Shaw v. City of Selma

• Decision Date: 07 March 2018
• Docket Number: No. 17-11694,17-11694
• Citation: 884 F.3d 1093
• Parties: Edward SHAW, as Personal Representative of the estate of Ananias Shaw, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF SELMA, an Alabama Municipal Corporation, Chief William Riley, in his official and individual capacity, Officer Desmond Williams, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

884 F.3d 1093

Edward SHAW, as Personal Representative of the estate of Ananias Shaw, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.CITY OF SELMA, an Alabama Municipal Corporation, Chief William Riley, in his official and individual capacity, Officer Desmond Williams, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 17-11694

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

March 7, 2018

Henry Sanders, Chestnut Sanders & Sanders, LLC, Selma, AL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Rick A. Howard, April W. McKay, Holtsford Gilliland Higgins Hitson & Howard, PC, Montgomery, AL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, BLACK, Circuit Judge, and MAY,^* District Judge.

ED CARNES, Chief Judge:

A Selma Police officer shot and killed Ananias Shaw, who was coming toward him with a hatchet. Shaw’s estate brought 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claims for excessive force and false arrest and state law tort claims against Officer Desmond Williams, former Selma Police Chief William Riley, and the City of Selma. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants and the estate has appealed.

I.

A.

In the middle of the afternoon in early December 2013, Selma Police received an emergency call about a disturbance at a Church’s Chicken restaurant. Shaw, a 74-year-old mentally ill man, had attempted to enter the restaurant but was turned away by its general manager. Officers Daniel Boone, Ronald Jones, and Desmond Williams responded to a dispatch about the incident.

The dispatch directed the officers to the Church’s Chicken with the call "disorderly conduct in progress." The dispatcher relayed the suspect’s description to the officers and informed them that Shaw had been at the restaurant the Sunday before "armed with a knife."

Jones was already in the area near the Church’s Chicken. After he spotted Shaw, who matched the dispatched description of the disorderly suspect, Jones radioed for the other officers to join him. The three of them found Shaw inside an abandoned laundromat down the street. Most of the events of the next two minutes were recorded by Williams’ body camera.¹

Boone, who was familiar with Shaw, went inside the building "to talk" with him and coax him out. Williams walked up to the building at roughly the same time. As he approached, Jones (who also knew Shaw) warned Williams that Shaw would "fight you in a minute."

Once inside, Boone asked Shaw to go outside the laundromat and speak with him, but Shaw refused. Shaw then bent down and picked up a hatchet. Boone drew his gun in response and started backing out of the building. Shaw, holding the hatchet, followed him.

As Boone exited the laundromat, the officers firmly and clearly told Shaw several times to "put the axe down."² Once Shaw was outside, Williams drew his gun, and Jones pulled out his baton. Shaw began slowly walking away from the building in the direction of the restaurant. The officers followed him down the street with their weapons drawn. Between Shaw’s curses at them, they repeatedly instructed him to put down the hatchet. Shaw ignored them and continued walking away, hatchet still in hand.

The four continued making their way down the street, walking past some houses. Shaw slowed down and moved onto the front lawn of one of those houses, stopping beside a parked car. Williams, following closely, raised his pistol and ordered Shaw to put down the hatchet twice more. Shaw stopped walking, turned, and began moving slowly towards Williams. As he approached, Shaw shouted for Williams to "Shoot it! Shoot it!" As he did so, Shaw’s right arm and the hatchet were outside the frame of the video.

By the time he was less than five feet away from Williams, Shaw, while holding the hatchet, yelled "Shoot it!" one more time. Williams immediately fired a single shot at Shaw’s chest, and Shaw fell.³ The video shows that when the shot was fired Shaw was close to Williams and moving closer. A short time afterwards, the paramedics pronounced Shaw dead at the scene.

In the two minutes or so between Williams’ arrival at the laundromat and the shooting, the officers told Shaw to "put the axe down" at least 26 times.

B.

After the shooting, Shaw’s estate, represented by his brother, Edward Shaw, brought a wrongful death action against Williams, former Selma Police Chief William Riley, and the City of Selma. The original complaint asserted twenty-two causes of action against the defendants for various civil rights violations under the Fourth Amendment and several state law tort claims, some of which overlapped with the federal claims.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, contending that they were entitled to qualified immunity and state agent immunity, and that the estate could not prevail on any of its federal or state law claims. The district court granted the defendants’ motion. It dismissed all of the estate’s federal claims on the merits or on qualified immunity grounds. It also dismissed some of the estate’s state law claims on the merits and the remainder of them on state agent immunity grounds.

II.

We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment. Smith v. LePage, 834 F.3d 1285, 1291 (11th Cir. 2016). "Summary judgment is appropriate only if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Hamilton v. Southland Christian Sch., Inc., 680 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir. 2012) (quotation marks omitted). If that standard is met, the burden shifts to the nonmoving party to "come forward with specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial." Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 1356, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986) (quotation marks omitted).

To prevent summary judgment, a factual dispute must be both material and genuine. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247–48, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2510, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). A fact is "material" if it has the potential of "affect[ing] the outcome" of the case. Furcron v. Mail Ctrs. Plus, LLC, 843 F.3d 1295, 1303 (11th Cir. 2016) (quotation marks omitted). And to raise a "genuine" dispute, the nonmoving party must point to enough evidence that "a reasonable jury could return a verdict for [him]." Id.

When considering the record on summary judgment "the evidence of the nonmovant is to be believed, and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in his favor." Tolan, 134 S.Ct. at 1863 (quotation marks and alterations omitted). But in cases where a video in evidence "obviously contradicts [the nonmovant’s] version of the facts, we accept the video’s depiction instead of [the nonmovant’s] account," Pourmoghani-Esfahani v. Gee, 625 F.3d 1313, 1315 (11th Cir. 2010), and "view[ ] the facts in the light depicted by the videotape," Scott, 550 U.S. at 380–81, 127 S.Ct. at 1776.

III.

A.

The estate contends that Williams is not entitled to qualified immunity because he used excessive force when he shot Shaw. "Qualified immunity protects government officials performing discretionary functions from suits in their individual capacities unless their conduct violates clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Andujar v. Rodriguez, 486 F.3d 1199, 1202 (11th Cir. 2007) (quotation marks omitted). Because the estate does not dispute that Williams was acting within the scope of his discretionary authority when he shot Shaw, it must show that qualified immunity is otherwise inappropriate. Lee v. Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1194 (11th Cir. 2002).

To overcome the qualified immunity defense, the estate must satisfy a two step inquiry. It must first prove that the facts alleged, construed in the light most favorable to it, establish that a constitutional violation did occur. Smith, 834 F.3d at 1291. And it must also show that law existing at the time the conduct occurred clearly established that the conduct violated the constitution. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232–36, 129 S.Ct. 808, 816–18, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009).

"We analyze a claim of excessive force under the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard." Oliver v. Fiorino, 586 F.3d 898, 905 (11th Cir. 2009) (quotation marks omitted). That means we determine whether the seizure was "objectively reasonable ... from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene."⁴ Smith, 834 F.3d at 1294 (quotation marks omitted). The amount of force used to affect the seizure must be reasonably proportionate to the need for that force. Lee, 284 F.3d at 1198. We balance several factors on that scale. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 1872, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). The decisive one here is the threat of physical harm that Shaw posed at the time he was shot. The issue is whether an officer in Williams’ position reasonably could have believed that Shaw posed a serious threat when he was close to and advancing on Williams, had a hatchet in his hand, and had ignored more than two dozen orders to drop the weapon.⁵ See Penley v. Eslinger, 605 F.3d 843, 851 (11th Cir. 2010) ("In this case, the reasonableness analysis turns on the second of these factors: presence of an imminent threat.").

The estate contends that summary judgment should not have been granted because there is a genuine issue of material fact about whether Shaw had raised the hatchet in his hand when Williams shot him. And if he hadn’t, the estate argues that no officer reasonably could have believed that Shaw posed an immediate threat to Williams or others. Given the light in which we must view the evidence at this stage of the proceeding, we assume that the factual premise of that syllogism is correct: that Shaw did not raise the hatchet he was holding. But the legal premise—that no reasonable officer could have feared serious injury or death unless the hatchet-holding hand was raised up at the time—is wrong.

The reasonableness of the shooting depends on the totality of the circumstances. Garrett v. Athens-Clarke County, 378 F.3d 1274, 1280 (11th Cir. 2004). Shaw...