Hill v. Carroll County, Miss.

• Decision Date: 28 October 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-60516.,08-60516.
• Citation: 587 F.3d 230
• Parties: Alice Loggins HILL, as Administratrix of the Estate of Debbie Denise Loggins, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CARROLL COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI; Carroll County Sheriff's Department, a Division of Carroll County, Mississippi; Donald Gray, in his Official Capacity as Sheriff of Carroll County; Michael Spellman, Individually and in his official capacity as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Carroll County; Charles Jones, Individually and in his official capacity as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Carroll County; David Mims, Individually and in his official capacity as Deputy Sheriff of Carroll County, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

587 F.3d 230

Alice Loggins HILL, as Administratrix of the Estate of Debbie Denise Loggins, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CARROLL COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI; Carroll County Sheriff's Department, a Division of Carroll County, Mississippi; Donald Gray, in his Official Capacity as Sheriff of Carroll County; Michael Spellman, Individually and in his official capacity as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Carroll County; Charles Jones, Individually and in his official capacity as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Carroll County; David Mims, Individually and in his official capacity as Deputy Sheriff of Carroll County, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 08-60516.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

October 28, 2009.

Tiffany Gayle Johnson (argued), The Cochran Firm, Memphis, TN, for Hill.

Michael Jeffrey Wolf (argued), Jan F. Gadow, Page, Kruger & Holland, Jackson, MS, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before JONES, Chief Judge, and STEWART and SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges.

EDITH H. JONES, Chief Judge:

Alice Loggins Hill ("Hill"), as administrator of Debbie Denise Loggins's ("Loggins") estate, sued several police officers and Carroll County, Mississippi, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for claims arising out of her daughter's death while she was being driven to jail. She appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants. With no evidence presented that Loggins's constitutional rights were violated, we affirm the district court.^*

I. BACKGROUND

Shortly before 6:00 am on September 17, 2005, Carroll County Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy Michael Spellman ("Spellman") and Deputy David Mims ("Mims") responded to a call about a fight between two women. Spellman arrived first and found Debbie Loggins holding Patricia McChristian ("McChristian") in a headlock. When Loggins refused to release McChristian, Spellman attempted to handcuff her. Loggins, who stood five foot four inches tall and weighed 220 pounds, released McChristian but attacked Spellman, forcing him to the ground. She seized the deputy's flashlight and pummeled him about the head and shoulders.

Spellman managed to knock the flashlight away from Loggins and eventually handcuffed her wrists behind her back. She kicked and cursed at the deputy. Spellman retrieved leg restraints from his patrol car and attached them. When Deputy Mims then arrived on the scene, both officers tried to load Loggins into the patrol car. She continued to kick, twist, and otherwise resist the deputies. After they failed several times to deposit her in the car, Spellman placed Loggins in four-point restraints,¹ linking her leg restraints to her handcuffs with an additional set of handcuffs. Spellman and Mims then lifted Loggins into the back seat of Mims's vehicle.

The two deputies drove to the Carrollton courthouse, where they met Deputy Charles Jones ("Jones"), who would transport Loggins to jail in Grenada, about 29 miles north. They transferred the still-fighting Loggins from Mims's vehicle to Jones's. Loggins's spirited movements caused Jones's car to rock and shake.

Taking the facts in the light most favorable to Hill, Loggins rode face-down in the back of Jones's air-conditioned car during the half-hour ride to the jail. At some point during the trip, Loggins became quiet and, unbeknownst to Jones, may have stopped breathing. On arrival, Jones left the car to request assistance with Loggins. When a corrections officer accompanied Jones back to the car, they found Loggins unresponsive and without a pulse. They began CPR and notified the emergency medical service. Loggins was rushed to the Grenada Lake Medical Center, but tragically, she was pronounced dead at 7:37 a.m.

The exact cause of Loggins's death is unclear. Her body temperature at the time of death was recorded at 107.5°F, an elevation consistent with the official autopsy diagnosis of fatal hyperthermia. Loggins was also obese and hypertensive; it is undisputed that neither drugs nor excessive alcohol were present in her system. A note in the coroner's chart suggests that blood work should be done to rule out positional asphyxia — but no relevant test reports are in the record. Finally, Hill's expert Dr. Spitz opined, based on the abbreviated medical records and autopsy report, that Loggins died from positional asphyxia (suffocation). For present analytical purposes, we must assume she died of the cause asserted by Dr. Spitz.

Hill sued all three deputies, Sheriff Donald Gray, and Carroll County under § 1983 for violations of Loggins's Fourth Amendment rights. The district court granted motions for summary judgment in favor of the defendants, finding the officers were entitled to qualified immunity and the County not liable for a variety of reasons. Hill appeals.

Although she characterizes the entire incident as an unreasonable seizure violating the Fourth Amendment, Hill challenges two distinct actions by the officers: the initial decision by Deputies Spellman and Mims to place Loggins in four-point restraints and the failure of Deputy Jones to monitor Loggins adequately during transport. Hill additionally contends that Carroll County is liable under Monell for ratifying the deputies' conduct, maintaining an unconstitutional custom or policy, and failing to provide insufficient training. See Monell v. Dep't of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978).

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review the grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same standards as the district court. Mack v. City of Abilene, 461 F.3d 547, 555 (5th Cir. 2006). In evaluating a motion for summary judgment, the court must view all disputed facts and inferences in the light most favorable to the non-movant. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). Summary judgment must be granted if "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and [the court finds] that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). No genuine issue as to any material fact exists where a party "fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986).

III. DISCUSSION

A. Four-Point Restraints

Hill alleges that the deputies violated Loggins's Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force during Loggins's arrest. To recover, she must show: (1) an injury (2) which resulted from the use of force that was clearly excessive to the need and (3) the excessiveness of which was objectively unreasonable. Williams v. Bramer, 180 F.3d 699, 704 (5th Cir.1999). To determine whether the force used by officers is unreasonable, the Fourth Amendment prescribes a case-specific balancing exercise in which "the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest ..." all play a part. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). The Court in Graham explains the necessary perspective in evaluating the use of force:

The "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. ... The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments— in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-97, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). Further, only the objective reasonableness of force matters for Fourth Amendment purposes—an officer's subjective motivation and intent are irrelevant. Id. at 397, 109 S.Ct. 1865. The court must measure the force used under the facts as a reasonable officer would perceive them, not necessarily against the historical facts. See Reese v. Anderson, 926 F.2d 494, 501 (5th Cir.1991) (finding no Fourth Amendment violation where an officer shot and killed an unarmed suspected who the officer reasonably believed to be armed). For that reason, when reviewing a grant of summary judgment in the Fourth Amendment context, after first construing disputed historical facts in favor of the non-movant, the court must then ask how a reasonable officer would have perceived those historical facts.

Even if Hill establishes a violation of Loggins's Fourth Amendment rights, the deputies can claim qualified immunity unless they violated constitutional rights that were "clearly established" at the time of their conduct. Pearson v. Callahan, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 808, 815-16, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009).

Because no material facts are in dispute except the cause of Loggins's death (which we assume to be positional asphyxia), we hold that no reasonable jury could have found that the deputies used excessive force to subdue Loggins. This conclusion relieves the deputies as well as Carroll County of § 1983 liability.

Hill's burden was to create a triable fact issue that four-point restraints, which are after all a variety of handcuffing, pose such a serious risk of inflicting death by positional asphyxia that the method is necessarily or frequently disproportionate to the need to restrain an arrestee. She then had to create a material fact issue as to the unreasonableness of the deputies' use of such force against Loggins in these particular circumstances.

To carry her burden, Hill relies on this court's decision in Gutierrez v. City of San Antonio, 139 F.3d 441 (5th Cir.1998); on the "San Diego Study" concerning four-point restraints; and on testimony of police procedure expert, George Kirkham and forensic pathologist, Dr. Werner Spitz.² She also notes that a...