King v. Ambs

Decision Date21 March 2008
Docket NumberNo. 06-2054.,06-2054.
Citation519 F.3d 607
PartiesSean KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kevin AMBS, Columbia Township Police Officer, in his individual capacity, Defendant-Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

ARGUED: Mark Granzotto, Law Office, Royal Oak, Michigan, for Appellant. G. Gus Morris, Kupelian, Ormond & Magy, Southfield, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Mark Granzotto, Law Office, Royal Oak, Michigan, Thomas L. Kent, Green, Green, Adams & Kent, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for Appellant. G. Gus Morris, D. Randall Gilmer, Kupelian, Ormond & Magy, Southfield, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: ROGERS and COOK, Circuit Judges; O'MALLEY, District Judge.*

ROGERS, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which COOK, J., joined. O'MALLEY, D.J. (pp. 615-26), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from summary judgment entered in favor of a police officer in a § 1983 action. Officer Kevin Ambs was questioning a third party, Nicholas Klein, when plaintiff Sean King told Klein not to speak to the officer. After King had twice told Klein not to talk to the officer, Officer Ambs threatened to arrest King if he said "one more word." King told Klein a third time not to speak to the officer, at which point Officer Ambs arrested King. Relying on Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 107 S.Ct. 2502, 96 L.Ed.2d 398 (1987), King argues that the arrest violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights. Officer Ambs argues that the arrest did not violate the Constitution and that he is entitled to qualified immunity. The district court granted Officer Ambs' motion for summary judgment and held that King's interference with Officer Amb's investigation provided probable cause for the arrest. We affirm the district court's judgment.

On December 15, 2002, after 3:00 a.m., Officer Kevin Ambs of the Columbia Township Police Department was on a routine patrol when he came upon an unlocked vehicle improperly parked in a rural residential area. Officer Ambs stopped his patrol car, ran the license plate number of the vehicle, then exited his patrol car, shined a light into the vehicle, and saw marijuana on the dashboard. Officer Ambs seized the marijuana, called for a wrecker to impound the vehicle, and began an inventory search of the vehicle.

Klein's house was across the street from the vehicle that Officer Ambs was searching. While Officer Ambs was conducting the search, King and Lucas Anderson came out of Klein's residence, approached the vehicle, and asked Officer Ambs why he was searching the vehicle. Officer Ambs asked King and Anderson whether either of them was the registered owner of the vehicle, and both responded that they were not. After King initially denied that he knew the owner of the vehicle, he told Officer Ambs that the registered owner was in the house across the street. During this exchange at the vehicle, King and Anderson told Officer Ambs that he did not have the right to search the vehicle. King testified that Officer Ambs then threatened to arrest King and Anderson for hindering an investigation. Officer Ambs claims that he smelled alcohol on King and Anderson, and he threatened to arrest the two men for public intoxication. King and Anderson laughed at the officer when he threatened to arrest them because, according to King, they did not think that they had done anything wrong. Officer Ambs asked whether the men had been drinking; both responded that they had but claimed to be twenty-one (though King was only twenty at the time), and they offered to show the officer their identifications.

King and Anderson decided to return to the house because they felt that they had "asked enough questions" of Officer Ambs and did not believe that they would be able to stop him from impounding their friend's vehicle. Officer Ambs followed King and Anderson to the Klein home. Klein's home had a glass entryway leading to the front door of the house. When Officer Ambs tried to open the glass door to the entryway, Anderson held onto the handle from the inside to prevent the door from opening and, in response, Officer Ambs told Anderson that he would go to jail if he kept resisting. Once Officer Ambs was in the entryway with King and Anderson, he knocked on the front door. Nick Klein answered and identified himself as a resident of the house. King and Anderson immediately stepped into the house while the officer remained in the entryway.

Officer Ambs asked Klein to step outside the house, and Klein responded by stepping into the doorway between the house and the entryway, leaving the door to the house open. As Klein went to exit the house, King and Anderson urged Klein not to go outside the house and told Klein that he did not have to talk to the officer. Officer Ambs testified that both King and Anderson "would speak over" him. King claims that he "was not speaking over Officer Ambs and was in no way interfering, physically or verbally, with Officer Amb's attempt to speak with Mr. Klein." As Officer Ambs continued his interview with Klein, King again advised Klein that he did not have to speak to the officer and told Klein that he did not have to go outside with Officer Ambs. Officer Ambs then advised King that "if he said one more word that he would be arrested." At this point, according to King, Klein "went to step outside of the house . . . and began to shut the door" with King inside the house. A third time, King told Klein that he did not have to talk to the officer. Officer Ambs then entered the house, grabbed King's arm, and told King that he was under arrest. King broke free of Officer Ambs' grasp and retreated into the Klein home. Officer Ambs followed King through the house before forcibly subduing King with pepper spray. Officer Ambs then searched King and found a glass smoking pipe in his pocket.

King was taken to jail and was given a breathalyser test that showed a reading of 0.14, above the Michigan standard for intoxication of .08. King was charged with being drunk in public, opposing an officer in the performance of his duty, resisting arrest, and possessing marijuana. On March 24, 2003, the state district court dismissed all charges against King. First the state court dismissed the public drunkenness charge because the local ordinance under which King was charged had been superseded by a state statute. Second, the state court found that Officer Ambs had no probable cause to arrest King for opposing an officer. Relying on the Michigan Supreme Court opinion in People v. Vasquez, 465 Mich. 83, 631 N.W.2d 711 (2001), which interpreted a different state statute (M.C.L. § 750.479), the state court held that the local ordinance prohibiting opposing an officer in the performance of his duties prohibited only "actual physical interference." Having held that there was no probable cause for King's arrest, the state court dismissed the charge of resisting arrest, granted King's motion to suppress the glass pipe, and then dismissed the charge of possession of marijuana.

King subsequently filed this § 1983 action. King alleges that his arrest was in violation of his rights under the First and Fourth Amendments. Officer Ambs moved for summary judgment, claiming qualified immunity. The district court held a hearing, granted Officer Ambs' motion, and held that Officer Ambs did not violate King's Fourth Amendment rights because King's verbal interference with the officer's investigation amounted to a "physical interruption of the questioning," which provided probable cause for the arrest. The court concluded that Officer Ambs did not violate King's First Amendment rights because it was "the fact of the interference" with the performance of police duties rather than the content of King's words themselves that constituted the basis for the arrest. The court also held, in the alternative, that even if there had been a violation of either or both rights, the violation would not have been clearly established. King now appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment.

Because Officer Ambs had probable cause to arrest King, Officer Ambs did not violate King's Fourth Amendment rights. King was arrested for disorderly conduct because he obstructed Officer Ambs' questioning of Klein in the course of a criminal investigation. Columbia Township Ordinance § 28.3.3 defined a disorderly person as, "A person who obstructs, resists, impedes, hinders or opposes a peace officer in the discharge of his or her duties." King argues that under Michigan law obstruction is limited to "physical obstruction," and therefore King's conduct was not prohibited by the statute. In so arguing, King relies on the holding in People v. Vasquez, 631 N.W.2d at 728. However, as the district court reasoned below, Vasquez involved a textually different statute and meaningfully different facts.

The defendant in Vasquez had been charged with violation of Michigan's "resisting and obstructing" statute, M.C.L. § 750.479. That statute provided in relevant part that, "Any person who shall knowingly and willfully . . . obstruct, resist, oppose, assault, beat or wound . . . any person or persons authorized by law to maintain and preserve the peace, in their lawful acts, attempts and efforts to maintain, preserve and keep the peace shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. . . ." Vasquez, 631 N.W.2d at 714 (quoting M.C.L. § 750.479 as it then provided). The question before the Michigan Supreme Court was whether "obstruction" as used in the state statute criminalized the conduct of a defendant who lied to a police officer about his name and age. Id. In holding that it did not, the Michigan Supreme Court held that the state statute proscribed "threatened, either expressly or impliedly, physical interference and actual physical interference with a police officer." Id. In holding that "obstruct" in this statute was limited to physical obstruction, the court emphasized that ...

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