Chestnut v. Wallace

• Decision Date: 21 January 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-3472,18-3472
• Citation: 947 F.3d 1085
• Parties: Kevin CHESTNUT, Plaintiff - Appellee v. Officer Dawain WALLACE, St. Louis City Arresting Police officer, in his individual capacity, Defendant - Appellant Officer Tiffany Burns, n/k/a Tiffany Porter; St. Louis City Arresting Officer, in her individual capacity; Officer John Doe, St. Louis City Arresting Police Officer, in his individual capacity; City of St. Louis, Missouri ; Justin Ludwig, St. Louis City Police Officer, in his individual capacity, Defendants
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

947 F.3d 1085

Kevin CHESTNUT, Plaintiff - Appellee

v.Officer Dawain WALLACE, St. Louis City Arresting Police officer, in his individual capacity, Defendant - Appellant

Officer Tiffany Burns, n/k/a Tiffany Porter; St. Louis City Arresting Officer, in her individual capacity; Officer John Doe, St. Louis City Arresting Police Officer, in his individual capacity; City of St. Louis, Missouri ; Justin Ludwig, St. Louis City Police Officer, in his individual capacity, Defendants

No. 18-3472

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: September 24, 2019

Filed: January 21, 2020

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied February 27, 2020

Robert Herman, Mark Thomas Timmerman, SCHWARTZ & HERMAN, Saint Louis, MO, for Plaintiff - Appellee.

Robert Henry Dierker, Jr., J. Brent Dulle, Erin K. McGowan, Assistant City Counselor, CITY COUNSELOR'S OFFICE, Saint Louis, MO, for Defendant - Appellant.

Before GRUENDER, ARNOLD, and GRASZ, Circuit Judges.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

This is an interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity to a police officer who stopped, frisked, and handcuffed a person who had been watching another police officer perform traffic stops. We agree with the district court¹ that genuine issues of material fact preclude the officer from receiving qualified immunity at this stage. We therefore affirm.

According to plaintiff Kevin Chestnut, one evening around dusk he paused his jog in a St. Louis park to watch St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Officer Leviya Graham perform a traffic stop. He watched the stop for five or ten minutes and then resumed his jog. Shortly thereafter, Chestnut stopped again to observe Graham perform another traffic stop. During this stop, Chestnut stood in a grassy area between the jogging trail and the sidewalk and leaned against a tree. He testified that he stood thirty to forty feet away and across the street from where Graham was conducting the stop. He asserts that he was watching the stops out of curiosity since there had "been a lot of difficulty in citizen/police interaction" as of late. The parties point out that this specific park had been the site of testy exchanges between police and citizens.

Chestnut caught Graham's attention. She radioed dispatch for assistance, reporting that a suspicious person had been following her to her car stops. She described Chestnut as a white male in a yellow shirt who was leaning against a tree across the street from her. Officer Dawain Wallace responded to the call and arrived on scene. From his police car, he saw someone matching Chestnut's description and shined his spotlight on him. Wallace testified at one point that either Graham or the dispatcher had said that Chestnut was "hiding in the treeline" and "kind of peeking and lurking around a tree." Chestnut, on the other hand, testified that he purposely stood in a location where the headlights on Graham's car illuminated him. He said that he intentionally made himself plainly visible, that he was standing still, and that he was not interfering.

After shining his spotlight, Wallace got out of his car, approached Chestnut, and asked him for some form of identification. Chestnut had none on him, so Wallace asked him for his name, address, and social security number. Wallace maintains that he requested this information so he could determine whether Chestnut had any outstanding warrants. Chestnut provided his name and, he says, his birthday. But he agreed to provide only the last four digits of his social security number. At that point, Wallace frisked Chestnut for weapons but found none, yet he directed other officers who had arrived on scene to put Chestnut in handcuffs. Chestnut then provided his full social security number to Wallace and asked to speak to one of Wallace's supervisors. Wallace used the information to perform a warrants check, and he learned that Chestnut had no outstanding warrants. After Wallace's supervisor arrived and spoke with Chestnut, he directed that the handcuffs be removed and permitted Chestnut to leave. Chestnut estimated that the entire encounter with Wallace lasted twenty minutes.

Chestnut sued Wallace, and others not relevant to this appeal, for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Wallace detained, arrested, frisked, and handcuffed him without reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe he had engaged in or was about to engage in unlawful conduct or that he was armed and dangerous. When Wallace moved for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity, a defense that protects an individual defendant from suit when his conduct does not violate clearly established constitutional rights, see White v. Pauly , ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S. Ct. 548, 551, 196 L.Ed.2d 463 (2017) (per curiam), the district court denied the motion. This appeal followed.

Though we ordinarily lack jurisdiction to review the denial of a motion for summary judgment immediately because such a ruling is not a final decision, we may entertain an interlocutory appeal from an order denying qualified immunity to the extent that it raises "abstract issues of law." Jenkins v. Univ. of Minn. , 838 F.3d 938, 943–44 (8th Cir. 2016). We accept as true the facts that the district court found and likely assumed, but for factual disputes that the district court did not resolve, we view the record in Chestnut's favor. See Roberts v. City of Omaha , 723 F.3d 966, 972 (8th Cir. 2013). We review the district court's decision de novo. Nord v. Walsh Cty. , 757 F.3d 734, 738 (8th Cir. 2014).

Before reaching the heart of this appeal, we briefly address Chestnut's contention that he was arrested, rather than merely detained. The distinction matters under the Fourth Amendment. An arrest is valid only if there is probable cause to believe that a suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime, whereas a brief, investigatory detention can be based on only a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. See Waters v. Madson , 921 F.3d 725, 736 (8th Cir. 2019). A detention can become an arrest if it "lasts for an unreasonably long time or if officers use unreasonable force." Id. at 737. Though the line between the two can be hazy, we think our precedent squarely places Chestnut's seizure on the detention side of the line. The Waters case involved a twenty-minute interaction that was arguably more intrusive than the one here (the suspect was placed in a police car for twenty minutes while handcuffed), and yet we held that the suspect had only been detained. Id. at 736–37. We see no reason why Waters does not control, and so we conclude that Chestnut's detention did not become an arrest.

To detain someone temporarily, officers need only reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot based on the attendant circumstances. Id. at 736. The inquiry deals with probabilities, not hard certainties, see United States v. Cortez , 449 U.S. 411, 418, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981), and it need not rule out innocent conduct. Navarette v. California , 572 U.S. 393, 403, 134 S.Ct. 1683, 188 L.Ed.2d 680 (2014). Reasonable suspicion is based on commonsense judgments about human behavior. Illinois v. Wardlow , 528 U.S. 119, 125, 120 S.Ct. 673, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000).

In his brief, Wallace maintains that the law was not clearly established when he detained Chestnut that he violated the constitution "by conducting an investigatory stop and briefly handcuffing a suspect with no identification after he follows a female police officer, seemingly obscures himself in a dark area of a public park after nightfall to watch her, and then fails to cooperate with the officer's investigation by refusing to provide his social security number." We have some difficulties with Wallace's legal argument and with his description of the circumstances.

First, Chestnut's refusal to supply his full social security number to a police officer during a consensual encounter should not have contributed to Wallace's reasonable suspicions. If "a person's decision during a consensual police encounter to ignore the police and go about his business" cannot be considered in the reasonable-suspicion calculus, see United States v. Sykes , 914 F.3d 615, 618 (8th Cir. 2019), then a person's refusal to provide only some of the requested information cannot be either. It would make no sense to require an officer to allow someone who provides no information to walk away but then to permit an officer to detain someone who gives him only partial information. And we do not believe that the encounter became non-consensual when Wallace asked Chestnut for identifying information. As the Supreme Court has explained, "interrogation relating to one's identity or a request for identification by the police does not, by itself, constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure," so "a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment." See Hiibel v. Sixth Jud. Dist. Ct. , 542 U.S. 177, 185, 124 S.Ct. 2451, 159 L.Ed.2d 292 (2004).

Second, it is disputed whether Chestnut obscured himself in a dark area of the park to watch Graham. Chestnut says he purposely remained visible and in the open, illuminated by Graham's headlights. We take the facts in a light most favorable to Chestnut, see Roberts , 723 F.3d at 972, and to the extent Wallace's argument is premised on this factual dispute, we would lack jurisdiction over his appeal. See Thompson v. Dill , 930 F.3d 1008, 1012 (8th Cir. 2019). The dissent seeks to justify the seizure because Wallace could reasonably suspect that Chestnut was intent on criminal conduct since "individuals who are merely interested in police conduct generally make their presence more apparent." But Chestnut says he was apparent and at this stage we must take him at his word. The dissent opines that Chestnut's description of where he was standing merely reflected his "subjective intent." With respect, we disagree. Chestnut testified to physical facts, not his intent: He...