Samples v. Vadzemnieks

• Decision Date: 17 August 2018
• Docket Number: No. 17-20350,17-20350
• Citation: 900 F.3d 655
• Parties: Gregory Todd SAMPLES, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Deputy Jeffrey VADZEMNIEKS, Defendant - Appellant
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

900 F.3d 655

Gregory Todd SAMPLES, Plaintiff-Appellee

v.Deputy Jeffrey VADZEMNIEKS, Defendant - Appellant

No. 17-20350

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Filed August 17, 2018

Victor Raymond Schindler, Law Offices of Ray Schindler, Conroe, TX, Thomas W. McQuage, Galveston, TX, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Victoria Lynn Jimenez, Esq., County Attorney's Office for the County of Harris, Houston, TX, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before HIGGINBOTHAM, SMITH, and CLEMENT, Circuit Judges.

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

Today we review a denial of a law officer's motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity on a claim of excessive force in a tasing. We reverse the denial of summary judgment to the law officer and render judgment to him.

I.

On January 29, 2014, Deputy Frederick McGregor, a member of the Harris County Sheriff's Office, received a terse message from his dispatcher while on patrol: to report to a given location to track down "a white male calling for help." McGregor hurried to the location—a gated community—and as he drove into it, a man quickly waved him over, reporting that someone was wandering through the neighborhood half-naked, and that whoever it was had left his wallet and clothing in the middle of the roadway. The man guided McGregor deeper into the neighborhood, finding Gregory Samples standing in the middle of the road, stripped to his boxers and speaking to another person; both this unnamed person and the one who led McGregor to Samples left upon McGregor's arrival on the scene. McGregor arrived at approximately 4:05 a.m.

The temperature was in the low 30s, and Samples had his arms wrapped around himself for warmth, visibly shivering. Samples was 50 years old and only stood at 5'3? and weighed approximately 154 pounds, with bruises on his feet and knees. He was carrying his own dentures in his hand.

When McGregor approached to speak with him, Samples would wander off. McGregor quickly came to believe that Samples was intoxicated. Samples expressed a desire to call his sister, but while McGregor repeatedly tried to coax him into the warmth and safety of his patrol car, Samples walked away from him. After several minutes, at roughly 4:08 a.m., Deputy Jeffrey Vadzemnieks arrived on the scene. Vadzemnieks was assigned to serve as the backup unit to McGregor for the disturbance call. When Vadzemnieks arrived, he noticed that Samples was "speaking incoherently and appeared intoxicated," and he witnessed Samples continually wandering away from McGregor.

McGregor worried that Samples was gradually drawing closer to a water retention pond, though it was still approximately 600 feet away. Thus, upon Vadzemnieks's arrival, McGregor got into his patrol car and tried to use it to cut Samples off. However, Samples simply walked around the patrol car and continued his wandering. At some point, Vadzemnieks claims that he witnessed McGregor order Samples to stop walking away, but that Samples disregarded him. However, McGregor characterizes his interactions with Samples after Vadzemnieks's arrival as two mere requests—not commands—that Samples enter his patrol car. Samples uttered something about going to a nearby friend's house and ignored McGregor. McGregor then attempted to restrain Samples by grabbing his arm, but Samples "growled at [him] and tensed up." Samples reportedly clenched his fists and turned towards McGregor, who retreated some distance away. Vadzemnieks's characterization goes further; he claims that Samples "broke away" from McGregor and adopted a "fighting stance." Fearing for his friend's safety, Vadzemnieks took out his taser and fired it at Samples, striking him in the left arm and leg.¹ At the time he was hit with the taser, Samples was standing in the street, near the curb. Samples cursed and fell backwards towards the center of the street, onto his back. Vadzemnieks does not "recall [Samples] hitting his head," and McGregor "did not see [ ] Samples hit his head." While Samples was lying on the ground, McGregor handcuffed him and noticed that he was "still tensing up." Samples then rolled onto his side and briefly began kicking his legs. At some point, Vadzemnieks reported that Samples began snoring. At 4:11 a.m., several minutes after Vadzemnieks's arrival, McGregor informed headquarters of the taser deployment.

The two men claim to have promptly contacted EMS² and headquarters to request a supervisor, and McGregor turned on his car strobes to ensure that the EMS personnel could find them. McGregor then returned to Samples, who had become unresponsive. After initially going to the wrong location several blocks away, the EMS team arrived at 4:18 a.m.; they noted that Samples was "laying prone, head turned to the right with his left cheek in the street." He had abrasions on his left cheek as well as along the left side of his body, which appeared to be of recent origin. He was motionless. It is not clear who spoke with EMS, but the record indicates that a member of the Harris County Sheriff's Office—presumably either McGregor or Vadzemnieks—"denied [to EMS that Samples] was combative, stating ‘he just kept repeating that he needed to call his sister.’ "

At 4:27 a.m., a supervisor, Sergeant Anthony Schattel, arrived on the scene. The EMS staff had already loaded Samples onto the ambulance by that point; Schattel instructed McGregor to go along with him, while Schattel went back to the police station with Vadzemnieks to fill out the required paperwork. EMS transported Samples to Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital and McGregor trailed behind. When McGregor arrived at the hospital, the EMS supervisor told him about a pile of clothes and a house with an open door near the incident scene, so McGregor drove back to that address and found an empty home with nothing of interest.³

When McGregor returned to the hospital, he learned that Samples's condition had dramatically deteriorated; the medical personnel discovered that Samples had suffered life-threatening brain damage: an acute subdural hematoma

and a fractured skull. Samples's condition was so serious that he had to be immediately lifted, via helicopter, to another hospital for emergency brain surgery. McGregor relayed this information to Schattel and Vadzemnieks. He then promptly contacted the District Attorney's Office and received permission to file resisting arrest charges against Samples, which he did the following day. The record is unclear on what became of these charges.

At some point several days later, one of Samples's two sisters, Gail Cooper, contacted McGregor and informed him that Samples had a history of drug abuse but that she had believed him to have "cleaned up." Medical records indicate that Samples tested positive for methamphetamines in his system that night.

The ensuing internal investigation of the incident was completed in August 2014; Schattel was reprimanded for providing insufficient notification to his superiors of the seriousness of the incident and of Samples's ongoing condition.⁴ Neither McGregor nor Vadzemnieks apparently suffered any negative consequences as a result of their actions.

For his part, Samples was not discharged from the hospital until over a month after the incident, on March 7, 2014. He remembers nothing of the night. Nor was any of the incident captured on video; for unknown reasons, neither Vadzemnieks nor McGregor activated his patrol car dash-cam before initiating contact with Samples. The only available footage was taken beginning at 4:14 a.m., after the taser had already been deployed, and it shows McGregor and Vadzemnieks standing over Samples's body, with Samples eventually being loaded onto a gurney upon the arrival of the EMS personnel. The magistrate judge characterized this omission as "particularly unfortunate" and opined that it represented a violation of the relevant policy.

On March 29, 2016, Samples sued, asserting 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and negligence claims against McGregor, Vadzemnieks, Harris County, and several other individual defendants. The case was removed to the Southern District of Texas. All claims against Harris County, McGregor, and the various other individual defendants were dismissed for failure to state a claim. The sole remaining claim was the excessive force claim against Vadzemnieks. Vadzemnieks filed a motion for summary judgment on this final claim, invoking qualified immunity. The district court, through a magistrate judge, rejected his argument.⁵ Vadzemnieks timely appealed.

II.

In the ordinary course of litigation, summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine dispute of material fact.⁶ This case involves an appeal arising out of the district court's denial of qualified immunity, which the Court has held is a collateral order capable of immediate review.⁷ The standard of review we deploy here differs from the one we use in workaday summary judgment cases. Because of this case's posture, we lack jurisdiction to determine whether any particular factual disputes are genuine .⁸ Instead, our review is limited to determining whether the factual disputes that the district court identified are material to the application of qualified immunity.⁹ Put another way, this court lacks jurisdiction to determine "whether the defendant[ ] did, in fact, engage in [a certain course of] conduct"; it only possesses jurisdiction to examine whether that conduct "would, as a matter of law, be objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law."¹⁰

We accept the plaintiff's version of the facts as true and review it through the lens of qualified immunity.¹¹ In resolving the purely legal questions, we apply a de novo standard.¹²

III.

Our legal inquiry into the availability of qualified immunity fits into a two-step framework. First, taking the facts in the plaintiff-friendly light that we must, we need to determine whether Vadzemnieks violated a constitutional right.¹³ Second, we must ask whether Vadzemnieks's actions violated clearly established...