Lead Opinion
On Dеcember 12, 1997, appellant Kam Santos encountered two Los Angeles Po
I. BACKGROUND
Kam Santos is a troubled individual who has a long history of psychological problems, difficulties with substance abuse, and brushes with the law. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in 1982. He takes medication to control his mental illness, and he has been hospitalized more than fifteen times for his condition.
A. Santos’s Account of Events
On the morning of December 12, 1997, Santos ate breakfast at the home of his friend Herb, who lived at the William Penn Hotel, located at 8th Street and Alvarado in Los Angeles. Santos ate scrambled eggs and toast, and accompanied his morning meal with approximately a cup and a half of Jack Daniels whiskey. He described himself as “mildly intoxicated” after this breakfast, but stated that he was able to walk. He testified at trial that he had not taken his prescribed medications for approximately seven days before the morning in question. He explained that when he has “a lot of business to take care of,” he does not take his medication because it renders him sluggish and he cannot function adequately.
Santos left Herb’s residence between 8:00 and 9:15 a.m., and made his way home by bus. Santos had a distinct memory of what bus lines he took and where and why he got off the bus, and also that the weather was clear that day. His recollection of the events from that point onward is less distinct; however, he does remember that two police officers began to pursue him as he proceeded down Arlington Avenue.
Seeing the police caused Santos considerable concern because he had been released from prison just 30 days earlier and had not been reporting to his parole officer as required. Santos had no idea why the police officers were trying to stop him, but he fled on foot until his way was blocked by a chainlink fence that he could not climb because it was topped with barbed wire. Knowing that he was caught, he sank to his knees and interlocked his hands behind his head. Prior experience with the police had taught him that assuming this position would likely “prevent them from do[ing] anything” to him.
The last things that Santos clearly remembers about the incident are seeing the two officers running towards him and hearing a loud sound. He stated that then “[I] felt like my — like my head just blew off. I was in so much pain all I seen was white, white light; and it was — whew, it made me pass out right after I screamed and started yelling, and I passed out.” Santos does recall screaming, “Why didfyou] have to break my back? I wasn’t doing anything. Why did you have to break my back?” and feeling like the lower portion of his body was “on fire” before he passed out. The next thing he remembers was waking up in an ambulance. Santos admits that he has no memory of being struck by the two officers. After the inci
B. The Officers’Account of Events
The officers’ account of the events in question, not surprisingly, differs considerably from Santos’s version. LAPD Officers Kimberly Allen and James Lee testified at trial that they were on patrol on December 12, 1997, when they received a radio call that in the area of Arlington Avenue and 27th Street there was a man “screaming and falling down in the street.” They found a small cluster of people in front of the house from which the call was made. Those individuals informed the officers that a Latino man who was covered with dirt and was wearing a multi-colored shirt had been roaming the neighborhood screaming. A woman said she thought the man might have taken something from a neighbor’s garage. Officer Allen testified that she and her partner considered the individual a suspect because a burglary might have occurred, and a burglary is “a serious felony.”
The officers drove around the neighborhood and, on the north side of 27th Street, came across a Hispanic male who was wearing a multi-colored shirt and was walking erratically. He was screaming periodically. The officers initiated an investigative stop. They pulled their patrol car up to the sidewalk where Santos was walking, and both officers got out of the car. Lee approached Santos and told him to stop because they needed to speak with him. Santos stopped walking towards the officers when he was approximately five feet away from them. Lee testified that Santos’s behavior throughout their encounter with him was “passive.”
Lee’s intent was “to take [Santos] into custody until we could determine whether he was the suspect or not and whether we had a crime or not.” Lee twice instructed Santos to turn around, place his hands behind his head, and interlace his fingers. Within a few seconds, Santos turned away from the two officers, but dropped his hands to his sides. Because he failed to comply with the entirety of the instructions, Lee stated that “I wasn’t going to stand there and ask him all day. I walked up and grabbed both of his wrists to handcuff him.” As Lee grabbed Santos’s wrists, Santos went limp and slumped to the ground. In order to prevent Santos from hitting his head on the sidewalk, Lee grabbed Santos’s arm and shoulder and “guided” him down to the ground. The first part of Santos’s body to touch the ground was his buttocks. Allen recalled that during this time, Santos was saying nonsensical things and yelling.
Once Santos was on the ground, Lee rolled him over onto his stomach, handcuffed him, and patted him down for weapons. The officers then sat Santos upright, because Lee thought that otherwise Santos’s breathing would be restricted. At this point, the plaintiff began yelling repeatedly, “They’re beating me, they’re beating me, they’re beating me like Rodney King.” Santos also began screaming out the officers’ names and badge numbers, as if he was attempting to commit them to memory.
The two officers then called for both a supervisor — because of the plaintiffs allegations that he was being beaten — and an ambulance. Before either arrived, Allen asked Santos for his name and address. Santos continued to yell out unintelligible sounds, as well as the officers’ badge numbers, and, from time to time, he screamed that he was being beaten. Allen noted that Santos’s arms had fresh needle tracks
Three paramedics arrived at the location at about the same time as Boyer and took Santos to Midway Hospital. Allen handcuffed each of Santos’s arms to a gurney and rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital where she left him in the charge of the medical and security staff. The officers did not investigate the possible burglary any further, because, in Officer Allen’s view, Santos did not appear to be sufficiently lucid to have formed the specific intent necessary for the crime of burglary. In fact, no burglary had occurred.
C. Medical Evidence
As a result of Santos’s complaints of lower .back pain, approximately four hours after he arrived at Midway Hospital an x-ray was taken of his back. It revealed a 10-20% compression fracture of his L-2 vertebra. At the time, Santos’s blood alcohol content was .227,
D. Proceedings Below
Santos filed this lawsuit on April 26, 1999, against Officers Allen and Lee, as well as against Sgt. Boyer. The plaintiff also nаmed as defendants the City of Los Angeles and a number of high-ranking officials of the LAPD. The complaint contained allegations of unlawful search and seizure, a claim of excessive force, and a claim for municipal liability against the City of Los Angeles under Monell v. New York City Dep’t of Social Servs.,
II. DISCUSSION
A. The Evidence Gives Rise to Material Questions of Fact.
Judgment as a matter of law is appropriate when the evidence presented at trial permits only one reasonable conclusion. See LaLonde v. County of Riverside,
The district court granted judgment as a matter of law in favor of the defendants primarily because of Santos’s testimony that he did not specifically remember being forced to the ground by defendant Lee. It decided that this single statement compelled the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence of excessive force in the record. In fact, however, there was more than enough evidence from which the jury might reasonably have found liability on the part of the defendants.
Simply because Santos has no clear recollection of the act which he contends caused his severe injury does not mean that his claim must fail as a matter of law. In Ting v. United States,
Thus, just as in Ting, a jury could well draw reasonable inferences from the circumstantial evidence presented that would support a verdict for the plaintiff. Nowhere in our cases have we held that police misconduct may be proved only through direct evidence. To the contrary, a jury’s finding for a plaintiff in an excessive force case may unquestionably rest on inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence. For example, in Rutherford v. Berkeley,
Whether or not the evidence in the record establishes liability on the part of the defendants depends on the resolution of disputed questions of fact and determinations of credibility, as well as on the drawing of inferences, all of which are manifestly the province of a jury. United States v. Goode,
The defendants contend that, even if a jury were to find as a matter of fact that they broke Santos’s back, as a matter of law they cannot be held responsible, because their use of force was objectively reasonable under the circumstances and, thus, was not excessive. Their contention, however, necessitates the resolution of disputed facts and the drawing of inferences, all of which must, for purposes of this appeal, be made in Santos’s favor. LaLonde,
We hold that in this casе, when the disputed facts and inferences are treated in the manner required by law, a jury could properly find a Fourth Amendment violation. A Fourth Amendment claim of excessive force is analyzed under the framework set forth by the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor,
Although it is undoubtedly true that police officers “are often forced to make split-second judgments,” and that therefore “not every push or shove, even if it may seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s chambers” is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, id. (quoting Johnson v. Glick,
On the one hand, the nature of the intrusion was quite severe: as a result of being taken to the ground, Santos suffered a broken vertebra which caused him both
Defendants contend that merely assisting Santos to the ground cannot be considered excessive force, because the take-down was not a sufficiently intrusive physical act. Assuming without deciding that some action on the part of the officers was warranted, the question remains whether the take-down was accomplished by the use of excessive force. Force is excessive when it is greater than is reasonable under the circumstances. Graham,
Our recent decision in Jackson v. City of Bremerton,
Moreover, in Jackson the injuries sustained by the plaintiff were far less severe than those inflicted here: Ms. Jackson suffered a broken fifth finger and the discomfort that occurred when a chemical solution that was sprayed on her hair ran into her eyes; as to the latter, the officers applied water within minutes in order to alleviate the discomfort. We described the intrusions, i.e., the injuries, in Jackson as “minimal.” Id. at 653. Under no circumstances would we describe a broken back in that manner. Although in Jackson we appear to have conflated the injury and the degree of force employed, our reasoning appears to have been that because the injuries were so minor, the force used must have been minor also. See
In light of the factual disputes regarding the amount of force used, the circumstances under which it was applied, and the extent of the plaintiffs’ injuries, the question is properly for the jury whether the force applied by the officers was objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances.
Because the evaluation of Santos’s claim depends principally on credibility detеrminations and the drawing of factual inferences from circumstantial evidence, both of which are the traditional functions of the jury, a question of material fact exists with respect to the amount of force used by the officers. Additionally, “[bjecause questions of reasonableness are not well-suited to precise legal determination,” Chew v. Gates,
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
Notes
. Santos also testified at trial that he had not taken his medications for the preceding five days because if he had taken them he would have been unable to testify properly.
. The defendant’s expert testified that it was virtually certain that Santos’s blood alcohol content was higher two hours bеfore, when he first encountered the police.
. The plaintiff called all three officers as part of his case-in-chief. For logistical reasons some of the defense’s medical witnesses also testified before the plaintiff rested. Thus, by the time the plaintiff completed his presentation, a substantial amount of the defense evidence had also been admitted.
. Although at trial the plaintiff advanced three Fourth Amendment claims — one for an unreasonable seizure, a second for an unreasonable search, and a third for excessive force — on appeal he pursues only the third.
.The high-ranking officer defendants and the City of Los Angeles made no separate arguments in the district court and make none on appeal. For present purposes, they rest solely on the arguments regarding the liability of the officers on the scene.
. Although Rutherford is in some respects no longer good law because it analyzed the excessive force claim under the substantive due process rubric that was supplanted by the Fourth Amendment approach set forth in Graham v. Connor,
. The dissent appears to be under the impression that a jury must always choose to believe in its entirety either the evidence presented by the plaintiff or the evidence presented by the defendant. To the contrary, life — and jury trials — is seldom so black and white. Here, a jury question results from the existence of testimony presented by both sides as to how various events occurred, as well as from the circumstantial evidence that could give rise to differing inferences. The reason why judgment as a matter of law was improper in this case may be summarized in a nutshell: San
. We note again, out of an excess of caution, that we make no finding as to causality here. We merely state that, on the record before us, a jury could reasonably do so.
. In Graham, the Supreme Court directed that when weighing the extent of force used against the need for force, the latter should be examined in light of the “severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”
.In JacJcson, the officers allegedly pushed to the ground a plaintiff who was already in a kneeling position. The officers broke Jackson’s fifth finger "during what she admits was a normal handcuffing procedure,” and subsequently placed her in a locked police car and rolled up the windows, although her hair had previously been sprayed with a chemical substance. Id. at 650, 652,
. In Jackson we also appear to have conflated whether a constitutional violation occurred with whether a qualified immunity defense exists. See
. In Saucier v. Katz,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
With all due sympathy for Mr. Santos and his mysterious injury, I respectfully dissent from the Court’s opinion and its failure to abide by the latest pronouncements of the Supreme Court on use of force cases involving police officers.
The Supreme Court tells us that “[i]n a suit against an officer for an alleged violation of a constitutional right, the requisites of a qualified immunity defense must be considered in proper sequence.” Saucier v. Katz,
The first step in our analysis, then, is to determine whether the facts alleged indicаte that the officers actually violated a constitutional right. Though not presented with the issue of qualified immunity because the case was tried before the Supreme Court’s decision, the trial court’s directed verdict was certainly consistent with Saucier. The lesson we glean from Saucier is that district courts should be more active in terminating litigation as early as possible so that officers who are protected by qualified immunity do not have to sit through an entire jury trial when there is no evidence that they committed a constitutional violation.
Here, the trial court granted defendants’ motion for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a) after listening to all of the plaintiffs evidence. The directed verdict was proper because “there[was] no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reason
My colleagues try to frame this case as one raising questions of credibility so as to justify sending it to the jury, Slip Op. at 852, but in their effort to make the case that Santos did not, they fail to follow Rule 50(a)’s requirement that there must be a “legally sufficient evidentiary basis” for a “reasonable jury” to find in favor of Santos. Tellingly, the Court’s opinion attempts to piece together selective versions of two widely different accounts of two different events — one from Santos and one from the officers — but ignores the fatal flaw in plaintiffs proof that the versions basically represent two different cases. According to Santos, he was running away from the police in an alley; according to the officers, Santos was walking on the sidewalk; according to Santos, he tried to climb a fence; according to the officers, there was no fence; according to Santos, he screamed, “why did [you] have to break my back?;” according to the officers, Santos screamed, “they’re beating me like Rodney King,” when no such activity was occurring.
If this were really a case about credibility, the jury would be asked to choose whether to believe Santos’s account of the same event or the officers’.
While the Court may be right that “excessive force claims typically boil down to an evaluation of the various accounts of the same events,” Slip Op. at 852, that, again, is not this case. The parties did not describe the same event. The officers told one story, a story that corroborating evidence supports (at least as to the place of the encounter). Santos told another story occurring at another place that involved an alley, a fence, and some unidentified people. Moreover, there is no dispute that Mr. Santos was not taking his psychotropic medications, was behaving in a manner consistent with paranoid schizophrenia exacerbated by a substantial amount of straight bourbon whiskey, and was screaming in broad daylight when neighbors called for help. The trial judge heard all of the plaintiffs evidence and properly
The cases cited by the Court do not preclude judgment as a matter of law in this case. In Ting v. United States,
In Ting, there was no dispute that the agent shot Ting or that it was the shooting that injured Ting. In the case before us, however, there is no evidence that Officer Lee used the amount of force that would be required to break someone’s back, nоr is there evidence that Santos’s broken back stemmed from his arrest. Furthermore, Ting did not undermine his own case by stating something like he was shot in a field while running from police. Santos, on the other hand, stated he was in an alley by a fence when he was injured. Thus, while Ting presented one clear story posing a definite unresolved question for a trier of fact, Santos does not challenge the specifics of the officers’ account of what happened but rather claims his injury took place in a completely different locale under completely different circumstances with no corroborating evidence to sustain his claim.
Rutherford v. Berkeley,
Thus, had Santos alleged that he suffered a broken back after a group of officers surrounded him and beat him, but he could not remember which ones actually took part in the beating, I would agree that the question was one for a jury to decide. In this case, however, Santos did not provide any evidence that the officers used excessive force upon him because he cannot say where he actually sustained the injury and the medical testimony acknowledged that it could have happened hours or days before his arrest.
Whether or not anyone knows exactly how Santos hаppened to break his back, the district court properly granted judgment as a matter of law for the defendants based on this evidentiary record. The approach of the majority — “to deny [judgment as a matter of law] any time a material issue of fact remains on the excessive force claim — could undermine the goal of qualified immunity to ‘avoid excessive disruption of government and permit the res
Because Santos failed to establish a pri-ma facie case to send his claims to a jury, that should be the end of the inquiry. See Jackson v. City of Bremerton,
Under Graham v. Connor,
When evaluating the “nature and quality of the intrusion” we consider “the type and amount of force inflicted.” City of Bremerton,
The Court also dismisses the countervailing government interests too easily. Santos, was not your ordinary drunkard. His mid-day blood alcohol content was an astronomical .227 two hours after first encountering police, he had traces of amphetamines in his system, and he was a paranoid schizophrenic who for several days had skipped taking the medicine to control his mental illness. The officers had received a report of a man “screaming and falling down in the street” who was covered in dirt and who was a burglary suspect. Santos failed to comply with the officers’ directives to place his hands on top of his head.
Because Santos did not offer sufficient competent evidence to support a reasonable jury’s finding of excessive force employed during his arrest, judgment as a matter of law was appropriate. I would therefore affirm the district court and respectfully dissent from the Court’s opinion.
. While in some cases it may be possible that parts of both parties' version are true and parts untrue, this is not the case when the versions stand in such stark contrast to one another so as to describe completely different events. It was for that reason that after listening to the evidence presented the district court properly granted the Rule 50 dismissal.
. Such as his shouting “why did you have to break my back?” Slip Op. at 852.
. Such as their description of Santos being "passive,” Slip Op. at 852, and their admission of having applied limited force to calm and restrain Santos. Slip Op. at 852.
. Such as the majority's questioning whether the officers gently applied force. Slip Op. at 852.
. The quotations come from summary judgment cases. Here, Santos had the opportunity to present his complete case-in-chief at trial. The trial court was therefore "freer to direct a verdict” because the court had a "better basis on which to determine the existence of material issues.” Lies v. Farrell Lines, Inc.,
. Santos claims he did do this, but he also claims he was in an alley near a fence.
. Even if Santos was "passive” for a while, his excessively inebriated state coupled with his mental condition would mean his demean- or could change rapidly, as evidenced by his subsequent screaming and irrational behavior.