Young v. City of Radcliff
| Decision Date | 22 May 2008 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 3:06-CV-656-H. |
| Citation | 561 F.Supp.2d 767 |
| Parties | Stephen C. YOUNG, Plaintiff v. CITY OF RADCLIFF, et. al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Kentucky |
David R. Vandeventer, Lawrenceburg, KY, Steve Mirkin, Elizabethtown, KY, for Plaintiff.
Lyndol S. Miller, Roger G. Wright, Kentucky State Police Legal Office, Frankfort, KY, R. Thad Keal, Turner, Keal & Dallas PLLC, Prospect, KY, for Defendants.
Plaintiff Stephen C. Young ("Young") has brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim alleging that Defendants violated his Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights by their actions in connection with a shooting and arrest which occurred at Young's residence (Count I). Young also brings various state law claims, including violation of Ky.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 344 (Kentucky Civil Rights Act), false arrest/false imprisonment (Count IV), assault (Count V), battery (Count VI), intentional infliction of emotional distress (Count VII), and outrageous conduct (Count VIII). There are two groups of Defendants: City of Radcliff and City of Radcliff Police Officer Tucker Raifsnider ("Raifsnider") and Kentucky State Police Troopers James Kevin Burton ("Burton") and Steven Eric Smallwood ("Smallwood") (collectively "Defendants").1 Both groups of Defendants have moved for summary judgment and their arguments partially overlap.
This is a difficult and unfortunate case. Young was wrongly targeted as a suspect in a shoplifting with which he had no connection whatsoever. The police officers conducted an unusual "knock and talk" which included sending some officers to the rear of Young's property. Those officers observed that Young was armed with a .45 caliber automatic pistol in a holster. This concerned the officers who tried to alert their fellow officers at the front door. The resulting ruckus alarmed Young who appeared at his backdoor, and then drew his pistol. The combination of these misjudgements and confusion led to Young's shooting and arrest.
Certainly, these events should never have occurred. Indeed, Young believes that he should never have been charged with a crime because he did not intend to draw a gun on police, but only upon suspected intruders. Nevertheless, he was charged with two felonies, which were later reduced to misdemeanor charges. A Hardin Circuit Court jury found Young guilty of criminal menacing, which is a misdemeanor.
It is not easy to apply formal constitutional strictures to misjudgments piled onto mistakes combined with the unpredictability of split-second human reactions. Whether our rules of law are capable of untangling these conflicting rights, much less provide Young some satisfaction, is the subject of this Memorandum Opinion. Young's civil complaint attempts to redress all of the perceived wrongs. The Court must confess that its analysis leads to conclusions which conflict with the natural impulse to cooperate in that effort.
The relevant evidence of these undeniably unfortunate events stated most favorably to Young follows.
On the evening of December 4, 2005 a shoplifting of approximately sixty to seventy dollars occurred at the Wal-Mart in Radcliff. Young was neither at the Wal-Mart nor in any way involved with the shoplifting. However, his specialty license plate bore the same number as that of the vehicle driven by the shoplifters (but whose license plate had a different background picture). Consequently, the Radcliff police identified Young's vehicle through a vehicle license plate database search. Young's vehicle information was reported to Raifsnider, who had responded to the initial shoplifting report from Wal-Mart. Raifsnider requested that the Kentucky State Police verify that the vehicle was at the address to which it was registered, and Smallwood, who was driving a marked Kentucky State Police cruiser at the time, confirmed that it was.
After obtaining consent from his supervisor, Raifsnider, without a search or arrest warrant, proceeded to Young's residence where he "intended to conduct . . . an investigative technique called a `knock-and-talk,' and ask questions, for instance about whether [the suspect] had been in Radcliff that night . . ." Mot. for Summ J. 3. Smallwood, Burton and two deputies from the Hardin County Sheriff Department2 met Raifsnider at Young's residence at around 11:30 p.m. The Defendants pulled into Young's driveway with their headlights turned off.
Young was at home in his kitchen awaiting his wife's return from work. Young was armed with a handgun in a holster on his right hip. Raifsnider and one of the deputies approached the front door of Young's residence while Smallwood and Burton went to the rear of the residence and stood outside a fence located approximately 15-20 feet from Young's back door. Raifsnider knocked on the front door twice. Young, who is hearing impaired and who may have been distracted by a television, did not hear the knock.
Very near the time that Raifsnider was knocking, Burton looked through Young's glass back door and observed him inside his home with a pistol on his hip holster, which he had a perfect right to possess. Burton yelled to notify the other officers that Young was armed. Burton and Smallwood's Mot. for Summ. J. 7. Plaintiff, hearing the noise from his back yard went to the rear of his home, opened the back door and asked who was there. Burton identified himself as "State Police" and shouted statements to the effect of "put your hands up" and "don't touch the gun." Id. at 8. Young did not respond to the commands, which he says, were "distorted by his hearing impairment."
Young, apparently concerned about unidentified persons in his back yard, reached for his gun. Burton says that upon seeing Young draw his gun, and because Young had not responded to Burton's yelled commands, Burton fired a total of six rounds, one of which hit Young in the forearm. Young says that he was in the process of retreating from the back door to go inside and call 911 when he was shot. After he was shot, Young appeared with his hands up and then crawled onto the back porch and was handcuffed by one of the Hardin County deputies and was placed into custody. Young consented to a search of his home.
After Emergency Medical technicians arrived, Young requested that he not be transported to the hospital until his wife arrived home from work so that he could let her know he was okay. Young alleges that someone he could only identify as "a captain" responded, with explicatives, "[i]f you don't get in the ambulance, I am going to hog tie [you] and throw you on the floorboard of the cruiser." Young was treated for his injuries at the hospital. In his pleadings, but without reference to supporting evidence, Young says that it is "undisputed" that he was "h[eld] for hours in uncomfortable positions" and "kept in painful handcuffs for several hours" and "questioned late into the night" and subject to unspecified "dehumanizing acts." Resp. to Burton and Smallwood's Mot. for Summ. J. 8, 11.
The Kentucky State Police charged Young with two felony counts of wanton endangerment, charges Young says were reported to local news media. The prosecutor later reduced the charges to misdemeanor counts of menacing. "A person is guilty of menacing when he intentionally places another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent physical injury." Ky. Rev.Stat. Ann. § 508.050(1). Young was found guilty of menacing Burton. He was not charged a fine or sentenced to any time in jail in connection with his conviction. The jury found that Young was not guilty of menacing Smallwood.
Defendants have moved for summary judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. The Court will grant a motion for summary judgment if the evidence submitted shows that "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986)(citing Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c)). In applying Rule 56(c), a court views the evidence in a light most favorable to the non-movant. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986) (citing Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 158-59, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970)). A court properly enters summary judgment where there is not sufficient evidence in support of the non-movant's case upon which "a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party." Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505.
As a threshold matter, the Court considers how Young's state court conviction of criminal menacing Burton affects various aspects of Young's § 1983 claim. The jury instructions in that trial required a "not guilty" verdict in a variety of circumstances: where Young had reason to believe that his actions were "necessary in order to protect himself from physical force by Burton, or "immediately necessary to prevent the commission of criminal trespass upon real property in his possession," or "immediately necessary to prevent burglary of his dwelling," or if Young had "reasonably believed that [ ] Burton was not a peace officer and posed a threat to his person or property."
Burton argues that Young's conviction bars Young's § 1983 claim relating to Burton's use of force ( the shooting) during Young's arrest. See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486-87, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994) (). However, a Sixth Circuit panel recently held that the Heck bar does not apply where a plaintiff had not had an opportunity to vindicate his federal...
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