Carlin Robinson v. Daniel Lioi , 536 F. App'x 340 ( 2013 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 12-1922
CARLIN ROBINSON, individually, as Guardian and next Friend
of I.Y., M.Y. and A.Y., and as Personal Representative of
the Estate of Veronica Williams, Deceased; EUNICE GRAVES,
Plaintiffs - Appellees,
v.
DANIEL A. LIOI,
Defendant – Appellant,
and
BALTIMORE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT; CLEAVEN LAWRENCE WILLIAMS,
JR.,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Catherine C. Blake, District Judge.
(1:12-cv-00192-CCB)
Argued: March 20, 2013 Decided: July 30, 2013
Before GREGORY and AGEE, Circuit Judges, and David A. FABER,
Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of
West Virginia, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: James Howard Fields, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant.
Cary Johnson Hansel, III, JOSEPH, GREENWALD & LAAKE, PA,
Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Daniel Cox, THE
COX LAW CENTER LLC, Frederick, Maryland, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
2
PER CURIAM:
Daniel Lioi (“Lioi”), a police officer with the Baltimore
City Police Department (“BCPD”), filed an interlocutory appeal
from the district court’s denial of his Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss based on his assertion of qualified immunity against
plaintiffs’ 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim. For the reasons set forth
below, we affirm the judgment of the district court that, on the
facts alleged, Lioi is not entitled to qualified immunity.
I.
Because this is an appeal from the denial of a motion to
dismiss, the material facts as alleged in the complaint are
taken as true, drawing all reasonable inferences in the
plaintiffs’ favor. See Jenkins v. McKeithen, 395 U.S. 411, 421-
22, 89 S.Ct. 1843, 23 L.Ed.2d 404 (1969); Tobey v. Jones, 706
F.3d 379, 383 (4th Cir. 2013).
A.
Veronica Williams (“Veronica” or “Mrs. Williams”) and
Cleaven Williams (“Cleaven” or “Mr. Williams”) were husband and
wife. Shortly after they married, Cleaven began to abuse
Veronica, both mentally and physically. The abuse escalated
over time and, eventually, Veronica not only filed assault
charges against Cleaven but also went into hiding.
On November 17, 2008, Mrs. Williams appeared before the
Baltimore District Court in connection with her request for a
3
protective order against her husband. Cleaven Williams was
provided notice of the hearing and, at the conclusion of the
hearing, the protective order was granted. As Veronica was
leaving the courthouse that day, Cleaven attacked Veronica,
stabbing her repeatedly in broad daylight just one block from
the courthouse. A few days later, Veronica, who was four to six
weeks pregnant at the time with the couple’s fourth child,
suffered a miscarriage. That same day, Veronica died as a
result of the injuries she sustained. Cleaven Williams was
found guilty of his wife’s murder and is currently incarcerated.
As mentioned earlier, several weeks prior to her death,
Veronica had filed assault charges against her husband. As a
result of the assault charges, a warrant was issued for Cleaven
Williams’ arrest. Lioi and other officers, in violation of the
procedure for service of a warrant, withheld the warrant from
the domestic violence unit that was responsible for serving it.
Lioi also warned Cleaven Williams about the warrant and sent him
text messages to help him avoid capture. Finally, when Cleaven
Williams arrived at police headquarters on November 14, 2008,
Lioi refused to serve or arrest him, falsely claiming that the
warrant could not be found. Lioi was later suspended when
homicide investigators discovered text messages between Lioi and
Cleaven Williams warning Williams and giving advice on avoiding
capture.
4
B.
Carlin Robinson, as Guardian and Next Friend of Veronica's
children, and Eunice Graves, Mrs. Williams' mother, filed a
civil suit against Lioi, the BCPD, and Cleaven Williams. The
plaintiffs allege that, due to his prior relationship with Mr.
Williams, Lioi departed from normal procedures in serving the
arrest warrant and thereby enabled Mr. Williams to remain free
at the time he killed his wife.
The plaintiffs asserted a claim against Lioi and the BCPD
for violating Mrs. Williams' due process rights under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983. They also brought a § 1983 claim under Monell v.
Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), against the
BCPD, as well as a claim against Lioi, the BCPD, and Cleaven
Williams for conspiring to violate Veronica Williams'
constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1985. Plaintiffs also
asserted state law claims for wrongful death, survival action,
battery, gross negligence, reckless endangerment, intentional
infliction of emotion distress, common law conspiracy,
conversion, and fraud and intentional misrepresentation.
The court granted the motion to dismiss filed by the BCPD
but denied Lioi’s motion to dismiss on the basis of qualified
immunity. The instant appeal followed. See Mitchell v.
Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985) (permitting interlocutory
appeals of qualified immunity determinations).
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II.
The defense of “[q]ualified immunity shields a government
official from liability for civil monetary damages if the
officer’s ‘conduct does not violate clearly established
statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person
would have known.’” Wiley v. Doory, 14 F.3d 993, 995 (4th Cir.
1994); (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)).
In Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 195 (2001), the Supreme Court
laid out a two-step process for resolving the qualified immunity
claims of government officials. First, a court must decide
whether the facts that a plaintiff has alleged or shown make out
a violation of a constitutional right. See id. at 201. Second,
a court must decide whether the right at issue was “clearly
established” at the time of defendant’s alleged misconduct. See
id. Courts may exercise discretion in deciding which of the two
Saucier prongs “should be addressed first in light of the
circumstances in the particular case at hand.” Pearson v.
Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009). A government official
asserting a qualified immunity defense bears the burden of proof
and persuasion. See Wilson v. Kittoe, 337 F.3d 392, 397 (4th
Cir. 2003). We review the denial of a motion to dismiss on the
basis of qualified immunity de novo. See Toby, 706 F.3d at 385.
6
A.
“As a general matter . . . a State’s failure to protect an
individual against private violence simply does not constitute a
violation of the Due Process Clause.” DeShaney v. Winnebago
Cnty. of Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 197 (1989). There
are, however, a few limited exceptions. One such exception is
where the state creates or enhances the danger. See id. at 198. 1
1
The other exception noted by the DeShaney decision,
commonly referred to as the “special relationship” exception,
arises when the individual and the State have a special
relationship such that the State has an affirmative duty to
protect the individual from harm inflicted by third parties.
This “special relationship” exception arises in a custodial
context because “when the State takes a person into its custody
and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes
upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for
his safety and general well-being.” DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199-
200; see also Waybright v. Frederick Cnty., 528 F.3d 199, 207
(4th Cir. 2008) (A “special relationship is all but synonymous
with a custodial relationship.”) (internal citations and
quotations omitted). As the Court noted, “[i]t is the State’s
affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act
on his own behalf . . . which is the ‘deprivation of liberty’
triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its
failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms
inflicted by other means.” Id. at 200; see also Pinder v.
Johnson, 54 F.3d 1169, 1175 (4th Cir. 1995) (en banc) (“Some
sort of confinement of the injured party—incarceration,
institutionalization, or the like—is needed to trigger the
affirmative duty.”).
The district court rejected plaintiffs’ claim that the
“special relationship” exception applied to their claim against
Lioi because it found that Veronica Williams was not in the
custody of the State at any relevant point. See J.A. at 178-79.
Although the court acknowledges that plaintiffs have raised the
“special relationship” exception claim on appeal, we need not
address it because we agree with the district court that
(Continued)
7
In DeShaney, the Winnebago County Department of Social
Services (DSS) was sued for violating four-year-old Joshua
DeShaney’s substantive due process rights by failing to protect
the child from his father’s abuse. See id. at 192-95. The DSS
had received a number of reports that Joshua was being abused by
his father yet they failed to remove him from his father’s
custody. See id. at 192-93. Eventually, Joshua was beaten so
badly that he suffered serious brain damage. See id. at 193.
The Supreme Court held that the DSS was not liable because
“[w]hile the State may have been aware of the dangers that
Joshua faced in the free world, it played no part in their
creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more
vulnerable to them.” Id. at 201. This language in DeShaney is
commonly acknowledged as the genesis of the state-created danger
doctrine. 2
Citing DeShaney, this Court has recognized the state-
created danger doctrine, noting that “[w]hen the state itself
creates the dangerous situation that resulted in a victim’s
plaintiffs have a substantive due process claim against Lioi
based upon the state-created danger exception.
2
See Currier v. Doran, 242 F.3d 905, 923 (10th Cir. 2001)
(“The clear implication of the Court’s language, which was
written in 1989, was that a state could be liable when it
affirmatively acts to create, or increases a plaintiff’s
vulnerability to, danger from private violence.”).
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injury, the absence of a custodial relationship may not be
dispositive. In such instances, the state is not merely accused
of a failure to act; it becomes much more akin to an actor
itself directly causing harm to the injured party.” Pinder, 54
F.3d at 1177; see also Waybright, 528 F.3d at 207-08(referencing Pinder’s acknowledgment of state-created danger
theory but refusing to apply it under facts of case); Stevenson
v. Martin Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 3 F. App’x 25, 31 (4th Cir. 2001)
(unpublished) (“In Pinder this court was faced with a case in
which it had to decide the contours of DeShaney’s state-created
danger exception.”). Although the Court ultimately rejected
Pinder’s reliance on the state-created danger exception, see
Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1175, and although we have not since applied
the exception, the Court’s discussion in Pinder is widely
acknowledged as the seminal case in this circuit on the theory.
See Waybright, 528 F.3d at 207-08; Stevenson, 3 F. App’x at 31;
see also Mills v. City of Roanoke, 518 F. Supp. 2d 815, 819-20
(W.D. Va. 2007) (“The leading Fourth Circuit case on the state-
created danger exception is Pinder v. Johnson, 54 F.3d 1169 (4th
Cir. 1995).”).
This Court has acknowledged that the state-created danger
exception is a narrow one and that for the doctrine to apply,
there must be affirmative action, not inaction, on the part of
the State which creates or increases the risk that the plaintiff
9
will be harmed by a private actor. See id. at 1175 (“It cannot
be that the state commits an affirmative act or creates a danger
every time it does anything that makes injury at the hands of a
third party more likely.”); see also Cartwright v. City of
Marine City, 336 F.3d 487, 493 (6th Cir. 2003) (noting that a
“failure to act is not an affirmative act under the state-
created danger theory”); Butera v. District of Columbia, 235
F.3d 637, 650 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“[A] key requirement for
constitutional liability is affirmative conduct by the State to
increase or create the danger that results in harm to the
individual. No constitutional liability exists where the State
actors had no hand in creating the danger but [simply] stood by
and did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more
active role for them.”); Stevenson, 3 F. App’x at 31 (“In order
to create a danger, the state has to take some affirmative
steps. Liability does not arise when the state stands by and
does nothing in the face of danger. Failing to provide
protection from danger does not implicate the state in the harm
caused by third parties.”) (internal citations and quotations
omitted); Holloway v. City of Suffolk, 660 F. Supp. 2d 693, 698
(E.D. Va. 2009) (“Liability under the state-created danger
exception means that the state has to take some affirmative step
to create the danger from the third party, and the failure to
provide protection from danger does not implicate the state in
10
the harm caused by the third party.”). Thus, the lodestar of
our analysis of the narrow state-created danger exception to the
bright-line rule under DeShaney is the Pinder requirement that
the government actor “itself directly caus[ed] harm to the
injured party.” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177.
Despite Lioi’s attempt to characterize his behavior
otherwise, it is clear that his conduct, as alleged, was far
more than a mere passive failure to act; the type of omission
claim which the court rejected in Pinder. To the contrary, Lioi
is alleged to have conspired with Cleaven Williams “to evade
capture” and “to remain free despite the finding of probable
cause,” thereby directly enabling him to harm Mrs. Williams.
(J.A. 20, at ¶¶ 20, 23.) To paraphrase Pinder, Lioi’s
affirmative acts in the conspiracy with Cleaven Williams
“create[d] the dangerous situation that resulted in a victim’s
injury.” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177. Lioi, as alleged, was “an
actor itself directly causing harm to the injured party.” Id.Lioi conspired with Cleaven Williams to help Williams avoid
being arrested. Lioi actively interfered with the execution of
the warrant by not only failing to turn the warrant over to the
proper unit with the BCPD responsible for its execution, but
also by warning Mr. Williams and giving him advice about how to
avoid service of the warrant. Furthermore, Lioi lied to avoid
service of the arrest warrant by falsely contending that it
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could not be found. Such acts meet the state-created danger
exception under Pinder.
While courts have applied the state-created danger
exception in varying contexts, the Ninth Circuit’s decision in
Wood v. Ostrander, 879 F.2d 583 (9th Cir. 1989), is particularly
instructive. In Wood, a police officer stopped the car in which
the plaintiff was a passenger, arrested the driver, and
impounded the vehicle. 879 F.3d at 586. Though the stop
occurred in a high-crime area, the police officer required the
plaintiff to get out of the car and abandoned her to external
dangers. Id. The police officer left with the vehicle and the
abandoned plaintiff was subsequently raped. Id.
The Ninth Circuit allowed the plaintiff’s § 1983 claim to
proceed, denying the officer’s qualified immunity defense
because “[a] reasonable police officer who acted as [the
plaintiff] alleges [the police officer] acted should have
understood that what he was doing violated [the plaintiff’s]
constitutional right to be free from an unjustified intrusion
into her personal security in violation of her liberty interest
under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. at 596. The court held
that the plaintiff had raised a triable issue as to whether the
officer “affirmatively placed the plaintiff in a position of
danger.” Id. at 589.
12
As in Wood, Lioi’s alleged affirmative acts with his co-
conspirator, Cleaven Williams, to avoid arrest directly enabled
Mr. Williams to perpetrate the harm to Mrs. Williams. Lioi,
therefore, “affirmatively placed [Mrs. Williams] in a position
of danger.” Id. at 589.
The Court finds unpersuasive Lioi’s argument that, because
a police officer has discretion in the execution of arrest
warrants, see Town of Castle Rock, Colo. v. Gonzales, 545 U.S.
748, 764 (2005), his conduct in this case did not violate
Veronica Williams’ substantive due process rights and thus did
not run afoul of § 1983. In Castle Rock, a father took his
three daughters from their mother’s yard, in violation of a
restraining order. Id. at 753. Despite repeated phone calls
from the mother informing them that her daughters were missing
and that the restraining order had been violated, the police did
nothing. Id. at 753-54. Eventually, the daughters were found
to have been murdered by their father. Id. at 754.
As to the mother’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim that the police
officers violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause
in failing to enforce the restraining order, the Court found she
did not have a property interest in police enforcement of the
restraining order. Id. at 768. The Court noted that “the
benefit that a third party may receive from having someone else
arrested for a crime generally does not trigger protections
13
under the Due Process Clause, neither in its procedural nor in
its substantive manifestations.” Id.The instant case is distinguishable from Castle Rock. Lioi
attempts to characterize his conduct in this case as a mere
failure to act. However, according to the complaint, that is a
gross mischaracterization. As discussed above, Lioi’s alleged
conduct in this case was not confined to a failure to execute
the arrest warrant. Lioi affirmatively acted to interfere with
execution of the warrant by conspiring with Cleaven Williams to
evade capture and remain at large. Whereas Castle Rock is,
fundamentally, a case about inaction, Plaintiffs in the instant
case have alleged affirmative misconduct on Lioi’s part such
that his actions “directly caus[ed] harm to the injured party.”
Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ claims are
not foreclosed by Castle Rock. 3
Lioi’s affirmative acts, as alleged, were on that “point on
the spectrum between action and inaction,” Pinder, 54 F.3d at
3
In addition, the Castle Rock decision did not even
consider the state-created danger exception nor did it consider
plaintiff’s substantive due process claim as that claim was not
before the court. See Caldwell v. City of Louisville, 200 F.
App’x 430, 435 (6th Cir. 2006) (unpublished) (“There is nothing
in Castle Rock that compels a conclusion the Supreme Court
intended to eliminate the state-created danger exception to the
DeShaney rule. This is not surprising since the Court did not
have occasion to address or consider the plaintiff’s substantive
due process claim as it was not before the Court.”).
14
1175, such that his acts created “the dangerous situation that
resulted in [Mrs. Williams’] injury.” Id. at 1177. Based on
the foregoing, the court agrees with the district court that
plaintiffs have stated a substantive due process claim against
Lioi based upon the state-created danger exception.
B.
When determining whether a constitutional right was clearly
established, a court asks whether the right was clearly
established at the time of the conduct in question. See Pinder,
54 F.3d at 1173. A right is clearly established when the
contours of the right are sufficiently clear such that a
reasonable official would understand that what he is doing
violates that right. Id. This inquiry is focused on whether
the official was on notice that his or her conduct violated
clearly established law and that the state of the law provided
fair warning that the conduct was unconstitutional. Id.A right is clearly established when it has been
authoritatively decided by the Supreme Court, the appropriate
United States Court of Appeals, or the highest court of the
state in which the action arose. See Edwards v. City of
Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 251 (4th Cir. 1999). The relevant,
dispositive inquiry is whether it would be clear to a reasonable
person that the conduct was unlawful in the situation he
confronted. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 195. “Clearly established”
15
does not mean that “the very action in question has previously
been held unlawful,” but requires the unlawfulness of the
conduct to be apparent “in light of preexisting law.” Wilson v.
Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615 (1999).
The responsibility imposed on public officials to
comply with constitutional requirements is
commensurate with the legal knowledge of an
objectively reasonable official in similar
circumstances at the time of the challenged conduct.
It is not measured by the collective hindsight of
skilled lawyers and learned judges. * * * “Officials
are not liable for bad guesses in gray areas; they are
liable for transgressing bright lines.” Maciarello v.
Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 295 (4th Cir. 1992), cert.
denied, 506 U.S. 1080 (1993).
Jackson v. Long, 102 F.3d 722, 730-31 (4th Cir. 1996); see also
Williams v. Hansen, 326 F.3d 569, 578-79 (4th Cir. 2003)
(holding that for purposes of qualified immunity, executive
actors are not required to predict how the courts will resolve
legal issues). “The linchpin of qualified immunity is objective
reasonableness.” Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1173.
“In determining whether the specific right allegedly
violated was `clearly established,’ the proper focus is not upon
the right at its most general or abstract level, but at the
level of its application to the specific conduct being
challenged.’” Wiley v. Doory, 14 F.3d 993, 995 (4th Cir. 1994)
(quoting Pritchett v. Alford, 973 F.2d 307, 312 (4th Cir.
1992)). “Notably, however, the existence of a case holding the
defendant’s identical conduct to be unlawful does not prevent
16
the denial of qualified immunity.” Edwards, 178 F.3d at 251;
see also Currier v. Doran, 242 F.3d 905, 923 (10th Cir. 2001)
(“It is not necessary, however, for plaintiffs to find a case
with exact corresponding factual circumstances; defendants are
required to make `reasonable applications of the prevailing law
to their own circumstances.’”)(quoting Murrell v. Sch. Dist. No.
1, 186 F.3d 1238, 1251 (10th Cir. 1999)).
Despite Lioi’s assertion to the contrary, the right to be
free from state-created danger has been clearly established in
this circuit. See Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1177; see also Waybright,
528 F.3d at 207; Stevenson, 3 F. App’x at 31. The lack of a
case directly on point does not alter the court’s conclusion in
this regard. As the Supreme Court has noted:
The easiest cases don’t even arise. There has never
been . . . a section 1983 case accusing welfare
officials of selling foster children into slavery; it
does not follow that if such a case arose, the
officials would be immune from damages . . .
liability.
United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271 (1997) (internal
citations and quotations omitted); Pulliam v. Ceresini, 221 F.
Supp. 2d 600, 605 n.5 (D. Md. 2002) (“The lack of decisional
authority defining the constitutional right in this specific
context does not imply that the unlawfulness of the conduct
under the Constitution is not apparent.”).
17
For qualified immunity purposes, in 2008, a reasonable
police officer in Lioi’s position would have known that a law
enforcement officer affirmatively acting in a conspiracy with a
third party to avoid arrest on assault charges could give rise
to a constitutional violation when the third party acts in
furtherance of the conspiracy to injure another person. As this
Court has stated on repeated occasions, although qualified
immunity protects law enforcement officers from bad guesses in
gray areas, they are liable for transgressing bright lines. See
Maciariello v. Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298 (4th Cir. 1992).
Lioi’s conduct as alleged in the complaint was not in a gray
area; he crossed a bright line.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district
court denying qualified immunity to Lioi is
AFFIRMED.
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