Dyer v. Lee

• Decision Date: 05 June 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-14680.,06-14680.
• Citation: 488 F.3d 876
• Parties: Ruth DYER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Shannon LEE, John J. Truitt, Thomas F. Humann, III, Ryan E. Tutt, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

488 F.3d 876

Ruth DYER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Shannon LEE, John J. Truitt, Thomas F. Humann, III, Ryan E. Tutt, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-14680.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

June 5, 2007.

Michael R. McDonnell, Colleen J. MacAlister, McDonnell Trial Lawyers, Naples, FL, for Dyer.

Bruce Wallace Jolly, Purdy, Jolly & Giuffreda, P.A., Ft. Lauderdale, FL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before BARKETT, KRAVITCH and STAHL,^* Circuit Judges.

STAHL, Circuit Judge:

In this case we are asked whether Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), bars a plaintiff's suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the use of excessive force during her arrest. We conclude that a successful § 1983 suit would not contradict her underlying conviction, and thus her suit is not Heck-barred. Therefore, we reverse.

I. BACKGROUND

Because the case was disposed of on summary judgment, we recite the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the non-moving party. See Bircoll v. Miami-Dade County, 480 F.3d 1072, 1075 n. 1 (11th Cir.2007).

On March 13, 2003, plaintiff Ruth Dyer ("Dyer") left the Ridgeport Pub, a restaurant in Naples, Florida, and, while intoxicated, sat down in the driver's seat of a Toyota Paseo belonging to Dwayne Dyer, her then-boyfriend (and current husband). The manager of the restaurant called a cab for Dyer and also called the Collier County Sheriff's Office to ensure that she did not drive intoxicated. In fact, Dyer was not intending to drive and had called her boyfriend to come get her and drive her home to Fort Myers.

Deputy Truitt arrived on the scene, followed shortly thereafter by Deputies Tutt and Lee. They asked for Dyer's driver's license, but she told them that she didn't have it, and that she was intoxicated and waiting for her boyfriend to come get her. Deputy Humann then arrived and asked Dyer to get out of the car. He attempted to perform field sobriety tests but Dyer refused, repeating that she was not driving, and saying, "Just go ahead and arrest me." Humann then handcuffed Dyer. Dyer asked that her hands be cuffed in front because of an arm injury, but Humann refused and cuffed her hands behind her back. Humann announced that Dyer was under arrest and began to read her the Florida implied consent notice.¹ Dyer protested that she had not been driving and grew agitated. Truitt and Tutt stood at Dyer's side to hold her still, while Humann placed his hand over her mouth to quiet her while he read the implied consent notice. Dyer then kicked Humann in the leg. At that point, the deputies told Dyer that she was also under arrest for battery on a police officer, and they placed her in the back of the patrol car.

At this juncture Dwayne Dyer arrived on the scene. Deputy Truitt then noticed that Ruth Dyer had moved her cuffed hands from behind her back to her front,² to ease the pain in her arms. Humann pulled Dyer out of the patrol car and, with some struggle, recuffed her hands behind her and returned her to the patrol car. According to Dyer, during this recuffing the defendants shoved her against the car, slammed her head against the car, kneed her in the leg and lower back, and sprayed her with pepper spray. Dyer resisted during the recuffing and again kicked the deputies.

Humann used an unauthorized cuffing technique when he cuffed Dyer the second time, placing both cuffs each around both wrists, with one wrist on top of the other. Once subdued, she was placed back in the rear of the patrol car. According to Dwayne Dyer, after the altercation had ended, Humann opened the door to the patrol car and again sprayed Dyer with pepper spray.

Dyer was transported and charged with driving under the influence ("DUI") and three counts of battery on a law enforcement officer. The DUI charge was later dropped, and one count of resisting arrest with violence was added. On August 12, 2003, she pled no contest to a single charge of resisting with violence, but because of a subsequent parole violation the verdict was changed to guilty on September 28, 2004. She was sentenced to one year of community control, followed by one year of probation.

On May 18, 2005, Dyer began the current action seeking damages from Lee, Truitt, Humann, and Tutt (the "defendants") under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Dyer claimed that, through their use of excessive force during her arrest, the defendants deprived her of her constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. On July 26, 2006, the district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, saying that Dyer's § 1983 suit was barred by Heck v. Humphrey. This timely appeal followed.

II. DISCUSSION

We review de novo the district court's grant of summary judgment, drawing all facts and inferences in the light most favorable to Dyer. See Bircoll, 480 F.3d at 1081 n. 12.

In Heck v. Humphrey, the Supreme Court held that

when a state prisoner seeks damages in a § 1983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint must be dismissed unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or sentence has already been invalidated.

512 U.S. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364. The Court gave the following as an example of a § 1983 suit that would be barred:

A state defendant is convicted of and sentenced for the crime of resisting arrest, defined as intentionally preventing a peace officer from effecting a lawful arrest . . . . He then brings a § 1983 action against the arresting officer seeking damages for violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. In order to prevail in this § 1983 action, he would have to negate an element of the offense of which he has been convicted. Regardless of the state law concerning res judicata the § 1983 action will not lie.

Id. at 487 n. 6, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (citations omitted) (emphasis in original).

This might seem at first to dispose of the issue before us, except that the use of excessive force may not necessarily make Dyer's arrest unlawful, particularly for the DUI and battery charges. Cf. Ivester v. State, 398 So.2d 926, 930 (Fla. Dist.Ct.App.1981) (noting distinction between arrest and unlawful force used in arrest). Furthermore, the lawfulness of the arrest is not an element of the offense of resisting arrest with violence. State v. Espinosa, 686 So.2d 1345, 1347 (Fla.1996); State v. Davis, 652 So.2d 942, 943 (Fla. Dist.Ct.App.1995); Delaney v. State, 489 So.2d 891, 892-93 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1986). Therefore, a successful § 1983 claim against an arresting officer for using excessive force does not necessarily negate an element of the underlying charge of resisting arrest with violence, in contrast to the example in Heck cited above.

Here, the defendants take a different tack. They argue that, rather than negating an element of the offense, a successful § 1983 suit would establish what would have been an affirmative defense to the underlying offense, namely self-defense. Because a person is entitled to "resist the use of excessive force in making the arrest," State v. Holley, 480 So.2d 94, 96 (Fla.1985), plaintiff's acts of violence against the defendants would have been justified, defendants argue, and thus could not have formed the basis for her conviction and sentence. The rule in Heck, they argue, should operate to bar a suit for this reason just as much as if it negated an element of the offense. The defendants argue that by pleading guilty to resisting arrest with violence, the plaintiff cannot now say that her resistance was justified, which it would have been if the defendants used excessive force.

The problem with this approach is that the logical necessity that is at the heart of the Heck opinion is not present here. It is not the case that a successful § 1983 suit by the plaintiff would "necessarily imply the invalidity of [her] conviction" for resisting arrest with violence. Heck, 512 U.S. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court underscored the importance of logical necessity in Heck with another example:

[A] suit for damages attributable to an allegedly unreasonable search may lie even if the challenged search produced evidence that was introduced in a state criminal trial resulting in the § 1983 plaintiff's still-outstanding conviction. Because of doctrines like independent source and inevitable discovery and especially harmless error, such a § 1983 action, even if successful, would not necessarily imply that the plaintiff's conviction was unlawful.

Id. at 487, n. 7, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). In other words, as long as it is possible that a § 1983 suit would not negate the underlying conviction, then the suit is not Heck-barred. In the first example in Heck, a successful § 1983 suit would necessarily negate one of the elements of the underlying offense; under those circumstances a conviction could not stand, as a matter of law. This is in contrast to the second example where, even following a successful § 1983 suit, there would still exist a construction of the facts that would allow the underlying conviction to stand.

The emphasis on logical necessity is a result of the Court's underlying concern in Heck: that § 1983 and the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, were "on a collision course." Heck, 512 U.S. at 492, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (Souter, J., concurring). The Court's decision in Heck was in part an extension of the rule set out in Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), that "habeas corpus is the exclusive remedy for a state prisoner who challenges the fact or duration of his confinement and seeks immediate or speedier release, even though such a claim may come within the literal terms of §...