MALEA BYRD v. JOHNNY CORNELIUS; GEORGE SWEETIN
No. 21-20654
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
October 31, 2022
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas
USDC No. 4:19-CV-4473
Before CLEMENT, DUNCAN, and WILSON, Circuit Judges.
In the 2019 school year, Appellant police officers Johnny Cornelius and George Sweetin allegedly used excessive force in removing and arresting Malea Byrd, a student, from a high school basketball game. The district court denied summary judgment based on qualified immunity, finding a dispute of material fact regarding the events surrounding Byrd‘s arrest. The officers filed an interlocutory appeal challenging the district court‘s decision. Because our jurisdiction is limited to reviewing the materiality of any factual disputes identified by the district court, we DISMISS the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
I
In the fall of 2017, Byrd was a student at Madisonville High School, which is operated by the Madisonville Consolidated Independent School District. On November 14, 2017, Byrd, with some of her friends and family, attended a basketball game and decided to sit on the visitors’ side of the gym. Officers Sweetin and Cornelius approached Byrd‘s group and asked them to move to the home side of the court. The teenagers complied with their request.
Later in the evening, Byrd and her cousin decided to go to the concession stand to buy some pizza. On the way, Kathleen Golden, an assistant principal at MHS, stopped Byrd and asked her about her nose ring. Following this encounter, Byrd rejoined her cousin in line at the visitors’ concession stand. Golden then re-engaged with Byrd, admonishing her not to go to the visitors’ section of the gym. Golden then asked Byrd to talk outside. During the conversation, Byrd became uncomfоrtable and decided to call her mother. Golden refused to speak to Byrd‘s mother and asked Byrd to leave the game. Because she did not have a coat and it was cold, Byrd refused to leave the building and waited inside of the gym for her mother to pick her up. The parties disagree regarding what exactly occurred at this point.
The officers’ account of the event differs markedly. Cornelius and Sweetin claim they witnessed Byrd yell at and start a physical confrontation with Golden. Cornelius claims he asked Byrd to leave the gym but that she refused his order. Cornelius states he took Byrd by the arm to escort her from the building, but Byrd resisted by pulling away, thrashing, and kicking. They allege Byrd‘s elbow hit Cornelius on the cheek. Cornelius states it was at this point that he swept Byrd‘s legs out from under her, placed her on her stomach, and handcuffed her.
The officers turned Byrd over to the Madisonville Police Department, who eventually released her. Byrd then sought treatment at the Madisonville St. Joseph Hospital for injuries to her elbow and shoulder, bruising, and multiple lacerations. MHS ultimately expelled Byrd for assaulting a school administrator and police officers during the events of November 14, 2017.
Byrd filed suit agаinst the Officers and the MCISD on November 13, 2019. On December 16, 2019, she submitted her Second Amended Complaint. The MCISD moved to dismiss the excessive force claims in her Second Amended Complaint, and the district court granted the motion. On April 14, 2021, Defendants moved for summary judgment premised on qualified immunity and on the merits of Byrd‘s due process claim.1
The magistrate judge found a genuine dispute of material fact between the evidence provided by the officers, namely their recollection of events and a short security video, and the evidence supplied by Byrd in her declaration. Specifically, the magistrate judge found the video to be unclear and wrote that it provided “no evidence at all that would support Defendants’ arguments.” Therefore, she turned to Byrd‘s declaration and the Defendants’ declarations and found them to be in conflict regarding what happened on November 14, 2017. The magistrate judge concluded that these genuine issues of fact were material to the reasonableness of the force used against Byrd and recommended that the district court deny summary judgment. On November 17, 2021, the district court summarily adopted the magistrate judge‘s memorandum and recommendation. Defendant officers then timely filed their interlocutory appeal on December 8, 2021.
II
We have jurisdiction over the district court‘s denial of summary judgment, which is not a final decision, “only to
III
Cornelius and Sweetin argue that we should reverse the district court and grant them qualified immunity. The officers argue that we should disregard the district court‘s factual findings because the video evidence conclusively contradicts Byrd‘s sworn statement and shows her striking Cornelius, threatening Golden, and kicking Sweetin. They also contend Byrd has failed in her burden to dеmonstrate that the officers violated clearly established law. Finally, Cornelius and Sweetin argue that their undisputed actions show they were objectively reasonable in arresting Byrd and that she, regardless, suffered only a de minimis legal injury. We address these arguments in turn.
A. Excessive Force and Qualified Immunity
The
The test used to determine whether a use of force was reasonable under the
When a plaintiff sues police officers for alleged violations of her constitutional rights, qualified immunity protects government officials “from liаbility for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or
For a right to be clearly established, “[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987). Although this does not mean that “a case directly on point” is required, “existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011). “The central concept is that of ‘fair warning‘: The law can be clearly established ‘despite notable factual distinctions between the precedents relied on and the cases then before the [c]ourt, so long as the prior decisions gave reasonable warning that the conduct then at issue violated constitutional rights.‘” Ramirez v. Martinez, 716 F.3d 369, 379 (5th Cir. 2013) (quoting Kinney, 367 F.3d at 350).
Applying the above tests, the magistrate judge concluded first that there was a genuine dispute of material fact, which prеcluded granting summary judgment. Second, she found the Graham factors were sufficiently satisfied by Byrd‘s presumed true allegations to show her constitutional rights were clearly established and violated. Cornelius and Sweetin attack the memorandum and recommendation on both conclusions.
1. The Video Evidence
The magistrate judge found the officers’ video to be unpersuasive. She concluded that due to the vidеo‘s low quality and short duration—the footage does not depict the arrest or events shortly after the arrest—it does not clarify the factual dispute. Indeed, the magistrate judge claimed the video further reinforced her conclusion regarding the Graham factors because of Byrd‘s petite size.
The officers argue that the footage shows that the magistrate judge‘s view of the events is conclusively erroneous; therefore, they contend we should disregard her factual findings. Specifically, Cornelius and Sweetin claim the security video exhibits Byrd swinging her arm at Cornelius, attempting to bump Golden, and kicking Sweetin. They cite Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380-81 (2007) in support of the proposition that appellate courts should rely on video evidence rather than the district court‘s factual findings when the two are in tension. Cornelius and Sweetin conclude that, considering Byrd‘s actions in the video, their use of force was objectively reasonable.
As requested by the Defendants, we have viewed the video in question numerous times. The footage is only fifteen seconds
For us to review the genuineness of a factual dispute identified by a district court on interlocutory review, the video evidence must conclusively resolve the dispute of material fact. See Curran v. Aleshire, 800 F.3d 656, 664 (5th Cir. 2015). Although we find the video far more supportive of the officers’ description of the events than the magistrate judge did, it does not conclusively resolve the factual disputes identified by the district court. The video is of low quality and fails to show Byrd‘s arrest, but contrary to the magistrate judge‘s report, the video plainly shows Byrd resisting as she was being removed from the gym‘s lobby. The video, however, does not depict when, or if, Byrd ceased resisting or what happenеd during the arrest. It also fails to show the events after Cornelius restrained Byrd. Therefore, under our standard of review on interlocutory appeal, we defer to the district court‘s findings that there is a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether the officers used excessive force during the evening of November 14, 2017.
2. Clearly Established Right
Next, we address, taking the facts in the light most favorable to Byrd, whеther the officers violated clearly established law when they allegedly used excessive force to arrest a student at a high school basketball game. Defendants first argue that the undisputed facts of this case warranted Byrd‘s arrest and that arrests inherently entail a certain amount of force. suspect‘s active resistance is a critical factor in the
As stated above, we are bound on interlocutory review to the facts as decided by the district court on summary judgment. There, the magistrate judge identified genuine disputes of fact regarding whether Byrd was resisting arrest, when any resistance may have ceased, and whether the officers used excessive force during or after the arrest. Because of our limited review, we dismiss the officers’ first argument as an improper attack on the genuineness of the district court‘s factual findings.
Cornelius and Sweetin next fault Byrd for failing to identify a case that clearly establishes that they could not forcefully remove and violently arrest a rowdy teenager at school. However, during the proceedings before the district court, Byrd citеd Curran v. Aleshire, where we addressed a near identical factual situation. See generally id. In Curran, a school police officer confronted a teenage girl using her cell phone to call her mother on school grounds. Id. at 658. According to the school‘s policy, students were prohibited from using cell phones at school. Id. The officer reached for a lanyard on the student‘s neck to check her identification. Id.
On interlocutory appeal, we held that the video and photographic evidence were inconclusive; therefore, we had to limit our review to the materiality of the factual dispute identified by the district court. Id. at 661-64. We concluded that the dispute was material and based our logic on our decision in Newman v. Guedry, whеre we held that a reasonable officer should have realized utilizing force against a non-resisting plaintiff is an “obvious” case in which the Graham factors alone provide fair warning. Id. at 661-62 (citing 703 F.3d 757, 764 (5th Cir. 2012)).
Sweetin and Cornelius attempt to distinguish Curran by pointing to the video evidence in this case and the temporal differences between Byrd‘s allegations and the claims made by Curran‘s plaintiff. We have already addressed the video evidence above and will not reiterate our analysis here. Regarding the alleged temporal differences, namely that the plaintiff in Curran was handcuffed and then allegedly suffered excessive force, the facts identified by the district court, in this case, do not support the argument that there was no temporal gap between the events that took place in the video and those that took place after the officers and Byrd move off camera. First, Byrd bases her excessive force claim on events from before, during, and shortly after Cornelius took her into custody. Second, Byrd alleges a specific temporal gap when Cornelius restrained her, and then Sweetin kicked her and broke her cell phone by throwing it on the ground. Thus, we reject the officers’ attempts to distinguish Curran.
In support of their argument, the officers ask us to see this case as more analogous to Poole v. City of Shreveport, 691 F.3d 624 (5th Cir. 2012). In that case, a district court granted summary judgment in favor of officers where the plaintiff resisted arrest, and the police responded by tasering him. Id. at 625-26. However, the procedural posture of that case and its facts are distinct from the matter before us on interlocutory appeal. In Poole, the district court granted summary judgment, whereas the district court in this case denied summary judgment. Id. at 626. Accordingly, the applicable standard of review constrains our analysis to the materiality of the district court‘s factual findings. This contrasts with Poole, where we could thoroughly interrogate the factual record. Id. We, consequently, do not see Poole as applicable.
Constrained to analyzing the materiality of the district court‘s factual findings, we agree with the district court that its identified disputes of fact are material to Byrd‘s excessive force claim. Applying the Graham factors to Byrd‘s allegations as we did in Curran, we see a teenager who claims she was not committing a crime, not a threat to others, and not resisting or attempting to flee the police when the officers allegedly used excessive force. We, therefore, agree with the district court that the officers’ alleged conduct, taking the facts in the light most favorable to Byrd, clearly violated federal law.
3. De Minimis
The officers’ final argument in support of reversing the district court‘s
Here, Byrd alleges that during her encounter with the officers, she was so afraid and in so much pain that she believed the officers would kill her. She claims her physiсal injuries required a hospital to treat her for shoulder and elbow trauma that necessitated a sling. Byrd also alleges that the hospital treated her for severe bruising and multiple lacerations. These injuries, allegedly caused by unnecessary excessive force, satisfy the de minimis threshold.
IV
The video evidence does not conclusively resolve the factual disputes identified by the district court in its summary judgment proceedings. These factual disputes are material to Cornelius’ and Sweetin‘s qualified immunity defense. Thus, we DISMISS the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
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