WILLIE JAMES DEAN, JR. v. JOHNNIE JONES; CHARLES C. HOBGOOD, еt al.
No. 18-7227
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
January 4, 2021
PUBLISHED. Argued: September 9, 2020. Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge Harris wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Gregory and Judge Wynn joined.
ARGUED: Jehanne McCullough, Virginia Oat, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. Mary Carla Babb, Special Deputy Attorney General, NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: James S. Ballenger, Molly M. Cain, Third Year Law Student, Read W. Mills, Third Year Law Student, Appellate Litigation Clinic, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellees.
Dean sued, alleging excessive force under the
We disagree. As the district court recognized, the
I.
A.
This appeal concerns two uses of force against Dean by correctional officers Charles Hobgood and Johnnie Jones on December 12, 2015, while Dean was serving a prison sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. Soundless video footage from the prison captures some of the surrounding events but does not show either use of force itsеlf. The parties dispute many of the critical facts, and those disputes are noted below.
We begin with the first incident, which occurred while Officer Hobgood was escorting Dean back to his cell after a visit to the prison barber. During that walk, Dean concedes, he head-butted Officer Hobgood, “causing him to fall.” J.A. 110.1 According to Dean, he promptly was subdued by a second officer, Dustin Gipson, who arrived on the scene. Dean ended up lying on his back with his arms handcuffed beneath him, while Officer Gipson, on top of him, pressed his knees into Dean‘s chest. At that point, Dean attests - while he was restrained by Officer Gipson and non-resistant - Officer Hobgood got to his feet and “administered one long burst [of pepper spray] to [Dean‘s] face, lasting over 3 seconds” and “partially blind[ing]” him. J.A. 111, 113.
The second episode began after twelve other correctional officers arrived on the scene in response to a call for backup. Two of those officers - one of whom was Sergeant Jones - held onto Dean‘s handcuffed wrists and began escorting him toward a nurses’ station for decontamination. These events are captured by video, which shows 11 other officers following closely behind the group of three.
According to Dean, during this escort, Sergeant Jones twice pushed him into sliding doors without provocation; one of those incidents can be seen on the video. As the escort continued, Dean states, he “fear[ed] for his well being,” panicked, and head-butted Sergeant Jones‘s face. J.A. 113. The video shows Sergeant Jones, surrounded at this point by 10 other officers, responding by pushing Dean up against a nearby wall. And then, on Dean‘s account, Sergeant Jones told the other officers to “get him in there,” J.A. 114, and the officers pushed Dean into a nearby janitor‘s supply closet, out of range of the video camera.
Dean, still handcuffed, landed on the closet floor and there, he claims, he was “maliciously beaten by . . . Jones and other officers.” J.A. 115. As the punching and kicking continued, Dean avers, he tried to “curl up to protect himself,” but the officers
Sergeant Jones disputes importаnt elements of this account. According to Jones, he and another officer placed Dean against the wall near the janitor‘s closet to restrain him after the head-butt. Dean and the two officers ended up in the closet by accident; Dean, in handcuffs against the wall, continued to resist and then the group‘s “collective momentum” caused them to fall into a nearby closet. J.A. 25. Injuries to Dean‘s face likewise were the result of an accident: After the group stumbled into the closet together, Dean “struck the right side of his head on a protruding shelf and his face on the concrete floor.” J.A. 25. Because Dean continued to struggle, Jones claims, he and another officer applied a bent-wrist technique to restrain him. But according to Jones, Dean was not punched, kicked, or otherwise beaten.
Finally, there is the video footage of the hallway outside the closet. Dean was in the closet for just over a minute, while several officers stood outside its door. Those officers pulled boxes out of the closet while Dean was inside, and one can be seen making a kicking motion near the door. At another point, Dean‘s shoe can be seen flying out of the closet before being kicked aside by an officer. In the end, Dean can be seen, as he attests, being “tossed on the floor” outside the closet with a bloodied face. J.A. 116.
Dean‘s injuries were severe. The discharge instructions from Wake Medical Center, where he was treated, state that Dean suffered a “contusion of face,” an “abrasion of face,” a “closed fracture of nasal bone,” and “subconjunctival hematoma.” J.A. 124. Weeks after the incident, Dean could not see anything out of his left eye. He later underwent surgery
B.
Dean, proceeding pro se, filed a
The district court agreed with the officers on the merits, holding that Dean could not establish an
With respect to Officer Hobgood‘s use of pepper spray, the district court adopted Dean‘s basic account, as required on summary judgment, which had Dean on the ground in handcuffs and non-resistant at the time the pepper spray was deployed. Even so, the court held, Hobgood‘s use of force was clearly necessary - and no reasonable jury could find otherwise - because it came “almоst immediately after” Dean‘s head-butt, when Hobgood still “reasonably feared for his own and officer Gipson‘s safety.” Id. at *4. Similarly, assuming for purposes of summary judgment that Sergeant Jones kicked and punched Dean while he was handcuffed on the floor of the supply closet, no reasonable jury could find that Jones had acted in anything but good faith: Jones, like Hobgood, “applied force immediately after [Dean] head butted him,” and all of “the officers reasonably feared for their safety.” Id.
Dean timely appealed the district court‘s grant of summary judgment to the defendants.
II.
Now represented by pro bono counsel, Dean argues that the district court misapplied the summary judgment standard, failing to construe the record evidence in the light most favorable to Dean as the nonmoving party. Properly viewed, he claims, the record would support a jury finding that Officer Hobgood and Sergеant Jones violated the
A.
The district court granted summary judgment to the officers on the merits of Dean‘s excessive force claim, finding as a matter of law that the officers had used force for the permissible purpose of protecting officer safety. We review that award of summary judgment de novo. Brooks v. Johnson, 924 F.3d 104, 111 (4th Cir. 2019).
A court may “grant summary judgment only if, taking the facts in the best light for the nonmoving party, no material facts are disputed and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Ausherman v. Bank of Am. Corp., 352 F.3d 896, 899 (4th Cir. 2003). In other words, we, like thе district court, must review the facts in the light most favorable to Dean, drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor. Brooks, 924 F.3d at 111. If the record, so viewed, gives rise to genuine factual disputes about why Officer Hobgood and Sergeant Jones deployed force in the way they did, then those questions must be resolved by a jury, not on summary judgment. Id. at 111-12. A dispute is “genuine” for these purposes so long as a reasonable jury could resolve it in Dean‘s favor. See Jacobs v. N.C. Admin. Off. of the Cts., 780 F.3d 562, 568 (4th Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks omitted).
1.
The more demanding part of the test - and the one on which the district court appropriately focused - is the subjective component, which asks a single question: whether the officers acted with a “sufficiently culpable state of mind.” Williams v. Benjamin, 77 F.3d 756, 761 (4th Cir. 1996). As the district court explained, the state of mind required here is “wantonness in the infliction of pain.” Dean, 2018 WL 4655723, at *3 (internal quotation marks omitted); see Iko v. Shreve, 535 F.3d 225, 239 (4th Cir. 2008) (quoting Whitley, 475 U.S. at 322). Whether an inmate can establish that impermissible motive turns on “whether force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline or maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.” Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320-21 (internal quotation marks omitted).
As we have explained, officers employ force in “good faith” - and thus permissibly - when they are motivated by an “immediate risk[] to physical safety” or threat to prison order. Brooks, 924 F.3d at 113. But they cross the line into an impermissible motive when they inflict pain not to protect safety or prison discipline but to punish or retaliate against an inmate for his prior conduct. Id.; see Boone v. Stallings, 583 F. App‘x 174, 177 (4th Cir. 2014) (“[T]he
On summary judgment, then, the inquiry under the subjective component boils down to whether a reasonable jury could determine that an officer acted with malice, applying force punitively and “for the very purpose of causing harm.” Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320-21 (internal quotation marks omitted); see Williams, 77 F.3d at 765. Because direct evidence of motive or intent may be hard to come by, the Supreme Court in Whitley v. Albers set out four factors from which “we may infer the existence of th[e] subjective state of mind required for an
(1) “the need for the application of force“; (2) “the relationship between the need and the amount of force that was used“; (3) the extent of any reasоnably perceived threat that the application of force was intended to quell; and (4) “any efforts made to temper the severity of a forceful response.”
Iko, 535 F.3d at 239 (quoting Whitley, 475 U.S. at 321). If a reasonable jury could find, based on inferences drawn under the Whitley factors or other evidence, that correctional officers used force maliciously to punish or retaliate against an inmate, then summary judgment is not appropriate. See Brooks, 924 F.3d at 116.
2.
We begin with Officer Hobgood‘s use of pepper spray against Dean while Dean was lying on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him. Consistent with the legal standard described above, Officer Hobgood raises two arguments in defense of the district court‘s
We need address the objective component only briefly here. The district court suggested that Dean fell short on this score because he had not shown injuries from the pepper spray that “rise above the level of de minimis harm.” See Dean, 2018 WL 4655723, at *4. But as Hobgood acknowledges on appeal, that is the wrong question: Although we once considered the severity of an inmate‘s injuries under the objective component, the Supreme Court has clarified that what matters is the severity of the force employed. See Wilkins v. Gaddy, 559 U.S. 34, 39 (2010). So long as the force used is more than de minimis, the objective component is satisfied, regardless of the extеnt of the injury. See id.; Hill v. Crum, 727 F.3d 312, 316 (4th Cir. 2013) (“[T]here is no de minimis injury threshold for an excessive force claim . . . .“); Thompson, 878 F.3d at 98 (“[A] prisoner who suffers a minor, but malicious, injury may be able to prevail on an excessive force claim . . . .“).
Under the correct standard, we have no difficulty concluding - as we have before - that a reasonable jury could find that a sustained blast of pepper spray directly to the face constitutes something more than de minimis force. See Greene v. Feaster, 733 F. App‘x 80, 81-82 (4th Cir. 2018) (per curiam) (holding that use of pepper spray for “two to three
That brings us to the subjective component, and whether Officer Hobgood used force in a “good faith effort” to subdue Dean and protect officer safety or “maliciously” to punish Dean. See Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320-21 (internal quotation marks omitted). Applying the first three Whitley factors - the need for force, the proportionality of the force
The problem with this analysis is that whether Hobgood‘s use of pepper spray was “clearly necessary” to respond to a threat to officer safety, id., turns on material questions of fact that are sharply disputed by the parties. On Officer Hobgood‘s account, to be sure, the pepper spray was necessary to protect against the threat posed by a resistant Dean, still largely unsubdued and grappling on the ground with Officer Gipson at the time force was used. But we must view the record in the light most favorable to Dean, and Dean‘s account has him fully subdued and non-resistant, lying on his back with handcuffed arms beneath him and Officer Gipson kneeling on his chest, when Hobgood pepper-sprayed his face. A
As we have explained, it is “well-established . . . that officers may not use gratuitous force against a prisoner who has already been subdued . . . [or] incapacitated.” See Thompson, 878 F.3d at 104 (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). And when officers do use force - including pepper spray - against a formerly recalcitrant inmate after he has been subdued, then a reasonable jury may infer that the force was applied not for protective reasons but instead to retaliate or punish. See Iko, 535 F.3d at 239-40 (holding that deployment of pepper spray after inmate is lying on the floor restrained may give rise to inference that force was not employed protectively); see also Brooks, 924 F.3d at 116 (holding that improper motive could be inferred in part from fact that inmate was subjected to taser shocks while “handcuffed and surrounded by officers“). We applied those straightforward principles in exactly this context in Boone v. Stallings, 583 F. App‘x at 176, reversing a grant of summary judgment to correctional officers because there was a factual dispute as to whether the plaintiff inmate was handcuffed before or after he was pepper-sprayed. If “a jury were to believe Boone‘s allegation that he was on the ground, already restrained in handcuffs” when the pepper spray was deployed, we held, then it reasonably could conclude that the officers used force punitively and not protectively, subjecting Boone to “unconstitutionally excessive force.” Id. The same is true here. Viewing the record facts in the light most favorable to Dean, a reasonable jury
In reaching a contrary conclusion, the district court appears to have made two mistakes. First, it seems to have found, as a matter of law, that Dean remained a threat to Officers Gipson and Hobgood while he was lying on his back in handcuffs. And that was so, the court reasoned, because even on Dean‘s account of the episode, though Officer Gipson was attempting to hold Dean‘s knees to his chest, Dean‘s legs were unrestrained. Dean, 2018 WL 4655723, at *4. But that misunderstands Dean‘s sworn Statement of Material Facts, in which Dean describes a different scene: Dean is lying on his back with his cuffed arms beneath him and Officer Gipson on top of him, with Officer Gipson‘s knees driven into Dean‘s chest. And a jury crediting that account could find that Dean was entirely restrained when he was pepper-sprayed, рosing no threat to any officer by way of legs or otherwise.
Second and more fundamentally, the district court erred to the extent it suggested that a jury would be required to deem Officer Hobgood‘s use of pepper spray “necessary” and proportionate so long as it came “almost immediately after” Dean‘s head-butt. Id. We appreciate that the decision to use force often involves “split-second judgments” made
In sum, on this record viewed most favorably to Dean, the inferences to be drawn from the Whitley factors are “not so рlain that they may be resolved as a matter of law” on summary judgment. Brooks, 924 F.3d at 117. We of course do not opine on how an ultimate fact-finder might evaluate the parties’ differing accounts, or weigh the necessity and proportionality of Officer Hobgood‘s use of force. But a reasonable jury crediting
3.
We turn now to Dean‘s excessive force claim against Sergeant Jones, arising from the use of force inside the janitor‘s closet. That incident left Dean with multiple serious injuries, and Jones does not dispute that the
We disagree. In granting summary judgment to Sergeant Jones, the district court made two mistakes. First, in applying the Whitley factors, the court failed to view the record in the light most favorable to Dean, and instead drew inferences in Sergeant Jones‘s favor while overlooking inconsistencies in his account. And second, the court entirely disregarded direct evidence of malicious intent, in the form of Dean‘s testimony regarding statements made by Jones during the closet episode. When all the evidence is considered, and considered in the light most favorable to Dean - as it must be at the summary judgment stage - there is enough for a reasonable jury to find that what motivated Sergeant Jones
a.
In applying the Whitley factors, the district court found, as Sergeant Jones argues on appeal, that there was a “clear need for the application of force” against Dean because Jones “and the other officers” in the closet with Dean “reasonably feared for their safety.” Dean, 2018 WL 4655723, at *4. But according to Dean, he was completely restrained and not resisting after he was pushed into the closet, lying on the floor with his hands still cuffed behind his back and trying to “curl up to protect himself” as he was punched and kicked repeatedly by numerous officers. J.A. 115. And as explained above, a jury crediting that account reasonably could infer that the multiple officers confronting a handcuffed Dеan in the supply closet in fact did not fear for their safety but instead intended to punish Dean for his intransigence. See, e.g., Mann, 578 F. App‘x at 275 (continued assault on formerly resistant inmate after he has been subdued gives rise to inference of malice under Whitley).
The district court did not confront directly Dean‘s account or its implications for the Whitley analysis, instead dismissing as “conclusory” Dean‘s sworn and detailed attestation that he was non-resistant and fully subdued during his beating. Dean, 2018 WL 4655723, at *5. It did suggest that the officers might have “interpreted” Dean‘s efforts to protect himself by curling his legs as “attempts to kick them,” necessitating a forceful response. Id. But none of the officers in the closet asserted in their initial witness statements that Dean attempted to kick them, and the district court was not authorized, at the summary
The district court‘s analysis of Whitley‘s proportionality factor is similarly flawed. On Sergeant Jones‘s account, of course, the only force deployed was a “bent-wrist technique” designed to restrain Dean, J.A. 19, which might be deemed proportionate to the circumstances Jones describes. But on Dean‘s account, the force in question consisted of a serious beating after he was restrained, administered by multiple officers who kicked and punched him until he nearly blacked out. Even assuming some need to administer force at the time, a reasonable jury crediting Dean - and perhaps considering that Dean was at all times in handcuffs and substantially outnumbered by the officers surrounding him - could find that the extent of the force was so disproportionate to any genuine threat that it must have resulted from an impermissible retaliatory motive. The district court suggested that the officers “reasonably believed” that lesser force in the form of pepper spray “would not be effective,” given that Dean continued to resist by head-butting Sergeant Jones even after the initial pepper-spraying. See Dean, 2018 WL 4655723, at *4. But the record is silent
Finally, the district court did not address the record evidence that could allow a reasonable jury to credit all or part of Dean‘s account, rather than Sergeant Jones‘s, in applying the Whitley factors. For instance, Sergeant Jones‘s description of how he, Dean, and another officer accidentally fell into the janitor‘s closet is consistent with only some of the officers’ witness statements; all told, there seem to be six versions of who ended up in the clоset and how, differing in respects both relatively minor (how many officers accidentally fell into the closet with Dean, see J.A. 43) and more significant (whether Dean fell into the closet or was “placed” there by Sergeant Jones, see J.A. 50). What‘s more, a jury could view the video evidence as resolving this discrepancy in Dean‘s favor: Taken in the light most favorable to Dean, the video can be construed to show Jones and other officers holding Dean against the wall for a moment and then forcefully and intentionally pushing him into the closet. And while Sergeant Jones denies that Dean was punched or kicked once in the closet, the video clearly shows an officer making a kicking motion inside the closet doorframe, and one of Dean‘s shoes flying out of the closet. Lastly, while Jones
Again, we have no occasion here to anticipate how a fact-finder ultimately might assess the credibility of Dean‘s account, or what inferences about motive it might draw from the Whitley factors as applied to all the record evidence. But those are jury questions, inappropriate for resolution on summary judgment. See Wilson v. Prince George‘s County, 893 F.3d 213, 218 (4th Cir. 2018) (reiterating that court does not “weigh the evidence or make credibility determinations” in reviewing grant of summary judgment). On this record, we cannot say that the Whitley factors establish, as a matter of law, that Sergeant Jones acted with a permissible motive when he applied force against Dean in the janitor‘s closet.
b.
The district court erred in a second respect, as well, in analyzing the merits of Dean‘s excessive force claim against Sergeant Jones: It never addressed Dean‘s direсt evidence that Jones acted with an impermissible retaliatory motive. In his sworn statement, Dean attests that Jones first told the other officers to “get him [Dean] in there” as Dean was pushed into the janitor‘s closet, and then repeatedly shouted, “You done fucked up!” to Dean as the officers beat him. J.A. 114-15. According to Dean, that evidence, properly credited as required at the summary judgment stage, see Brooks, 924 F.3d at 115, would permit a trier of fact to conclude that Jones acted with the requisite “malicious” motive under the
The crucial question under the
The officers’ suggestion that motive may be evaluated only through the lens of the Whitley factors is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of an
Recognizing our case law relying on such evidence in
B.
Because we conclude that a reasonable jury could find that Officer Hobgood and Sergeant Jones violated Dean‘s
First, it was clearly established in 2015 - and for many years before that - that inmates have a right to be free from pain inflicted maliciously and in order to cause harm, rather than in a good-faith effort to protect officer safety or prison order. See, e.g., Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 7 (1992); Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320-21; see also Thompson, 878 F.3d at 102
And as we have explained before, that clearly established
Iko is hardly an outlier. See, e.g., Cowart v. Erwin, 837 F.3d 444, 449-50 (5th Cir. 2016) (holding that it was “clearly established” in 2009 that “officers may not use gratuitous force against a prisoner who has already been subdued” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Thompson, 878 F.3d at 104-05 (discussing additional cases). And it was enough to put officers on clear notice, in 2015, that the use of pepper spray - or kicks and punches, see, e.g., McMillian, 503 U.S. at 4; Thompson, 878 F.3d at 102 (discussing cases) - against Dean after he had been fully subdued and no longer posed a risk to their safety
The officers insist that Iko is not sufficiently on point, because in that case, the initial justification for the use of force was the enforcement of prison rules and not, as here, the protection of officer safety after Dean‘s two head-butts. But the point is precisely the same - once the justification for the use of force has expired, any additional force may be deemed “malicious” and hence unconstitutional - and it applies with “obvious clarity” whatever the original justification. See Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002) (citation omitted); cf. Thompson, 878 F.3d at 102 (holding that precedent involving force in one form - kicking and punching - puts officers on “fair warning” that application of force in a different form also may violate the
In sum, the officers here were on “fair notice” of Dean‘s right not to be subjected to force in the form of pepper spray or a beating if that force was deployed to retaliate against Dean after he was subdued, and not to protect officer safety. For that reason, the officers
III.
For the foregоing reasons, we reverse the judgment of the district court granting summary judgment to the defendants and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED