McCaskill v. Yankalunas

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 06-1739
SONYA C. MCCASKILL,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
JASON YANKALUNAS; JOHN W. MOORE; PETER L.
TYLER; JOHN FELTS,
Defendants - Appellants,
and
SALISBURY CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT; WICOMICO
COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT; JOHN DOE(S)
AND/OR JANE DOE(S) (Names Unknown At This
Time), Individual Officers of the Wicomico Co.
Sheriff’s Dept. Task Force and of the
Salisbury City Police Dept.; CITY OF
SALISBURY, MARYLAND; STATE OF MARYLAND,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Marvin J. Garbis, Senior District Judge.
(1:03-cv-00986-MJG)
Argued: May 22, 2007 Decided: July 27, 2007
Before TRAXLER and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and Frank D. WHITNEY,
United States District Judge for the Western District of North
Carolina, sitting by designation.
Reversed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: Kevin Bock Karpinski, KARPINSKI, COLARESI & KARP, P.A.,
Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. Alan Hilliard Legum,
Annapolis, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Victoria M. Shearer,
KARPINSKI, COLARESI & KARP, P.A., Baltimore, Maryland, for
Appellants.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Sonya C. McCaskill brought this action under § 1983 alleging
that law enforcement officers used excessive force against her
during the execution of a “no knock” search warrant in violation of
the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied the officers’
motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, and the
officers appeal. We conclude that the facts, even when viewed in
the light most favorable to McCaskill, fail to establish that the
officers violated her constitutional rights. Accordingly, we
reverse.
I.
From May 2001 until April 2002, the Wicomico County, Maryland,
Narcotics Task Force received information about and conducted
surveillance of George Jackson, a suspected crack dealer. Based on
this investigation, Sergeant S.R. Elliot, a task force member,
applied for a search warrant for illegal drugs and drug
paraphernalia located at 421 Truitt Street, Salisbury, Maryland,
where Jackson lived with his girlfriend, Sonya McCaskill, and her
children. Elliot’s application also sought authorization to search
the person of Jackson and Jackson’s brother Brandon, who went by
the name “Loco” and sold drugs alongside Jackson. Elliot requested
that the executing officers be permitted to make a “no knock” entry
to prevent the destruction of evidence and to ensure officer safety
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in light of information revealed during the investigation,
including the fact that Jackson and Loco kept handguns accessible
during drug transactions, had criminal histories, and had resisted
arrest on at least one previous occasion. McCaskill also had a
prior drug possession charge as well as an active, outstanding
arrest warrant in Delaware for contempt of court. The judge
granted the no-knock warrant.
At 5:30 a.m. on April 4, 2002, officers from the Task Force
and the City of Salisbury Tactical Unit performed a no-knock entry
at 421 Truitt Street to execute the warrant. Officer Peter Tyler
testified that in executing a no-knock warrant such as this one,
the standard police practice is to gain control of “[a]ll adults,
even older children, . . . teenagers, [and] [a]nyone who could
possibly be a threat to themselves or to us,” J.A. 132, prior to
conducting the search. The officers in this case did not know who
was in the house before they entered.
After ramming open the front door, officers Tyler, John Felts,
Jason Yankalunas and John Moore entered the living room of the
residence, where Jackson happened to be sleeping on a mattress that
was lying on the floor. There were no lights on in the living
room. The unexpected and loud entry startled Jackson, who moved to
a couch near the front door and began throwing punches at a
protective shield carried by Officer Tyler. Officers Tyler and
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Yankalunas were eventually able to subdue Jackson by pushing him
down onto the sofa and placing him in flexible plastic restraints.
McCaskill, who was then five months pregnant with Jackson’s
child, was in the bathroom as the officers entered the home. While
inside the bathroom, McCaskill heard task force members order
Jackson to lie down and then Jackson say “my girl, she’s pregnant.”
J.A. 112. As the commotion with Jackson subsided, McCaskill,
wearing a t-shirt and boxers, emerged from the bathroom with her
hands up and walked into the living room toward the couch where
Jackson was handcuffed. Jackson “noticed [McCaskill] coming out
of the bathroom” and told the officers “[m]y girlfriend is
pregnant.” J.A. 117. At about the same time, having seen a person
moving in the apartment, one of the officers approached McCaskill
from behind, ordered her to “get down” and then pushed her forward
onto the mattress where Jackson had been sleeping. J.A. 57.
McCaskill landed on her stomach. The officers then placed
restraints on her, completed a sweep of the apartment, determined
that McCaskill’s children were the only other people on the
premises, and finally performed the search of the apartment, which
yielded weapons and drugs. McCaskill remained on the mattress on
her side during the five-minute sweep. Officer Yankalunas told
McCaskill that she was being detained because of the outstanding
Delaware warrant, but she was released shortly thereafter when
Delaware authorities declined to pursue the charges.
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Two days later, McCaskill was admitted to the Peninsula
Regional Medical Center with a premature rupture of the uterine
membrane. She delivered the fetus prematurely and it did not
survive; however, no medical evidence was presented establishing
that McCaskill’s fall onto her stomach caused her to deliver
prematurely.
McCaskill brought this action under § 1983 against the four
officers who executed the warrant, alleging that they violated the
Fourth Amendment by using excessive force in arresting her.
Specifically, McCaskill asserts that the officers’ actions were
excessive because they knew she was pregnant and she was
cooperative. The officers invoked qualified immunity and sought
summary judgment on that basis. The district court rejected the
qualified immunity defense, concluding that “no reasonable police
officer would think it was proper to push, face-down, a compliant
pregnant woman.” J.A. 148.
II.
The doctrine of qualified immunity shields police officers
performing discretionary duties “from liability for civil damages
insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established
statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person
would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982).
The qualified immunity doctrine relieves officers of having “to
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stand trial or face the other burdens of litigation”; thus, it is
crucial for courts to “resolv[e] immunity questions at the earliest
possible stage in litigation.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200-
01 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In analyzing a qualified immunity claim, we must consider its
requirements in the proper sequence. The first step is to
determine whether the facts, viewed in the light most favorable to
the plaintiff, establish that the officer violated a constitutional
right. See id. at 201. If so, we then turn to the question of
whether that particular constitutional right was clearly
established when the violation occurred. See id.The reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amendment applies to
McCaskill’s excessive force claim. We must decide if the officer’s
actions were “‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and
circumstances confronting [him], without regard to [his] underlying
intent or motivation.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989).
“Because ‘police officers are often forced to make split-second
judgments -- in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and
rapidly evolving,’ the facts must be evaluated from the perspective
of a reasonable officer on the scene, and the use of hindsight must
be avoided.” Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471, 476-77 (4th Cir.
2005) (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 397) (internal citation
omitted); see Elliott v. Leavitt, 99 F.3d 640, 642 (4th Cir. 1996)
(“The court’s focus should be on the circumstances at the moment
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force was used and on the fact that officers on the beat are not
often afforded the luxury of armchair reflection.”).
Determining the reasonableness of the challenged actions
“requires a careful balancing of the nature and quality of the
intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against
the countervailing governmental interests at stake.” Graham, 490
U.S. at 396 (internal quotation marks omitted). A proper
assessment of “the objective reasonableness of force is to view it
in full context, with an eye toward the proportionality of the
force in light of all the circumstances.” Rowland v. Perry, 41
F.3d 167, 173 (4th Cir. 1994). In applying the reasonableness
test, courts must give “careful attention to the facts and
circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of
the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat
to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively
resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Graham,
490 U.S. at 396. In sum, “the question is whether the totality of
the circumstances justifie[s] a particular sort of . . . seizure.”
Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
In this case, we conclude that the force used by the officers,
in the context of the tense and potentially volatile circumstances
attendant to the execution of the no-knock warrant, was reasonable
and clearly within the bounds of the Fourth Amendment. As
reflected by the application for the search warrant, the criminal
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wrongdoing at issue related to the distribution of crack cocaine –-
a serious offense carrying substantial criminal penalties. See
United States v. Pyles, 482 F.3d 282, 291 (4th Cir. 2007). Based
on the information they possessed immediately before executing the
search warrant -- that Jackson and his associate Loco used or kept
handguns readily accessible and that both previously resisted
arrest -- the officers had reason to believe that Jackson posed a
threat to their safety. Indeed, officer safety served as one of
the justifications for the no-knock entry. And, in the first few
moments after the officers rammed down the door and entered the
living room, Jackson’s immediate reaction, which was to resist
arrest momentarily by throwing punches as Officer Tyler approached,
likewise suggested that Jackson was a threat to the officers.
Additionally, the time of day is an important consideration in
the totality of circumstances, as is the surprise element inherent
in a no-knock entry. See Hudson v. Michigan, 126 S. Ct. 2159, 2165
(2006) (“[A]n unannounced entry may provoke violence in supposed
self-defense by the surprised resident.”). The officers’ early-
morning entry of the premises startled and confused McCaskill and
Jackson, who had been sleeping. The officers when they entered did
not know who was on the premises, or how many people there were, or
whether they were dangerous, and the events unfolded rapidly in a
darkened room where Jackson had been sleeping. In this chaotic
atmosphere, the officers were forced to make split-second decisions
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regarding how to gain control of the occupants and secure the
premises so that the search could be conducted.
McCaskill contends that the shove was unnecessary because she
was acting in a compliant fashion, having exited the bathroom with
her hands up. Even assuming McCaskill raised her hands to signal
cooperation, the officer who shoved her did not act in a
constitutionally unreasonable manner. McCaskill heard the officers
commanding the occupants to “get down” but remained on her feet;
even if she was raising her hands to show her cooperation,
McCaskill was not complying with the officer’s demand. Officer
Tyler explained that the reason for forcing everyone onto the floor
was to ensure the safety of both the officers and the occupants.
And, at the time McCaskill was pushed, the officers were not
finished securing the house and therefore still did not know
whether there were additional occupants who might have access to
handguns. We conclude that it was reasonable under the
circumstances for an officer to push McCaskill down onto a mattress
while securing the house after a no-knock entry, whether or not her
hands were raised.
For the same reasons, we also reject McCaskill’s argument that
it was unreasonable for the officers to push her because she was
pregnant. Her physical condition does not eliminate any of the
exigent circumstances in which the no-knock warrant was executed
and, under the particulars of this case, did not mandate different
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behavior from the officers. As appellants point out, McCaskill is
essentially requesting that we require an officer to evaluate in
some detail the physical condition of an occupant before securing
that person for the safety of the officer and others during the
search. We do not see in this situation circumstances that would
have made the pushing of McCaskill onto a mattress an excessive use
of force.
Finally, although McCaskill claims that her premature delivery
resulted from the fall onto the mattress, she presented no evidence
establishing a causal link. “For damages to be proximately caused
by a constitutional tort, a plaintiff must show that, except for
that constitutional tort, such injuries and damages would not have
occurred.” Jackson v. Sauls, 206 F.3d 1156, 1168 (11th Cir. 2000).
When a civil rights plaintiff is unable to establish real,
substantial injury flowing from the conduct of the official, his
constitutional claim fails. Cf. Carter v. Morris, 164 F.3d 215,
219 n.3 (4th Cir. 1999) (concluding that claim that handcuffs were
too tight, without any resulting injury, was insufficient to state
a claim of excessive force).
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that McCaskill failed
to establish a constitutional violation and that the officers are
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entitled to summary judgment on the excessive force claim.
Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court.
REVERSED
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