Torres v. Madrid ( 2023 )

Appellate Case: 22-2001 Document: 010110814434 Date Filed: 02/17/2023 Page: 1
FILED
United States Court of Appeals
PUBLISH Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS February 17, 2023
Christopher M. Wolpert
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
_________________________________
ROXANNE TORRES,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v. No. 22-2001
JANICE MADRID, a New Mexico police
investigations bureau officer; RICHARD
WILLIAMSON, a New Mexico State
police investigations bureau officer,
Defendants - Appellees.
------------------------------
CONSTITUTIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER;
INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE,
Amici Curiae.
_________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Mexico
(D.C. No. 1:16-CV-01163-LF-KK)
_________________________________
Kelsi Brown Corkran, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (Mary B.
McCord and Seth Wayne, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and Eric
D. Dixon, Attorney and Counselor at Law, P.A., with her on the briefs), Georgetown
University Law Center, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Christina L. G. Brennan (James P. Sullivan with her on the brief), Brennan & Sullivan,
P.A., Santa Fe, NM, for Defendant-Appellees.
_________________________________
Appellate Case: 22-2001 Document: 010110814434 Date Filed: 02/17/2023 Page: 2
Before HARTZ, McHUGH, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges.
_________________________________
HARTZ, Circuit Judge.
_________________________________
Plaintiff Roxanne Torres appeals the summary judgment in favor of
Defendants Janice Madrid and Richard Williamson, agents of the New Mexico State
Police Investigations Bureau. The encounter between Ms. Torres and Defendants
lasted only 14 seconds. But it has raised at least three subtle Fourth Amendment and
qualified-immunity issues, one of which was resolved by the United States Supreme
Court in this very case. In the Background section of this opinion we provide a brief
description of the encounter and introduce the issues before us and how we resolve
them. In the Discussion section we explain our disposition of the issues raised by Ms.
Torres and briefly address Defendants’ alternative argument for affirmance.
Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse the district court’s grant
of summary judgment.
I. BACKGROUND
a. Factual History
About 6:30 a.m. on July 15, 2014, Agents Madrid and Williamson arrived at
an apartment complex at 6100 Harper Avenue NE in Albuquerque. Traveling in
separate unmarked vehicles with two other agents, they intended to serve an arrest
warrant for Kayenta Jackson at her apartment and interview her about the check-
fraud scheme for which she was charged. Defendants were dressed in dark clothing
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and tactical vests that identified them as police. It was still slightly dark out and a
light rain fell.
Ms. Torres was sitting in her Toyota FJ Cruiser. She had backed into a spot in
front of the suspect’s apartment with her rear bumper against the curb and cars
parked on either side. The vehicle’s engine was running and the doors were locked.
Defendants approached Ms. Torres’s vehicle and Agent Williamson attempted to
open the driver’s door. Defendants shouted commands at Ms. Torres to open her
door, but they did not announce themselves as police officers.
Ms. Torres stepped on the gas and headed forward across the parking lot. The
witnesses were not consistent about the location of Agent Madrid in relation to the
car—whether she was in front or to the side—when it began moving. Both
Defendants fired their duty weapons at Ms. Torres. Agent Williamson fired eight
shots and Agent Madrid seven. Neither Defendant was struck as Ms. Torres drove
past. Some of Defendants’ bullets hit the front windshield of Ms. Torres’s vehicle,
most struck the side, and five bullets were fired at the rear of Ms. Torres’s vehicle,
one of them striking Ms. Torres in the back.1 Only about 14 seconds passed from the
time Defendants first issued commands to Ms. Torres to the moment the last bullet
was fired. Defendants fired their 15 shots over seven seconds.
1
Ms. Torres alleges in her opening brief on appeal that two bullets struck her
in the back; Defendants neither challenge nor clarify that statement in their appellate
briefing, and medical records seem to indicate that Ms. Torres was shot twice. But an
expert retained by Ms. Torres testified that although there was some initial confusion
on whether Ms. Torres’s second wound was the entry point of a second bullet or the
exit path of the first, Ms. Torres was shot only once.
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Ms. Torres managed to drive over a curb and away from the area. She was
later treated for her wounds at the University of New Mexico Hospital. The next day
she was charged by criminal complaint with two counts of aggravated assault with a
deadly weapon upon a police officer. The complaint states that Ms. Torres drove
“toward” Defendants. Aplt. App., Vol. I at 90. On March 31, 2015, Ms. Torres
entered a no-contest plea to two lesser offenses: (1) aggravated flight from a law-
enforcement officer under N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-22-1.1, and (2) assault upon a peace
officer under N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-22-21.
b. Issues Raised by the Lawsuit
In October 2016, Ms. Torres filed a civil-rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983against Defendants in the United States District Court for the District of New
Mexico, alleging that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive
force. On a motion for summary judgment by Defendants, the district court dismissed
the suit, holding that because Ms. Torres had successfully fled the scene, she was not
seized and therefore not entitled to Fourth Amendment protections. We affirmed. But
the Supreme Court reversed. It said that it was irrelevant that Ms. Torres had not
been apprehended, holding that “the application of physical force to the body of a
person with intent to restrain is a seizure even if the person does not submit and is
not subdued.” Torres v. Madrid, 141 S. Ct. 989, 1003 (2021). That decision resolved
the first subtle issue in this case.
After remand from the Supreme Court the district court again granted
Defendants summary judgment. See Torres v. Madrid, No. 16-cv-01163, 2021 WL
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6196994, at *9 (D.N.M. Dec. 30, 2021). That decision raises two subtle issues, which
we resolve on this appeal.
First, the district court held that Ms. Torres’s claims were barred under the
doctrine of Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), because her claims against
Defendants were inconsistent with her no-contest pleas to charges of aggravated
flight from a law-enforcement officer and assault upon a peace officer. We reverse
that decision because her pleas are not inconsistent with her claims that the officers
used excessive force by firing at her after she had driven past them and no longer
posed a threat to them.
Second, the district court held that Ms. Torres’s claims were barred on the
ground that Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. It observed that although
the Supreme Court had held that a person who evades the attempted restraint of law-
enforcement officers is nonetheless entitled to Fourth Amendment protections, that
decision came after the shooting of Ms. Torres, so her cause of action had not been
clearly established at the time she was shot. But that ground for the district court’s
decision must be reversed because Defendants did not know Ms. Torres would escape
when they shot at her, and facts unknown to officers at the moment they use force are
not relevant to the qualified-immunity analysis.
That leaves two further issues that were not addressed by the district court but
which Defendants raise in seeking to affirm the summary judgment on an alternate
ground: (1) Did Defendants use excessive force when they continued to fire their
weapons at Ms. Torres after she had driven past them; and (2) was there clearly
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established law that their use of force was unreasonable? On these issues, we remand
to the district court for further proceedings.
II. DISCUSSION
On appeal Ms. Torres argues that the district court erred in its analysis of both
Heck and qualified immunity, and Defendants argue as an alternative ground for
affirmance that they are entitled to qualified immunity because they did not use force
that was excessive under clearly established law. We review de novo the district
court’s ruling on a motion for summary judgment. See Attocknie v. Smith, 798 F.3d
1252, 1255–56 (10th Cir. 2015) (qualified immunity); Butler v. Compton, 482 F.3d
1277, 1278 (10th Cir. 2007) (Heck). On summary judgment we review the evidence
in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and resolve all factual disputes
and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor. See GFF Corp. v. Associated
Wholesale Grocers, Inc., 130 F.3d 1381, 1387 (10th Cir. 1997); Est. of Booker v.
Gomez, 745 F.3d 405, 411 (10th Cir. 2014) (applying same standard in qualified-
immunity context).
A. The Heck Doctrine
We first turn to Ms. Torres’s argument that her claims based on being shot in
the back are not barred under Heck.
Heck bars § 1983 claims where “a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would
necessarily imply the invalidity of h[er] conviction or sentence.” 512 U.S. at 487(emphasis added). But “[a]n excessive-force claim against an officer is not
necessarily inconsistent with a conviction for assaulting the officer.” Havens v.
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Johnson, 783 F.3d 776, 782 (10th Cir. 2015). “For example, the claim may be that
the officer used too much force to respond to the assault or that the officer used force
after the need for force had disappeared.” Id. Therefore, in cases where there are
multiple uses of force or a continuing use of force, Heck may bar the plaintiff’s
claims as to some force but not all. See Hooks v. Atoki, 983 F.3d 1193, 1197, 1201
(10th Cir. 2020) (although Heck barred plaintiff, who had pleaded no contest to two
counts of assault and battery on a police officer, from bringing excessive-force
claims based on four uses of force involved in subduing him, “[t]he fifth and sixth
uses of force [we]re different” and thus not barred by Heck because plaintiff had
alleged that he “no longer posed a threat”). The analysis of whether Heck bars the
entirety of a plaintiff’s excessive-force claims thus requires “compar[ing] the
plaintiff’s allegations to the offense [s]he committed.” Havens, 783 F.3d at 782.
Recall that Ms. Torres pleaded no contest to two offenses: (1) aggravated
flight, which requires “willfully and carelessly driving [her] vehicle in a manner that
endangers the life of another person” after being instructed to stop, see N.M. Stat.
Ann. § 30-22-1.1(A) (emphasis added); and (2) assault upon a peace officer causing
the officer to “reasonably believe that [she] is in danger of receiving an immediate
battery,” see id. § 30-22-21(A)(2) (emphasis added). Both convictions are based on
Ms. Torres’s decision to step on the gas, placing Defendants in potential peril. Ms.
Torres therefore properly acknowledges that her plea could “foreclose[] an excessive
force claim based on shots fired by Defendants at the moment [she] initially pulled
forward to leave the parking space.” Aplt. Br. at 28. But we have repeatedly
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recognized that a reasonable use of force—such as when an officer is subject to a
direct physical threat—may become unreasonable even seconds later when force
persists after the threat has passed. See Havens, 783 F.3d at 782; Surat v. Klamser, 52
F.4th 1261, 1272 (10th Cir. 2022); Hooks, 983 F.3d at 1201. Ms. Torres’s plea,
justified by the alleged danger in which she placed Defendants at the moment her
vehicle advanced, is therefore not “necessarily inconsistent” with a claim that
Defendants later used excessive force when, despite any danger having passed, they
fired additional bullets into the rear of her vehicle, including the one that struck her
in the back. See Havens, 783 F.3d at 782.
Defendants contend that our decisions in Havens and Hooks compel a different
result. We disagree.
In Havens we affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the officer-defendant
on the basis of Heck. See id. at 782. We recognized that a conviction for assault of a
peace officer was not necessarily inconsistent with a later excessive-force claim
against that officer if the force was disproportionate to the need or occurred “after the
need for force had disappeared.” Id. But we determined that the § 1983 claim brought
by the plaintiff—who rammed his vehicle into surrounding police vehicles before an
officer shot him, later pleaded guilty to first-degree assault of the officer, and then
brought suit alleging unreasonable use of force and denying all wrongdoing—was
nonetheless barred under Heck. See id. at 778, 780–81, 783–84. The plaintiff’s
complaint did not allege, and his opening brief on appeal did not argue, that the
officer had “used excessive force in response to an attempted assault by [the
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plaintiff].” Id. at 783. Rather, the plaintiff contended that the use of force was
unreasonable because he had done nothing wrong and had never intended or
attempted to injure the officer—a “version of events [that] could not sustain the
elements of attempted first-degree assault under [state] law and the factual basis for
[his] plea.” Id.
Here, Defendants argue that Ms. Torres also asserts her innocence and that her
claims against them are therefore barred. But they misstate Ms. Torres’s theory of the
case. Ms. Torres concedes that Heck precludes recovery for force used as she drove
toward the officers. Instead, she bases her claims on the bullet that hit her—one,
among others, that was fired at the back of the vehicle, allegedly after any threat had
passed. Ms. Torres has therefore presented a theory of liability that is not inconsistent
with her plea.
As for Hooks, that opinion distinguished between separate uses of force to
hold that only certain claims were barred under Heck. The plaintiff—who had
pleaded no contest to two charges of committing assault and battery on arresting
officers who wrestled him to the ground, tased him twice, and placed him in a
chokehold—brought an excessive-force claim. See 983 F.3d at 1197–98. The district
court dismissed the plaintiff’s complaint on Heck grounds, but we reversed the
dismissal of the claims based on the second tasing and the chokehold. See id. at 1199,
1201. Defendants argue that Hooks does not aid Ms. Torres because the only claims
we allowed to go forward in Hooks were those based on uses of force after the
plaintiff was subdued. They seem to suggest that because Ms. Torres was not
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subdued, they were entitled to continue using force until the vehicle stopped, so the
shots fired after Ms. Torres’s vehicle passed them cannot be analyzed any differently
from the initial shots. But in Hooks we emphasized the established proposition that
an excessive-force claim is not incompatible with a conviction for assault where the
plaintiff claims, for example, “that the officer used force after the need for force had
disappeared.” Id. at 1200 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). When
we reversed the dismissal of claims based on the two uses of force after plaintiff was
subdued, it was not because the plaintiff’s capture was dispositive, but because the
plaintiff had alleged that the justification for the use of force had disappeared.2 See
id. at 1201. Contrary to Defendants’ argument, Hooks aids Ms. Torres as it permits a
jury to parse Defendants’ shots into those uses justified by the threat posed by Ms.
Torres’s vehicle and those uses not so justified.
We therefore conclude that Defendants lack a Heck defense to Ms. Torres’s
claims that they employed excessive force after the vehicle had passed the officers.
The district court’s grant of summary judgment must therefore be set aside insofar as
it relies on Heck. Should this case proceed to trial, the district court will need to
instruct the jury on the appropriate scope of Ms. Torres’s claims. See Hooks, 983
F.3d at 1201; Martinez v. City of Albuquerque, 184 F.3d 1123, 1127 (10th Cir. 1999).
2
Defendants also rely on McCoy v. Meyers, in which we distinguished conduct
of the officers before and after the suspect was handcuffed, see 887 F.3d 1034, 1047–
49 (10th Cir. 2018), to further support the premise that only uses of force after a
suspect is subdued may be excessive. We reject this argument for the same reasons.
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B. Qualified Immunity—Ms. Torres’s Escape
Our rejection of the Heck ground for summary judgment does not dispose of
the case because the district court had an alternative ground for dismissal. It
determined that Ms. Torres’s claims were barred by the doctrine of qualified
immunity because, at the time she was shot, the law was not clearly established that
the Fourth Amendment protects persons who successfully elude seizure. We must
reverse because the court’s analysis missed an important consideration.
The doctrine of qualified immunity in civil-rights suits under § 1983 protects
“all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Mullenix v.
Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). It
forecloses liability unless the applicable law was “sufficiently clear that every
reasonable official would understand that what he is doing is unlawful.” District of
Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted).
When a defendant has asserted a qualified-immunity defense, the plaintiff must
therefore show (1) that the defendant “violated . . . her constitutional rights,” and (2)
“that the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged unlawful activity.”
Huff v. Reeves, 996 F.3d 1082, 1088 (10th Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks
omitted). “Ordinarily, in order for the law to be clearly established, there must be a
Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision on point, or the clearly established weight
of authority from other courts must have found the law to be as the plaintiff
maintains.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
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Defendants argue that they could not have violated clearly established law
when they shot at Ms. Torres because it was not clearly established at that time
(indeed, it was established by the Supreme Court only on its review of this very case)
that the Fourth Amendment can protect those who successfully escape attempts by
law enforcement to seize them. There is considerable appeal to this argument. But
Defendants have overlooked the second subtle Fourth Amendment/qualified
immunity issue raised on this appeal.
The point overlooked by Defendants is that the factual basis for qualified-
immunity analysis is “limited to the facts that were knowable to [Defendants] at the
time they engaged in the conduct in question.” Hernandez v. Mesa, 137 S. Ct. 2003,
2007 (2017) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). Facts Defendants
“learn[ed] after the incident ends—whether those facts would support granting
immunity or denying it—are not relevant.” Id.Hernandez was a civil-rights suit under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal
Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), against a border-patrol agent who fired a shot
across the border with Mexico and killed a 15-year-old Mexican national. See
Hernandez, 137 S. Ct. at 2004, 2006. The Fifth Circuit held that the agent was
entitled to qualified immunity on a Fifth Amendment due-process claim because it
had not been clearly established that “an alien who had no significant voluntary
connection to the United States” was entitled to Fifth Amendment protection. Id. at
2007 (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court reversed
because the victim’s nationality was unknown to the agent at the moment he pulled
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the trigger and should not have been considered in assessing qualified immunity. See
id.As we understand Hernandez, the district court should not have considered in
its qualified-immunity analysis that Ms. Torres eluded custody after Defendants shot
at her. That fact was unknown to Defendants as they fired at Ms. Torres and therefore
was irrelevant to the analysis. We therefore must reverse the judgment of the district
court insofar as it relies on Ms. Torres’s escape to establish qualified immunity.
C. Qualified Immunity—Reasonableness of Force and Clearly
Established Law
There remains to be decided the merits of Ms. Torres’s claims that Defendants
used excessive force when shooting at her through the rear window of her vehicle.
Was that use of force unreasonable, see Cordova v. Aragon, 569 F.3d 1183, 1185–92
(10th Cir. 2009); and if so, was the unreasonableness of force in the specific
circumstances of this case clearly established at the time Ms. Torres was shot? The
district court has not addressed those issues. Defendants ask us to resolve them in
their favor as an alternative ground for affirming the judgment below. But our
customary practice is to leave such issues for the district court to decide in the first
instance. See Pac. Frontier v. Pleasant Grove City, 414 F.3d 1221, 1238 (10th Cir.
2005) (“Where an issue has been raised, but not ruled on, proper judicial
administration generally favors remand for the district court to examine the issue
initially.”).
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III. CONCLUSION
We REVERSE the district court’s order granting summary judgment to
Defendants, VACATE its judgment, and REMAND this matter for consideration of
whether Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity because their use of force was
reasonable or there was not clearly established law that it was unreasonable.
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