Criminal Law and Procedure Decisions: Saucier v. Katz</titl <body>  <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/wss-lp.js"></script> <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/hbx-0250.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://ehg-findlaw.hitbox.com/HG?hc=we76&cd=1&hv=6&ce=u&hb=DM531216MLSZ&n=LP&vcon=NO+JAVASCRIPT&vpc=HBX0250u" border="0" width="1" height="1"> </noscript>  <div id="main"> <div id="doc3" class="pro"> <div id="bd"> <div class="yui-g" id="header"> <div id="header_sub_center"> <h1 id="logo"><a href="http://lp.findlaw.com"><b>FindLaw | Find a Lawyer. Find Answers.</b></a></h1> <div id="question"> <h3><a href="http://www.findlaw.com/" class="c_4">Non-Professional? 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Katz</h5><b><P align="center">Fourth Amendment – Excessive Force and Qualified Immunity</b></p><p><b>Case: <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/99-1977.html">Saucier v. Katz</a></b></p><p><b>Issue</b>: [<U>Note</U>: In <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/483/635.html">Anderson v. Creighton</a>, 483 U.S. 635 (1987), the Court held that “whether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action generally turns on the ‘<U>objective legal reasonableness</U>’ of the action . . . assessed in light of the legal rules that were ‘clearly established’ at the time it was taken.” (Emphasis added). In <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/490/386.html">Graham v. Connor</a>, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), the Court held that allegations of excessive force by police officers during a stop or arrest must be judged under a Fourth Amendment standard and that “the reasonableness inquiry in an excessive force case is an objective one: the question is whether the officers’ actions are ‘<U>objectively reasonable</U>’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to their underlying intent or motivation.” (Emphasis added).] Whether the analysis used to determine qualified immunity is so intertwined with the question of whether an officer used excessive force in making an arrest that the qualified immunity and constitutional violation issues (in excess force cases) should be treated as one question to be decided by the trier of fact.</p><p><b>Facts</b>: The Presidio Army Base in San Francisco was the site of an event to celebrate the conversion of that base into a national park, and among the event’s speakers was Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. In attendance to protest potential use of the Army’s Letterman Hospital to conduct experiments on animals was Respondent Elliot Katz. Aware that members of the public had been asked in the past to leave the base when engaging in certain activities, such as distributing handbills, Katz concealed a four by three foot cloth banner that read “Please Keep Animal Torture Out of Our National Parks” under his coat as he entered and walked around the base. At about the time the Vice President began to speak, Katz unfurled his banner to hang upon a barrier that separated the Vice President from the crowd. Petitioner Donald Saucier, a military police officer on duty that day, recognized Katz and moved forward to intercept him. As Katz reached the barrier and began hanging the banner, officers, including Saucier, grabbed him and rushed him out of the area, half-walking, half-dragging Katz so that Katz’s feet “barely touch[ed] the ground.” Saucier and another officer took Katz to a military van where, Katz claimed, he was shoved and thrown inside. As a result, Katz (who wears a leg brace) fell to the floor of the van, where he caught himself “just in time to avoid any injury.” The officers drove Katz to a military police station, where he was detained for a short time and then released.</p><p>Katz filed a <U>Bivens</U> action [<a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/403/388.html">Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents</a>, 403 U.S. 388, (1971)] in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that Saucier and other officers had used excessive force in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court granted summary judgment for the defendants, on the ground of qualified immunity, for all claims except excessive force. The District Court held that because an issue of material fact existed over whether excessive force was used, summary judgment for the qualified immunity defense was premature. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed on interlocutory appeal. The Ninth Circuit applied its two-part qualified immunity analysis. First it considered “whether the law governing the officer’s conduct was clearly established.” If the law was <U>not</U> clearly established, “that ends the matter and the official is entitled to immunity.” Holding that the law was clearly established, the court next considered whether “a reasonable officer could have believed, in light of the clearly established law, that his conduct was lawful.” Concluding that this second step of the qualified immunity inquiry “and the merits of the Fourth Amendment excessive force claim are identical, since both concern the objective reasonableness of the officer’s conduct in light of the circumstances the officer faced on the scene,” the Ninth Circuit found summary judgment based on qualified immunity to be inappropriate.</p><p><b>Holding</b>: “[T]he ruling on qualified immunity requires an analysis not susceptible of fusion with the question whether unreasonable force was used in making the arrest.” Officer Saucier “was entitled to qualified immunity, and the suit should have been dismissed at an early stage in the proceedings.” </p><p><b>Reasoning</b>: The Court, through Justice Kennedy, ruled that the Ninth Circuit’s qualified immunity approach was inconsistent with <U>Anderson v. Creighton</U>. The first inquiry a court must make in a qualified immunity case is “whether a constitutional right would have been violated on the facts alleged.” Second, assuming that a violation has been established, “the question whether the right was clearly established must be considered on a more specific level than recognized” by the Ninth Circuit.</p><p>The Court noted that a ruling on qualified immunity must be made early in the judicial process “so that the costs and expenses of trial are avoided where the defense is dispositive.” Qualified immunity is an “entitlement not to stand trial” and “an immunity from suit” that is “effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial.” It follows that a court ruling on qualified immunity “must consider . . . this threshold question: Taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, do the facts alleged show the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right?” In the course of making this determination, “a court might find it necessary to set forth principles which will become the basis for a holding that a right is clearly established. This is the process for the law’s elaboration from case to case . . . The law might be deprived of this explanation were a court simply to skip ahead to the question whether the law clearly established that the officer’s conduct was unlawful in the circumstances of the case.” If a violation can be made out, a court must next determine whether the right was clearly established. This inquiry, “it is vital to note,” must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition. Although <U>Graham v. Conner</U> “clearly establishes the general proposition that use of force is contrary to the Fourth Amendment if it is excessive under objective standards of reasonableness,” that is not enough for purposes of qualified immunity. The right allegedly violated must have been clearly established in a more particularized sense. “The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” If the law did not put Saucier “on notice that his conduct would be clearly unlawful, summary judgment based on qualified immunity is appropriate.” The Court quoted <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/475/335.html">Malley v. Briggs</a>, 475 U.S. 335 (1986), to the effect that “qualified immunity protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” The approach of the Ninth Circuit, to deny summary judgment any time that a material issue of fact remains in an excessive force case, undermines the goals of qualified immunity. </p><p>The Court also rejected Katz’ argument that <U>Graham</U> “sets forth an excessive force analysis indistinguishable from qualified immunity, rendering the separate immunity inquiry superfluous and inappropriate.” The Court explained that <U>Graham</U> looked at the reasonableness of the officer’s on-scene belief about the appropriate level of force from a <U>fact-intensive</U> perspective. The qualified immunity inquiry, however, adds an additional dimension by acknowledging that reasonable mistakes can be made as to the <U>legal</U> constraints on particular police conduct. “An officer might correctly perceive all of the relevant facts but have a mistaken understanding as to whether a particular amount of force is legal in those circumstances.” If the officer’s legal mistake is reasonable, he is entitled to the immunity defense.</p><p>Assuming that a constitutional violation could have occurred in this case, the Court examined “whether the general prohibition against excessive force was the source for clearly established law that was contravened in the circumstances this officer faced.” The Court concluded that “[t]here was no contravention under this standard.” Therefore, Saucier was entitled to qualified immunity. Under the factual circumstances at hand, Saucier did not know the full extent of the threat Katz posed towards the Vice President and “was required to recognize the necessity to protect the Vice President by securing [Katz] and restoring order to the scene. It cannot be said there was a clearly established rule that would prohibit using the force [Saucier] did to place [Katz] into the van to accomplish these objectives.”</p><p><b>Other Opinions</b>: Concurring in the Court’s judgment, Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stevens and Breyer, characterized the majority’s test as confusing. “Endeavors to bring the Court’s abstract instructions down to earth, I suspect, will bear out what lower courts have already observed-paradigmatically, the determination of police misconduct in excessive force cases and the availability of qualified immunity both hinge on the same question: taking into account the particular circumstances confronting the defendant officer, could a reasonable officer, identically situated, have believed the force employed was lawful? Nothing more and nothing else need be answered in this case.” Adopting a straightforward application of the <U>Graham</U> standard, Ginsburg concluded that “Katz tendered no triable excessive force claim against Saucier,” because, under <U>Graham</U>, “[n]ot every push or shove . . . violates the Fourth Amendment” and because Katz’ failed to refute evidence establishing that a different officer, not subject to the lawsuit, had pushed him.</p><p>Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Justice Souter stated that he would remand the case for application of the qualified immunity standard enunciated by the majority rather than have the Court apply it.</p><p><b>Comment</b>: It is hard to argue with the concurrence's position that the Court’s attempt to distinguish the qualified immunity and excessive force tests will be more difficult for lower courts to follow than the fusion approach favored by the concurrence and the Ninth Circuit. As a practical matter, the most important element of the Court’s opinion may well be the directive that lower courts must first determine, in qualified immunity cases, whether a constitutional violation occurred. This should have the effect weeding out more of these cases at an earlier point in the litigation.</p></div> </div>       <div id="fl_container3"> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <div id="fl_label">Ads by FindLaw</div> </div> <script> hide_box('fl_container3'); </script>   <div id="fl_container_goog"> <script language="JavaScript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/lp/google.js"></script> <script language="JavaScript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script> </div>  </div> </div> <div class="nav_right rn_inner">  <div class="sections yui-g"> <h2 class="right" style="color:#666666;">Welcome Legal Professionals</h2> <p>FindLaw provides the resources to help you practice law. 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