Stamps v. Town of Framingham , 813 F.3d 27 ( 2016 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 15-1141
EURIE A. STAMPS, JR., Co-administrator of the Estate of Eurie A.
Stamps, Sr.; NORMA BUSHFAN-STAMPS, Co-administrator of the
Estate of Eurie A. Stamps, Sr.,
Plaintiffs, Appellees,
v.
TOWN OF FRAMINGHAM; PAUL K. DUNCAN, individually and in his
official capacity as a police officer of the Framingham Police
Department,
Defendants, Appellants.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. F. Dennis Saylor, IV, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Thompson, and Kayatta,
Circuit Judges.
Leonard H. Kesten, with whom Thomas R. Donohue, Deidre Brennan
Regan, and Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten, LLP were on brief,
for appellants.
Anthony Tarricone, with whom Joseph P. Musacchio, Kreindler
& Kreindler, LLP, Anthony W. Fugate, and Bardouille and Fugate
were on brief, for appellees.
Matthew R. Segal, Adriana Lafaille, Ezekiel Edwards, Ilya
Shapiro, Benjamin Crump, Juan Cartagena, Jose Perez, Bradford M.
Berry, and Anson Asaka, on brief for the American Civil Liberties
Union, American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, Cato
Institute, National Bar Association, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- New
England Area Conference, amici curiae in support of appellees.
February 5, 2016
LYNCH, Circuit Judge. This civil rights case brought
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 arises from the tragic shooting death of an
innocent, elderly, African-American man, Eurie Stamps, Sr. He was
shot by a local police officer, Paul Duncan, during a SWAT team
raid executing a search warrant for drugs and related paraphernalia
belonging to two drug dealers with violent criminal histories
thought to reside in Stamps's home.
The co-administrators of Stamps's estate sued the Town
of Framingham and Duncan. The plaintiffs argue that Duncan
violated Stamps's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable
seizure when he pointed a loaded semi-automatic rifle at Stamps's
head, with his finger on the trigger and the safety off. Duncan
did so even though Stamps had been subdued, was lying in a hallway
on his stomach with his hands above his head, and was compliant
and posed no known threat to the officers. Duncan moved for
summary judgment on the ground that he was entitled to qualified
immunity because the shooting was an accident and, in any event,
not a violation of clearly established law. The district court
denied the motion, holding that a reasonable jury could find that
Duncan had violated Stamps's Fourth Amendment rights and that the
law was sufficiently clearly established to put Duncan on notice
that pointing a loaded firearm at the head of an innocent and
compliant person, with the safety off and a finger on the trigger,
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is not constitutionally permissible. Stamps v. Town of Framingham,
38 F. Supp. 3d 146, 151–58 (D. Mass. 2014). Duncan appealed.
We agree with the district court and affirm the denial
of the defendants' motion for summary judgment on qualified
immunity.
I.
The parties do not dispute that we properly have
interlocutory jurisdiction. The defendants have accepted, as they
did in the district court on summary judgment, that all inferences
from the record are drawn in the plaintiffs' favor. See Mlodzinski
v. Lewis, 648 F.3d 24, 27 (1st Cir. 2011) ("An interlocutory appeal
from a denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds
lies only if the material facts are taken as undisputed and the
issue on appeal is one of law.").
After midnight on January 5, 2011, a group of
approximately eleven SWAT team members executed a search warrant
at a first floor apartment in Framingham, Massachusetts. Eurie
Stamps, Sr., the decedent; Norma Bushfan-Stamps, his wife; and
Joseph Bushfan, his stepson, lived in the apartment. The search
warrant identified another man, Dwayne Barrett, as also occupying
the apartment. The warrant was issued on probable cause that
Bushfan and Barrett were selling crack cocaine out of the
apartment. A third man, Deandre Nwaford, though not mentioned in
the warrant, was thought to be an associate of Bushfan and Barrett,
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and the police believed he might be in the apartment as well. The
Framingham Police Department suspected all three men of having
ties to Boston gangs and criminal histories collectively including
armed robbery, armed assault, assault with a dangerous weapon,
assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, theft of a firearm,
and cocaine-related charges. The warrant authorized a nighttime
search of the premises for drugs and related paraphernalia, but
did not authorize unannounced entry or command search of any person
found who might have such property in his possession.
Before the raid, the SWAT team was briefed on the layout
of the apartment and the criminal histories of the occupants.
During this briefing, the SWAT team members were told that Stamps,
who was likely to be present in the apartment, was sixty-eight
years old and that his criminal record only consisted of "motor
vehicle arrests/charges." Stamps was not suspected of any
involvement in the illegal activity underlying the search warrant
or of any crime. The SWAT team members were also instructed that
Stamps had no history of violent crime or of owning or possessing
a weapon and that he posed no known threat to the officers
executing the warrant.
The raid began just after midnight.1 After the officers
announced their presence, one team of officers set off a flash-
1 Shortly before the raid began, Joseph Bushfan was
apprehended outside of the apartment.
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bang grenade through the kitchen window, while another team,
including Duncan, breached the apartment with a battering ram.
Upon entering, Duncan switched the selector on his loaded M-4 rifle
from "safe" to "semi-automatic."
Two other SWAT team members, Officers Timothy O'Toole
and Michael Sheehan, encountered Stamps first, in a hallway that
separated the kitchen from the bathroom and a rear bedroom. The
officers ordered Stamps to "get down," and he complied by lying
down on his stomach with his hands raised near his head. A series
of officers stepped over Stamps to go elsewhere in the apartment.
Duncan, who had been ordered by a sergeant to assist O'Toole and
Sheehan as a "trailer," assumed control of Stamps while O'Toole
and Sheehan continued searching and clearing the apartment.
Stamps remained prostrate on the hallway floor. Duncan
pointed his rifle at Stamps's head as Stamps lay in the hallway.
The rifle's safety was still disengaged and set to "semi-
automatic." Duncan said nothing to Stamps. At some point, Duncan
placed his finger on the trigger.2 The search continued in the
2 The defendants have accepted, for purposes of this
appeal, the plaintiffs' statement of facts. Further, on review of
summary judgment, we are required to "draw[] all reasonable
inferences in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party."
Mitchell v. Miller, 790 F.3d 73, 76 (1st Cir. 2015). Given that
the defendants do not assert that the gun malfunctioned or fired
without Duncan pulling the trigger, it is also reasonable to infer
that Duncan, at some point before shooting Stamps, placed his
finger on the trigger.
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apartment. Sometime before the shooting, a young man found in the
rear bedroom, Devon Talbert, was detained. He was not one of the
suspects the police expected to find there. The record before us
simply does not tell us what the status of the search was for
Barrett and Nwaford.
While the other officers continued to search elsewhere
in the apartment, Duncan was pointing a loaded, semi-automatic
rifle, with the safety off and his finger on the trigger, at
Stamps. Stamps was fully complying with the orders he was given,
was unarmed and flat on his stomach in the hallway, and constituted
no threat. At some point, Duncan unintentionally pulled the
trigger of his rifle and shot Stamps.3 The shot was an accident;
Duncan had no intention of shooting Stamps. The bullet pierced
Stamps's head, neck, and chest. Stamps was taken by ambulance to
a hospital and pronounced dead. Duncan was later dismissed from
the SWAT team for failing to abide by police training and
protocols.
3 The plaintiffs maintain that Duncan pulled the trigger
while standing upright. Duncan, meanwhile, asserts that the rifle
discharged when he lost his balance and fell back. This happened,
he says, because, fearing that Stamps might reach for a weapon, he
attempted to move Stamps's hands behind his back in order to
handcuff him. However, the plaintiffs presented expert testimony
that Duncan's description was "implausible, highly unlikely and
inconsistent with the evidence." (capitalization omitted). In any
event, the defendants have agreed to accept the plaintiffs' version
for purposes of the appeal.
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According to expert testimony, Duncan committed three
errors during his seizure of Stamps that violated police rules,
including Framingham rules, his training, and general firearms
protocol.4 First, accepting for purposes of this appeal that he
4 The defendants argue that we may not consider police
training and procedures in determining whether there was a Fourth
Amendment violation. We disagree. Such standards do not, of
course, establish the constitutional standard but may be relevant
to the Fourth Amendment analysis. We have approved the taking of
evidence about police training and procedures into consideration.
See, e.g., Fernández-Salicrup v. Figueroa-Sancha, 790 F.3d 312,
327 (1st Cir. 2015) (considering "standard police practice");
Raiche v. Pietroski, 623 F.3d 30, 37 (1st Cir. 2010); Jennings v.
Jones, 499 F.3d 2, 11–16, 19–20 (1st Cir. 2007) (noting that
evidence regarding officer training "is relevant both to the . . .
question of whether there was a violation at all and to the . . .
question . . . of whether a reasonable officer in [the defendant's]
circumstances would have believed that his conduct violated the
Constitution," id. at 19–20); Calvi v. Knox Cty., 470 F.3d 422,
428 (1st Cir. 2006). So have other courts. See, e.g., Young v.
Cty. of L.A., 655 F.3d 1156, 1162 (9th Cir. 2011); Torres v. City
of Madera, 524 F.3d 1053, 1057 (9th Cir. 2008) (agreeing that the
following "factors [had been] relevant to the reasonableness
determination" in a case where an officer unintentionally fired
his pistol when he meant to fire his Taser: "(1) the nature of the
training the officer had received to prevent incidents like this
from happening; (2) whether the officer acted in accordance with
that training; (3) whether following that training would have
alerted the officer that he was holding a handgun; (4) whether the
defendant's conduct heightened the officer's sense of danger; and
(5) whether the defendant's conduct caused the officer to act with
undue haste and inconsistently with that training" (citing Henry
v. Purnell, 501 F.3d 374, 383 (4th Cir. 2007))); Drummond ex rel.
Drummond v. City of Anaheim, 343 F.3d 1052, 1059 (9th Cir. 2003)
("Although . . . training materials are not dispositive, we may
certainly consider a police department's own guidelines when
evaluating whether a particular use of force is constitutionally
unreasonable."). But see, e.g., Moreno v. Taos Cty. Bd. of
Comm'rs, 587 F. App'x 442, 446 (10th Cir. 2014); Thompson v. City
of Chi., 472 F.3d 444, 453–55 (7th Cir. 2006).
To be clear, we do not mean to suggest that such evidence
is necessary -- or sufficient -- to establish a Fourth Amendment
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placed his finger on the trigger, Duncan concedes that he violated
his training and Framingham Police Department protocol by doing
so. According to Framingham Police Department policy in place at
the time, officers were required to "keep their finger[s] outside
of the trigger guard until ready to engage and fire on a target."
Framingham police officers, including Duncan, were trained on this
policy.
Second, Duncan deviated from "proper, reasonable,
established, and accepted police practices and procedures" and
"his training by having his weapon 'off safe' at all times when he
encountered Mr. Stamps. The training provided to Officer Duncan
by the [Framingham Police Department] required that his weapon be
'on safe' unless he perceived Mr. Stamps as a threat or was
actively clearing a room."5 We accept for the purposes of this
appeal that neither was the case here.
violation, see Jennings, 499 F.3d at 20 n.24, or that compliance
with police protocols and training necessarily renders an
officer's conduct reasonable, see Smith v. Kan. City, Mo. Police
Dep't, 586 F.3d 576, 581–82 (8th Cir. 2009).
5 This is according to one of the plaintiffs' experts, Kim
Widup. The parties dispute whether it was appropriate for Duncan
to have the safety off on his rifle. The defendants note that one
of the plaintiffs' experts, James Gannalo, opined that not engaging
the gun's safety was a "judgment call." Because of the posture of
this appeal, we assume facts in the light most favorable to the
plaintiffs. See Mitchell, 790 F.3d at 76. As such, we are
satisfied that a jury could find on these facts that Duncan
deviated from his training and standard police practice when he
turned off his rifle's safety.
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Third, Duncan additionally violated "basic firearm
safety procedures" and "departmental guidelines" by "fail[ing] to
keep the weapon's muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times."
(emphasis omitted).6
II.
On October 12, 2012, Norma Bushfan-Stamps and Eurie
Stamps, Jr., Stamps's son, as the co-administrators of Stamps's
estate, brought suit on behalf of the estate against Duncan and
the Town of Framingham. They brought ten claims, including claims
6 This is according to the plaintiffs' expert, James
Gannalo. Widup similarly opined that "[i]n direct violation of
[Framingham Police Department] protocol, his training, and
reasonable and customary police weapons practices and procedure,
Officer Duncan failed to point his rifle's muzzle in a safe
direction when he stood in the kitchen and encountered Mr. Stamps."
The defendants' representations to the contrary in their
Rule 28(j) letter are flatly repudiated by the record. We expect
better from counsel.
Even considering Duncan's version of the facts, in which
the potential threat he perceived may have justified training the
rifle on Stamps, the plaintiffs have produced expert testimony
that Duncan should not have attempted to handcuff Stamps while
covering him with the rifle, but instead should have maintained
his position as cover officer and called someone to help, a
technique known as "contact/cover." Widup opined that, even on
Duncan's version of the facts, "Duncan deviated from his training
and standard and reasonable police procedure by failing to utilize
the contact/cover procedure." That was also the view of Sergeant
Vincent Stuart and Lieutenant Robert Downing, both of whom
participated in the raid. The training Duncan received required
this, as admitted by Police Chief Steven Carl. And this is
precisely what the officers who seized Devon Talbert did when they
found him in the bedroom. Although this evidence certainly is not
determinative of the Fourth Amendment inquiry, we are likewise
satisfied here, as with the evidence discussed above, that a jury
could find on these facts that Duncan violated standard police
procedure.
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under § 1983 against Duncan for violations of both the Fourth and
Fourteenth Amendments, a claim under § 1983 against the Town of
Framingham for negligent training and supervision, and claims of
wrongful death under Massachusetts law against Duncan and the Town
of Framingham.
The defendants moved for summary judgment on all but one
of the claims, a state-law wrongful death claim against the Town
of Framingham. Summary judgment was granted to the defendants on
seven of the nine counts, leaving two § 1983 claims against Duncan
predicated on violations of the Fourth Amendment. In pressing for
summary judgment on these two counts, the defendants had argued
that Duncan was entitled to qualified immunity because 1) an
unintentional shooting does not violate the Fourth Amendment, and
2) even if there were a Fourth Amendment violation, the law had
not clearly established that his conduct constituted such a
violation.
The district court disagreed and denied Duncan's motion
as to those two claims. See Stamps, 38 F. Supp. 3d at 151–58.
This appeal followed.
III.
We review de novo the district court's denial of summary
judgment on qualified immunity grounds. Riverdale Mills Corp. v.
Pimpare, 392 F.3d 55, 60 (1st Cir. 2004); cf. Lopera v. Town of
Coventry, 640 F.3d 388, 395 (1st Cir. 2011) (noting that the same
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standard applies to a grant of summary judgment on qualified
immunity grounds).
The rules for granting qualified immunity are well
established. "The doctrine of qualified immunity shields
officials from civil liability so long as their conduct 'does not
violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of
which a reasonable person would have known.'" Mullenix v. Luna,
136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015) (per curiam) (quoting Pearson v.
Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009)). "A clearly established right
is one that is 'sufficiently clear that every reasonable official
would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.'"
Id. (quoting Reichle v. Howards, 132 S. Ct. 2088, 2093 (2012)).
This court adheres to a two-step approach to determine
whether a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity: "We ask
'(1) whether the facts alleged or shown by the plaintiff make out
a violation of a constitutional right; and (2) if so, whether the
right was "clearly established" at the time of the defendant's
alleged violation.'"7 Mlodzinski, 648 F.3d at 32 (quoting
7 At this stage of the litigation, we do not have
"jurisdiction to decide whether any constitutional violations
actually occurred or to resolve any factual disputes necessary to
make that determination." Maldonado v. Fontanes, 568 F.3d 263,
268 (1st Cir. 2009). Rather, accepting the facts in the light
most favorable to the plaintiffs, as we must, we have jurisdiction
to determine whether "the plaintiffs have . . . stated cognizable
constitutional violations," and "whether the constitutional rights
. . . allegedly violated were clearly established at the time."
Id. In this posture, an officer is entitled to qualified immunity
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Maldonado v. Fontanes, 568 F.3d 263, 269 (1st Cir. 2009)). The
second prong, in turn, has two elements: "We ask (a) whether the
legal contours of the right in question were sufficiently clear
that a reasonable officer would have understood that what he was
doing violated the right, and (b) whether in the particular factual
context of the case, a reasonable officer would have understood
that his conduct violated the right." Id. at 32–33.
Following this framework, the district court held on
prong one that "[e]ven the unintentional or accidental use of
deadly force in the course of an intentional seizure may violate
the Fourth Amendment if the officer's actions that resulted in the
injury were objectively unreasonable." Stamps, 38 F. Supp. 3d at
152. The court then found that "there are substantial issues as
to the reasonableness of Duncan's conduct as a whole," id. at 153,
emphasizing the low risk posed by Stamps and the high risk created
by Duncan aiming his rifle at Stamps's head with the safety off
and his finger on the trigger, id., and concluded that "a
reasonable jury could find that Duncan's actions leading up to the
shooting were objectively unreasonable, and therefore that he
"[i]f even on plaintiffs' best case, there is no violation of their
rights, or the law was not clearly established, or an objectively
reasonable officer could have concluded (even mistakenly) that his
or her conduct did not violate their rights." Mlodzinski, 648
F.3d at 28.
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employed excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment,"
id. at 154. We agree.
On prong two, the district court stated that "it was
clearly established at the time of the incident that the
unintentional or accidental use of deadly force during a seizure
can give rise to a constitutional violation if the officer has
acted unreasonably in creating the danger." Id. The court then
found that the law was clearly established such that Duncan would
have been on notice that his conduct violated the Fourth Amendment,
and accordingly denied Duncan's plea for summary judgment on
qualified immunity. Id. at 154–58. Again, we agree.
IV.
A jury could reasonably find that Duncan violated
Stamps's Fourth Amendment rights. The defendants' primary
argument, in fact what appears to be their principal reason for
taking this interlocutory appeal, is that Duncan's actions are not
subject to Fourth Amendment review because the shooting itself was
not intentional. We reject that argument. They then make the
secondary argument that even if Duncan's actions are within the
ambit of Fourth Amendment review, a jury could not find that his
decision to point the rifle at Stamps's head with the safety off
and his finger on the trigger was objectively unreasonable under
the law.
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One point of the Fourth Amendment is to protect an
individual from a police officer's use of excessive force in
effectuating a seizure. See Raiche v. Pietroski, 623 F.3d 30, 36
(1st Cir. 2010). Where an officer creates conditions that are
highly likely to cause harm and unnecessarily so, and the risk so
created actually, but accidentally, causes harm, the case is not
removed from Fourth Amendment scrutiny.
To make out a Fourth Amendment excessive force claim, a
plaintiff must show, as an initial matter, that there was a seizure
within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and then that the
seizure was unreasonable. "A Fourth Amendment seizure occurs when
a police officer 'has in some way restrained the liberty of a
citizen' through 'physical force or show of authority.'" United
States v. Camacho, 661 F.3d 718, 725 (1st Cir. 2011) (quoting Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 n.16 (1968)). A person is seized by an
officer's show of authority if "a reasonable person would have
believed that he was not free to leave," INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S.
210, 215 (1984) (quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S.
544, 554 (1980) (opinion of Stewart, J.)), and he in fact submits
to the officer's assertion of authority, California v. Hodari D.,
499 U.S. 621, 626 (1991). The Fourth Amendment is only implicated
if the "governmental termination of freedom of movement [was]
through means intentionally applied." Brower v. Cty. of Inyo, 489
U.S. 593, 597 (1989).
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Stamps was undoubtedly seized. See Mendenhall, 446 U.S.
at 554 (opinion of Stewart, J.) (citing "display of a weapon by an
officer" as an "[e]xample[] of [a] circumstance[] that might
indicate a seizure"). The defendants do not dispute this. No
reasonable person could possibly have felt free to leave with an
assault rifle pointed directly at his head. And Stamps submitted
to Duncan's show of authority by remaining prostrate on the ground
with his hands in the air.
The defendants, however, argue that, as a matter of law,
the Fourth Amendment does not apply to Duncan's conduct because
the shooting itself was unintentional, and thus not "means
intentionally applied," Brower, 489 U.S. at 597 (emphasis
omitted). The heart of their argument is that regardless of
Duncan's actions leading up to the moment he pulled the trigger,
the inadvertence of the shot shields him from Fourth Amendment
scrutiny.
We cannot agree. The defendants' proposed rule has the
perverse effect of immunizing risky behavior only when the
foreseeable harm of that behavior comes to pass.8
8 Consider, for example, what would have happened had
everything else been the same but for the last act: the gun was
not fired. Whether or not it was found to be a Fourth Amendment
violation, there is no question that Duncan's conduct would be
susceptible to Fourth Amendment scrutiny. See Mlodzinski, 648
F.3d at 38. Stamps could have brought a § 1983 claim just as the
plaintiffs did in Mlodzinski, and the case would have proceeded as
normal. It makes no sense, then, to find that the exact same
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The Supreme Court's opinion in Brower illustrates
precisely why the defendants' reasoning is flawed. In Brower, the
police were engaged in a high-speed chase with a suspect, Brower,
who was driving a stolen vehicle. Id. at 594. In an effort to
stop him, the police positioned "an 18-wheel tractor-trailer . . .
across both lanes of a two-lane highway in the path of Brower's
flight," "concealed[] this roadblock by placing it behind a curve
and leaving it unilluminated," and "positioned a police car, with
its headlights on, between Brower's oncoming vehicle and the truck,
so that Brower would be 'blinded' on his approach." Id. Brower
was killed when he crashed into the tractor-trailer, and his heirs
brought a § 1983 claim against the county. Id.
The Court faced the question whether the use of the
roadblock constituted a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment. The guiding principle identified by the Court was that
a seizure only occurs "when there is a governmental termination of
freedom of movement through means intentionally applied." Id. at
597. Finding that the use of the roadblock was a "means
intentionally applied," the Court stated:
In determining whether the means that
terminates the freedom of movement is the very
means that the government intended we cannot
draw too fine a line, or we will be driven to
saying that one is not seized who has been
stopped by the accidental discharge of a gun
conduct becomes unreviewable because Duncan accidentally fired the
gun.
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with which he was meant only to be bludgeoned,
or by a bullet in the heart that was meant
only for the leg. We think it enough for a
seizure that a person be stopped by the very
instrumentality set in motion or put in place
in order to achieve that result.
Id. at 598–99 (emphasis added).9 Aware that identifying the
roadblock as a seizure was not enough alone to make out a Fourth
Amendment claim, the Court noted that "[p]etitioners can claim the
right to recover for Brower's death only because the
unreasonableness they allege consists precisely of setting up the
roadblock in such manner as to be likely to kill him." Id. at
599.
9 The defendants appear to quibble over the meaning of
"instrumentality," asserting that only the display of the gun, and
not the bullet, was "intentionally applied," and therefore the
shooting itself is outside the Fourth Amendment. But this type of
hairsplitting was plainly rejected by the Supreme Court in Brower
when it offered the example of a suspect who is "stopped by the
accidental discharge of a gun with which he was meant only to be
bludgeoned." Brower, 489 U.S. at 598–99. In this context, we
decline to entertain the fiction that the bullet is somehow an
"instrumentality" distinct from the rifle. We reject as well the
defendants' attempt to draw a line between the use of a gun as a
show of authority and the use of a gun to inflict physical harm.
We find no reason in Brower, nor can we find a principled reason,
to distinguish between attempting to seize someone by pointing a
gun at his head, using the gun as a bludgeon, or even throwing the
gun or strategically placing it such that the individual trips
over it; in all of these situations the gun is "the very
instrumentality set in motion or put in place in order to" seize
the individual. Id. at 599. Indeed, the Court in Brower did not
fret over such an argument, characterizing the tractor-trailer as
"not just a significant show of authority to induce a voluntary
stop, but . . . designed to produce a stop by physical impact if
voluntary compliance does not occur." Id. at 598.
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Brower stands for the proposition that an officer can be
held liable under the Fourth Amendment for an intentional but
unreasonably dangerous seizure, even when the means employed to
effectuate the seizure result -- unintentionally -- in someone's
death. In the wake of Brower, this court affirmed that
"unintentional conduct [can] trigger[] Fourth Amendment
liability." Landol-Rivera v. Cruz Cosme, 906 F.2d 791, 796 n.9
(1st Cir. 1990).10 So have other circuits.
There is widespread agreement among the circuits that
have addressed the issue that a claim is stated under the Fourth
Amendment for objectively unreasonable conduct during the
effectuation of a seizure that results in the unintentional
discharge of an officer's firearm. That reasoning underlies the
decisions in recent cases like Estate of Bleck ex rel. Churchill
v. City of Alamosa, 540 F. App'x 866, 874–77 (10th Cir. 2013),
cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 2845 (2014), and Watson v. Bryant, 532 F.
App'x 453, 457–58 (5th Cir. 2013) (per curiam) ("An undisputedly
10 Contrary to the defendants' assertion, our opinion in
Landol-Rivera is not inconsistent with our conclusion here. There,
a police officer accidentally shot a hostage while trying to stop
a fleeing felon. Landol-Rivera, 906 F.2d at 791–92. Resting on
Brower's intent requirement, we reasoned that it was not the
officer's intent to seize the hostage: "It is intervention directed
at a specific individual that furnishes the basis for a Fourth
Amendment claim." Id. at 796. That holding simply has no
relevance here since there is no question that Stamps was the
intended target of Duncan's seizure. Landol-Rivera specifically
"emphasize[d] that our decision does not mean that Fourth Amendment
consequences may never result from unintended action." Id.
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accidental shooting . . . does not end the inquiry. [The officer]
still may have violated the Fourth Amendment if he acted
objectively unreasonably by deciding to make an arrest, by drawing
his pistol, or by not reholstering it before attempting to handcuff
[the plaintiff]."). As the en banc court stated in Henry v.
Purnell, 652 F.3d 524 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc), cert. denied, 132
S. Ct. 781 (2011), "[a]ll actions, . . . mistaken or otherwise,
are subject to an objective test," id. at 532. Of course, cases
more recent than the incident do not establish pre-incident notice
of clearly established rules. But the reasoning they apply is
derived from pre-2011 cases. See Torres v. City of Madera, 524
F.3d 1053, 1056–57 (9th Cir. 2008); Henry v. Purnell, 501 F.3d
374, 379–82 (4th Cir. 2007); Tallman v. Elizabethtown Police Dep't,
167 F. App'x 459, 463 (6th Cir. 2006) ("There is no evidence from
which a jury could conclude that [the officer] intentionally
discharged his weapon. We therefore focus the reasonableness
inquiry on [the officer's] actions leading up to the unintentional
discharge of the weapon." (citing Leber v. Smith, 773 F.2d 101,
105 (6th Cir. 1985) ("It is undisputed that [the officer]
unintentionally discharged his weapon as he slipped and fell; the
question is whether he acted reasonably in drawing his gun.")));
Pleasant v. Zamieski, 895 F.2d 272, 276–77 (6th Cir. 1990).11
11Duncan attempts to undermine the clear weight of this
authority by suggesting that some of these cases involved an
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The defendants point to several circuit cases that they
claim stand for the opposite conclusion, most notably Dodd v. City
of Norwich, 827 F.2d 1 (2d Cir. 1987). See Speight v. Griggs, 620
F. App'x 806 (11th Cir. 2015) (per curiam); Powell v. Slemp, 585
F. App'x 427 (9th Cir. 2014); Culosi v. Bullock, 596 F.3d 195 (4th
Cir. 2010). They also rely on district court opinions. See, e.g.,
Brice v. City of York, 528 F. Supp. 2d 504 (M.D. Pa. 2007); Greene
v. City of Hammond, No. 2:05-CV-83, 2007 WL 3333367 (N.D. Ind.
Nov. 6, 2007); Clark v. Buchko, 936 F. Supp. 212 (D.N.J. 1996);
Troublefield v. City of Harrisburg, Bureau of Police, 789 F. Supp.
160 (M.D. Pa.), aff'd, 980 F.2d 724 (3d Cir. 1992) (table
decision); Glasco v. Ballard, 768 F. Supp. 176 (E.D. Va. 1991).
Only one case that the defendants cite, Dodd, is a published
appellate court opinion whose holding supports their position.12
officer's intentional conduct that rested on a mistake of fact,
rather than an officer's wholly unintentional conduct. The cases
do not split such hairs, nor do we see any reason they should.
When an officer's intentional actions in effecting a seizure create
an unreasonable risk of physical harm, the Fourth Amendment has
already been violated; whether it is unintended action or intended
but mistaken action that ultimately actualizes the harm (or,
indeed, whether no physical harm comes to pass at all) is
immaterial.
12 Culosi did not expressly hold that an accidental
shooting that results from an officer's intentional use of a
firearm is immune from Fourth Amendment scrutiny. Rather, the
Fourth Circuit, noting that the officer's appeal centered on
factual and not legal issues, dismissed the appeal for lack of
jurisdiction. Culosi, 596 F.3d at 201–03. At most, the Fourth
Circuit stated in dicta that the following "framing of the issue
is quite correct": "[W]as the shooting death of [the plaintiff]
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the result, on the one hand, of an intentional act by [the
defendant], or, on the other hand, was it the result of a tragic
and deeply regrettable, unintentional, accidental, discharge of
[the defendant's] firearm?" Id. at 200. Moreover, the Fourth
Circuit's subsequent en banc opinion in Henry accords with our
reasoning. See Henry, 652 F.3d at 532.
Neither did Powell hold what the defendants attribute to
it. There, the Ninth Circuit skipped the Fourth Amendment inquiry
entirely and proceeded directly to the question of clearly
established law. Powell, 585 F. App'x at 427–28. It did note,
however, that since there was no evidence that the police officer
intentionally shot the plaintiff, "we focus on what the district
court characterized as [the plaintiff's] 'primary theory of
liability' -- that [the defendant] used excessive force when he
attempted to restrain [the plaintiff] with his firearm drawn," id.
at 427, which would suggest that the court's views are in line
with ours. The court reversed the district court's denial of
summary judgment on qualified immunity because it found that there
was no "existing law [that] would have made it 'sufficiently clear'
to a reasonable officer in [the officer's] position that attempting
to restrain [the plaintiff] with his gun drawn violated her Fourth
Amendment rights," and thus the officer "was entitled to qualified
immunity." Id. This holding says nothing about the Ninth
Circuit's views on whether the accidental results of intentional
conduct can give rise to Fourth Amendment liability. In fact, its
holding in Torres would seem to suggest that it agrees with our
analysis. See Torres, 524 F.3d at 1056–57.
Finally, Speight also provides little aid to the
defendants. In Speight, the district court explicitly held that
because "[the officer's] unintentional shooting of [the plaintiff]
during the course of the arrest [did] not insulate him from
liability under the Fourth Amendment," the court needed to
determine "whether [the officer's] conduct leading up to the gun's
accidental discharge was objectively reasonable." Speight v.
Griggs, 13 F. Supp. 3d 1298, 1320–21 (N.D. Ga. 2013). But because
the district court found the officer's conduct objectively
reasonable, it declined to address the "clearly established" prong
of the qualified immunity analysis. Id. at 1323. On appeal, the
Eleventh Circuit did not address the lower court's analysis on
this point. Rather, it merely stated that "[i]n this circuit,
there is no clearly established right to be free from the
accidental application of force during arrest." Speight, 620 F.
App'x at 809 (emphasis added). In other words, Speight expressed
no view on whether or not the district court's underlying
constitutional analysis was sound.
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We find these cases relied on by the defendants to be
distinguishable in light of Brower's clear command. To be sure,
both Dodd and Brower recognize that Fourth Amendment liability
only attaches to intentional conduct. But to the extent that Dodd,
or any of the other cases cited by the defendants, can be read for
the proposition that unintended harms arising from intentional and
unreasonable police conduct are never within the purview of the
Fourth Amendment, they are not good law in light of Brower.13
Our decision today, on the other hand, flows necessarily
from Brower. While in Brower "the very instrumentality set in
motion" was the tractor-trailer roadblock, here it was the assault
rifle. In both cases, the instrumentality was set in motion in a
highly dangerous fashion, and the resulting deaths were accidents.
But in neither case does -- nor should -- the accidental result of
the dangerous conduct prevent Fourth Amendment review. As the
Brower Court noted, the core of the plaintiffs' case "consist[ed]
precisely of setting up the roadblock in such manner as to be
likely to kill." Brower, 489 U.S. at 599. We need only replace
13 We are not persuaded that the citation to Dodd in a
footnote in Landol-Rivera signifies this circuit's adoption of
Dodd. See Landol-Rivera, 906 F.2d at 796 n.9. We do not read the
neutral phrase, "[c]ompare this statement in Brower with Dodd v.
City of Norwich" as an endorsement of Dodd's holding. If anything,
Dodd is cited in the footnote for the fact that the officer's gun
had discharged after the suspect had initiated a struggle with the
officer, not during the officer's effectuation of the seizure, and
was therefore not within the purview of the Fourth Amendment. Id.
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"setting up the roadblock" with "pointing the rifle" to arrive at
the claim presented in this case.
V.
As to the defendants' second argument, we think it close
to self-evident that a jury could find as a matter of fact that
Duncan's actions were not reasonable, and no extensive discussion
beyond what we have said is required. The question then moves to
whether the law was clearly established. We ask "whether the legal
contours of the right in question were sufficiently clear that a
reasonable officer would have understood that what he was doing
violated the right," and then consider "whether in the particular
factual context of the case, a reasonable officer would have
understood that his conduct violated the right." Mlodzinski, 648
F.3d at 32–33. Whether the law was clearly established is itself
a question of law for the court. Elder v. Holloway, 510 U.S. 510,
516 (1994).
In conducting this analysis, we are mindful of the
Supreme Court's most recent pronouncement on this issue in
Mullenix. It cautioned the courts "not to define clearly
established law at a high level of generality," and reiterated
that "[t]he dispositive question is 'whether the violative nature
of particular conduct is clearly established.'" Mullenix, 136
S. Ct. at 308 (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 742
(2011)). It noted that "[s]uch specificity is especially important
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in the Fourth Amendment context, where the Court has recognized
that '[i]t is sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how
the relevant legal doctrine, here excessive force, will apply to
the factual situation the officer confronts.'" Id. (second
alteration in original) (quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194,
205 (2001), overruled in part on other grounds by Pearson, 555
U.S. at 236). The Court explained that the "correct inquiry" in
the Fourth Amendment context is "whether it was clearly established
that the Fourth Amendment prohibited the officer's conduct in the
'situation [she] confronted.'" Id. at 309 (alteration in original)
(quoting Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 200 (2004) (per
curiam)).
We believe that the state of the law was clear such that
a reasonable officer in Duncan's position would have understood
that pointing his loaded assault rifle at the head of a prone,
non-resistant, innocent person who presents no danger, with the
safety off and a finger on the trigger, constituted excessive force
in violation of that person's Fourth Amendment rights.14 In
14 As to the Brower issue, we need not belabor what we have
just said. We do not believe that Dodd, which was decided before
Brower, or a smattering of district court cases rendered the law
unclear on this point. See Camreta v. Greene, 131 S. Ct. 2020,
2033 n.7 (2011) ("[D]istrict court decisions -- unlike those from
the courts of appeals -- do not necessarily settle constitutional
standards or prevent repeated claims of qualified immunity," and
therefore "[m]any Courts of Appeals . . . decline to consider
district court precedent when determining if constitutional rights
are clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity.").
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concluding that this case must go to a jury for determination, we
rely on Brower and on our prior circuit precedent, and we confirm
our ruling by observing that clearly settled Fourth Amendment law
as of the time of Stamps's death fully cohered with commonly
accepted precepts on appropriate use of firearms and appropriate
police procedures.
Our opinion in Mlodzinski speaks directly to this issue.
There, we affirmed the denial of summary judgment on qualified
immunity to officers who, in 2006, detained two innocent and
compliant women at gunpoint during a late-night police raid
executing a search warrant, issued on probable cause to believe
that the seventeen-year-old boy who lived at the women's residence
had severely beaten another boy with an expandable nightstick.15
Mlodzinski, 648 F.3d at 29–31. The first woman, the fifteen-year-
old sister of the suspect, was shoved to the floor, handcuffed,
and "detained with an assault rifle held to her head for seven to
ten minutes." Id. at 37. We found that "[a] reasonably competent
officer . . . would not have thought that it was permissible to
point an assault rifle at the head of an innocent, non-threatening,
and handcuffed fifteen-year-old girl for seven to ten minutes, far
15 Mlodzinski was decided on June 2, 2011, five months after
Stamps's death, and so was obviously not on the books at the time
of the shooting. However, we denied qualified immunity in
Mlodzinski because we found that the law was clearly established
on the facts of that case as of, at least, August 2, 2006, the
date of the raid. See Mlodzinski, 648 F.3d at 27, 37–39.
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beyond the time it took to secure the premises and arrest and
remove the only suspect." Id. at 38. The second woman, the
suspect's mother, was held at gunpoint for thirty minutes while
forced to sit nearly nude in her bed. Id. at 38–39. Though we
recognized that the officers "did initially have to make split
second decisions to assess [the mother's] threat level and the
possible need for restraint, that does not characterize the entire
period in the bedroom" because "it quickly became clear" that she
was not a suspect, was compliant with orders, and did not pose a
danger to the officers. Id. at 39.
This case bears a remarkable resemblance to Mlodzinski.
Both cases involve officers pointing firearms at the heads of
innocent, compliant individuals during the course of SWAT team
raids at residences thought to be occupied by other individuals
who were dangerous. And neither the sister nor the mother in
Mlodzinski, nor Stamps, was thought to be dangerous. Mlodzinski
affirms that as of at least August 2, 2006, the date of the raid
at issue in that case, the state of the law was clear enough to
put police officers on notice that a warrant to conduct a SWAT
raid does not grant them license to aim their weapons at the heads
of submissive and nonthreatening bystanders.16 As we recognized,
16 Duncan alludes to our observation in Mlodzinski that the
outcome of the case may have varied if, for example, the officer
had pointed the gun at the mother's head "for only a very short
period." Mlodzinski, 648 F.3d at 40. In Mlodzinski, though, it
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this is especially true where, as here, a jury could find that the
officer is not forced to act based on a split-second judgment about
the appropriate level of force to employ. See id.; cf. Graham v.
Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396–97 (1989). Reviewing the facts in the
light most favorable to the plaintiffs, a jury could find that
Duncan had adequate time to determine that there was no reasonable
threat posed by Stamps and to calibrate his use of force
accordingly. See Henry, 652 F.3d at 533 ("It bears emphasis that
this also was not a situation in which circumstances deprived [the
officer] of the opportunity to fully consider which weapon he had
drawn before firing. . . . There was no evidence indicating that
[the officer] did not have the split-second he would have needed
to at least glance at the weapon he was holding to verify that it
was indeed his Taser and not his Glock.").
In light of Mlodzinski, as well as long-standing
precedent from other circuits, a reasonable officer in early 2011
would have understood that Duncan's conduct, as a jury could find
it, violated clearly established Fourth Amendment law. See, e.g.,
Espinosa v. City & Cty. of S.F., 598 F.3d 528, 537–38 (9th Cir.
2010) (denying summary judgment on qualified immunity to officers
who pointed loaded guns at a suspect "given the low level of
threat"); Baird v. Renbarger, 576 F.3d 340, 345 (7th Cir. 2009)
was not assumed that the officers had turned off their guns'
safeties or that they had kept their fingers on the triggers.
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(denying summary judgment on qualified immunity and noting that
"gun pointing when an individual presents no danger is unreasonable
and violates the Fourth Amendment"); Tekle v. United States, 511
F.3d 839, 845–48 (9th Cir. 2007) (denying summary judgment on
qualified immunity and noting that "[w]e have held since 1984 that
pointing a gun at a suspect's head can constitute excessive force
in this circuit," id. at 847); Holland ex rel. Overdorff v.
Harrington, 268 F.3d 1179, 1192–93, 1196–97 (10th Cir. 2001)
(denying summary judgment on qualified immunity and holding, "[w]e
can find no substantial grounds for a reasonable officer to
conclude that there was legitimate justification for continuing to
hold the young people outside the residence directly at gunpoint
after they had completely submitted to the SWAT deputies' initial
show of force," id. at 1197); Jacobs v. City of Chi., 215 F.3d
758, 773–74 (7th Cir. 2000) (reversing district court's grant of
motion to dismiss on qualified immunity to officers who "pointed
a loaded weapon at [the plaintiff] for an extended period of time
when they allegedly had no reason to suspect that he was a
dangerous criminal, or indeed that he had committed any crime at
all, [the plaintiff] was unarmed, and when [the plaintiff] had
done nothing either to attempt to evade the officers or to
interfere with the execution of their duties"); McDonald v.
Haskins, 966 F.2d 292, 292–95 (7th Cir. 1992) (affirming district
court's denial of motion to dismiss on qualified immunity where an
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officer held a gun to the head of a nine-year-old boy who "posed
no threat to the safety of [the officer] or any other police
officer present, was not actively resisting arrest or attempting
to evade arrest by fleeing, . . . was not engaged in any assaultive
behavior toward [the officer] or the other officers" and "was
neither under arrest nor suspected of committing a crime, was not
armed, and was not interfering or attempting to interfere with
[the officers] in the execution of their duties," id. at 292–93);
cf. Robinson v. Solano Cty., 278 F.3d 1007, 1014 (9th Cir. 2002)
(en banc) (noting that "under more extreme circumstances the
pointing of a gun has been held to violate even the more rigorous
standard . . . [that] conduct [be] so excessive that it 'shock[s]
the conscience.'" (citing McKenzie v. Lamb, 738 F.2d 1005, 1010
(9th Cir. 1984); Black v. Stephens, 662 F.2d 181, 188–89 (3d Cir.
1981))).
We acknowledge that each of these cases presented unique
sets of facts that in some respects differ from the facts presented
in the case at hand. Nonetheless, their factual differences do
not obscure or detract from the straightforward rule that,
collectively, they all espouse. When considered alongside
Mlodzinski, these cases plainly put police officers in these
circumstances on notice that pointing a firearm at a person in a
manner that creates a risk of harm incommensurate with any police
necessity can amount to a Fourth Amendment violation. On the facts
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as a jury might find them to be in this case (safety off, finger
on the trigger, and gun pointed at the head of a prone person known
not to pose any particular risk), it was clear under existing law
that Duncan used his gun in a manner that unlawfully created such
a risk.
In light of what we have just said, we conclude that
Duncan, "in the 'situation [he] confronted,'" Mullenix, 136 S.
Ct. at 309 (quoting Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 200), was on notice that
his actions could be found violative of Stamps's Fourth Amendment
right to be free from excessive force. Existing precedent places
this conclusion "beyond debate," id. at 308 (quoting al-Kidd, 563
U.S. at 741).
We find further confirmation for our conclusion in the
expert testimony presented by the plaintiffs. In Mullenix, the
Court parried the dissent's critique of the reasonableness of the
officer's decision-making by stating that "others with more
experience analyze the issues differently," and pointing to a brief
filed by the National Association of Police Organizations
discussing the options and risks informing the reasonableness of
the officer's decision-making. Mullenix, 136 S. Ct. at 311. Here,
in contrast, we have a procedural posture and a record supporting
the conclusion that police officers are customarily taught not to
do what Duncan did. See Jennings v. Jones, 499 F.3d 2, 19–20 (1st
Cir. 2007). This evidence reinforces the conclusion that the
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unreasonableness of Duncan's conduct, as a jury could find it, was
well established. Not only had the unreasonableness of Duncan's
alleged conduct been clearly established as a legal matter, but it
had also been well established in a manner that is actually useful
to police officers, eliminating the risk that judicial
declarations of reasonable firearm use in such situations may miss
the mark. In this sense, our decision does not rely on hindsight
to second guess the handling of a difficult situation. Rather, it
simply confirms that in this instance, the reasonableness demanded
by the Fourth Amendment is no more than the reasonableness that
law enforcement officers regularly demand of themselves.
We end as we did in Mlodzinski, noting that "[o]ur denial
of immunity on plaintiffs' version of the events leaves these
claims for trial, where [Duncan] may try to persuade the jury that
[he] did not do what [he is] accused of doing." Mlodzinski, 648
F.3d at 40.
VI.
For the reasons stated above, we affirm the denial of
the defendants' motion for entry of summary judgment on the basis
of qualified immunity. Costs are awarded to the plaintiffs.
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