Qualified Immunity

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Timothy Johnson v. Michael Rogers

Case No.: 19-1366

Officials: EASTERBROOK, MANION, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Qualified Immunity

In October 2014 Timothy Johnson showed up drunk for an appointment at a rehab clinic. After he threatened a therapist and the clinic’s security guard, the clinic called the police. Two officers arrested and handcuffed Johnson. When he told them that he would run away, they sat him on the pavement next to a patrol car. What happened next led to this suit under 42 U.S.C. §1983. The events we describe were captured on video. The video lacks a sound track, but the officers’ descriptions about what Johnson said are uncontested, because he was too inebriated to remember much about the encounter.

Despite being cuffed behind his back, Johnson managed to stand. The officers walked him backward about 10 feet and sat him down on a patch of grass. They returned to their cars to do some paperwork. In about a minute Johnson got to his knees and managed to stand again. He started to move away, shouting threats and racial taunts. Officer Rogers returned and pulled Johnson backward by his cuffed hands. When that did not return him to the ground, Rogers tried a different means. Johnson fell and suffered a compound fracture of one leg. He contends that this resulted from a kick designed to punish him rather than to return him to a sitting position; Rogers contends that he used a leg sweep (in other words, tripped Johnson to force him backward) rather than a kick. The grainy video does not enable a viewer to distinguish these possibilities with confidence.

Johnson contends that Rogers violated the Fourth Amendment (applied to state actors via the Fourteenth) by using unreasonable force during the encounter. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). The district court granted summary judgment for the officers, giving two reasons. 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6961 (S.D. Ind. Jan. 15, 2019). First, the judge concluded that Rogers is entitled to qualified immunity, because the procedure that led to Johnson’s broken leg did not violate any of his clearly established rights. Second, the judge wrote that, because Johnson pleaded guilty in state court to resisting arrest, Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), bars any claim under the Fourth Amendment while the judgment of conviction stands. The district court also ruled in defendants’ favor on Johnson’s federal claim against the City of Indianapolis and its Chief of Police, and his state law claims against all three defendants. Those additional claims have been abandoned on appeal, and we have amended the caption accordingly.

What resolves this appeal in Rogers’s favor is this: Johnson, who had told the officers that he wanted to run away, was not under control when Rogers tried to use his knee to unbalance Johnson, who remained on his feet until Rogers took a further step. If that further step is best understood as a kick, it must also be understood as an attempt to regain control. That such an attempt causes injury, perhaps because poorly executed, does not lead to liability.

Nor does the possibility that Rogers had two things in mind: regaining control and punishing Johnson for abusive language. Graham holds that the excessive-force inquiry is objective. If the force used was objectively allowable, the officer’s state of mind can’t make it unconstitutional. Lester v. Chicago, 830 F.2d 706, 712 (7th Cir. 1987). Taking the events as the video depicts them, the district court properly found that Rogers is entitled to qualified immunity.

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is trademark corporate counsel for Harley-Davidson. Hawkins oversees the prosecution and maintenance of the Harley-Davidson’s international trademark portfolio in emerging markets.