Feathers v. Aey

• Decision Date: 13 February 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-3368.,02-3368.
• Citation: 319 F.3d 843
• Parties: Thomas L. FEATHERS; Kathleen Feathers, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. William AEY; J.P. Donohue, Defendants-Appellants, City of Akron, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

319 F.3d 843

Thomas L. FEATHERS; Kathleen Feathers, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. William AEY; J.P. Donohue, Defendants-Appellants, City of Akron, Defendant.

No. 02-3368.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued December 13, 2002.

Decided and Filed February 13, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Paul R. Reiners (argued and briefed), Canton, OH, Paul J. Pusateri, Howes Daane Milligan Kyhos & Erwin, Canton OH, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Bruce H. Christensen, Jr. (argued and briefed), John C. Reece (briefed), City of Akron, Department of Law, Akron, OH, for Defendants-Appellants.

Before BATCHELDER and MOORE, Circuit Judges; FORESTER, Chief District Judge.^*

OPINION

MOORE, Circuit Judge.

Defendants William Aey and J.P. Donohue, both officers in the City of Akron Police Department, appeal from the district court's denial of summary judgment in a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit brought by plaintiffs Thomas and Kathleen Feathers. The district court refused to grant the officers qualified immunity, ruling that the officers violated Thomas Feathers's ("Feathers") clearly established rights to be free from an unreasonable seizure and to be free from an arrest without probable cause. Because the officers were entitled to qualified immunity protection with respect to both their initial seizure of Feathers and his subsequent arrest, we REVERSE the district court on Feathers's Fourth Amendment claims.

I. BACKGROUND

Taken in the light most favorable to Feathers, the facts are as follows. At approximately 1:25 in the morning on August 31, 2000, Akron officials received a 911 call reporting that moments earlier, a white male with a beard on a porch on North Howard Street had pointed something at the caller and told the caller to shut up. The caller said that the individual "looks like he is pretty drunk," and said that although he didn't know the address from which the individual had spoken, the house was two houses from the corner. Joint Appendix ("J.A.") at 70. The caller, who claimed that he was just walking along the street when the individual spoke to him, refused to identify himself by name but suggested that "you can have somebody come by here." J.A. at 70. The dispatcher then instructed a patrol car near the area to approach 708 North Howard Street and "check for a signal 9, supposed to be carrying a weapon.... Signal 9 is on the porch near the corner, it's a white male with a beard, no shirt, possible 4, he pointed something at a caller, so he possibly has a weapon."¹ J.A. at 71.

Officers William Aey and J.P. Donohue were in a patrol car nearby and informed the dispatcher that they would go to the address. After determining that 708 North Howard was the wrong address, Aey saw on a nearby porch an individual who Aey believed matched the dispatcher's description, and they pulled their car over to 728 North Howard. When the officers arrived, Thomas Feathers and his wife, Kathleen Feathers, were standing on one side of the porch, hugging. Feathers was wearing shorts and sandals, but no shirt.

The officers approached the porch and shouted at Feathers to move from one end of the porch to the other. Feathers complied, moving to the side of the porch nearest the porch stairs and the entrance to the house. The officers, ignoring Kathleen's questions about why they were there, ordered Feathers to take his hands out of his pockets. Feathers did not remove his hands on their first instruction. They repeated the instruction; Feathers claims that, on the repeated instruction, "[I] took my hands out and by habit just put them back in." J.A. at 363. When he put his hands back in his pockets again, the officers — still standing at the base of the porch stairs — instructed him once more to take his hands out of his pockets.

After receiving this order a third time, Feathers turned away and, removing his hands from his pockets, went back toward the door that led into his house. Opening the door with his right hand, Feathers leaned into his house and told his father, who was inside, to come outside quickly and to bring their video camera. The officers ran up the porch stairs and seized him from behind while he was leaning into the house. Officers Aey and Donohue each grabbed one of his arms and pinned him, face-forward, against a pillar. One of Aey's hands was placed against Feathers's shoulders and neck in order to prevent Feathers from head-butting them, and at some point during the scuffle Aey's pinky finger was bitten, breaking the skin on both sides. Aey states that Feathers turned his head and bit Aey's pinky, but Feathers — somewhat incredibly — suggests that Aey bit his own finger. For summary judgment purposes, suffice it to say that when the officers and Feathers emerged from the fracas, someone had bitten Officer Aey's finger.

Once they had pinned Feathers against the pillar, Donohue called for other officers. The other officers, who were on their way pursuant to the original dispatch, arrived within a matter of seconds and helped wrestle Feathers to the ground, face down, where they handcuffed him. At that point, the newly arriving officers stated that they could smell alcohol on Feathers's breath. Feathers was handcuffed and transported to a cruiser. When the officers searched his pockets, they found that Feathers, a carpenter, had a Leatherman utility knife in his pocket.

Feathers was charged with assault against a peace officer, carrying a concealed weapon, and resisting arrest. At trial, the concealed weapon and resisting arrest charges were dismissed, and Feathers was acquitted by a jury on the charge of assaulting a police officer.

On August 30, 2001, Feathers and his wife filed a suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, naming the City of Akron and Officers Aey and Donohue as defendants. Feathers alleged that Aey and Donohue violated his Fourth Amendment rights, that the City failed to train the officers properly, and that the officers violated various state law rights. In his deposition, Feathers discussed a number of harms that he suffered from the incident, including his legal expenses from the criminal charges, recurring nightmares since the incident, and his eventual move from the city as a result of police intimidation. The district court dismissed the claim against the city, the state law claims, and the claims by Kathleen, but the court denied Aey's and Donohue's motion for summary judgment with respect to the constitutional claim. Finding that, for summary judgment purposes, the facts showed that the officers had seized Feathers based only on unverified anonymous tipster's 911 call, the district court determined that the officers had violated Feathers's clearly established Fourth Amendment rights under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The district court also found that Feathers's arrest arose from the impermissible seizure. Accordingly, the court rejected the officers' claim that they were entitled to qualified immunity and denied their motion for summary judgment.

The officers timely appealed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985), which provides that a district court's denial of qualified immunity, to the extent that it involves a question of law, is an appealable final order. Federal appellate courts have jurisdiction to hear interlocutory appeals concerning "the legal question of qualified immunity, i.e., whether a given set of facts violates clearly established law." Mattox v. City of Forest Park, 183 F.3d 515, 519 (6th Cir.1999). We review a district court's denial of qualified immunity de novo. Klein v. Long, 275 F.3d 544, 550 (6th Cir.2001), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ____, 123 S.Ct. 95, 154 L.Ed.2d 26 (2002).

II. ANALYSIS

We must evaluate Feathers's claims under the framework of qualified immunity. According to the doctrine of qualified immunity, "government officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Qualified immunity involves a three-step inquiry. First, we determine whether, based upon the applicable law, the facts viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs show that a constitutional violation has occurred. Second, we consider whether the violation involved a clearly established constitutional right of which a reasonable person would have known. Third, we determine whether the plaintiff has offered sufficient evidence "to indicate that what the official allegedly did was objectively unreasonable in light of the clearly established constitutional rights." Williams v. Mehra, 186 F.3d 685, 691 (6th Cir.1999) (en banc) (citing Dickerson v. McClellan, 101 F.3d 1151, 1158 (6th Cir.1996)); see also Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001).

For a right to be clearly established, "[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." Russo v. City of Cincinnati, 953 F.2d 1036, 1042 (6th Cir.1992) (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987)). "Although it need not be the case that `the very action in question has been previously held unlawful, . . . in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.'" Id. (quoting Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034). As the Supreme Court noted in Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 2516-17, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002), an action's unlawfulness can be apparent from direct holdings, from specific examples described as prohibited, or from the general reasoning that a court employs.

A. The Terry Stop

Feathers alleges that the officers' initial Terry stop violated his Fourth...