Erin Lincoln, et al v. City of Colleyville, Texas
Filing
PUBLISHED OPINION FILED. [16-10327 Affirmed] Judge: EGJ, Judge: PEH, Judge: JEG. Mandate pull date is 05/11/2017 [16-10327]
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 1
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
Fifth Circuit
FILED
No. 16-10327
April 20, 2017
Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
ERIN LINCOLN, Individually and as Representative of the Estate of John
Lincoln; KATHLEEN LINCOLN, Individually and as Representative of the
Estate of John Lincoln,
Plaintiffs - Appellees
v.
C. BARNES,
Defendant - Appellant
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Texas
Before JOLLY, HIGGINBOTHAM, and GRAVES, Circuit Judges.
JAMES E. GRAVES, JR., Circuit Judge:
Ranger Clair Barnes appeals the denial of his motion to dismiss based
on qualified immunity.
Because it was clearly established that Barnes’s
conduct constituted an illegal seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment,
we affirm.
I.
BACKGROUND
This case arises out of the unfortunate police shooting of John Lincoln
during a SWAT team operation at his mother’s residence. The following facts
are taken from Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint, which at this stage we presume
to be true. John Lincoln was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was taking
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 2
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
medication to manage it. In December 2013, John ran out of his medication
and for reasons unknown was unable to refill his prescription. On December
26, 2013, John had been dining with his father when he took one of his father’s
guns and left the house. John’s father believed that he was headed to the home
of his mother, Kathleen Lincoln, and that he was a threat to her life.
When John arrived at his mother’s house, she was not there, but John’s
eighteen-year-old daughter, Erin Lincoln, who lived with her grandmother,
was at home and let him into the house. After John left for Kathleen’s house,
John’s father called John’s sisters and one of them, Kelly Lincoln, called the
Colleyville police.
A large SWAT team, including officers from both the
Colleyville and North Richland Hills police departments arrived and
surrounded Kathleen’s house.
A police dispatcher contacted Erin inside the house and asked if she was
in harm’s way. Erin replied that she was not and that her father would not
harm her. She also told the dispatcher that she was talking to her father to
try to calm him down and that the police’s presence was upsetting him. When
the phone rang again, Erin told her father not to pick it up because it would
just upset him. Despite her advice, John picked up the phone and spoke with
the police. The call upset him greatly.
John then began to open the front door to the house and to shout at the
police, while holding his father’s gun. Every time he opened the door, Erin was
standing immediately next to him. The last time John opened the door, three
officers opened fire, killing him and narrowly missing Erin, who was standing
by his side.
Erin fell to the ground next to her father’s body. She was then forcibly
removed, placed in handcuffs, and put in the backseat of a police vehicle.
Although she did not fight, struggle, or resist, she did ask the officer why she
2
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 3
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
was being taken into custody and made it known that she wanted to remain
with her father.
While Erin was being held in the patrol car, her aunt Kelly, an Arlington
Police Department officer, who was on the scene in uniform, informed one of
the Colleyville officers that her niece had severe social anxiety disorder and
was emotionally distraught and she requested that Erin be released into her
care. The Colleyville officer told Kelly that they would not release Erin because
they needed to get a statement. Kelly demanded to speak with a supervisor.
After about thirty minutes, a Colleyville Sergeant came over and reiterated
that they were holding Erin to get a statement. Kelly responded that they were
outside their authority by holding Erin as a witness against her will. The
Sergeant refused to release Erin.
After being held in the back of the patrol car for about two hours, Erin
was transported to the police station. Kelly went to the station to get Erin, but
she was not allowed to see her. At the station, Erin was interrogated for five
hours by Ranger Barnes and Officer Kyle Meeks and she was forced to write
out a statement. After the officers obtained her statement, Erin was permitted
to leave with Kelly. Erin was never charged with any crime.
Erin and Kathleen, individually and as representatives of the estate of
John Lincoln, sued the Cities of Colleyville and North Richland Hills, Texas,
and several officers involved in the incident, including Barnes. They asserted
a variety of constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 stemming from the
shooting and Erin’s subsequent detention. In pertinent part, Erin asserted
that Barnes and Meeks violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from
unreasonable seizure when they took her into custody without a warrant,
probable cause, or justifiable reason and interrogated her against her will for
many hours, refusing her access to her family, including Kelly Lincoln.
3
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 4
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
All defendants, including Barnes, filed motions to dismiss.
Barnes
moved to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity. In a series of orders, the
district court dismissed all of the claims except the unreasonable seizure
claims against Barnes, Meeks, and Officer Sandra Scott, who had transported
Erin to the police station. As for Barnes, the court held that the allegations
concerning Erin’s five-hour interrogation at the station, during which she was
forced to write out a statement, stated a claim for violation of the Fourth
Amendment. The court cited Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200 (1979), a
1979 Supreme Court decision which held that the involuntary detention and
interrogation of an individual without probable cause on the grounds that he
possessed information about an unsolved crime constituted an unreasonable
seizure. Id. at 207. The district court further determined that Barnes should
have been on notice that his conduct was illegal based on a Tenth Circuit
decision, Walker v. City of Orem, 451 F.3d 1139 (10th Cir. 2006), which held
that an involuntary ninety-minute detention of witnesses to a police shooting
for the purpose of obtaining information from them, including their
statements, was unreasonable. Id. at 1149.
Barnes timely filed an interlocutory appeal to this Court.
II.
JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW
We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 to review the district court’s
order denying Barnes qualified immunity as “a collateral order capable of
immediate review.” Club Retro, L.L.C. v. Hilton, 568 F.3d 181, 194 (5th Cir.
2009) (citing Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 307 (1996)). That jurisdiction,
however, is “severely curtailed” and “restricted to determinations of questions
of law and legal issues, and we do not consider the correctness of the plaintiff’s
version of the facts.”
Id. (citations, internal quotations, and alterations
omitted); see also Good v. Curtis, 601 F.3d 393, 397 (5th Cir. 2010).
4
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 5
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
Within this limited jurisdiction, our review of the denial of a motion to
dismiss predicated on a defense of qualified immunity is de novo. Club Retro,
568 F.3d at 194. We must “take the complaint’s factual allegations as true and
view them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Hinojosa v. Livingston,
807 F.3d 657, 661 n.1 (5th Cir. 2015) (citing Atteberry v. Nocona Gen. Hosp.,
430 F.3d 245, 252 (5th Cir. 2005)). “[A] plaintiff seeking to overcome qualified
immunity must plead specific facts that both allow the court to draw the
reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the harm [s]he has alleged
and that defeat a qualified immunity defense with equal specificity.” Id. at 664
(internal quotations and citation omitted).
III.
DISCUSSION
Doctrine of Qualified Immunity
“The doctrine of qualified immunity shields officials from civil liability so
long as their conduct ‘does not violate clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.’”
Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015) (quoting Pearson v. Callahan, 555
U.S. 223, 231 (2009)) (internal quotation marks omitted). A clearly established
right is one that is “sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have
understood that what he is doing violates that right.” Reichle v. Howards, 132
S. Ct. 2088, 2093 (2012) (internal quotations and alteration omitted). This
inquiry “does not require a case directly on point, but existing precedent must
have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft
v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (citations omitted); see also Morgan v.
Swanson, 659 F.3d 359, 372 (5th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (“The sine qua non of the
clearly-established inquiry is fair warning.
Thus, we must ask not only
whether courts have recognized the existence of a particular constitutional
right, but also . . . whether that right has been defined with sufficient clarity
5
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 6
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
to enable a reasonable official to assess the lawfulness of his conduct.” (internal
quotations and citations omitted)).
Fourth Amendment Right to Be Free from Unreasonable Seizure
Erin asserts that Barnes violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free
from unreasonable seizure by taking her into custody without a warrant,
probable cause, or justifiable reason and interrogating her against her will for
five hours, during which she was forced to write out a statement. She argues
that her detention constituted a de facto arrest.
We note at the outset that Barnes does not contend that the officers
involved in the incident had a reasonable suspicion that Erin was involved with
any criminal wrongdoing or that there was probable cause to believe she had
committed or was committing a crime. The rationale for her detention rests
solely on her status as a witness to her father’s shooting. 1
The question therefore is whether Erin’s detention at the police station
for the purposes of questioning her as a witness to her father’s shooting and
obtaining her statement satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness”
requirement. The relevant facts are as follows: Erin witnessed the events
leading up to her father’s death; after her father was lethally shot by members
of the SWAT team, the police had an interest in detaining Erin to solicit
information from her, including a statement; toward that end, Erin was
handcuffed and placed in the backseat of a patrol car; after a period of
Barnes suggested in his brief that Erin’s detention could be justified on the basis
that either reasonable suspicion or probable cause existed to believe she had committed the
Texas offense of interference with public duties. See Tex. Penal Code § 38.15. At oral
argument, however, Barnes’s counsel disclaimed reliance on either of these rationales. We
therefore do not need to separately address whether the detention is justified on any basis
other than her status as a witness. We note, however, that Barnes also did not raise these
arguments in the district court. Thus, even if he continued to press these arguments now,
we would not be able to address them as they are forfeited. See, e.g., United States v. Mix,
791 F.3d 603, 611 (5th Cir. 2015) (arguments not raised below are forfeited on appeal).
1
6
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 7
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
approximately two hours, she was transported to the police station; and at the
station, Barnes and Meeks questioned her for approximately five hours and
forced her to write out a statement.
Dunaway v. New York involved several materially similar facts. In that
case, officers were investigating a crime; they picked up petitioner at a
neighbor’s house, drove him to police headquarters in a police car, placed him
in an interrogation room, and questioned him regarding the crime. 442 U.S.
at 203. He was never “told he was under arrest, [but] he would have been
physically restrained if he had attempted to leave.” Id. (citation omitted). It
was undisputed that officers lacked probable cause for the detention. Id. at
206. The State argued that his detention at the police station for questioning
was justified on the grounds that police believed he possessed “intimate
knowledge about a serious and unsolved crime.” 2
Id. at 207 (internal
quotations and citation omitted). In holding petitioner’s seizure illegal, the
Supreme Court emphasized that “detention for custodial interrogation—
regardless of its label—intrudes so severely on interests protected by the
Fourth Amendment as necessarily to trigger the traditional safeguards against
illegal arrest.” Id. at 216. Dunaway, in fact, merely reaffirmed this principle,
which the Court had made clear ten years earlier in Davis v. Mississippi, 394
U.S. 721 (1969)—namely, that an investigatory detention that, for all intents
and purposes, is indistinguishable from custodial interrogation, requires no
less probable cause than a traditional arrest. Id. at 726–27 (“Nothing is more
clear than that the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent wholesale
intrusions upon the personal security of our citizenry, whether these intrusions
be termed ‘arrests’ or ‘investigatory detentions.’”); see also Hayes v. Florida,
At the time the petitioner was taken in for questioning, he was not yet formally a
suspect, although he eventually made incriminating statements during the interrogation
that resulted in charges for attempted robbery and felony murder. 442 U.S. at 203.
2
7
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 8
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
470 U.S. 811, 815 (1985) (“None of our later cases have undercut the holding
in Davis that transportation to and investigative detention at the station house
without probable cause or judicial authorization together violate the Fourth
Amendment.”).
Accordingly, police violate the Fourth Amendment when,
absent probable cause or the individual’s consent, they seize and transport a
person to the police station and subject her to prolonged interrogation.
Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 216.
Clearly Established Law
The second part of the qualified immunity inquiry looks to whether the
right was clearly established at the time of the violation. The longstanding
precedents we have just discussed have placed the instant “constitutional
question beyond debate.” al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741. Nevertheless, Barnes
argues that he reasonably could have believed Erin’s detention was lawful
because she was a witness to a crime and under certain circumstances,
investigatory detentions on less than probable cause are constitutional.
Barnes contends that the lawfulness of Erin’s detention is not governed by the
principle announced in Davis and Dunaway; rather it should be assessed under
the balancing test articulated in Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 (1979). Under
that test, the constitutionality of a seizure “involves a weighing of the gravity
of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure
advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with
individual liberty.” Id. at 50–51.
Barnes suggests that the Brown test governs all witness detentions,
relying on Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419 (2004), a case in which the Supreme
Court upheld the constitutionality of a highway checkpoint at which officers
briefly detained motorists to seek information about a fatal hit-and-run
accident. Id. at 428. In determining that the checkpoint satisfied the Fourth
Amendment’s
reasonableness
requirement,
8
the
Court
analyzed
the
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 9
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
circumstances under the Brown factors. Id. at 427–28. The Court found the
relevant public concern grave because police “were investigating a crime that
had resulted in a human death. . . . And the stop’s objective was to help find
the perpetrator[.]” Id. at 427. The stop significantly advanced the public
concern insofar as it was “appropriately tailored . . . to fit important criminal
investigatory needs.” Id. (noting that the stops took place shortly after the hitand-run, on the same highway near the location of the accident, and about the
same time of night). Finally, the stop posed only a minimal interference with
the motorists’ liberty, requiring only a brief wait in line, and “provided little
reason for anxiety or alarm.” Id. at 427–28.
Neither Brown nor Lidster are apposite to this case. Critically, Brown,
which itself concerned the brief detention of an individual under suspicion of
wrongdoing, not the prolonged interrogation of a witness to a crime, expressly
limited its analysis to “[t]he reasonableness of seizures that are less intrusive
than a traditional arrest.” 443 U.S. at 50. Lidster also involved a seizure that
fell far short of a traditional arrest. Moreover, in Lidster, the fact that “the
stops interfered only minimally with liberty of the sort the Fourth Amendment
seeks to protect” was, in the Court’s view, the “[m]ost important[]” factor
weighing in favor of the checkpoint’s constitutionality. 540 U.S. at 427. These
circumstances plainly distinguish these cases and their reasoning from the
facts at bar.
If there was any lingering doubt, however, we need only turn back to
Dunaway to dispel the notion that custodial interrogation of the kind here is
subject to a balancing inquiry. In Dunaway, the State, like Barnes, had urged
the application of a Terry-style balancing test to assess the reasonableness of
custodial interrogations for investigatory purposes. 442 U.S. at 211. The State
argued that such seizures could be justified by mere ‘reasonable suspicion.’ Id.
The Court flatly rejected this approach. It stated:
9
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 10
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
Terry and its progeny clearly do not support such a result. The
narrow intrusions involved in those cases were judged by a
balancing test rather than by the general principle that Fourth
Amendment seizures must be supported by the ‘long-prevailing
standards’ of probable cause, only because these intrusions fell far
short of the kind of intrusion associated with an arrest.
Id. at 211–12 (internal citation omitted). The same reasoning controls the
outcome of the case at bar.
Barnes also relies on United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S.
531 (1985), arguing that it suggests Erin’s five-hour interrogation was
reasonable in light of the nearly sixteen-hour detention found reasonable
there. First, Montoya de Hernandez was a case in which the detaining officers
had reasonable suspicion that the detainee was smuggling illicit drugs across
the border. Id. at 534, 544. Therefore, the case has little bearing on the law
concerning witness detention. Even if it did, the unusually long warrantless
detention there was justified by the particular circumstances, where the
officers had articulable suspicion that the detainee was smuggling drugs in her
alimentary canal. Id. Under those circumstances, “[h]er detention for the
period of time necessary to either verify or dispel the suspicion was not
unreasonable.” Id. at 544.
Nothing in Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint suggests that comparable
exigent circumstances existed here.
Nor does Barnes contend that such
circumstances existed to justify Erin’s prolonged detention and, most
pertinently, her custodial interrogation.
Indeed, police were not even
questioning her about an unsolved crime for which the perpetrator might still
be at large. They knew well who had caused John Lincoln’s death.
We also make no attempt to draw lines here regarding the duration of
the detention.
Therefore, Barnes’s concern that the district court unduly
focused on the duration of Erin’s detention and that it improperly relied on
Walker, 451 F.3d at 1149, to conclude that her five-hour detention was clearly
10
Case: 16-10327
Document: 00513961282
Page: 11
Date Filed: 04/20/2017
No. 16-10327
unreasonable is misplaced. Although we observe that our cases recognize that
a detention of excessive duration can sometimes morph an investigatory stop
into a de facto arrest, see, e.g., United States v. Massi, 761 F.3d 512, 521-22
(5th Cir. 2014); United States v. Zavala, 541 F.3d 562, 574 (5th Cir. 2008), our
holding here rests on the nature of Erin’s detention and the lack of
circumstances justifying her custodial interrogation. Walker is persuasive
authority that the prolonged detention of witnesses to a police shooting for the
sole purpose of obtaining information from them, including statements, is
unreasonable absent any exigencies justifying the detention for investigative
purposes. 451 F.3d at 1149. But the clearly established law governing this
case derives from Davis and Dunaway, not Walker.
IV.
CONCLUSION
While “the law ordinarily permits police to seek the voluntary
cooperation of members of the public in the investigation of a crime,” Lidster,
540 U.S. at 425, “[a]bsent special circumstances, the person approached may
not be detained . . . but may refuse to cooperate and go on his way,” Terry v.
Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 34 (1968) (White, J., concurring); see also Florida v. Royer,
460 U.S. 491, 497–98 (1983).
Any further detention of such individual
constitutes a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, which must satisfy the
Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness” requirement. Lidster, 540 U.S. at 426–
27. As a general matter, the detention of a witness that is indistinguishable
from custodial interrogation requires no less probable cause than a traditional
arrest. Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 216; Davis, 394 U.S. at 726–28.
AFFIRMED.
11
Disclaimer: Justia Dockets & Filings provides public litigation records from the federal appellate and district courts. These filings and docket sheets should not be considered findings of fact or liability, nor do they necessarily reflect the view of Justia.
Why Is My Information Online?