Gonzales v. Duran
| Decision Date | 22 December 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 08-2184.,08-2184. |
| Citation | 590 F.3d 855 |
| Parties | Bertha GONZALES; Jade Gonzales, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. William DURAN; Steve Hall; Richard Dilley; Mary Kendrick, in their individual capacities; City of Albuquerque, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Paul Kennedy (Mary Y.C. Han and Darin M. Foster, with him on the briefs) of Kennedy & Han, P.C., Albuquerque, NM, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Kathryn Levy, Deputy City Attorney, City of Albuquerque (Lisa Entress Pullen of Civerolo, Gralow, Hill & Curtis, P.A., with her on the brief), Albuquerque, NM, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before KELLY, EBEL, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiffs-Appellants Bertha and Jade Gonzales appeal from the district court's judgment on a jury verdict in favor of Defendants-Appellees police officers, William Duran, Steve Hall, Richard Dilley, and Mary Kendrick, and the City of Albuquerque. Plaintiffs maintain that the district court1 improperly submitted the issue of qualified immunity (for the defendant police officers) to the jury. Our jurisdiction arises under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and we affirm finding harmless error.
In this federal civil rights action, Plaintiffs claimed that the Defendants violated Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights based upon an unlawful detention and interrogation during an investigation. Aplt. Br. at 2. On June 14, 1999, Sam Gonzales, the husband of Bertha Gonzales and father of Jade Gonzales, was shot when Jade went to get a gun for Sam. Aplt.App. 65. Jade was 12 years old at the time and Sam died shortly thereafter. Aplt.App. 65. The police suspected that Sam was murdered by members of his family. Aplt. App. 370. The case was submitted to the jury on two basic claims.
The first claim was that Plaintiffs were detained without probable cause in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment. This claim ran against Defendants Duran, Hall and Dilley and arose out the following facts. On July 12, 1999, Albuquerque Police Department officers obtained a warrant to install a listening device in the Gonzales's home. Aplt.App. 374-78. The warrant authorized the officers to install the device by a ruse. Apt. App. 378. The ruse involved telling the Plaintiffs and their neighbors that, because a fictional armed burglar was in the area, evacuation of the "danger zone" was necessary. Aplt.App. 379-80. Bertha Gonzales returned from a grocery trip to find police officers on her street. Aplt.App. 527-28. An officer told Bertha that because of a hostage situation involving a gun, she could not return to her home. Aplt.App. 527-31. At the officer's instruction, Bertha and her children, including Jade, waited in a police mobile unit for an hour-and-a-half to two hours. Aplt.App. 530.
The second claim was that Jade was deprived of her substantive due process rights as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment — specifically, the right to be free of arbitrary and abusive governmental conduct that shocks the conscience. This claim ran against all of the individual Defendants and stemmed from Jade's arrest on the night of August 7, 1999. Plaintiffs contended that APD officers interrogated Jade without advising her of her right to have her attorney or mother present, and refused Jade access to her attorney or mother. Aplt.App. 69. Plaintiffs disputed that Jade waived her rights. Aplt.App. 69-70.
The Defendant officers raised qualified immunity as an affirmative defense to both claims. Aplt.App. 157. The district court denied Defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law, as well as denying the Defendant officers qualified immunity — both at the close of the Plaintiffs' case-in-chief and at the close of the Defendants' case. Aplt.App. 620-28; Aplt.App. 635. The court instructed the jury on the Plaintiffs' unlawful detention and unlawful interrogation claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Aplt.App. 148-53. Over Plaintiffs' objections, the court also instructed the jury on qualified immunity.2
Plaintiffs objected to this instruction on the ground that it put "the issue of qualified immunity to the jury." Aplt.App. 637. They noted that it was adapted from a Fifth Circuit pattern jury instruction, see Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instr. Civ. 10.1 at 126-27 (2009 rev.), and a note accompanying the instruction explained that where there is agreement as to the historical facts, a court must resolve the issue of qualified immunity, not a jury. Id. at 126 n. 2 (citing Mangieri v. Clifton, 29 F.3d 1012, 1016 (5th Cir.1994)). The underlying historical facts going to qualified immunity were not in dispute, Plaintiffs argued, so "the issue of the availability of the qualified immunity defense must be resolved at the summary judgment stage by the court, not in a trial by the jury." Aplt.App. 638.
The court also provided the jury with special interrogatories. Aplt.App. 179-83. Several are important to this appeal and are set out below.3 Question No. 1 asked whether individual Defendants (Duran, Hall, and Dilley) violated the Jade Gonzales's "Fourth Amendment right to not be detained without probable cause." Aplt. App. 179. Question No. 2 asked the same question regarding Bertha Gonzales's Fourth Amendment rights. Aplt.App. 180. The jury answered both questions "No" as to each defendant. Aplt.App. 179-80. To Question No. 3, whether Duran as supervisor "participate[d] and acquiesce[d] in ... Hall, Dilley, and Kendrick's interrogation," the jury checked "No." Aplt.App. 179-80. The interrogatories then instructed that if the jury answered "No" to Question No. 3, it was to proceed to Question No. 4 on qualified immunity. After a question on causation (which would not have applied given the jury's answers), the interrogatories instructed "If you answered `No' to all of the three previous questions or the sub-parts, please go to Question No. 5." Aplt. App. 179-80. The jury then proceeded to answer Question No. 4: "Was each Defendant's conduct objectively reasonable as explained to you in the jury instructions?" The jury answered "Yes" as to each individual Defendant. Aplt.App. 181. Finally, the jury proceeded to Question No. 5: "Did any of the following Defendants violate Jade Gonzales' Fourteenth Amendment Right to be free of arbitrary and abusive governmental conduct that shocks the conscience?" The jury answered "No" as to each individual Defendant. Aplt. App. 181. Based on the jury's verdict, the court entered judgment on July 31, 2008. Aplt.App. 184.
We review de novo whether the court erroneously instructed the jury on the applicable law. Sherouse v. Ratchner, 573 F.3d 1055, 1059 (10th Cir.2009). "Despite this standard of review, we do not require perfection, but `we must be satisfied that, upon hearing the instructions, the jury understood the issues to be resolved and its duty to resolve them.'" Smith v. Ingersoll-Rand Co., 214 F.3d 1235, 1250 (10th Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). This court reviews de novo both a district court's ruling on qualified immunity, Farmer v. Perrill, 288 F.3d 1254, 1259 (10th Cir.2002), and the submission of qualified immunity to the jury. Maestas v. Lujan, 351 F.3d 1001, 1007 (10th Cir.2003).
Qualified immunity "protects government officials 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." Pearson v. Callahan, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 808, 815, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). Therefore, qualified immunity requires four determinations: (1) what actually happened, (2) whether the plaintiff asserted a violation of a constitutional or statutory right, (3) whether the law had clearly established that right, and (4) whether an objectively reasonable defendant would have understood his conduct to violate that clearly established right. See Maestas, 351 F.3d at 1006-07.
Qualified immunity is "almost always" a question of law. Keylon v. City of Albuquerque, 535 F.3d 1210, 1217 (10th Cir.2008). Like many other questions of law raised in pre-trial motions, the trial court often decides the issue before trial. Id. A trial court may submit a question of qualified immunity to the jury only "`in exceptional circumstances' [where] historical facts [are] so intertwined with the law that a jury question is appropriate as to whether a reasonable person in the defendant's position would have known that his conduct violated [the] right [at issue]." Id. at 1217-18 (quoting Maestas, 351 F.3d at 1007). Thus, the predicate for submitting a qualified immunity question to the jury is the existence of disputed issues of material fact — that is, the question of what actually happened.
Where such factual disputes are present, there are three possible ways for a trial court to submit the qualified immunity question to the jury. First, the court could submit special interrogatories to the jury to establish the facts. Based on the jury's findings, the court could then determine whether the defendant's conduct was objectively reasonable in light of the clearly established law. Second, the judge could define the clearly established law for the jury. Then, the court could instruct the jury to determine what the defendant actually did and whether it was reasonable in light of the clearly established law defined by the judge. This second approach is the one apparently taken by the district court in this case. Third, the court could simply allow the jury to determine what the clearly established law is, what the defendant actually did, and whether the defendant's conduct was objectively reasonable in light of the clearly established law found by the jury. This last approach, of course, is clearly inappropriate.
Although our cases have allowed the second approach, they have done so only when narrow issues of disputed material fact are dispositive of...
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