Reese v. Cnty. of Sacramento

• Decision Date: 23 April 2018
• Docket Number: No. 16-16230,No. 16-16195,16-16195
• Citation: 888 F.3d 1030
• Parties: Robert I. REESE, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellant, v. COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO; Duncan Brown, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #1220); Zachary Rose, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #832), Defendants–Appellees. Robert I. Reese, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellee, v. County of Sacramento; Zachary Rose, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #832), Defendants–Appellants, and Duncan Brown, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #1220), Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

888 F.3d 1030

Robert I. REESE, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellant,
v.
COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO; Duncan Brown, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #1220); Zachary Rose, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #832), Defendants–Appellees.

Robert I. Reese, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
County of Sacramento; Zachary Rose, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #832), Defendants–Appellants,
and
Duncan Brown, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Deputy (Badge #1220), Defendant.

No. 16-16195
No. 16-16230

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted December 8, 2017, San Francisco, California
Filed April 23, 2018

Dale K. Galipo (argued), Law Office of Dale K. Galipo, Woodland Hills, California; Eric Grant, Hicks Thomas LLP, Sacramento, California; Stewart Katz, Law Office of Stewart Katz, Sacramento, California; for Plaintiff–Appellant.

John R. Whitefleet (argued) and Thomas L. Riordan, Porter Scott, Sacramento, California, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before: Milan D. Smith, Jr. and Sandra S. Ikuta, Circuit Judges, and Diane J. Humetewa,^* District Judge.

HUMETEWA, District Judge:

888 F.3d 1035

Plaintiff/Appellant Robert Reese, Jr. ("Reese") appeals the district court's decision granting Defendants'/Appellees' ("the Defendants") post-verdict motion for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of qualified immunity. Reese further appeals the district court's post-verdict decision granting "summary judgment sua sponte " for the Defendants on the California Bane Act ("Bane Act") claim. The Defendants cross-appeal the district court's denial of their requests for post-trial relief. Defendants also argue that Heck v. Humphrey , 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994) should have barred Reese's claims because his misdemeanor criminal conviction for exhibiting a knife arose out of the same acts. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

Background

Robert Reese, Jr., filed this civil rights claim against the County of Sacramento and two of its Deputy Sheriffs, Duncan Brown and Zachary Rose, following a shooting incident on March 25, 2011. In the hours leading up to the incident, Reese had consumed large quantities of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine at a neighborhood party. The party ended when Reese and his neighbor Nathan began arguing over whether Reese had taken Nathan's bottle of vodka. Sometime after the party, Nathan's girlfriend went to Reese's apartment to retrieve the vodka. Reese answered the door holding a knife and refused to hand over the bottle. Around 4:30 a.m., Reese and Nathan exchanged several text messages, some containing racial epithets. Shortly thereafter, Reese heard knocking on his apartment door. He assumed it was Nathan. It was not.

Deputies Brown and Rose and several other police officers arrived at Reese's apartment complex shortly before 5:00 a.m. They were responding to an anonymous 911 call that an African–American male had exited apartment 144 and fired an automatic gun. The caller also stated that the male was possibly crazy, under the influence of drugs, had a knife, and was back inside apartment 144.

Deputy Rose decided that someone should knock on the door of apartment 144 to further investigate the 911 report. The deputies decided that Deputy Brown, who had a rifle, would stand back about 15 feet to cover the doorway while Deputy Rose would knock on the apartment door. Deputy Rose, concealing himself, stood to the side of the door and other deputies lined up behind him. Deputy Rose, while holding his handgun in one hand, knocked on the door with his flashlight. Deputy Brown testified that after Deputy Rose knocked, "the door flew open. I saw a figure coming out, arm up, extended, large knife[.]" Upon seeing the knife, which he describes as being within a foot of Deputy Rose's neck, Deputy Brown fired his rifle at Reese. Deputy Rose, seeing Reese with the knife in his hand, simultaneously backed away from the door of the apartment. The next events occurred in what Deputy Rose describes as a "millisecond." After the rifle shot, Deputy Rose advanced into the apartment expecting to see Reese shot and incapacitated. Instead he saw Reese standing upright in the apartment. He could not, however, see Reese's hands. Deputy Rose immediately fired his handgun, aiming it at Reese's chest. He was approximately three feet away from Reese. Reese fell backward toward a couch and Deputy Rose saw blood on Reese's clothing and the carpet. At trial, Deputy Rose testified that he was uncertain whether it was his or Deputy Brown's shot that actually hit Reese but believed that it was his. Reese survived the incident and thereafter asserted

888 F.3d 1036

civil rights claims against the County and Deputies Brown and Rose.

After a seven-day jury trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Reese on his Fourth Amendment excessive force and Bane Act claims against Deputy Rose and the County. The jury also returned a verdict in favor of Deputy Brown, which Reese does not appeal. In separate interrogatories, the jury determined that Deputy Rose's pistol round, not Deputy Brown's rifle round, hit Reese. The jury also found that Reese had a knife in his hand in an elevated position when he opened the door. They answered "no" to the question of whether Reese brandished the knife at Deputy Rose. Question 14 asked the jury "[a]t the time Deputy Rose fired his shot, did it appear that Plaintiff posed an immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to Deputy Rose?" The jury answered "no." The jury awarded Reese $534,340.00 in compensatory damages including $150,000.00 for non-economic loss.

After the jury returned its verdict, the Defendants moved for a judgment as a matter of law asserting that Deputy Rose was entitled to qualified immunity, or alternatively that Reese failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence all of the elements required for a Fourth Amendment battery and Bane Act violation. The Defendants asserted that the evidence at trial insufficiently established that it was Deputy Rose's shot that hit Reese, and thus Reese had not met his burden of showing Rose had caused Reese's harm. Finally, the Defendants asserted that Reese's claims were barred by Heck v. Humphrey because he pleaded no contest to a violation of California Penal Code section 417(a)(1). Defendants also moved for a new trial, arguing that the district court erred in its instruction to the jury on Reese's Bane Act claim.

The district court determined that Deputy Rose was entitled to qualified immunity on Reese's Fourth Amendment claim. The district court then granted "summary judgment sua sponte ," finding that Defendants were entitled to judgment as a matter of law on Reese's Bane Act claim, concluding that Defendants' proposed jury instruction on that claim should have been given. The district court denied Defendants' other requests for post-trial relief, including their Heck v. Humphrey claim. Reese appealed the district court's post-trial rulings in favor of Defendants. Defendants filed a cross-appeal reasserting their Heck v. Humphrey claim and asserting that the district court erred in several of its evidentiary rulings and its award of future non-economic loss.

Analysis

I. Defendants' Post–Verdict Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law

The Court of Appeals "review[s] de novo the grant or denial of a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law." Pavao v. Pagay , 307 F.3d 915, 918 (9th Cir. 2002). "A renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law is properly granted only ‘if the evidence, construed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, permits only one reasonable conclusion, and that conclusion is contrary to the jury's verdict.’ " Castro v. County of Los Angeles , 833 F.3d 1060, 1066 (9th Cir. 2016) (quoting Pavao , 307 F.3d at 918 ). Thus, although the Court does not defer to the district court's decision on the motion, it gives "significant deference to the jury's verdict and to the nonmoving parties ... when deciding whether that decision was correct." A.D. v. Cal. Highway Patrol , 712 F.3d 446, 453 (9th Cir. 2013).

A. Qualified Immunity

Reese first challenges the district court's post-verdict ruling that Deputy Rose is

888 F.3d 1037

entitled to qualified immunity on his Fourth Amendment excessive force claim.

"The doctrine of 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 , 555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald , 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) ). "Qualified immunity gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions. When properly applied, it protects ‘all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.’ " Ashcroft v. al-Kidd , 563 U.S. 731, 743, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011) (quoting Malley v. Briggs , 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)...