Supreme Court to Consider Petition for Writ of Certiorari to Clarify the Parameters of an Excessive Force Claim
This case law update was written by Michael J. Sgarlat, an attorney at the law firm of Shaw Bransford & Roth, where he has practiced federal personnel and employment law since 2015. Mr. Sgarlat works with federal employees to respond to proposed disciplinary and adverse actions, and has experience litigating cases before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
Earlier this month, a petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of a decision out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit was filed with the Supreme Court. The petition asks the Court to consider whether the Fourth Amendment’s standard for evaluating unreasonable force claims that was originally set forth in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), or the Fourteenth Amendment’s standard for evaluation of actions of law enforcement announced in Court of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998) apply when a law enforcement officer shoots at, and misses, a target.
On August 21, 2018, two Cheatham County, Tennessee deputies, James Fox and Christopher Austin, were dispatched to the residence of Mark Campbell and Sherrie Campbell to conduct a welfare check after a dispatcher received two hang-up calls from a phone located at the property. The deputies arrived at the property, and knocked on the front door. Fox did not announce himself as law enforcement.
After knocking on the door, Fox walked down the steps and stood next to Austin. Through the closed door, Mark Campbell asked Fox, “You got a gun?” Fox unholstered his gun, walked to the other side of Austin, and told Mark to come out. In the course of this discussion, Mark announced that he had a gun. Fox turned his back from the door and towards Austin. Mark then opened his door, and Fox quickly turned around. Fox then fired two shots toward the door. He then fired another six shots toward the door. The entire encounter lasted 31 seconds.
On February 16, 2019, the Campbells sued Fox and others under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Part of their suit claimed that Fox used excessive force against them in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The federal district court denied Fox’s motion for summary judgment asserting qualified immunity on the excessive force claims. The district court stated that a reasonable person would not feel free to leave even though Mark was not hit by the gunshots and that the Campbells were seized. The district court also denied qualified immunity, stating that in the Sixth Circuit, qualified immunity is only permitted if the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm.
Fox appealed the district court’s denial of his request for qualified immunity to the Sixth Circuit. The majority agreed with the district court that a reasonable person would have believed he was not free to leave. The majority found that “shooting into a house in a manner that prevents occupants from leaving constitutes a seizure of the occupants.” The majority also noted that, for the issue of excessive force, that the court has only authorized the use of deadly force in rare instances where an officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, and here that was not present.
Among other things, on petition for writ of certiorari, Fox asks the Supreme Court to clarify “if and how the Court’s seminal ruling on use of force under the Fourth Amendment, Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), applies, if at all, when an officer, in the course of a knock and talk, fires his weapon in self-defense but misses his target.” More specifically, Fox describes that this case offers the Court an opportunity to clarify “Whether a seizure by taking action to control an
individual’s freedom of movement requires total control of that freedom of movement as is required by the common law of false imprisonment or if something less than total control of freedom of movement may result in a seizure.”
Stay tuned as we follow this case in its petition for writ of certiorari before the Supreme Court.
Read the Petition here: Fox v. Campbell
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