, I take issue with the Court’s suggestion in footnote five that Engleman’s arrest did not violate a clearly established constitutional right. The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to be free from unreasonable seizures. And, that right is clearly established in the specific context of this case, because the recognition of the jurisdictional limits of an officer executing a warrant dates back to English common law, as the Court itself notes. This is not a situation where a peace officer licensed in the state of Arkansas merely crossed a municipal or county line. Rather, the officer executed an arrest warrant in a state where he knew he was unlicensed and had no authority. Would it comport with the *952Fourth Amendment for an Arkansas police officer to execute a warrant in, for example, the state of Maine? No. For the same reason, an arrest by an Arkansas officer in Oklahoma violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures.
Second, with respect to the impropriety of granting summary judgment in this case, the Court failed to discuss a relevant fact that would have been known to an objective officer in Deputy Murray’s position. A reasonable officer would have known Benton County, Arkansas, borders the state of Oklahoma and that the Engle-man home is located on the road that runs along the state border — in common parlance, a state-line road. See J.A. at 84. It is undisputed the Engleman home is located on the Oklahoma side of the state-line road, not the Arkansas side. See id. Thus, from the very moment of arriving on the scene, a reasonable officer would and should have questioned whether the home was in Oklahoma, notwithstanding the fact that its mailbox may have carried an Arkansas address. My common sense tells me a deputy sheriff, employed by a county which borders another state, would be aware of where the state line is, and further, would not reasonably assume homes located on the opposite side of a state-line road are still within his jurisdiction.
In addition, shortly after approaching the home, Deputy Murray was informed by the homeowners, Billy Jay and Ann Engleman, that the home was in fact in Oklahoma, not Arkansas. The Court dismisses this information, citing cases which excuse an officer from investigating the protests of a resisting arrestee. Ante at 949-50. Billy Jay and Ann Engleman were not resisting arrestees, however, but the homeowners of the very home in question. Deputy Murray was not entitled to simply ignore this information. Cf. Logsdon v. Hains, 492 F.3d 334, 343 (6th Cir.2007) (“[Officers ... may not off-handedly disregard potentially exculpatory information made readily available by witnesses on the scene” when executing an arrest); Sevigny v. Dicksey, 846 F.2d 953, 957 n. 5 (4th Cir.1988) (“[A qualified immunity analysis] must charge [an officer] with possession of all the information reasonably discoverable by an officer acting reasonably under the circumstances.... As the Seventh Circuit has recently put it in a ease quite similar to this one, ‘[a] police officer may not close his or her eyes to facts that would help clarify the circumstances of an arrest.’ ”) (quoting BeVier v. Hucal, 806 F.2d 123, 128 (7th Cir.1986)).
Finally, we are charged with the responsibility of viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Engleman and taking as true the facts he asserts. Wilson v. Lawrence County, 260 F.3d 946, 951 (8th Cir.2001). Thus, we must assume for purposes of resolving Deputy Murray’s qualified immunity claim that at least one of the three deputy sheriffs who arrested Engle-man not only questioned whether the arrest was being executed in Oklahoma, but actually knew that to be the case, for that is the inference a reasonable juror could make to explain why the officer said, “We got away with it once.”
Engleman avers that one of the three deputy sheriffs on the scene made this statement shortly before he was placed in Deputy Murray’s squad car and transported to jail. A reasonable jury could infer Deputy Murray was with Engleman when he was placed in Deputy Murray’s squad car — after all, executing the arrest was Deputy Murray’s purpose for being there. Thus, if we are truly viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Engleman, Deputy Murray was either present when the statement was made or was the officer who made the statement. *953Assuming Deputy Murray merely heard the statement, a reasonable officer in his position should have questioned whether he was acting lawfully if he suspected another officer knew the arrest was unlawful, particularly when coupled with his knowledge that the Engleman home was located on the wrong side of the state line road, and direct statements by the homeowners indicating their home was in Oklahoma. And clearly, if Deputy Murray was the officer who made the statement, he is not entitled to qualified immunity. Whether Deputy Murray heard, or made, the statement which indicated the declarant knew the arrest was unlawful, is a disputed issue of fact which should not be resolved on summary judgment.
I would affirm the district court’s denial of qualified immunity for Deputy Murray on Engleman’s Fourth Amendment claim. I respectfully dissent.