Chandra Turner v. City of Champaign ( 2020 )

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 19-3446
CHANDRA TURNER, as Special Administrator of the Estate of
RICHARD TURNER, deceased, and CHANDRA TURNER, individu-
ally,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
CITY OF CHAMPAIGN, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
No. 2:17-cv-02261-EIL — Eric I. Long, Magistrate Judge.
____________________
ARGUED SEPTEMBER 17, 2020 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 3, 2020
____________________
Before KANNE and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges. *
HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Richard Turner died during an
encounter with police officers in Champaign, Illinois. The
*Then-Circuit Judge Barrett was a member of the panel when this case
was argued but did not participate in the decision and judgment. The ap-
peal is resolved by a quorum of the panel pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(d).
2 No. 19-3446
officers were trying to detain him to protect himself and oth-
ers and to take him to a hospital for evaluation of his mental
health. With hindsight we can say that his death might have
been avoided. In this suit by Mr. Turner’s estate, however, the
central question is not whether officers used best police prac-
tices but whether they violated his rights under the Fourth
Amendment by using excessive force against him. The district
court found that undisputed facts, including a coroner’s find-
ings that Mr. Turner suffered no physical trauma but died of
a cardiac arrhythmia, showed that the officers did not use ex-
cessive force. We agree and affirm summary judgment for the
defendants.
I. Facts for Purposes of Summary Judgment
In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we view the
evidence in the light most favorable to Mr. Turner’s estate, the
non-moving party, giving the estate the benefit of reasonable
inferences that can be drawn in its favor. Alicea v. Thomas, 815
F.3d 283, 288 (7th Cir. 2016). The estate must rely on the offic-
ers’ own testimony and the surveillance and dashboard cam-
era footage that captured parts of the encounter. As a result,
almost all of the facts we recount below are undisputed. We
note where a fact is in dispute.
Mr. Turner was a homeless member of the Champaign
community and was well-known to police. On the morning of
November 16, 2016, someone called the police to check on Mr.
Turner. He was walking in the streets, speaking to passersby,
and rummaging through trash near the University of Illinois
campus. Sergeant Thomas Frost, the most senior officer in-
volved in this case, had known Mr. Turner for decades. He
first noticed Mr. Turner’s mental health deteriorate around
2010. Since then, police had often been dispatched to check on
No. 19-3446 3
him and had hospitalized him on numerous occasions with-
out a struggle. One of those incidents had occurred as recently
as April 2016.
When officers responded on November 16, Mr. Turner
seemed to them more disoriented than usual. Officer Young
arrived first and spotted Mr. Turner on the corner of Green
Street and Sixth Street. He was on the ground, rolling around
with his pants down. Officer Young parked, approached him
on foot, and asked how he was doing. Mr. Turner began flail-
ing his arms and babbling unintelligibly. Officer Young told
him not to yell at people on the street and then returned to his
squad car to wait for backup.
When Officers Talbott and Wilson arrived, Mr. Turner
walked past their car and jaywalked across Sixth Street. No
traffic was present as he crossed. On the other side of the
street, Mr. Turner pulled a construction tag from a building
but put it back when Officer Young yelled at him to return it.
Mr. Turner then crossed Sixth Street again. Officer Wilson,
who was a trainee under Officer Talbott’s supervision, ap-
proached and told Mr. Turner to leave the area. Mr. Turner
did not comply. Instead, he began walking back and forth
across the street several times. Seeing this behavior, Officer
Wilson asked aloud whether Mr. Turner could leave the area
given how disoriented he seemed. So Officer Wilson com-
manded Mr. Turner to approach and asked him what day of
the week it was. Mr. Turner responded incoherently. The of-
ficers decided to detain Mr. Turner for his own protection and
to send him to a hospital for mental-health treatment. Officer
Wilson called for an ambulance.
While waiting for the ambulance, Officer Young ap-
proached Officer Wilson and asked Mr. Turner to sit on the
4 No. 19-3446
curb. Mr. Turner instead turned and ran away across Green
Street. He kept running. Officers Young and Wilson decided
to pursue him on foot. Officer Talbott followed behind them.
Officer Wilson testified that they caught up to Mr. Turner half-
way down an alley north of Green Street. After unsuccessfully
commanding Mr. Turner to stop, Officer Wilson grabbed Mr.
Turner’s shoulder. That was the first physical contact between
the police and Mr. Turner that morning.
The parties dispute how to characterize what happened
next. They agree, though, that Mr. Turner immediately pulled
away and shoved Officer Wilson, knocking his radio off his
uniform. A struggle ensued, during which it is undisputed
that Mr. Turner was also grabbing at Officer Young with both
hands. Officers Young and Wilson both testified that they re-
sponded by pulling Mr. Turner to the ground and turning him
on his stomach. Then, while trying to handcuff him, Officer
Young pressed his right knee onto Mr. Turner’s shoulder to
prevent him from moving. Officer Talbott then arrived and at-
tempted to control Mr. Turner’s flailing legs. He placed his
knees on one leg and his hands on the other. Working to-
gether, the three officers were eventually able to handcuff Mr.
Turner, but he was still kicking his legs.
As these officers were struggling to restrain Mr. Turner,
Sergeant Frost heard the radio chatter and decided to help.
Video from Sergeant Frost’s dashboard camera shows him
driving to the scene. By the time Mr. Turner was handcuffed,
Sergeant Frost was close. He radioed to ask where the officers
had ended up. Officer Talbott told him and asked him to bring
a hobble—a strap used to restrain a person’s legs. Sergeant
Frost arrived with the hobble, which he and Officer Talbott
then placed around Mr. Turner’s legs. At first Mr. Turner
No. 19-3446 5
kicked out of the hobble, so the officers secured it a second
time.
None of this physical contact between Mr. Turner and the
officers was captured on video. But the estate does not dispute
that Mr. Turner continued to struggle against the officers dur-
ing the entire process. The estate argues that Mr. Turner re-
acted this way because he was likely having difficulty breath-
ing.
On the audio recording, shortly after securing the hobble,
Sergeant Frost asked, “is he still breathing?” The officers
quickly determined that Mr. Turner was not breathing. They
rushed to get a portable defibrillator from a patrol car. Once
the defibrillator was activated, it advised the officers not to
administer a shock but to begin CPR. Around this time, the
ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over. Less than
three minutes elapsed from the moment the officers noticed
that Mr. Turner was not breathing until the paramedics ar-
rived. The paramedics had the officers remove the handcuffs
and hobble, and they rushed Mr. Turner to the hospital. They
tried to revive him in the ambulance, but he never regained a
pulse.
An autopsy later determined that Mr. Turner died from
cardiac arrhythmia—his heart gave out after beating too fast
during the encounter. The autopsy also showed that this ar-
rhythmia was likely caused by an underlying condition. Mr.
Turner had an enlarged heart and insufficient blood supply to
one of his heart’s chambers. The medical evidence showed no
other causes of death. There were no signs of suffocation or
trauma to Mr. Turner’s body.
6 No. 19-3446
II. Procedural History
After Mr. Turner’s death, his sister Chandra Turner filed
this lawsuit as administrator of his estate. Seeking relief under
42 U.S.C. § 1983, the estate alleged Fourth Amendment viola-
tions by Officers Young, Wilson, and Talbott for using exces-
sive force against Mr. Turner and by Officer Talbott and Ser-
geant Frost for failing to intervene. The estate also asserted
state-law claims for wrongful death, battery, and intentional
infliction of emotional distress against Young, Wilson, Talbott,
and Frost. Finally, the complaint sought to hold the City of
Champaign liable under state law through respondeat supe-
rior and indemnification, and under federal law under Monell
v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978) (local
government may be liable for damages under § 1983 for inju-
ries caused by unconstitutional policy, custom, or practice).
The district court granted summary judgment to the de-
fendants on all counts. Relying primarily on Fitzgerald v. San-
toro, 707 F.3d 725 (7th Cir. 2013), the district court held that
the officers acted legally to detain Mr. Turner and used rea-
sonable force in response to his resistance. The court also held
that qualified immunity would protect the officers even if
they acted unreasonably because the case so closely resembles
Estate of Phillips v. Milwaukee, 123 F.3d 586 (7th Cir. 1997),
where we affirmed summary judgment for the officers in a
similarly unfortunate fatal encounter between police and a
mentally ill person who violently resisted efforts to detain
him. The district court also dismissed the estate’s state-law
claims because Illinois law provides absolute tort immunity
for officers carrying out protective functions, as distinct from
law-enforcement functions.
No. 19-3446 7
We affirm. Reviewing the district court’s decision de novo,
e.g., Alicea, 815 F.3d at 288, we agree that this case closely mir-
rors Estate of Phillips and that the undisputed facts show that
the officers here used reasonable force. The district court also
correctly concluded that Illinois law bars the plaintiff’s state
tort claims.
III. Fourth Amendment Claims for Excessive Force
The estate's Fourth Amendment claims fail because the of-
ficers did not use excessive force. A claim for excessive force
under § 1983 invokes the Fourth Amendment’s protection
against unreasonable seizures. The reasonableness standard
is objective, “judged from the perspective of a reasonable of-
ficer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hind-
sight.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989). The Graham
standard is fact-intensive, asking whether each use of force
was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances, “in-
cluding the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect
poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or oth-
ers, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting
to evade arrest by flight.” Id. “If the suspect is mentally ill, the
officer’s awareness of his mental illness is also a factor.” Cyrus
v. Town of Mukwonago, 624 F.3d 856, 862 (7th Cir. 2010).
This case raises two distinct issues under this standard.
The first is whether Officer Wilson’s initial decision to grab
Mr. Turner’s shoulder was reasonable, which depends on
whether the officers’ decision to detain Mr. Turner for his own
protection was supported by probable cause. The second is
whether, in light of Mr. Turner’s resistance, it was reasonable
to pull him to the ground, pin down his shoulder and legs,
and handcuff and hobble him. We address these in turn.
8 No. 19-3446
A. Protective Detention of Mr. Turner
“[A] mental-health seizure is lawful if there is probable
cause to believe that the person is a danger to herself or oth-
ers.” Bruce v. Guernsey, 777 F.3d 872, 876 (7th Cir. 2015). Here,
Mr. Turner was repeatedly crossing both Sixth and Green
Streets while seemingly unaware of his surroundings. The
available video shows that when Mr. Turner crossed the
streets, there was little traffic passing. But the officers’ impres-
sion that Mr. Turner was more disoriented than usual, cou-
pled with his unintelligible speech and repeated forays into
the street, gave the officers probable cause to detain him for
his own safety and that of others. The estate’s expert witness
on policing acknowledged this probable cause in his deposi-
tion. Dkt. 47-12 at 166–67. We have found probable cause for
protective detention in other cases with less compelling evi-
dence of danger. See, e.g., Bruce, 777 F.3d at 876–77 (affirming
dismissal of Fourth Amendment claim against officer who,
based on dispatcher’s report that plaintiff was possibly sui-
cidal, detained her until another officer arrived); Fitzgerald,
707 F.3d at 733 (affirming summary judgment for defendants;
dispatcher told officers detainee was suicidal, detainee ap-
peared intoxicated and admitted she was on antidepressants
and going through a difficult period, but also told police at
scene that she was not in fact suicidal); Estate of Phillips, 123
F.3d at 592 (affirming summary judgment for defendants
where man in hotel room gave unintelligible answers to po-
lice and was clenching ballpoint pens in both hands).
We are not saying that Officer Wilson and Young’s deci-
sion to chase Mr. Turner down the alley exhibited best police
practices. The estate argues that Mr. Turner’s death might
have been avoided if the officers had instead continued to
No. 19-3446 9
monitor him from a distance and waited until the ambulance
arrived, as they had on prior occasions. The Champaign Po-
lice Department’s own policies train officers responding to
calls involving persons with mental illnesses to “consider[]
first the least restrictive environment possible to meet the
needs of the individual and the community.” Dkt. 62-11 (Ex.
12) at 41.13.2(A)(1). This approach can include “officer inter-
vention as a calm third party, to reduce tension and hostility,
and to restore order without unnecessary force.” Id. at
41.14.2(B)(1).
With the benefit of hindsight, one can say that perhaps
such an approach might have saved Mr. Turner’s life. But po-
lice training policies and best practices, while relevant, do not
define what is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
United States v. Brown, 871 F.3d 532, 536–37 (7th Cir. 2017)
(“The excessive-force inquiry is governed by constitutional
principles, not police-department regulations… . Put another
way, a police officer’s compliance with the rules of his depart-
ment is neither sufficient nor necessary to satisfy the Fourth
Amendment’s reasonableness requirement.”); see also Mays
v. Dart, 974 F.3d 810, 823−24 (7th Cir. 2020) (discussing Brown
and expert testimony on police practices and standards for
disease prevention). Here, once the officers had probable
cause to detain Mr. Turner, they had the constitutional power
to do so. The officers’ decision to detain Mr. Turner did not
violate the Fourth Amendment.
With the lawful power to detain Mr. Turner came the legal
power to use reasonable force to accomplish the detention.
Graham, 490 U.S. at 396 (“[T]he right to make an arrest or in-
vestigatory stop necessarily carries with it the right to use
some degree of physical coercion or threat thereof to effect
10 No. 19-3446
it.”); United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 702 (1983). That prin-
ciple applies to protective detention as well. Graham, 490 U.S.
at 395 (Fourth Amendment standard applies to all claims for
excessive force arising from any type of seizure of free citi-
zen); Bruce, 777 F.3d at 875 (“The Fourth Amendment of the
Constitution governs mental-health seizures.”). Accordingly,
Officer Wilson did not violate the Fourth Amendment when
he caught up with Mr. Turner and grabbed his shoulder to
stop his flight. Since Mr. Turner never submitted to the au-
thority of spoken police commands, this physical contact was
the moment police first seized him. See United States v. Griffin,
652 F.3d 793, 800 (7th Cir. 2011); see generally California v. Ho-
dari D., 499 U.S. 621, 625−26 (1991).
B. Bringing Mr. Turner to the Ground and Restraining Him
Mr. Turner did not respond to the first physical contact by
complying with the officers’ commands. The undisputed facts
show that he resisted the officers actively and continually. He
was not offering merely passive resistance to lawful deten-
tion; in such cases significant force can violate the Fourth
Amendment. Unlike when someone is passively refusing to
move or follow lawful commands, the police may use signifi-
cant force to subdue someone who is actively resisting lawful
detention. Compare Miller v. Gonzalez, 761 F.3d 822, 829 (7th
Cir. 2014) (recognizing prohibition against more than mini-
mal force against only passive resistance), citing Phillips v.
Community Ins. Corp., 678 F.3d 513, 525 (7th Cir. 2012) (in turn
collecting cases), with Fitzgerald, 707 F.3d at 734 (arm-bar and
wrist-lock techniques that broke protective detainee’s arm
were not excessive because she was actively resisting attempts
to place her into an ambulance; “We have repeatedly upheld
officers’ use of force in the face of suspects resisting arrest.”),
No. 19-3446 11
and Estate of Phillips, 123 F.3d at 592–93 (officers could tackle,
handcuff, and hobble a detainee who continued to struggle
and kick throughout; “amount of force that is justified in-
creases as the confrontation escalates”).
The undisputed facts show that Mr. Turner’s behavior
qualified as active resistance. When Officer Wilson grabbed
his shoulder, Mr. Turner shoved Officer Wilson and began
grabbing at Officer Young. The officers then took Mr. Turner
to the ground, where Mr. Turner kept resisting and trying to
pry himself away from the officers. The officers all testified
that this resistance continued throughout the encounter. Even
after Mr. Turner was handcuffed, they needed a hobble be-
cause he kept kicking his legs. The hobble had to be attached
twice because Mr. Turner’s flailing legs broke free on the first
attempt.
In this respect, as the district court recognized, the facts
closely resemble Estate of Phillips, where we found no exces-
sive force. In Estate of Phillips, the police detained a man with
mental health needs who was speaking unintelligibly in a ho-
tel room. The man actively resisted and a struggle ensued.
The officers brought him to the ground and handcuffed him,
but he continued to kick violently. Officers responded by
pressing a knee on his right shoulder to keep him in place.
They also restrained his legs with a hobble. About a minute
later, medical personnel arrived. At that point Mr. Phillips
was no longer breathing. He was rushed to the hospital but
died the following day. We held “that these actions of the of-
ficers amount[ed] to an objectively reasonable response to the
escalating situation they faced.” 123 F.3d at 593–94.
Here too, the escalating force against Mr. Turner was a
constitutionally permissible response to his continued
12 No. 19-3446
resistance. As in Estate of Phillips, officers placed Mr. Turner in
a prone position, pinned down his shoulder, handcuffed him,
and hobbled him. And just as in Estate of Phillips, each of these
actions was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. After
Mr. Turner shoved Officer Wilson and continued resisting, it
was reasonable to place him in a prone position to handcuff
him. Placing a knee on Mr. Turner’s shoulder was also not ex-
cessive given the undisputed evidence of his continued re-
sistance on the ground. Finally, pinning down Mr. Turner’s
legs and attaching a hobble were reasonable given the undis-
puted testimony that he kept kicking and that he maneuvered
out of the hobble when it was first applied.
Unfortunately, also as in Estate of Phillips, “[t]hat force, it
turned out, when combined with Mr. [Turner’s] other health
problems, resulted in [his] death.” See 123 F.3d at 594. But le-
gally, it was not “deadly force” because it did not “carry a
substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily harm.” Id.
at 593. Rather, at each step of the encounter, the undisputed
facts show that the officers used a reasonable amount of force.
Critically, Mr. Turner’s body showed no signs of suffocation
or trauma from the officers’ force. The officers “did not hog-
tie, choke or transport Mr. [Turner]. Nor were his medical
conditions,” including his enlarged heart, “observable to the
untrained eye.” Id. at 594. In situations like this, where an of-
ficer’s force causes unexpectedly severe injuries due to a hid-
den condition, reasonableness is assessed objectively based
only on what the officer knew at the time force was applied.
Id. (“question is not whether the officers’ actions aggravated
an undiscovered injury or condition, but whether their ac-
tions were objectively reasonable under the circumstances”).
No. 19-3446 13
The same principle applies when an officer reasonably
mistakes medical symptoms as resistance. For instance, in
Smith v. Ball State University, 295 F.3d 763 (7th Cir. 2002), the
plaintiff went into diabetic shock while driving and was un-
responsive when officers arrived. As officers used force to re-
move him from his car, another officer arrived on the scene
and misread the scenario as an active struggle. He ran in to
deliver a knee strike to the plaintiff but missed, instead knock-
ing the plaintiff and the other officers to the ground. In reject-
ing the plaintiff’s excessive force claim, we explained: “Al-
though we accept as true the fact that Smith was not actively
resisting, a reasonable officer who happened on the scene
could reasonably misconstrue Smith's unresponsiveness as
resistance requiring the minimal use of force.” Id. at 771; see
also Padula v. Leimbach, 656 F.3d 595, 603 (7th Cir. 2011) (same
where no evidence showed officers were aware of arrestee’s
hypoglycemic episode).
On the other hand, when officers observe medical symp-
toms that cannot reasonably be mistaken as resistance, they
may not respond with force. An example is McAllister v. Price,
615 F.3d 877 (7th Cir. 2010). As in Smith and Padula, the plain-
tiff in McAllister suffered a diabetic episode while driving. Id.
at 879. When police arrived, they suspected he was a drunk
driver. Id. at 883. Finding him unresponsive to their com-
mands, officers pulled him from his car, slammed him to the
ground, and kneed him in the back. Id. at 886. In assessing Mr.
McAllister’s excessive force claim, we distinguished Smith be-
cause “McAllister has come forward with enough evidence so
that a jury could infer that Price's mistaken belief that McAl-
lister was intoxicated was unreasonable. It was clear to Price,
as it was to the other witnesses, that McAllister was im-
paired…. Multiple eyewitness observed McAllister to be
14 No. 19-3446
convulsing or twitching, and at least one concluded that
McAllister was not intoxicated.” Id. at 883. We therefore re-
versed summary judgment for the officers because “nothing
in Smith suggests that McAllister’s diabetic condition is
wholly irrelevant if Price should have been aware of it.” Id.
Here, the estate argues that Mr. Turner was not resisting
the officers but only struggling to breathe. The estate, how-
ever, has offered no evidence supporting this theory, and the
autopsy results contradict it. Nor is there any evidence show-
ing that, even if this were true, the officers were aware of it
before Sergeant Frost asked if Mr. Turner was breathing. The
estate therefore lacks the kind of evidence that raised a genu-
ine issue of fact in McAllister. Without such evidence, we must
conclude that the officers here—like the officers in Smith—rea-
sonably interpreted Mr. Turner’s movements as resistance.
The district court properly granted summary judgment for
the defendants on the estate’s excessive force claims against
Officers Wilson, Young, and Talbott.
Since no excessive force was used against Mr. Turner, we
also affirm summary judgment on the estate’s claims against
Sergeant Frost and Officer Talbott for failure to intervene.
“The fate of [a] plaintiff’s failure to intervene claim is closely
linked to that of her excessive force claim since, by definition,
if there is no excessive force then there can be no failure to
intervene.” Abdullahi v. City of Madison, 423 F.3d 763, 767–68
(7th Cir. 2005). Without evidence of a constitutional violation,
the district court also properly granted summary judgment
on the estate’s Monell claim against the City of Champaign.
See Brown v. Polk County, 965 F.3d 534, 541 (7th Cir. 2020)
(“[T]here was no constitutional violation. That finding defeats
the Monell claim too.”).
No. 19-3446 15
IV. State-Law Claims
The state-law tort claims of Mr. Turner’s estate fail for a
different reason: this was a mental health detention rather
than a criminal arrest. Section 4-102 of the Illinois Tort Im-
munity Act provides: “Neither a local public entity nor a pub-
lic employee is liable … for failure to provide adequate police
protection.” 745 ILCS 10/4-102. Unlike § 2-202 of the Act,
which applies when officers are engaged in the “execution or
enforcement” of law, § 4-102 provides absolute immunity
with no exception for willful and wanton conduct. Compare
id. with 745 ILCS 10/2-202. When interpreting state-law pro-
visions like these, we look to decisions from state intermedi-
ate appellate courts “unless there are persuasive indications
that the state supreme court would decide the issue differ-
ently.” Much v. Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co., 266 F.3d 637, 643 (7th
Cir. 2001). We therefore follow the Illinois Appellate Court’s
decision in Payne v. City of Chicago, holding that protective
mental-health detentions, unlike criminal arrests, are covered
by § 4-102’s absolute immunity provision. 16 N.E.3d 110, 118
(Ill. App. 2014).
As in Payne, the officers here were acting in a protective
role. From the beginning of the encounter, the officers at the
scene were concerned with Mr. Turner’s well-being. They
called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital and indi-
cated over the radio that they were detaining him involuntar-
ily for his own protection rather than for breaking the law.
Mr. Turner’s estate concedes as much. The officers’ actions are
therefore covered by § 4-102’s blanket immunity, and no
state-law claims may proceed against the officers or the City
of Champaign.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.