Wigley v. County of Bernalillo

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT June 4, 2014
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
GROVER DELMAR WIGLEY;
LORAINE WIGLEY; ELIZABETH
MICHELLE WIGLEY; ALISA
DELARA, as natural parent and next
friend of S.D., a minor child,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
No. 13-2156
v. (D.C. No. 1:12-CV-00595-PJK-RHS)
(D. N.M.)
CITY OF ALBUQUERQUE;
JOHN/JANE DOES, 1-12, Albuquerque
Police Officers; JAMES WILLIAMSON,
in his individual and official capacity,
Defendants - Appellees,
and
COUNTY OF BERNALILLO; LOUIZ
FUNES, in his individual and official
capacity; GERALD KOPPMAN, in his
official and individual capacity;
JOHN/JANE DOES, Bernalillo County
Sheriff’s Office,
Defendants.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of this
appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore
ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding
precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral
(continued)
Before HOLMES, ANDERSON, and BALDOCK, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiffs appeal the district court’s orders granting summary judgment to
James Williamson on the ground of qualified immunity and dismissing claims of
municipal liability against the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Exercising
jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
The Bernalillo County, New Mexico Sheriff’s Department (BCSD) obtained a
search warrant for the home of plaintiffs Grover Delmar Wigley (Del) and Loraine
Wigley. The warrant was signed by a New Mexico state judge, was issued to the
BCSD, and authorized a search of the Wigleys’ residence for a weapon, ammunition,
and law enforcement gear that had been stolen from a law enforcement officer’s
vehicle. BCSD officer Luiz Funes prepared the supporting affidavit, which was
incorporated into the warrant and identified two suspects in the robbery: Nathan
Talamante and Matthew Otero. The affidavit reiterated information Officer Funes
received from a confidential source (CS)—that Mr. Otero had told his cousin, “JR,”
to take the gun to JR’s house; that JR lived at the Wigleys’ address; and that the
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estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with
Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
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stolen weapon and gear (police vests, a shield, and a helmet) were still at the
Wigleys’ address, but the gun had been taken to the suspects’ house.
Appellee James Williamson was one of twenty-two officers from the
Albuquerque Police Department (APD) SWAT team who assisted two or three BCSD
officers in executing the warrant. He had no role in preparing the affidavit or
securing the warrant, and he was briefed that the search included stolen guns and
body armor. As the SWAT team approached the house, a car pulled into the
driveway and the garage door opened. Three of the plaintiffs were in the car: Del;
his adult daughter, Michelle Wigley; and his five-year-old grandchild, “S.D.” They
were ordered to get out of the car, and Officer Williamson handcuffed Del in flex
cuffs. Another SWAT team member, Scott Smiel, handcuffed Michelle with zip-tie
cuffs. Those cuffs broke twice, and eventually she was put in metal handcuffs.
Officers Williamson and Smiel escorted Del and Michelle down the street and placed
them in the back of an APD patrol car. Officer Williamson then carried S.D. to the
car and put S.D. in with Del and Michelle. Both officers returned to their positions in
front of the house.
Another SWAT officer ordered the fourth plaintiff, Loraine Wigley, who was
alone in the house, to come out, which she did. She was not handcuffed. Officer
Williamson brought her to the car holding the other plaintiffs, and she stood beside it.
SWAT officer Drew Bader asked the adult plaintiffs whether they knew Mr. Otero or
JR and whether there was any stolen property in the house. After they responded no
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in both respects, Officer Bader told SWAT Sergeant Fox that plaintiffs “were not
involved in the Sheriff’s Department’s case.” Aplt. App. at 110. Sergeant Fox then
authorized Officer Bader and his team to enter and secure the house.
Meanwhile, another car approached the house but was stopped by police some
distance away. In it were S.D.’s parents and his younger sibling. They could see Del
and Michelle being walked to the patrol car but could not see S.D. Despite repeated
protests and requests, they were prevented from going any closer to the house or
having any contact with S.D., and they were denied information regarding S.D.’s
whereabouts. About forty-five minutes later, a SWAT officer told S.D.’s father that
“‘we are obviously at the wrong place.’” Id. at 105.
The search uncovered none of the items or people identified in the warrant.
After approximately sixty to eighty minutes, the SWAT team was released, and
Officer Smiel retrieved his metal handcuffs and placed flex cuffs on Michelle. A
BCSD officer soon approached and stated that he was releasing the scene. Del,
Michelle, and S.D. were then let out of the patrol car. Del was uncuffed, and Officer
Smiel returned with scissors and cut off Michelle’s flex cuffs, which he had allegedly
placed on her too tightly. After plaintiffs were released from the patrol car, a BCSD
sergeant told S.D.’s father, “‘we screwed up. I knew the second we got here we were
at the wrong place. You can just tell. You know when gang members live
somewhere, and this is not the place.’” Id. at 106. Ultimately, it was determined that
the CS had incorrectly identified the Wigleys’ house as JR’s.
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Plaintiffs then filed a civil action, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that
defendants used excessive force and subjected them to an unreasonable search and
seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. They also asserted state-law claims.
Officer Williamson moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, and
the City of Albuquerque sought to dismiss the claims against it.
The district court granted Officer Williamson’s motion and declined to
exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims against him. Noting his
limited role in detaining the plaintiffs, the court concluded that Officer Williamson
was entitled to rely in good faith on the search warrant and that the safety risk
inherent in the search for a weapon justified the detention. The court observed that
under Michigan v. Summers, “a warrant to search for contraband founded on probable
cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to detain the occupants of the
premises while a proper search is conducted.” 452 U.S. 692, 705 (1981) (footnote
omitted). The district court then likened this case to Muehler v. Mena, where the
Supreme Court applied Summers and concluded that it was a reasonable use of force
to handcuff multiple occupants of a residence for two-to-three hours during a search
for weapons and evidence of gang membership authorized by a warrant.
See 544 U.S. 93, 98-101 (2005). The district court further concluded that no facts
suggested that Officer Williamson’s presence during the re-handcuffing of Michelle
or while Del, Michelle, and S.D. were uncomfortably detained in the back of the
patrol car for over an hour produced more than a de minimis physical or emotional
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injury, as required for an excessive-force claim under Cortez v. McCauley, 478 F.3d
1108, 1129 (10th Cir. 2007) (en banc).
The district court also rejected plaintiffs’ argument that disputed factual issues
regarding the validity of the warrant precluded summary judgment and that they
should be allowed to depose Officer Williamson as to whether he or the other officers
read the warrant and affidavit. The court noted that under Pearson v. Callahan,
555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009), qualified immunity allows for mistakes, and that officers
are not required “to evaluate on an ad hoc basis the circumstances surrounding the
execution of the warrant each and every time they wish to detain the occupant of the
place to be searched,” United States v. Ritchie, 35 F.3d 1477, 1482 (10th Cir. 1994).
The court further relied on Jenkins v. Wood, 81 F.3d 988, 995-96 (10th Cir. 1996),
for the principle that an assisting officer like Officer Williamson is entitled to rely in
good faith that the warrant is valid. The court concluded that Officer Williamson’s
reliance was reasonable under the circumstances and therefore the validity of the
warrant was immaterial.
In a separate decision, the district court granted the City’s motion to dismiss
on the ground that it could not be held liable absent a constitutional violation by
Officer Williamson, who was the only City employee named in the complaint. This
appeal followed.
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II. DISCUSSION
“When a defendant asserts qualified immunity at summary judgment, the
burden shifts to the plaintiff to show that: (1) the defendant violated a constitutional
right and (2) the constitutional right was clearly established.” Thomson v. Salt Lake
Cnty., 584 F.3d 1304, 1312 (10th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). Our
review of the qualified-immunity decision is de novo, and we construe the facts in
the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. See id. at 1311-12. We also review the
dismissal of the claims against the City de novo. See Christensen v. Park City Mun.
Corp., 554 F.3d 1271, 1275 (10th Cir. 2009). Having done so, we conclude that the
district court’s decisions are sound, and we are unpersuaded by plaintiffs’ arguments
to the contrary.
Plaintiffs first contend that Officer Williamson should have read the affidavit,
and that if he had done so, he would have known that the gun was not at the Wigleys’
address and that detaining plaintiffs was unnecessary. But plaintiffs have not pointed
to, nor are we aware of, any law clearly establishing that Officer Williamson, as one
of the many SWAT team members assisting in the execution of the warrant, and who
was briefed that the search included stolen guns1 and body armor, had a duty to read
1
Plaintiffs claim defendants misrepresent the record by stating that the warrant
authorized a search for multiple weapons whereas the warrant mentioned only a
single weapon. We note defendants’ mistake and have considered the affidavit and
warrant on their specific terms. Plaintiffs make several other claims of record
misrepresentation, see Pls.’ Reply Br. at 5-6, but our disposition of this appeal
renders their complaints immaterial or irrelevant.
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the warrant or affidavit and assess whether handcuffed detention was justified.
Indeed, the law does not require police officers to second-guess a judicial
determination that probable cause supports a search warrant. See United States v.
Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 913-14 (1984) (according “great deference to a magistrate’s
determination” that an affidavit establishes probable cause because “the detached
scrutiny of a neutral magistrate . . . is a more reliable safeguard against improper
searches than the hurried judgment of a law enforcement officer engaged in the often
competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime” (internal quotation marks omitted));
Ritchie, 35 F.3d at 1482 (providing that officers are not required to evaluate
circumstances “each and every time they wish to detain the occupant of the place to
be searched” pursuant to warrant).
Nor have plaintiffs rebutted “the evidentiary presumption that when a police
officer carries out a search based on a warrant it is a good faith search.” Jenkins,
81 F.3d at 995-96. The warrant in this case permitted a search for a weapon. Thus,
Officer Williamson was entitled to rely on it to detain plaintiffs, two in handcuffs,
even though the affidavit suggested that the gun had been moved to another location.
See Muehler, 544 U.S. at 100 (stating that the “safety risk inherent in executing a
search warrant for weapons was sufficient to justify the use of handcuffs,” and “the
need to detain multiple occupants made the use of handcuffs all the more
reasonable”); Summers, 452 U.S. at 702 (recognizing that a handcuffed detention of
occupants during a proper search pursuant to warrant is substantially justified by a
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legitimate law enforcement interest in “minimizing the risk of harm to the officers”).
That it turned out there was no gun in the house and the CS had identified the wrong
house does not expose Officer Williamson to liability for his role in handcuffing Del
and escorting plaintiffs to the patrol car.
Plaintiffs next attempt to align this case with Harman v. Pollock, 446 F.3d
1069, 1086 (10th Cir. 2006), where we distinguished Summers and Muehler on the
ground that the validity of the warrant was not at issue in those cases. However, the
validity in Harman concerned whether the warrant covered an attached-garage
residence with a separate street address, and we concluded that the officers
reasonably entered that residence. See id. at 1080-82. That is not the case here—the
warrant specified the Wigleys’ address—and in any event, as explained above, the
validity of the warrant’s scope with regard to the weapon is immaterial to Officer
Williamson’s qualified immunity.
Plaintiffs further contend that under Harman, any authority to initially detain
them ended as soon as the officers knew or reasonably should have known that the
warrant was deficient. See id. at 1086 (stating that an officer’s authority to detain
pursuant to a search warrant “terminates when an officer knows or reasonably should
know that the warrant is overbroad” (internal quotation marks omitted)). They also
rely on a statement from Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in Muehler that a restraint
should “be removed if, at any point during the search, it would be readily apparent to
any objectively reasonable officer that removing the handcuffs would not
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compromise the officers’ safety or risk interference or substantial delay in the
execution of the search.” 544 U.S. at 103. They then posit that summary judgment
was inappropriate because there are disputed material facts as to the reasonableness
of the prolonged detention and when the officers’ authority terminated.
As evidenced by plaintiffs’ repeated references to “officers” (plural), their
argument overlooks that this appeal concerns only Officer Williamson, that he was
the only City employee named in the complaint, and that he played a limited role in
the execution of the warrant.2 Officer Williamson’s undisputed estimate was that his
initial interaction with plaintiffs lasted only ten minutes. He handcuffed one of them
and escorted all four of them to the patrol car. Officer Williamson returned to
plaintiffs only at the end of the search, at least an hour later, and was present for, but
did not conduct, the re-handcuffing of Michelle. Nothing suggests that he had any
role in determining how long to detain plaintiffs. Nor is there anything to suggest
that Officer Bader’s comment to Sergeant Fox or the comments made by other
officers to S.D.’s father were ever communicated to Officer Williamson such that he
should have taken some action to end plaintiffs’ detention sooner.3 Hence, we fail to
2
Although plaintiffs named twelve “John and/or Jane Doe” City defendants,
those defendants did not move for summary judgment, nor did the district court grant
them summary judgment. In fact, plaintiffs withdrew a motion to amend their
complaint to add other City defendants, including Officer Smiel. We therefore reject
the notion that the conduct of other officers is at issue in this appeal.
3
Although the parties refer to a rebuttable presumption of communication
among police officers, that presumption applies when officers are working closely
together at a scene. See United States v. Shareef, 100 F.3d 1491, 1504 (10th Cir.
(continued)
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see any genuinely disputed issues of material fact regarding the length of time
plaintiffs were detained that precludes summary judgment on Officer Williamson’s
qualified-immunity defense. Harman therefore does not control this case, and
Officer Williamson did not violate the principle voiced by Justice Kennedy in his
Muehler concurrence.
Lacking a constitutional violation by Officer Williamson, the only City
employee named in the complaint, the district court properly dismissed the claims
against the City of Albuquerque. See Hinton v. City of Elwood, Kan., 997 F.2d 774,
782 (10th Cir. 1993) (“A municipality may not be held liable where there was no
underlying constitutional violation by any of its officers.”).
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
Entered for the Court
Bobby R. Baldock
Circuit Judge
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1996). Here, Williamson was one of twenty-two SWAT team members, and there is
no indication he had close interaction with any of the officers who made the
comments about being in the wrong place or that he had any involvement in deciding
how long to hold plaintiffs. We are therefore unwilling to apply the presumption.
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