Saunders v. Duke

• Decision Date: 08 September 2014
• Docket Number: No. 12–11401.,12–11401.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit
• Parties: Oberist Lee SAUNDERS, a.k.a. Oberist Lee Saunders, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellant, v. George C. DUKE, M.B.I. Agent, Thomas Matthews, Agent, Conrad Kilian, Agent, Defendants–Appellees.

766 F.3d 1262

Oberist Lee SAUNDERS, a.k.a. Oberist Lee Saunders, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.George C. DUKE, M.B.I. Agent, Thomas Matthews, Agent, Conrad Kilian, Agent, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 12–11401.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eleventh Circuit.

Sept. 8, 2014.

Daniel Joseph Moriarty, Green & Sapp, LLP, Elizabeth Vila Rogan, Law Office of Elizabeth Vila Rogan, Atlanta, GA, Tomoka CI Warden, SFRC–Inmate Trust Fund, Doral, FL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Oberist Lee Saunders, Daytona Beach, FL, pro se.

Kenneth Van Wilson, Pam Bondi, Caroline Johnson Levine, Office of the Attorney General, Tampa, FL, Austin Moore, City of Orlando, Ian D. Forsythe, Hilyard Bogan& Palmer, PA, Orlando, FL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. D.C. Docket No. 6:10–cv–00120–MSS–GJK.

Before WILSON and JORDAN, Circuit Judges, and ROTHSTEIN,^* District Judge.

JORDAN, Circuit Judge:

We have repeatedly ruled that a police officer violates the Fourth Amendment, and is denied qualified immunity, if he or she uses gratuitous and excessive force against a suspect who is under control, not resisting, and obeying commands. See, e.g., Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida, 208 F.3d 919, 927 (11th Cir.2000); Slicker v. Jackson, 215 F.3d 1225, 1233 (11th Cir.2000); Lee v. Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1198 (11th Cir.2002). Consistent with these decisions, we hold today that Oberist Saunders, who alleged that his head was “slammed” against the pavement with “extreme force” after he had been handcuffed and was lying prone on the ground, stated a valid Fourth Amendment claim for excessive force, and that the defendants—agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Orlando Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation—were not entitled to qualified immunity. We therefore reverse the district court's dismissal of Mr. Saunders' Fourth Amendment claim. ¹

I

Proceeding pro se, Mr. Saunders filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against FDLE Agent George Duke and MBI Agents Thomas Matthews and Conrad Kilian. As amended, the operative complaint alleged the following facts.

On January 24, 2008, Mr. Saunders met with a couple of individuals at a gas station in Orlando, Florida, to sell them oxycodone pills. Those individuals, however, turned out to be an undercover officer and a confidential informant. Mr. Saunders entered the front passenger seat of the undercover agent's car and conducted the narcotics transaction. After the sale was completed, Agents Duke, Matthews, and Kilian surrounded the vehicle with their weapons drawn. Agent Matthews ordered Mr. Saunders to place his hands on the car's windshield and not move. Mr. Saunders immediately complied with the command without resisting or attempting to flee. Agent Kilian then jerked Mr. Saunders out of the vehicle and pushed him down on the hot pavement in order to handcuff him.

After he was handcuffed, Mr. Saunders was held down against the hot pavement on his stomach for a “long period of time,” though he was “not resisting, posing [a] threat, or attempting to flee.” He told the agents that he was “getting burnt.” During this time Mr. Saunders “was holding his face up off the hot pavement to keep from being burn[ed].” Though he was not resisting or attempting to flee, one of the agents “slammed” Mr. Saunders' face onto the pavement “with extreme force.” Mr. Saunders did not see which one of the agents struck him, but all three agents were present at the time. When Mr. Saunders was brought to his feet, “blood was pouring out of his mouth [and] face from the impact against the pavement.” Mr. Saunders suffered lacerations, injuries to his teeth and jaw, damage to his left eardrum, and emotional distress due to his head striking the pavement.

II

The district court's dismissal of Mr. Saunders' Fourth Amendment claim is subject to plenary review. We accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to Mr. Saunders. See Butler v. Sheriff of Palm Beach Cnty., 685 F.3d 1261, 1265 (11th Cir.2012). We also construe the complaint liberally because it was filed pro se. See Boxer X v. Harris, 437 F.3d 1107, 1110 (11th Cir.2006).

“Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007). After Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678–69, 685–86, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009), which applied the Twombly pleading standard in a civil rights/qualified immunity context, there is no longer a “heightened pleading” standard in “cases governed by Rule 8(a)(2), including civil rights [cases]” under § 1983. Randall v. Scott, 610 F.3d 701, 710 (11th Cir.2010).

III

With respect to the Fourth Amendment claim arising out of the alleged slamming of Mr. Saunders' head to the pavement, the district court ruled that Agents Duke, Matthews, and Kilian were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court acknowledged the existence of cases like Hadley v. Gutierrez, 526 F.3d 1324, 1330, 1332 (11th Cir.2008) (holding that a police officer who struck a handcuffed, non-resisting suspect in the stomach violated the Fourth Amendment and was not entitled to qualified immunity), but explained that the “use of force during an arrest is not clearly unlawful if an arresting officer is faced with an uncooperative suspect or if an officer perceives resistance in a volatile situation.” It then reasoned that, because Mr. Saunders had lifted his head off the pavement, “a reasonable officer in [the defendants'] position could have believed that the use of force to return [Mr. Saunders'] head to the pavement was lawful on the bases that [Mr. Saunders] was refusing to cooperate and/or resisting arrest when he lifted his head from the pavement.” In so ruling, the district court erred.

A

“Qualified immunity ‘gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions.’ ” Lane v. Franks, ––– U.S. ––––, 134 S.Ct. 2369, 2381, 189 L.Ed.2d 312 (2014) (citation omitted). Under this doctrine, “courts may not award damages against a government official in his personal capacity unless the official violated a statutory or constitutional right, and the right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the challenged conduct.” Id. (citation and some internal quotation marks omitted).

In determining whether a right was clearly established, we look to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit, and the Florida Supreme Court. See Barnes v. Zaccari, 669 F.3d 1295, 1307 (11th Cir.2012). See also Lane, 134 S.Ct. at 2381–82. Because it is undisputed that the agents here were acting within the scope of their discretionary authority, “the burden shifts to [Mr. Saunders] to show that qualified immunity is not appropriate.” Lee, 284 F.3d at 1194. With these principles in mind, we turn to the qualified immunity analysis.

B

The Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures includes the right to be free from the use of excessive force in the course of an arrest. See id. at 1197. In order to determine whether the amount of force used was proper, a court must ask “whether the officer's conduct is objectively reasonable in light of the facts confronting the officer.” Vinyard v. Wilson, 311 F.3d 1340, 1347 (11th Cir.2002). In this respect, “[t]he ‘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.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989).

“Determining whether the force used to effect a particular seizure is ‘reasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment requires a careful balancing of the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against the countervailing governmental interests at stake.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). This objective analysis “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Id. Other considerations are “the need for the application of force, the relationship between the need and the amount of force used, [and] the extent of the injury inflicted.” Hadley, 526 F.3d at 1329 (citation, internal quotation marks, and numbering omitted).

Mr. Saunders alleged that, while he was left on the hot pavement for a long period of time, he kept his head raised to avoid being burned. At the time he did this, he was handcuffed and on his stomach, and he was not resisting or attempting to flee. Nevertheless, one of the agents “slammed” his head against the pavement with “extreme force,” resulting in a number of significant injuries. As we explain, Mr. Saunders' complaint sufficiently alleged a gratuitous use of force. Because “[o]ur cases hold that gratuitous use of force when a criminal suspect is not resisting arrest constitutes excessive force,” id. at 1330, the district court should not have dismissed the Fourth Amendment claim.

We begin our discussion of Eleventh Circuit precedent with our 2000 decision in Priester. In that case, a police officer with a canine found a suspect who had been hiding and ordered him to lie down on the ground. Under the version of facts found by the jury, the officer released his dog to attack the suspect after he had complied with the command to lie down. We held that the officer violated the Fourth Amendment because the force used was “objectively unreasonable.” 208 F.3d at 923–24. We also concluded that the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity. The suspect “did not pose a threat of bodily harm to the officers or to anyone else...