Lead Opinion
SUTTON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which COOK, J., joined, and MARBLEY, D.J., joined in part and in the result. MARBLEY, D.J. (pp. 682-85), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and in the judgment.
OPINION
When law enforcement officers tried to execute a warrant for his arrest, Matthew Krause fled into his home and holed up in a bedroom closet armed with a gun. After negotiating for hours, the officers decided to enter the bedroom, using something called a “flash bang” in the process. In the seconds that followed, Krause fired a shot at the officers, and one of the officers fatally shot Krause in response. At issue is whether the officers used excessive force when entering the bedroom and in shooting Krause. We affirm the district court’s grant of qualified immunity to the officers.
I.
The United States Marshals arrived at Matthew Krause’s home in Redford at nine in the morning on December 12, 2008. They had a warrant for Krause’s arrest for felony possession of more than fifty grams of cocaine. When Matthew opened the door and saw the Marshals, he slammed it shut and ran into a bedroom. The Marshals followed. One of the Deputy Marshals entered the bedroom but left to take cover when he found Krause standing in the corner pointing a handgun at him. As the others took up positions around the bedroom, they again announced themselves and again explained they had a warrant for his arrest. Krause told them he had multiple guns in the bedroom and he would kill anyone who tried to come in. As they continued to encourage him to come out unarmed, he continued to threaten to kill them, saying at one point, “[L]et’s do this, I’m ready to die[,] are you[?]” R.14-3 at 2.
The Marshals called the Redford Township Police Department. The Redford SWAT team took up positions in the house, and its negotiator Sergeant Duane Gregg began talking to Krause from the hallway outside the open bedroom door. They talked for the next eight or so hours.
Around six thirty, a pole camera showed that Krause seemed to be sleeping in the closet, prompting the SWAT team to think about entering the bedroom. They briefly considered having one member of the team enter the room behind a shield, fall on Krause, and try to secure him. But they rejected that idea. More extravagantly, they considered using the SWAT team’s tank to bring down the exterior wall of the bedroom and to seize Krause in that way. But they rejected that idea as well. They settled on using a “flash bang,” “which emits a loud bang and a bright flash of light,” United States v. Dawkins,
Sergeant Nick Lentine rolled the flash bang into the bedroom. Officer Jones crossed into the room simultaneously “with the flash bang.” R.14-5 at 21 (Tr. at 75-76, 81). Officer Butler followed with Lieutenant Gillman behind him. Officer Jones remembers seeing the muzzle flash of a handgun “after the flash bang,” as Krause shot at him. Id. at 22-23 (Tr. at 81-82). Lieutenant Gillman heard shots before he entered the room — “one round, one shot, and then there was a short pause, and then there was some multiple rounds.” R.14-6 at 18, 19 (Tr. at 62, 67). Once inside, Lieutenant Gillman saw Officer Jones sitting down “checking himself’ to see if he had been shot. Id. at 18 (Tr. at 63). He also saw Krause seated in the closet with his hand on a gun. The entire exchange took “seconds.” Id. at 19 (Tr. at 67). Officer Butler removed the gun from Krause’s hand. Krause was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An investigation of the bedroom showed Krause had fired one round from a .38 revolver toward the doorway from the closet. R.14-3 at 3. A medical examination revealed that Krause had suffered twenty gunshot wounds. R.17-6 at 4-14.
Matthew’s mother sued Sergeant Gregg, Lieutenant Gillman, Officer Jones, the Redford Police Department and Redford Township. Her complaint claimed, as relevant here, that the officers violated Krause’s Fourth (and Fourteenth) Amendment rights by using a flash bang and by shooting Krause, and that their actions independently amounted to gross negligence under state law. The district court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on all claims on qualified-immunity grounds.
II.
Qualified immunity shields officers from section 1983 constitutional torts so long as the officers did not violate the clearly established constitutional rights of the claimant. See Pearson v. Callahan,
Use of the flash bang. There are several problems with Krause’s claim that the officers violated her son’s Fourth Amendment rights when they used a flash bang before entering the room. The complaint as an initial matter does not identify any way in which the device improperly seized or otherwise harmed him. And neither the appellate briefs nor oral argument fill this gap.
Even if that were not the case, the officers’ use of a flash bang in this instance was reasonable. Faced with a troubled young man resisting arrest on drug charges, threatening to shoot them, expressing his willingness to die, and refusing all requests to surrender peacefully, the officers sought to minimize the risk of injury to themselves and others in entering the room. See Graham v. Connor,
All of these increases in officer safety came with little downside, including the kinds of downsides that have led other courts to be skeptical of the use of a flash bang or to find it unreasonable. The suspect was isolated in one room, precluding the risk that the flash bang could harm others, including children, the elderly or others in the wrong place at the wrong time. See Boyd v. Benton Cnty.,
Bing illustrates the two sides of the line. The police responded to a report of an intoxicated man, Bing, who had shot at a group of children on his street. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade Bing to leave his house for two hours, the police threw pepper spray and a flash bang into a window. Bing then shot at the police, who threw another flash bang into the house. The house caught fire, and Bing died inside. Id. at 558-63. We held that the officers acted reasonably in using the first flash bang to try to force Bing out of his house. The officers needed “to disarm Bing and place him under arrest to abate the threat that he posed to people in the area.” Id. at 570. Yet the second flash bang crossed the reasonableness line because the officers had “full knowledge that it [would] likely ignite accelerants and cause a fire” and thus created a “mortal,” and unnecessary, “threat” to the suspect. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). In this instance, no comparable safety concerns cloud the record.
Because the officers complied with the Fourth Amendment in using the flash bang, it follows that they did not violate any clearly established law in doing so. Even Bing, which found a constitutional violation with the second use of the flash bang, determined that the officers did not violate clearly established law.
Fatal shooting. The officers’ use of deadly force — shooting Krause — also did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights. Whether an officer reasonably uses deadly force turns on whether “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others.” Tennessee v. Garner,
The claimant offers several rejoinders to this conclusion. She suggests that Krause may have been asleep with his hand on the trigger of the gun and might have fired accidentally when the flash bang jolted him awake. Yet Krause’s intent, or lack of intent, in firing the gun has no role to play. We judge Officer Jones’ reasonableness “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene,” Plumhoff v. Rickard, - U.S. -,
She adds that her expert questioned whether Krause fired his gun at all. But this argument lacks any support in the record. She never identified any such expert, and a search of the record does not turn up a report or deposition of any ex
Even if Officer Jones had the right to use deadly force in self-defense, she questions the use of so much force — twenty rounds in all. But, so far as the record shows, the number of rounds fired by the officer flows from the reasonable decision to engage the automatic-trigger function on his gun before entering the room. And no evidence shows that Officer Jones continued firing after he knew that he had already incapacitated Krause or that Krause had given up. “[I]f police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.” Id. at 2022.
Plaintiff asks, last of all, why the officers opted to enter the bedroom instead of waiting for Krause to exit on his own. But the officers did try waiting — ten hours in all devoted to trying to coax Krause out of the bedroom. This was not an impulsive entry. At any rate, “the police need not have taken that chance and hoped for the best.” Scott v. Harris,
The concurrence questions the officers’ decision to enter the bedroom with their weapons set to fire automatically. But it is not clear why. Krause had shown no concern for his own safety or that of others and had threatened many times to shoot the officers if they entered. Once Krause delivered on his threat and fired at Officer Jones, all agree that Officer Jones could reasonably fire back and could keep firing “until the threat [was] over.” Plum-hoff,
The concurrence adds that “There was no need for Matthew Krause to die.” We agree and have considerable sympathy for
That leaves one loose end. The complaint raised a state law gross negligence claim. It did not explain the basis for that claim. The response to the defendants’ summary judgment motion did not either. See R.17 at 19 (mentioning the phrase “gross negligence” but referencing excessive force cases). Nor did the motion for reconsideration mention the claim. See R.21 at 4. The district court could have treated this undeveloped claim as a forfeited one. See Brown v. United States,
For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s judgment.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the court’s holding that the officer’s use of deadly force in this case, where Krause fired first, did not violate Krause’s Fourth Amendment rights. An officer in the position of Officer Jones, who had heard Krause’s threats, knew that he was armed, and saw the muzzle flash of Krause’s gun, reasonably could determine that Krause posed a serious threat to him and to other officers, and that the threat must be neutralized.
I write separately, however, to express my disagreement with the court’s conclusion that it was reasonable for Officer Jones to shoot Krause twenty times. See R. 17-6 at 4-14. The majority flatly announces that the number of rounds fired by Jones “flow[ed] from the reasonable decision” of the officer to engage the automatic-fire function of his weapon. Supra at 681; I find such a decision to be neither reasonable nor inevitable. The majority notes that, if an officer is justified in firing, he may continue to fire until the threat has ended. See Plumhoff v. Rickard, — U.S. —,
Claims against officers for use of excessive force during a stop or arrest are properly analyzed in keeping with “the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures of the person,” wherein the “reasonableness” of a particular seizure “depends not only on when it is made, but also on how it is carried out.” Graham v. Connor,
But I struggle to understand why the majority’s analysis is bereft of any examination into the officers decisions not to wait longer, or to leave Krause asleep while apprehending him, or at minimum to shoot merely in order to incapacitate, rather than to destroy. Compare Baker v. City of Hamilton, Ohio,
Once Krause fired, it is clear that the officer’s decision to return fire was reasonable. But surely this court is able to question also the pre-shooting conduct by law enforcement. See, e.g., Claybrook v. Birchwell,
If officers had decided, for example, to carry with them a grenade launcher, or
What is more, it is deeply troubling to see that, before launching their raid against the sleeping Krause, police considered other options, including the truly outrageous possibility of “using the SWAT team’s tank to bring down the exterior wall of the bedroom and to seize Krause in that way.” Supra at 678. This deliberation is disturbing not for the fact that police opted for a different choice, but because such a shockingly militarized option was even a consideration in the apprehension of a low-level drug dealer. In comparison, the officers’ choice merely to use fully-automatic rifles, riot shields, and flash-bang grenades seems almost reserved. But it is precisely this sort of jurisprudential creep which must be resisted at all costs; indeed, as the Supreme Court long ago warned, “[i]t is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon. Their motto should be obsta principiis [‘resist the beginnings’].” Boyd v. United States,
The doctrine of qualified immunity serves the importance purpose of “protect[ing] the State and its officials from overenforcement of federal rights,” Johnson v. Fankell,
There was no need for Matthew Krause to die. Despite his threats that he might “come out shooting,” as officers prepared to enter his bedroom he was asleep, posing a danger to no one. In facing such a suspect, police must do more than merely select from an array of deadly options that threaten an unreasonable risk of death — at least when safer, simpler options remain. It is not our duty to second-guess law enforcement. But is emphatically our duty to ensure that the law reflects our society’s commitment to saving lives, not meaninglessly taking them.
For these reasons, I respectfully concur in part and concur in the judgment.
Notes
. Police action that today is borderline — but ultimately immunized' — -will tomorrow be “clearly established” and shielded beyond dispute. As one commentator has recognized in a related context, "[a] 'steady drumbeat' of [Fourth Amendment] violations that will not be subject to [the exclusionary rule] will become more and more accepted — not as technical violations — -but as accepted behavior.... [Wjhat will be considered egregious enough to justify exclusion will also be influenced, resulting in increasingly diminished respect for the right to be secure over time.” Thomas K. Clancy, The Fourth Amendment’s Exclusionary Rule as a Constitutional Right, 10 Ohio St. J.Crim. L. 357, 383 (2013) (footnote omitted).
