Court Opinion

ID: 9372023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-17 17:00:24.778921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:31.824658
License: Public Domain

Appellate Case: 22-2001            Document: 010110814434   Date Filed: 02/17/2023   Page: 1
                                                                                    FILED
                                                                        United States Court of Appeals
                                             PUBLISH                            Tenth Circuit

                           UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                      February 17, 2023

                                                                            Christopher M. Wolpert
                                 FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT                          Clerk of Court
                             _________________________________

  ROXANNE TORRES,

         Plaintiff - Appellant,

  v.                                                             No. 22-2001

  JANICE MADRID, a New Mexico police
  investigations bureau officer; RICHARD
  WILLIAMSON, a New Mexico State
  police investigations bureau officer,

         Defendants - Appellees.

  ------------------------------

  CONSTITUTIONAL
  ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER;
  INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE,

         Amici Curiae.
                             _________________________________

                         Appeal from the United States District Court
                               for the District of New Mexico
                             (D.C. No. 1:16-CV-01163-LF-KK)
                           _________________________________

 Kelsi Brown Corkran, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (Mary B.
 McCord and Seth Wayne, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and Eric
 D. Dixon, Attorney and Counselor at Law, P.A., with her on the briefs), Georgetown
 University Law Center, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

 Christina L. G. Brennan (James P. Sullivan with her on the brief), Brennan & Sullivan,
 P.A., Santa Fe, NM, for Defendant-Appellees.
                         _________________________________
Appellate Case: 22-2001    Document: 010110814434       Date Filed: 02/17/2023    Page: 2

 Before HARTZ, McHUGH, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges.
                   _________________________________

 HARTZ, Circuit Judge.
                          _________________________________

       Plaintiff Roxanne Torres appeals the summary judgment in favor of

 Defendants Janice Madrid and Richard Williamson, agents of the New Mexico State

 Police Investigations Bureau. The encounter between Ms. Torres and Defendants

 lasted only 14 seconds. But it has raised at least three subtle Fourth Amendment and

 qualified-immunity issues, one of which was resolved by the United States Supreme

 Court in this very case. In the Background section of this opinion we provide a brief

 description of the encounter and introduce the issues before us and how we resolve

 them. In the Discussion section we explain our disposition of the issues raised by Ms.

 Torres and briefly address Defendants’ alternative argument for affirmance.

 Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse the district court’s grant

 of summary judgment.

       I.     BACKGROUND

              a. Factual History

       About 6:30 a.m. on July 15, 2014, Agents Madrid and Williamson arrived at

 an apartment complex at 6100 Harper Avenue NE in Albuquerque. Traveling in

 separate unmarked vehicles with two other agents, they intended to serve an arrest

 warrant for Kayenta Jackson at her apartment and interview her about the check-

 fraud scheme for which she was charged. Defendants were dressed in dark clothing

                                            2
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434         Date Filed: 02/17/2023     Page: 3

 and tactical vests that identified them as police. It was still slightly dark out and a

 light rain fell.

         Ms. Torres was sitting in her Toyota FJ Cruiser. She had backed into a spot in

 front of the suspect’s apartment with her rear bumper against the curb and cars

 parked on either side. The vehicle’s engine was running and the doors were locked.

 Defendants approached Ms. Torres’s vehicle and Agent Williamson attempted to

 open the driver’s door. Defendants shouted commands at Ms. Torres to open her

 door, but they did not announce themselves as police officers.

        Ms. Torres stepped on the gas and headed forward across the parking lot. The

 witnesses were not consistent about the location of Agent Madrid in relation to the

 car—whether she was in front or to the side—when it began moving. Both

 Defendants fired their duty weapons at Ms. Torres. Agent Williamson fired eight

 shots and Agent Madrid seven. Neither Defendant was struck as Ms. Torres drove

 past. Some of Defendants’ bullets hit the front windshield of Ms. Torres’s vehicle,

 most struck the side, and five bullets were fired at the rear of Ms. Torres’s vehicle,

 one of them striking Ms. Torres in the back.1 Only about 14 seconds passed from the

 time Defendants first issued commands to Ms. Torres to the moment the last bullet

 was fired. Defendants fired their 15 shots over seven seconds.

        1
         Ms. Torres alleges in her opening brief on appeal that two bullets struck her
 in the back; Defendants neither challenge nor clarify that statement in their appellate
 briefing, and medical records seem to indicate that Ms. Torres was shot twice. But an
 expert retained by Ms. Torres testified that although there was some initial confusion
 on whether Ms. Torres’s second wound was the entry point of a second bullet or the
 exit path of the first, Ms. Torres was shot only once.
                                              3
Appellate Case: 22-2001      Document: 010110814434      Date Filed: 02/17/2023    Page: 4

        Ms. Torres managed to drive over a curb and away from the area. She was

 later treated for her wounds at the University of New Mexico Hospital. The next day

 she was charged by criminal complaint with two counts of aggravated assault with a

 deadly weapon upon a police officer. The complaint states that Ms. Torres drove

 “toward” Defendants. Aplt. App., Vol. I at 90. On March 31, 2015, Ms. Torres

 entered a no-contest plea to two lesser offenses: (1) aggravated flight from a law-

 enforcement officer under N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-22-1.1, and (2) assault upon a peace

 officer under N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-22-21.

               b. Issues Raised by the Lawsuit

        In October 2016, Ms. Torres filed a civil-rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

 against Defendants in the United States District Court for the District of New

 Mexico, alleging that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive

 force. On a motion for summary judgment by Defendants, the district court dismissed

 the suit, holding that because Ms. Torres had successfully fled the scene, she was not

 seized and therefore not entitled to Fourth Amendment protections. We affirmed. But

 the Supreme Court reversed. It said that it was irrelevant that Ms. Torres had not

 been apprehended, holding that “the application of physical force to the body of a

 person with intent to restrain is a seizure even if the person does not submit and is

 not subdued.” Torres v. Madrid, 141 S. Ct. 989, 1003 (2021). That decision resolved

 the first subtle issue in this case.

        After remand from the Supreme Court the district court again granted

 Defendants summary judgment. See Torres v. Madrid, No. 16-cv-01163, 2021 WL

                                             4
Appellate Case: 22-2001    Document: 010110814434         Date Filed: 02/17/2023    Page: 5

 6196994, at *9 (D.N.M. Dec. 30, 2021). That decision raises two subtle issues, which

 we resolve on this appeal.

       First, the district court held that Ms. Torres’s claims were barred under the

 doctrine of Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), because her claims against

 Defendants were inconsistent with her no-contest pleas to charges of aggravated

 flight from a law-enforcement officer and assault upon a peace officer. We reverse

 that decision because her pleas are not inconsistent with her claims that the officers

 used excessive force by firing at her after she had driven past them and no longer

 posed a threat to them.

       Second, the district court held that Ms. Torres’s claims were barred on the

 ground that Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. It observed that although

 the Supreme Court had held that a person who evades the attempted restraint of law-

 enforcement officers is nonetheless entitled to Fourth Amendment protections, that

 decision came after the shooting of Ms. Torres, so her cause of action had not been

 clearly established at the time she was shot. But that ground for the district court’s

 decision must be reversed because Defendants did not know Ms. Torres would escape

 when they shot at her, and facts unknown to officers at the moment they use force are

 not relevant to the qualified-immunity analysis.

       That leaves two further issues that were not addressed by the district court but

 which Defendants raise in seeking to affirm the summary judgment on an alternate

 ground: (1) Did Defendants use excessive force when they continued to fire their

 weapons at Ms. Torres after she had driven past them; and (2) was there clearly

                                             5
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434       Date Filed: 02/17/2023      Page: 6

 established law that their use of force was unreasonable? On these issues, we remand

 to the district court for further proceedings.

        II.    DISCUSSION

        On appeal Ms. Torres argues that the district court erred in its analysis of both

 Heck and qualified immunity, and Defendants argue as an alternative ground for

 affirmance that they are entitled to qualified immunity because they did not use force

 that was excessive under clearly established law. We review de novo the district

 court’s ruling on a motion for summary judgment. See Attocknie v. Smith, 798 F.3d

 1252, 1255–56 (10th Cir. 2015) (qualified immunity); Butler v. Compton, 482 F.3d

 1277, 1278 (10th Cir. 2007) (Heck). On summary judgment we review the evidence

 in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and resolve all factual disputes

 and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor. See GFF Corp. v. Associated

 Wholesale Grocers, Inc., 130 F.3d 1381, 1387 (10th Cir. 1997); Est. of Booker v.

 Gomez, 745 F.3d 405, 411 (10th Cir. 2014) (applying same standard in qualified-

 immunity context).

        A. The Heck Doctrine

        We first turn to Ms. Torres’s argument that her claims based on being shot in

 the back are not barred under Heck.

        Heck bars § 1983 claims where “a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would

 necessarily imply the invalidity of h[er] conviction or sentence.” 512 U.S. at 487

 (emphasis added). But “[a]n excessive-force claim against an officer is not

 necessarily inconsistent with a conviction for assaulting the officer.” Havens v.

                                             6
Appellate Case: 22-2001    Document: 010110814434        Date Filed: 02/17/2023      Page: 7

 Johnson, 783 F.3d 776, 782 (10th Cir. 2015). “For example, the claim may be that

 the officer used too much force to respond to the assault or that the officer used force

 after the need for force had disappeared.” Id. Therefore, in cases where there are

 multiple uses of force or a continuing use of force, Heck may bar the plaintiff’s

 claims as to some force but not all. See Hooks v. Atoki, 983 F.3d 1193, 1197, 1201

 (10th Cir. 2020) (although Heck barred plaintiff, who had pleaded no contest to two

 counts of assault and battery on a police officer, from bringing excessive-force

 claims based on four uses of force involved in subduing him, “[t]he fifth and sixth

 uses of force [we]re different” and thus not barred by Heck because plaintiff had

 alleged that he “no longer posed a threat”). The analysis of whether Heck bars the

 entirety of a plaintiff’s excessive-force claims thus requires “compar[ing] the

 plaintiff’s allegations to the offense [s]he committed.” Havens, 783 F.3d at 782.

       Recall that Ms. Torres pleaded no contest to two offenses: (1) aggravated

 flight, which requires “willfully and carelessly driving [her] vehicle in a manner that

 endangers the life of another person” after being instructed to stop, see N.M. Stat.

 Ann. § 30-22-1.1(A) (emphasis added); and (2) assault upon a peace officer causing

 the officer to “reasonably believe that [she] is in danger of receiving an immediate

 battery,” see id. § 30-22-21(A)(2) (emphasis added). Both convictions are based on

 Ms. Torres’s decision to step on the gas, placing Defendants in potential peril. Ms.

 Torres therefore properly acknowledges that her plea could “foreclose[] an excessive

 force claim based on shots fired by Defendants at the moment [she] initially pulled

 forward to leave the parking space.” Aplt. Br. at 28. But we have repeatedly

                                            7
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434        Date Filed: 02/17/2023     Page: 8

 recognized that a reasonable use of force—such as when an officer is subject to a

 direct physical threat—may become unreasonable even seconds later when force

 persists after the threat has passed. See Havens, 783 F.3d at 782; Surat v. Klamser, 52

 F.4th 1261, 1272 (10th Cir. 2022); Hooks, 983 F.3d at 1201. Ms. Torres’s plea,

 justified by the alleged danger in which she placed Defendants at the moment her

 vehicle advanced, is therefore not “necessarily inconsistent” with a claim that

 Defendants later used excessive force when, despite any danger having passed, they

 fired additional bullets into the rear of her vehicle, including the one that struck her

 in the back. See Havens, 783 F.3d at 782.

       Defendants contend that our decisions in Havens and Hooks compel a different

 result. We disagree.

       In Havens we affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the officer-defendant

 on the basis of Heck. See id. at 782. We recognized that a conviction for assault of a

 peace officer was not necessarily inconsistent with a later excessive-force claim

 against that officer if the force was disproportionate to the need or occurred “after the

 need for force had disappeared.” Id. But we determined that the § 1983 claim brought

 by the plaintiff—who rammed his vehicle into surrounding police vehicles before an

 officer shot him, later pleaded guilty to first-degree assault of the officer, and then

 brought suit alleging unreasonable use of force and denying all wrongdoing—was

 nonetheless barred under Heck. See id. at 778, 780–81, 783–84. The plaintiff’s

 complaint did not allege, and his opening brief on appeal did not argue, that the

 officer had “used excessive force in response to an attempted assault by [the

                                             8
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434        Date Filed: 02/17/2023      Page: 9

 plaintiff].” Id. at 783. Rather, the plaintiff contended that the use of force was

 unreasonable because he had done nothing wrong and had never intended or

 attempted to injure the officer—a “version of events [that] could not sustain the

 elements of attempted first-degree assault under [state] law and the factual basis for

 [his] plea.” Id.

        Here, Defendants argue that Ms. Torres also asserts her innocence and that her

 claims against them are therefore barred. But they misstate Ms. Torres’s theory of the

 case. Ms. Torres concedes that Heck precludes recovery for force used as she drove

 toward the officers. Instead, she bases her claims on the bullet that hit her—one,

 among others, that was fired at the back of the vehicle, allegedly after any threat had

 passed. Ms. Torres has therefore presented a theory of liability that is not inconsistent

 with her plea.

        As for Hooks, that opinion distinguished between separate uses of force to

 hold that only certain claims were barred under Heck. The plaintiff—who had

 pleaded no contest to two charges of committing assault and battery on arresting

 officers who wrestled him to the ground, tased him twice, and placed him in a

 chokehold—brought an excessive-force claim. See 983 F.3d at 1197–98. The district

 court dismissed the plaintiff’s complaint on Heck grounds, but we reversed the

 dismissal of the claims based on the second tasing and the chokehold. See id. at 1199,

 1201. Defendants argue that Hooks does not aid Ms. Torres because the only claims

 we allowed to go forward in Hooks were those based on uses of force after the

 plaintiff was subdued. They seem to suggest that because Ms. Torres was not

                                             9
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434         Date Filed: 02/17/2023     Page: 10

  subdued, they were entitled to continue using force until the vehicle stopped, so the

  shots fired after Ms. Torres’s vehicle passed them cannot be analyzed any differently

  from the initial shots. But in Hooks we emphasized the established proposition that

  an excessive-force claim is not incompatible with a conviction for assault where the

  plaintiff claims, for example, “that the officer used force after the need for force had

  disappeared.” Id. at 1200 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). When

  we reversed the dismissal of claims based on the two uses of force after plaintiff was

  subdued, it was not because the plaintiff’s capture was dispositive, but because the

  plaintiff had alleged that the justification for the use of force had disappeared.2 See

  id. at 1201. Contrary to Defendants’ argument, Hooks aids Ms. Torres as it permits a

  jury to parse Defendants’ shots into those uses justified by the threat posed by Ms.

  Torres’s vehicle and those uses not so justified.

         We therefore conclude that Defendants lack a Heck defense to Ms. Torres’s

  claims that they employed excessive force after the vehicle had passed the officers.

  The district court’s grant of summary judgment must therefore be set aside insofar as

  it relies on Heck. Should this case proceed to trial, the district court will need to

  instruct the jury on the appropriate scope of Ms. Torres’s claims. See Hooks, 983

  F.3d at 1201; Martinez v. City of Albuquerque, 184 F.3d 1123, 1127 (10th Cir. 1999).

         2
          Defendants also rely on McCoy v. Meyers, in which we distinguished conduct
  of the officers before and after the suspect was handcuffed, see 887 F.3d 1034, 1047–
  49 (10th Cir. 2018), to further support the premise that only uses of force after a
  suspect is subdued may be excessive. We reject this argument for the same reasons.
                                              10
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434        Date Filed: 02/17/2023      Page: 11

         B. Qualified Immunity—Ms. Torres’s Escape

        Our rejection of the Heck ground for summary judgment does not dispose of

  the case because the district court had an alternative ground for dismissal. It

  determined that Ms. Torres’s claims were barred by the doctrine of qualified

  immunity because, at the time she was shot, the law was not clearly established that

  the Fourth Amendment protects persons who successfully elude seizure. We must

  reverse because the court’s analysis missed an important consideration.

        The doctrine of qualified immunity in civil-rights suits under § 1983 protects

  “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Mullenix v.

  Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). It

  forecloses liability unless the applicable law was “sufficiently clear that every

  reasonable official would understand that what he is doing is unlawful.” District of

  Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted).

  When a defendant has asserted a qualified-immunity defense, the plaintiff must

  therefore show (1) that the defendant “violated . . . her constitutional rights,” and (2)

  “that the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged unlawful activity.”

  Huff v. Reeves, 996 F.3d 1082, 1088 (10th Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks

  omitted). “Ordinarily, in order for the law to be clearly established, there must be a

  Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision on point, or the clearly established weight

  of authority from other courts must have found the law to be as the plaintiff

  maintains.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

                                             11
Appellate Case: 22-2001    Document: 010110814434       Date Filed: 02/17/2023       Page: 12

        Defendants argue that they could not have violated clearly established law

  when they shot at Ms. Torres because it was not clearly established at that time

  (indeed, it was established by the Supreme Court only on its review of this very case)

  that the Fourth Amendment can protect those who successfully escape attempts by

  law enforcement to seize them. There is considerable appeal to this argument. But

  Defendants have overlooked the second subtle Fourth Amendment/qualified

  immunity issue raised on this appeal.

        The point overlooked by Defendants is that the factual basis for qualified-

  immunity analysis is “limited to the facts that were knowable to [Defendants] at the

  time they engaged in the conduct in question.” Hernandez v. Mesa, 137 S. Ct. 2003,

  2007 (2017) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). Facts Defendants

  “learn[ed] after the incident ends—whether those facts would support granting

  immunity or denying it—are not relevant.” Id.

        Hernandez was a civil-rights suit under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal

  Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), against a border-patrol agent who fired a shot

  across the border with Mexico and killed a 15-year-old Mexican national. See

  Hernandez, 137 S. Ct. at 2004, 2006. The Fifth Circuit held that the agent was

  entitled to qualified immunity on a Fifth Amendment due-process claim because it

  had not been clearly established that “an alien who had no significant voluntary

  connection to the United States” was entitled to Fifth Amendment protection. Id. at

  2007 (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court reversed

  because the victim’s nationality was unknown to the agent at the moment he pulled

                                            12
Appellate Case: 22-2001     Document: 010110814434         Date Filed: 02/17/2023     Page: 13

  the trigger and should not have been considered in assessing qualified immunity. See

  id.

         As we understand Hernandez, the district court should not have considered in

  its qualified-immunity analysis that Ms. Torres eluded custody after Defendants shot

  at her. That fact was unknown to Defendants as they fired at Ms. Torres and therefore

  was irrelevant to the analysis. We therefore must reverse the judgment of the district

  court insofar as it relies on Ms. Torres’s escape to establish qualified immunity.

          C. Qualified Immunity—Reasonableness of Force and Clearly
             Established Law

         There remains to be decided the merits of Ms. Torres’s claims that Defendants

  used excessive force when shooting at her through the rear window of her vehicle.

  Was that use of force unreasonable, see Cordova v. Aragon, 569 F.3d 1183, 1185–92

  (10th Cir. 2009); and if so, was the unreasonableness of force in the specific

  circumstances of this case clearly established at the time Ms. Torres was shot? The

  district court has not addressed those issues. Defendants ask us to resolve them in

  their favor as an alternative ground for affirming the judgment below. But our

  customary practice is to leave such issues for the district court to decide in the first

  instance. See Pac. Frontier v. Pleasant Grove City, 414 F.3d 1221, 1238 (10th Cir.

  2005) (“Where an issue has been raised, but not ruled on, proper judicial

  administration generally favors remand for the district court to examine the issue

  initially.”).

                                              13
Appellate Case: 22-2001    Document: 010110814434       Date Filed: 02/17/2023    Page: 14

        III.   CONCLUSION

        We REVERSE the district court’s order granting summary judgment to

  Defendants, VACATE its judgment, and REMAND this matter for consideration of

  whether Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity because their use of force was

  reasonable or there was not clearly established law that it was unreasonable.

                                            14