Rainey v. Conerly, s. 91-7248

• Decision Date: 19 August 1992
• Docket Number: 91-7249,Nos. 91-7248,s. 91-7248
• Citation: 973 F.2d 321
• Parties: Jeffrey RAINEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bob CONERLY, Jr., Defendant-Appellee, and Morris Bedsole, Sheriff; James Bowser, Defendants. Jeffrey RAINEY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bob CONERLY, Jr., Defendant-Appellant, and Morris Bedsole, Sheriff; James Bowser, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 321

973 F.2d 321

Jeffrey RAINEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bob CONERLY, Jr., Defendant-Appellee, and Morris Bedsole, Sheriff; James Bowser, Defendants.

Jeffrey RAINEY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bob CONERLY, Jr., Defendant-Appellant, and Morris Bedsole, Sheriff; James Bowser, Defendants.

Nos. 91-7248, 91-7249.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued May 4, 1992.

Decided Aug. 19, 1992.

Richard Edmond Giroux, North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc., Raleigh, N.C., for plaintiff-appellant.

Larry James McGlothlin, Fayetteville, N.C. (George Joseph Franks, on the brief), for defendant-appellee.

Before ERVIN, Chief Judge, HAMILTON, Circuit Judge, and KELLAM, Senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

OPINION

ERVIN, Chief Judge:

Jeffrey Rainey brought this action against Bob Conerly, a prison guard, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Conerly had used excessive force against Rainey while Rainey was a detainee at the Cumberland County Jail in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A jury found against Rainey. Rainey appeals, alleging an error in the jury selection process, an erroneous evidentiary ruling, and improper remarks by the trial judge, in the presence of the jury, regarding Rainey's credibility. Conerly cross-appeals, arguing that the trial court erred by not granting his motions for summary judgment and directed verdict on the basis of the doctrine of qualified immunity. We hold that Conerly was not entitled to summary judgment or directed verdict on the basis of qualified immunity. Furthermore, we find that the district court's failure to question the jurors on a matter requested by Rainey entitles Rainey to a new trial.

I.

On December 3, 1988, Jeffrey Rainey was a pretrial detainee at the Cumberland County Jail in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Rainey was being conducted from his cell block to the prisoner visitation area by prison guard Bob Conerly when a dispute commenced between Conerly and Rainey concerning the extent of Rainey's visitation privileges. Conerly made the decision to abort Rainey's visitation and return Rainey to the cell block.

The cell block at the Cumberland County Jail is separated from the corridor to the visitation area by a set of two security doors. The first door, a solid steel frame door with a small viewing window is manually locked and unlocked by the prison guards. Ordinarily, to enter the cell block, a prisoner passes through the steel door into a small vestibule, and the steel door is locked from the outside by a guard. Then an inner barred door is electronically unlocked by use of a switch in the outside corridor. The prisoner may then pass through the inner door into the cell block area. The inner door automatically relocks after it has been opened and closed.

In the present case, Conerly passed Rainey through the outer door into the vestibule, relocked the outer door, and electronically unlocked the inner door. At this point in time, Rainey, continuing his dispute with Conerly, refused to proceed into the cell block area, telling Conerly that if he wanted him in the cell block he should come in and put him there himself.

Rainey testified that at this point, Conerly lost his temper, opened the outer door, dragged Rainey back into the corridor, and slammed him into the wall three times, causing injuries to Rainey's back. Conerly contended that he was concerned that a large group of prisoners had congregated by the unlocked inner door, which he could not relock without entering the vestibule. He testified that he entered the vestibule with the intention of defusing a volatile situation and only used a necessary degree of force to remove Rainey from the vestibule, merely "falling" against Rainey when they were back in the outer corridor.

Rainey was subsequently convicted of the breaking and entering and larceny charges for which he was being detained. He filed the present complaint pro se while he was a prisoner at the Southern Correctional Institution in Troy, North Carolina. The original complaint included claims against Morris Bedsole, Sheriff of Cumberland County, and James Bowser, Chief Jailer of the Cumberland County Jail, for improperly training and supervising Conerly. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of these defendants, and Rainey has not appealed that ruling.

Conerly sought summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. The district court denied the motion, due to factual disputes in the record, and the case proceeded to trial, commencing July 19, 1991. Conerly made motions for directed verdict, based on qualified immunity, after the close of Rainey's case and again after presenting his defense. Both motions were denied. After deliberating, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Conerly. Rainey appeals, alleging error in the jury selection process, an improper evidentiary ruling, and improper statements by the trial judge. Conerly cross-appeals on the issue of qualified immunity.

II.

Because any alleged errors at trial would be moot if Conerly is correct in his contention that he is protected by qualified immunity, we will consider that issue first. This court has held that the doctrine of qualified immunity is applicable to allegations of excessive use of force. See Slattery v. Rizzo, 939 F.2d 213, 216 (4th Cir.1991). In general, the doctrine of qualified immunity provides that "[g]overnment officials performing discretionary functions are shielded from civil liability to the extent their conduct 'does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.' " Id. (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). In keeping with this principle, a police officer is entitled to prevail on an assertion of qualified immunity "if a reasonable officer possessing the same information could have believed that his conduct was lawful." Id.; see also Gooden v. Howard County, 954 F.2d 960, 964-65 (4th Cir.1992) (en banc) ("immunity is to be applied with due respect for the perspective of police officers on the scene and not with the greater leisure and acquired wisdom of judicial hindsight").

Even in light of this highly deferential standard, we find that the district court properly denied Conerly's motions for the invocation of qualified immunity. Resolution of this case depends entirely on a credibility determination between Rainey and Conerly as to the level of force used by Conerly in removing Rainey from the vestibule, and as such, the issue is inappropriate for resolution by summary judgment.

This case is distinguishable from this court's recent decision in Gooden. In Gooden, the en banc court addressed a similar situation in which the applicability of qualified immunity arguably depended on resolution of conflicting versions of the facts. The majority ultimately concluded that resolution of what actually happened was irrelevant to the qualified immunity claim, because the appropriate focus was on the perceptions of the officers. See 954 F.2d at 965-66 ("In the absence of a genuine dispute as to the reasonableness of the officers' perceptions, the issue of qualified immunity is ripe for summary judgment." (emphasis added)). Given the facts as perceived by the officers at the time of the incident, the court in Gooden ruled that there was no basis to dispute a conclusion that the officers could have believed their actions to be lawful. The Gooden court, therefore, reversed the district court, and a panel of this court, both of which had ruled that summary judgment on qualified immunity was inappropriate.

Unlike Gooden where what actually happened did not need to be resolved by the trier of fact in order to reach a decision on the applicability of qualified immunity, in this case a determination of what actually happened is absolutely necessary to decide whether Conerly could reasonably have believed that his actions were lawful. Conerly does not claim, as did the officers in Gooden, that he operated under a mistaken, but reasonable, perception of the facts. Instead, the crux of the dispute revolves entirely around the level of force utilized by Conerly in removing Rainey from the vestibule. If Rainey's version of the facts is credited, then Conerly's actions could not, by any reasonable officer, be considered to be within the bounds of the law. Conversely, if Conerly's version is believed, then, not only would qualified immunity be applicable, but Rainey would have no valid claim for use of excessive force. The determination of what actually happened depends exclusively on an assessment of the credibility of the respective witnesses. This assessment is a disputed issue of fact and, therefore, cannot be resolved on summary judgment or directed verdict. Crediting Rainey's version of the facts, as we are required to do in this context, we must find that the district court was correct in declining to grant Conerly's motions.

Recognizing that he cannot succeed on summary judgment or directed verdict in the face of conflicting testimony as to what actually happened, Conerly attempts to make an argument analogous to the winning argument in Gooden. He contends that even if Rainey's version of the facts is taken as true, and Conerly did use substantial force in removing Rainey from the vestibule, Conerly's actions were justified by the situation as Conerly perceived it to be. Conerly contends that his actions were motivated by a reasonable concern regarding the potential escape of the other inmates in the cell block which, at minimum, could have led Conerly to believe that the use of substantial force against Rainey was legitimate. At trial, Conerly testified that he feared the other inmates would crowd through the unlocked inner door and kick through the locked outer door--an occurrence he testified he had witnessed on two other occasions.

However, Conerly's...