Piazza v. Jefferson Cnty.

• Decision Date: 09 May 2019
• Docket Number: No. 18-10487,18-10487
• Citation: 923 F.3d 947
• Parties: Anthony PIAZZA, as personal representative of the Estate of Ricky DeAngelo Hinkle, deceased, Plaintiff, Nyreekis Jarnell Hunter, as personal representative of the Estate of Ricky DeAngelo Hinkle, deceased, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. JEFFERSON COUNTY, ALABAMA, an Alabama county, individually, et al, Defendants, Mike Hale, Ron Eddings, Habimana Dukuzumuremyi, each individually, Defendants - Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

923 F.3d 947

Anthony PIAZZA, as personal representative of the Estate of Ricky DeAngelo Hinkle, deceased, Plaintiff,

Nyreekis Jarnell Hunter, as personal representative of the Estate of Ricky DeAngelo Hinkle, deceased, Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.JEFFERSON COUNTY, ALABAMA, an Alabama county, individually, et al, Defendants,Mike Hale, Ron Eddings, Habimana Dukuzumuremyi, each individually, Defendants - Appellants.

No. 18-10487

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 9, 2019

Michael Todd Wheeles, Matthew Gregory Garmon, Jeremy L. Knowles, Morris Haynes Wheeles Knowles & Nelson, Birmingham, AL, Thomas E. James, Law Offices of Tommy James, Birmingham, AL, Anthony J. Piazza, Anthony Piazza, PC, Birmingham, AL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

John G. Dana, Gordon Dana & Gilmore, LLC, Birmingham, AL, James E. Murrill, Keith Jackson, Jeremiah M. Mosley, Robert R. Riley, Jr., Riley & Jackson, PC, Birmingham, AL, for Defendants-Appellants MIKE HALE, RON EDDINGS, HABIMANA DUKUZUMUREMYI.

Horace Cecil Ireland, III, Porterfield Harper Mills Motlow & Ireland, PA, Birmingham, AL, for Defendants-Appellants ADVANCED CORRECTIONAL HEALTHCARE, INC., DAVID HICKS, KAREN FOWLER, TYKIE JILL MORGAN, JANE MOORE, TAMIKO COLE.

Before TJOFLAT, NEWSOM, and GILMAN,^* Circuit Judges.

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:

Ricky Hinkle died in the Birmingham City Jail after being shocked with a taser, twice. Hinkle’s son, Nyreekis Hunter, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging several claims on his behalf, including, as relevant here, (1) an excessive-force claim against Deputy Habimana Dukuzumuremyi and (2) supervisory-liability claims for excessive force and deliberate indifference to Hinkle’s serious medical needs against Sheriff Mike Hale and Captain Ron Eddings. The officers moved to dismiss Hunter’s suit based on qualified immunity, the district court denied their motion, and the officers now appeal.

After careful review, we agree in part and disagree in part with the district court’s decision. We agree that the facts as Hunter has pleaded them show that Deputy Dukuzumuremyi violated Hinkle’s clearly established constitutional right to be free from excessive force. In particular, we hold that Dukuzumuremyi crossed the constitutional line, and clearly so, when, having already tased Hinkle once—dropping him to the floor, rendering him motionless, and causing him to urinate on himself—Dukuzumuremyi shocked him again a full eight seconds later. We disagree, however, that Hunter’s allegations show—as they must to support a supervisory-liability claim—a causal connection between either the use of force against Hinkle or any deliberate indifference to Hinkle’s serious medical needs, on the one hand, and any policy or custom implemented by Sheriff Hale or Captain Eddings, on the other. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s decision to deny qualified immunity to Deputy Dukuzumuremyi but reverse its decision to deny qualified immunity to Sheriff Hale and Captain Eddings.

I

Ricky Hinkle, who suffered from alcoholism, heart disease

, and depression, was arrested while "visibly intoxicated" and was taken to the Jefferson County Jail in Bessemer, Alabama.¹ The next day, he was transferred to the Birmingham City Jail. Soon thereafter, he began suffering from alcohol-withdrawal symptoms and exhibiting delusional behavior. Jail officers moved Hinkle three different times before eventually (and presumably due to his deteriorating condition) placing him in a cell on Level 3, where Deputies Habimana Dukuzumuremyi and Christopher Cotten were working.

Shortly after Hinkle arrived on Level 3, Dukuzumuremyi realized that he couldn’t see him on the video monitor, so he called to him over the loudspeaker. When Hinkle didn’t respond, Cotten went to investigate and found Hinkle in the corner of his cell, wearing only underpants and shoes. When Cotten asked Hinkle why he was in the corner, Hinkle responded that he "wanted to die." At this, Cotten decided to move Hinkle to a padded cell. He walked Hinkle toward the cell and asked him to remove his shoes. Hinkle initially obeyed but then ran down the hallway to the bathroom and grabbed a shower curtain. Cotten took the shower curtain away from Hinkle shortly before Dukuzumuremyi arrived on the scene.

After the officers attempted three times to pull Hinkle into his new cell, Dukuzumuremyi fired his taser, hitting Hinkle on the left side of his chest just above his heart. As a result of that taser shock—which lasted 5 seconds—Hinkle fell to the floor on his right side and urinated on himself. Dukuzumuremyi then ordered Hinkle to roll over to be handcuffed, but Hinkle remained unresponsive. Eight seconds after the end of the first shock, and while Hinkle still lay motionless (and wet) on the ground, Dukuzumuremyi tased him again, this time on the front left side of his neck. Shortly after the second shock, Hinkle went into cardiac arrest

. He was taken to the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead.

Hinkle’s son Nyreekis Hunter, acting as personal representative of Hinkle’s estate, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on Hinkle’s behalf.² As relevant here, Hunter sued Deputy Dukuzumuremyi for excessive force and Deputy Cotten for failure to intervene, and both deputies for deliberate indifference to Hinkle’s serious medical needs. He also sued Sheriff Hale and Captain Eddings on a supervisory-liability theory based on the excessive-force and deliberate-indifference claims. The officers moved to dismiss on qualified-immunity grounds.³

The district court granted in part and denied in part the officers’ motion to dismiss. The court dismissed the deliberate-indifference claim against Dukuzumuremyi and Cotten, finding that the complaint "contain[ed] no allegations to indicate that either deputy had subjective knowledge of the decedent’s medical condition." The court also dismissed the failure-to-intervene claim against Cotten.⁴ But the court denied the motion to dismiss as to (1) the excessive-force claim against Dukuzumuremyi and (2) the supervisory-liability claims against Hale and Eddings. Dukuzumuremyi, Hale, and Eddings timely appealed.⁵

II

We review de novo a district court’s denial of qualified immunity. Cottone v. Jenne , 326 F.3d 1352, 1357 (11th Cir. 2003). Qualified immunity shields a government official from liability unless he violates "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Foy v. Holston , 94 F.3d 1528, 1532 (11th Cir. 1996). An officer asserting a qualified-immunity defense bears the initial burden of showing that he was "acting within his discretionary authority." Skop v. City of Atlanta , 485 F.3d 1130, 1136 (11th Cir. 2007). After the officer makes this showing—and here, it is undisputed—the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show that (1) the officer violated a constitutional right and (2) the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation. Holloman ex rel. Holloman v. Harland , 370 F.3d 1252, 1264 (11th Cir. 2004). We may consider these two prongs in either order; an official is entitled to qualified immunity if the plaintiff fails to establish either. Jacoby v. Baldwin County , 835 F.3d 1338, 1344 (11th Cir. 2016).

We start with the excessive-force claim against Deputy Dukuzumuremyi, and then move to the supervisory-liability claims against Sheriff Hale and Captain Eddings.

A

First things first. What constitutional provision governs the use of force in this case, and what doctrinal standard guides our analysis? While the Fourth Amendment prevents the use of excessive force during arrests, see Graham v. Connor , 490 U.S. 386, 388, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989), and the Eighth Amendment serves as the primary source of protection against excessive force after conviction, see Whitley v. Albers , 475 U.S. 312, 327, 106 S.Ct. 1078, 89 L.Ed.2d 251 (1986), it is the Fourteenth Amendment that protects those who exist in the in-between—pretrial detainees. Garrett v. Athens–Clarke County , 378 F.3d 1274, 1279 n.11 (11th Cir. 2004).⁶

That pretrial detainees fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s ambit dates to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell v. Wolfish , 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). The Court explained there that the "proper inquiry" when "evaluating the constitutionality of conditions or restrictions of pretrial detention" is "whether those conditions amount to punishment of the detainee." Id . at 535, 99 S.Ct. 1861. "For under the Due Process Clause," the Court continued, "a detainee may not be punished prior to an adjudication of guilt in accordance with due process of law." Id .

Although pretrial detainees’ excessive-force claims have been analyzed under the Fourteenth Amendment since Bell , the constitutional inquiry—at least in this Circuit—has long resembled the one that governs prisoners’ excessive-force claims under the Eighth Amendment. Historically, both prisoners and pretrial detainees needed to show not only that a jail official deliberately used excessive force, but also that the official did so "maliciously or sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm." Bozeman v. Orum , 422 F.3d 1265, 1271 (11th Cir. 2005), overruled by Kingsley v. Hendrickson , ––– U.S. ––––, 135 S. Ct. 2466, 2473, 192 L.Ed.2d 416 (2015). All that changed a few years back, though, when the Supreme Court clarified that, unlike a prisoner bringing an Eighth Amendment excessive-force claim, a pretrial detainee raising a Fourteenth Amendment claim needn’t prove an officer’s subjective intent to harm but instead need show only that "the force purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively unreasonable." Kingsley , 135 S. Ct. at 2473.

Harking back to Bell , the Kingsley Court explained that, unlike in Eighth Amendment cases, there is no need in the pretrial-detainee context to determine "when punishment is unconstitutional" because a pretrial detainee has not yet been adjudicated guilty and thus may not be...