Hines v. Lowndes County, MS ( 2023 )

Case: 22-60548 Document: 00516852969 Page: 1 Date Filed: 08/10/2023
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
____________ FILED
August 10, 2023
No. 22-60548 Lyle W. Cayce
____________ Clerk
Jason Hines, Individually and as Wrongful Death Beneficiary and as
Survivor of Austin Hines,
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Lowndes County, Mississippi; Eddie Hawkins; Thomas
Culpepper; John Does 1-15; Thomas Honnoll,
Defendants—Appellees.
______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Mississippi
USDC No. 1:21-CV-52
______________________________
Before Clement, Elrod, and Willett, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam: *
This appeal involves two deputies who fired at a suspect, killing him,
after he led a citywide chase, abandoned his vehicle, stole a police vehicle,
sped narrowly past one officer, and then drove straight at another. The dis-
trict court held that qualified immunity protects the deputies. We AFFIRM.
_____________________
*
This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-60548 Document: 00516852969 Page: 2 Date Filed: 08/10/2023
No. 22-60548
I
On April 1, 2020, a detective from the Lowndes County Sherriff’s
Office saw a vehicle that failed to observe a stop sign. The vehicle had been
reported stolen earlier that day, and the detective recognized the vehicle’s
driver as Austin Hines (“Austin”). The detective turned on his lights, but
Austin kept driving, and a chase ensued. The pursuit lasted about 20
minutes, during which Austin:
• led police through populated areas;
• drove through yards and ditches;
• ran civilians and police officers off the road;
• swerved into the left lane of traffic, including through blind curves
and over hills;
• ignored multiple stop signs;
• hit several civilian vehicles, including an 18-wheeler;
• collided with a law enforcement vehicle; and
• reached speeds of over 90 mph.
Austin eventually lost control of the vehicle, wrecked it, and
abandoned it. He continued on foot and soon encountered another detective.
That detective fired a single shot at Austin after “see[ing] something in his
hand,” but Austin escaped. The detective’s shot is not at issue here. After
firing it, the detective called over the radio: “Shots fired. Shots fired. He’s
got a gun.”
Deputy Culpepper and Deputy Honnoll (the “Deputies”) were on
foot in a nearby clearing, and they each heard the detective’s gunshot and his
radio call. The Deputies and other officers began searching the clearing, but
they could not locate Austin. Their body cameras captured what happened
next. A police truck came careening through from the right side of the
clearing, traveling in front of the Deputies and perpendicular to a pair of
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railroad tracks to their left. The Deputies ignored the truck at first, but then
they saw Austin behind the wheel, and they realized he had stolen it. As the
two Deputies gave chase on foot, Austin sped past a constable, only narrowly
avoiding running him over. When Austin arrived at the railroad tracks, he
turned left. That decision brought him back toward the general area of the
clearing, but it also put him on a path directly toward Captain Higgins, who
was on the tracks as part of the search.
Seeing that Austin had aimed the stolen police truck “right towards
[Captain] Higgins,” Deputy Culpepper opened fire at the truck. Deputy
Honnoll opened fire too, for the same reason. In total, they fired about 18
shots. The stolen truck came to a stop a few feet from Captain Higgins, and
the officers called a ceasefire. Austin suffered multiple gunshot wounds and
died as a result.
Austin’s father (“Hines”) sued Deputy Culpepper and Deputy
Honnoll in state court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that they violated
Austin’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force. Hines also
asserted state-law claims against both Deputies, sued additional defendants,
and relied on additional causes of action that are not relevant here. The
Deputies removed the case to federal court.
The Deputies moved for summary judgment based on qualified
immunity. The district court agreed, first concluding that “Honnoll’s and
Culpepper’s use of force was reasonable,” because when they opened fire,
they had reason “to believe Austin posed a serious threat to at least one
officer.” Hines v. City of Columbus, No. 1:21-CV-52-DMB-RP, 2022 WL
4587450, at *6 (N.D. Miss. Sept. 27, 2022). The district court next
concluded—in the alternative—that “[e]ven had the facts alleged amounted
to a constitutional violation, [Hines] cannot show Honnoll or Culpepper
violated a clearly established constitutional right.” Id. at *7. The court
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reasoned that “Austin was driving in the direction towards at least one other
officer,” and that Hines had “failed to identify any clearly established law
that would place beyond doubt the constitutional question in this case,
whether it is unreasonable for an officer to use deadly force when he observes
a fleeing vehicle driving towards a fellow officer.” Id. (internal quotation
marks and citation omitted).
The district court granted summary judgment for the Deputies on
Hines’s § 1983 claim, and it remanded Hines’s state-law claims to state
court. This appeal timely followed.
II
Summary judgment is appropriate when “there is no genuine dispute
as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of
law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A fact is material if it could “affect the
outcome of the suit under the governing law[.]” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A dispute is genuine “if the evidence is such
that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Id.We view all of the evidence “in the light most favorable to the nonmoving
party,” and we “draw[ ] all reasonable inferences in that party’s favor.”
Kariuki v. Tarango, 709 F.3d 495, 501 (5th Cir. 2013). Even so, “‘we assign
greater weight, even at the summary judgment stage, to the . . . video
recording[s] taken at the scene.’” Baker v. Coburn, 68 F.4th 240, 244 (5th
Cir. 2023) (alteration in original) (quoting Betts v. Brennan, 22 F.4th 577, 582
(5th Cir. 2022)).
Once an official raises qualified immunity, “‘the burden then shifts to
the plaintiff, who must rebut the defense by establishing a genuine fact issue
as to whether the official’s . . . conduct violated clearly established law.’” Id.(quoting Brown v. Callahan, 623 F.3d 249, 253 (5th Cir. 2010)). “We review
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the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same
standard as the district court.” Id. at 244–45.
III
“Qualified immunity shields . . . state officials from money damages
unless a plaintiff pleads facts showing (1) that the official violated a statutory
or constitutional right, and (2) that the right was ‘clearly established’ at the
time of the challenged conduct.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011)
(citation omitted). When either prong is conclusive, a court need not address
the other. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009). Under the second
prong, “[t]he burden here is heavy: A right is ‘clearly established’ only if . . .
precedent has placed the constitutional question beyond debate.” Harmon v.
City of Arlington, 16 F.4th 1159, 1165–66 (5th Cir. 2021) (alteration adopted)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “The dispositive question is
‘whether the violative nature of particular conduct is clearly established.’”
Id. (alteration adopted) (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per
curiam)). “The specificity requirement assumes special significance in
excessive force cases, where officers must make split-second decisions to use
force.” Id. “To overcome qualified immunity, the law must be so clearly
established that every reasonable officer . . . would have known he could not
use deadly force.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Under the qualified-immunity test’s second prong, the district court
defined the particular conduct at issue as: “whether it is unreasonable for an
officer to use deadly force when he observes a fleeing vehicle driving towards
a fellow officer.” Hines, 2022 WL 4587450, at *7 (internal quotation marks
and citation omitted). Hines does not dispute this framing on appeal, nor
does he offer any alternative statement of the specific conduct at issue.
Indeed, he mentions the “clearly established” prong only once, on the
penultimate page of his opening brief.
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Hines makes a cursory attempt to identify clearly established law that
prohibits the specific conduct at issue, but he relies on only a single decision
from this court: Lytle v. Bexar County, 560 F.3d 404 (5th Cir. 2009). There,
we held that “[i]t has long been clearly established that, absent any other
justification for the use of force, it is unreasonable for a police officer to use
deadly force against a fleeing felon who does not pose a sufficient threat of harm
to the officer or others.” Id. at 417 (emphases added). But Lytle is not analogous
to this case. The Deputies knew that Austin was driving a vehicle toward
Captain Higgins when they opened fire. Lytle did not clearly establish
anything about what is reasonable when a suspect in a large truck drives
directly toward an officer who is on foot. Because Hines has not shown that
the Deputies’ unlawful actions (if any) violated Austin’s clearly established
rights, we need not (and do not) address the test’s first prong.
Hines’s arguments cannot overcome this conclusion. To begin, he
cites a number of out-of-circuit cases in which “courts have found police
officers’ shooting of fleeing motorists to be unreasonable.” But, like Lytle,
these cases are not on point, because none of them involves a fleeing suspect
who was accelerating toward someone when the officer fired. See, e.g., Adams
v. Speers, 473 F.3d 989, 992 (9th Cir. 2007) (officer fired shots from “in front
of the [suspect’s vehicle] as it rolled backwards away from him”); Smith v.
Cupp, 430 F.3d 766, 770 (6th Cir. 2005) (autopsy showed that officer had
fired only after the suspect passed him). Hines can prevail only if he identifies
authority placing Austin’s rights “beyond debate.” Harmon, 16 F.4th at 1165.
And he has failed to meet this burden.
Hines next argues that a fact question remains as to whether the stolen
police truck posed a threat to Captain Higgins. But the Deputies’ body-
camera footage shows Austin driving the stolen truck right at the Captain.
Even if Austin’s angle of approach was sometimes off by a few degrees, or if
the Captain might have had time to take refuge on the opposite side of the
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tracks, he was still in immediate danger when the Deputies opened fire to
save him. See generally Hathaway v. Bazany, 507 F.3d 312 (5th Cir. 2007)
(officer was justified in using deadly force against a car that was accelerating
toward him).
Finally, Hines uses the bulk of his brief to build an argument that asks
us to look at things from Austin’s perspective (rather than the Deputies’
perspective). Hines says that when Austin ignored the first stop sign, the
vehicle he was driving was merely borrowed (even though it had been
reported stolen). When Austin took off on foot and encountered the second
detective, Austin did not have a gun, let alone shoot (even though a radio call
then proclaimed “Shots fired. He’s got a gun.”). When Austin drove
through the clearing—almost hitting several officers, and then toward
another—he was just trying to get back to his girlfriend (even though the
officers on the scene could not have appreciated this). And when Austin
drove toward Captain Higgins, he was trying to run—not fight (even though
he had earlier collided with a police vehicle). Even if Hines is right about all
of that, the legal outcome is still the same. That is because “[e]xcessive force
claims are evaluated for objective reasonableness based on the information the
officers had when the conduct occurred.” Baker, 68 F.4th at 247 (emphasis
added) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
IV
Hines has identified no law—much less clearly established law—
holding that the Fourth Amendment prohibits officers from using deadly
force against a suspect driving directly toward one of their colleagues during
his attempt to escape. Accordingly, we AFFIRM.
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