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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 12–1117
_________________
OFFICER VANCE PLUMHOFF, et al.,
PETITIONERS v. WHITNE RICKARD, a Minor Child, Individually, andas
Surviving Daughter of DONALD RICKARD, Deceased, By and Through Her
Mother SAMANTHA RICKARD, as Parent and Next Friend
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the sixth circuit
[May 27, 2014]
Justice Alito
delivered the opinion of the Court.[
1]*
The courts below denied
qualified immunity for police officers who shot the driver of a
fleeing vehicle to put an end to a dangerous car chase. We reverse
and hold that the officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In
the alternative, we conclude that the officers were entitled to
qualified immunity because they violated no clearly established
law.
I
A
Because this case
arises from the denial of the officers’ motion for summary
judgment, we view the facts in the light most favorable to the
nonmoving party, the daughter of the driver who attempted to flee.
Wilkie v. Robbins, 551 U. S. 537 , n. 2 (2007). Near
midnight on July 18, 2004, Lieutenant Joseph Forthman of the West
Memphis, Arkansas, Police Department pulled over a white Honda
Accord because the car had only one operating headlight. Donald
Rickard was the driver of the Accord, and Kelly Allen was in the
passenger seat. Forthman noticed an indentation, “ ‘roughly
the size of a head or a basketball’ ” in the windshield of the
car. Estate of Allen v. West Memphis, 2011 WL 197426, *1 (WD Tenn.,
Jan. 20, 2011). He asked Rickard if he had been drinking, and
Rickard responded that he had not. Because Rickard failed to
produce his driver’s license upon request and appeared nervous,
Forthman asked him to step out of the car. Rather than comply with
Forthman’s request, Rickard sped away.
Forthman gave chase and
was soon joined by five other police cruisers driven by Sergeant
Vance Plumhoff and Officers Jimmy Evans, Lance Ellis, Troy
Galtelli, and John Gardner. The officers pursued Rickard east on
In-terstate 40 toward Memphis, Tennessee. While on I–40, they
attempted to stop Rickard using a “rolling roadblock,” id., at *2,
but they were unsuccessful. The District Court described the
vehicles as “swerving through traffic at high speeds,” id., at *8,
and respondent does not dispute that the cars attained speeds over
100 miles per hour.[
2] See
Memorandum of Law in Response to Defendants’ Motion for Summary
Judgment in No. 2:05–cv–2585 (WD Tenn.), p. 16; see also Tr.
of Oral Arg. 54:23–55:6. During the chase, Rickard and the officers
passed more than two dozen vehicles.
Rickard eventually
exited I–40 in Memphis, and shortly afterward he made “a quick
right turn,” causing “contact [to] occu[r]” between his car and
Evans’ cruiser. 2011 WL 197426, *3. As a result of that contact,
Rickard’s car spun out into a parking lot and collided with
Plumhoff’s cruiser. Now in danger of being cornered, Rickard put
his car into reverse “in an attempt to escape.” Ibid. As he did so,
Evans and Plumhoff got out of their cruisers and approached
Rickard’s car, and Evans, gun in hand, pounded on the
passenger-side window. At that point, Rickard’s car “made contact
with” yet another police cruiser. Ibid. Rickard’s tires started
spinning, and his car “was rocking back and forth,” ibid.,
indicating that Rickard was using the accelerator even though his
bumper was flush against a police cruiser. At that point, Plumhoff
fired three shots into Rickard’s car. Rickard then “reversed in a
180 degree arc” and “maneuvered onto” another street, forcing Ellis
to “step to his right to avoid the vehicle.” Ibid. As Rickard
continued “fleeing down” that street, ibid., Gardner and Galtelli
fired 12 shots toward Rickard’s car, bringing the total number of
shots fired during this incident to 15. Rickard then lost control
of the car and crashed into a building. Ibid. Rickard and Allen
both died from some combination of gunshot wounds and injuries
suffered in the crash that ended the chase. See App. 60, 76.
B
Respondent, Rickard’s
surviving daughter, filed this action under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42
U. S. C. §1983, against the six individual police
officers and the mayor and chief of police of West Memphis. She
alleged that the officers used excessive force in violation of the
Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The officers moved for
summary judgment based on qualified immunity, but the District
Court denied that motion, holding that the officers’ conduct
violated the Fourth Amendment and was contrary to law that was
clearly established at the time in question. The officers appealed,
but a Sixth Circuit motions panel initially dismissed the appeal
for lack of jurisdiction based on this Court’s decision in Johnson
v. Jones, 515 U. S. 304, 309 (1995) . Later, however, that
panel granted rehearing, vacated its dismissal order, and left the
jurisdictional issue to be decided by a merits panel.
The merits panel then
affirmed the District Court’s decision on the merits. Estate of
Allen v. West Memphis, 509 Fed. Appx. 388 (CA6 2012). On the issue
of appellate jurisdiction, the merits panel began by stating that a
“motion for qualified immunity denied on the basis of a district
court’s determination that there exists a triable issue of fact
generally cannot be appealed on an interlocutory basis.” Id., at
391. But the panel then noted that the Sixth Circuit had previously
interpreted our decision in Scott v. Harris, 550 U. S. 372
(2007) , as creating an “exception to this rule” under which an
immediate appeal may be taken to challenge “ ‘blatantly and
demonstrably false’ ” factual determinations. 509 Fed. Appx.,
at 391 (quoting Moldowan v. Warren, 578 F. 3d 351, 370 (CA6
2009)). Concluding that none of the District Court’s fac-tual
determinations ran afoul of that high standard, and distinguishing
the facts of this case from those in Scott, the panel held that the
officers’ conduct violated the Fourth Amendment. 509 Fed. Appx., at
392, and n. 3. The panel said nothing about whether the
officers violated clearly established law, but since the panel
affirmed the order denying the officers’ summary judgment
motion,[
3] the panel must have
decided that issue in respondent’s favor.
We granted certiorari.
571 U. S. ____ (2013).
II
We start with the
question whether the Court of Appeals properly exercised
jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. §1291, which gives the
courts of appeals jurisdiction to hear appeals from “final
decisions” of the district courts.
An order denying a
motion for summary judgment is generally not a final decision
within the meaning of §1291 and is thus generally not immediately
appealable. Johnson, 515 U. S., at 309. But that general rule
does not apply when the summary judgment motion is based on a claim
of qualified immunity. Id., at 311; Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472
U. S. 511, 528 (1985) . “[Q]ualified immunity is ‘an immunity
from suit rather than a mere defense to liability.’ ” Pearson
v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 231 (2009) (quoting Mitchell,
supra, at 526). As a result, pretrial orders denying qualified
immunity generally fall within the collateral order doctrine. See
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662 –672 (2009). This is so
because such orders conclusively determine whether the defendant is
entitled to immunity from suit; this immunity issue is both
important and completely separate from the merits of the action,
and this question could not be effectively reviewed on appeal from
a final judgment because by that time the immunity from standing
trial will have been irretrievably lost. See ibid; Johnson, supra,
at 311–312 (citing Mitchell, supra, at 525–527).
Respondent argues that
our decision in Johnson, forecloses appellate jurisdiction under
the circumstances here, but the order from which the appeal was
taken in Johnson was quite different from the order in the present
case. In Johnson, the plaintiff brought suit against certain police
officers who, he alleged, had beaten him. 515 U. S., at 307.
These officers moved for summary judgment, asserting that they were
not present at the time of the alleged beating and had nothing to
do with it. Id., at 307–308. The District Court determined,
however, that the evidence in the summary judgment record was
sufficient to support a contrary finding, and the court therefore
denied the officers’ motion for summary judgment. Id., at 308. The
officers then appealed, arguing that the District Court had not
correctly analyzed the relevant evidence. Ibid.
This Court held that
the Johnson order was not immediately appealable because it merely
decided “a question of ‘evidence sufficiency,’ i.e., which facts a
party may, or may not, be able to prove at trial.” Id., at 313. The
Court noted that an order denying summary judgment based on a
determination of “evidence sufficiency” does not present a legal
question in the sense in which the term was used in Mitchell, the
decision that first held that a pretrial order rejecting a claim of
qualified immunity is immediately appealable. Johnson, 515
U. S., at 314. In addition, the Court observed that a
determination of evidence sufficiency is closely related to other
determinations that the trial court may be required to make at
later stages of the case. Id., at 317. The Court also noted that
appellate courts have “no comparative expertise” over trial courts
in making such determinations and that forcing appellate courts to
entertain appeals from such orders would impose an undue burden.
Id., at 309–310, 316.
The District Court
order in this case is nothing like the order in Johnson.
Petitioners do not claim that other officers were responsible for
shooting Rickard; rather, they contend that their conduct did not
violate the Fourth Amendment and, in any event, did not violate
clearly established law. Thus, they raise legal issues; these
issues are quite different from any purely factual issues that the
trial court might confront if the case were tried; deciding legal
issues of this sort is a core responsibility of appellate courts,
and requiring appellate courts to decide such issues is not an
undue burden.
The District Court
order here is not materially distinguishable from the District
Court order in Scott v. Harris, and in that case we expressed no
doubts about the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals under §1291.
Accordingly, here, as in Scott, we hold that the Court of Appeals
prop-erly exercised jurisdiction, and we therefore turn to the
merits.
III
A
Petitioners contend
that the decision of the Court of Appeals is wrong for two separate
reasons. They maintain that they did not violate Rickard’s Fourth
Amendment rights and that, in any event, their conduct did not
violate any Fourth Amendment rule that was clearly established at
the time of the events in question. When confronted with such
arguments, we held in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U. S. 194, 200
(2001) , that “the first inquiry must be whether a constitutional
right would have been violated on the facts alleged.” Only after
deciding that question, we concluded, may an appellate court turn
to the question whether the right at issue was clearly established
at the relevant time. Ibid.
We subsequently altered
this rigid framework in Pearson, declaring that “Saucier’s
procedure should not be regarded as an inflexible requirement.” 555
U. S., at 227. At the same time, however, we noted that the
Saucier procedure “is often beneficial” because it “promotes the
development of constitutional precedent and is especially valuable
with respect to questions that do not frequently arise in cases in
which a qualified immunity defense is unavailable.” 555 U. S.,
at 236. Pearson concluded that courts “have the discretion to
decide whether that [Sau-cier] procedure is worthwhile in
particular cases.” Id., at 242.
Heeding our guidance in
Pearson, we begin in this case with the question whether the
officers’ conduct violated the Fourth Amendment. This approach, we
believe, will be “beneficial” in “develop[ing] constitutional
precedent” in an area that courts typically consider in cases in
which the defendant asserts a qualified immunity defense. See
Pearson, supra, at 236.
B
A claim that
law-enforcement officers used excessive force to effect a seizure
is governed by the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness” standard.
See Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386 (1989) ; Tennessee v.
Garner, 471 U. S. 1 (1985) . In Graham, we held that
determining the objective reasonableness of a particular seizure
under the Fourth Amendment “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.” 490 U. S., at 396 (internal quotation
marks omitted). The inquiry requires analyzing the totality of the
circumstances. See ibid.
We analyze this
question from the perspective “of a reasonable officer on the
scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Ibid. We
thus “allo[w] for the fact that police officers are often forced to
make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense,
uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is
necessary in a particular situation.” Id., at 396–397.
In this case,
respondent advances two main Fourth Amendment arguments. First, she
contends that the Fourth Amendment did not allow petitioners to use
deadly force to terminate the chase. See Brief for Respondent
24–35. Second, she argues that the “degree of force was excessive,”
that is, that even if the officers were permitted to fire their
weapons, they went too far when they fired as many rounds as they
did. See id., at 36–38. We address each issue in turn.
1
In Scott, we
considered a claim that a police officer violated the Fourth
Amendment when he terminated a high-speed car chase by using a
technique that placed a “fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury
or death.” 550 U. S., at 386. The record in that case
contained a videotape of the chase, and we found that the events
recorded on the tape justified the officer’s conduct. We wrote as
follows: “Although there is no obvious way to quantify the risks on
either side, it is clear from the videotape that respondent posed
an actual and imminent threat to the lives of any pedestrians who
might have been present, to other civilian motorists, and to the
officers involved in the chase.” Id., at 383–384. We also
wrote:
“[R]espondent’s vehicle rac[ed] down
narrow, two-lane roads in the dead of night at speeds that are
shock-ingly fast. We see it swerve around more than a dozen other
cars, cross the double-yellow line, and force cars traveling in
both directions to their respective shoulders to avoid being hit.
We see it run multiple red lights and travel for considerable
periods of time in the occasional center left-turn-only lane,
chased by numerous police cars forced to engage in the same
hazardous maneuvers just to keep up.” Id., at 379–380 (footnote
omitted).
In light of those
facts, “we [thought] it [was] quite clear that [the police officer]
did not violate the Fourth Amendment.” Id., at 381. We held that a
“police officer’s attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car
chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not
violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing
motorist at risk of serious injury or death.”[
4] Id., at 386.
We see no basis for
reaching a different conclusion here. As we have explained supra,
at ___, the chase in this case exceeded 100 miles per hour and
lasted over five minutes. During that chase, Rickard passed more
than two dozen other vehicles, several of which were forced to
alter course. Rickard’s outrageously reckless driving posed a grave
public safety risk. And while it is true that Rickard’s car
eventually collided with a police car and came temporarily to a
near standstill, that did not end the chase. Less than three
seconds later, Rickard resumed maneuvering his car. Just before the
shots were fired, when the front bumper of his car was flush with
that of one of the police cruisers, Rickard was obviously pushing
down on the accelerator because the car’s wheels were spinning, and
then Rickard threw the car into reverse “in an attempt to escape.”
Thus, the record conclusively disproves respondent’s claim that the
chase in the present case was already over when petitioners began
shooting. Under the circumstances at the moment when the shots were
fired, all that a reasonable police officer could have concluded
was that Rickard was intent on resuming his flight and that, if he
was allowed to do so, he would once again pose a deadly threat for
others on the road. Rickard’s conduct even after the shots were
fired—as noted, he managed to drive away despite the efforts of the
police to block his path—underscores the point.
In light of the
circumstances we have discussed, it is beyond serious dispute that
Rickard’s flight posed a grave public safety risk, and here, as in
Scott, the police acted reasonably in using deadly force to end
that risk.
2
We now consider
respondent’s contention that, even if the use of deadly force was
permissible, petitioners acted unreasonably in firing a total of 15
shots. We reject that argument. It stands to reason that, if police
officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a
severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting
until the threat has ended. As petitioners noted below, “if lethal
force is justified, officers are taught to keep shooting until the
threat is over.” 509 Fed. Appx., at 392.
Here, during the
10-second span when all the shots were fired, Rickard never
abandoned his attempt to flee. Indeed, even after all the shots had
been fired, he managed to drive away and to continue driving until
he crashed. This would be a different case if petitioners had
initiated a second round of shots after an initial round had
clearly incapacitated Rickard and had ended any threat of continued
flight, or if Rickard had clearly given himself up. But that is not
what happened.
In arguing that too
many shots were fired, respondent relies in part on the presence of
Kelly Allen in the front seat of the car, but we do not think that
this factor changes the calculus. Our cases make it clear that
“Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which . . .
may not be vicariously asserted.” Alderman v. United States, 394 U.
S. 165, 174 (1969) ; see also Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128
–143 (1978). Thus, the question before us is whether petitioners
violated Rickard’s Fourth Amendment rights, not Allen’s. If a suit
were brought on behalf of Allen under either §1983 or state tort
law, the risk to Allen would be of central concern.[
5] But Allen’s presence in the car cannot
enhance Rickard’s Fourth Amendment rights. After all, it was
Rickard who put Allen in danger by fleeing and refusing to end the
chase, and it would be perverse if his disregard for Allen’s safety
worked to his benefit.
C
We have held that
petitioners’ conduct did not violate the Fourth Amendment, but even
if that were not the case, petitioners would still be entitled to
summary judgment based on qualified immunity.
An official sued under
§1983 is entitled to qualified immunity unless it is shown that the
official violated a statutory or constitutional right that was
“ ‘clearly established’ ” at the time of the challenged
conduct. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip
op., at 3). And a defendant cannot be said to have violated a
clearly established right unless the right’s contours were
sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in the
defendant’s shoes would have understood that he was violating it.
Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). In other words, “existing precedent
must have placed the statutory or constitutional question”
confronted by the official “beyond debate.” Ibid. In addition,
“[w]e have repeatedly told courts . . . not to define
clearly established law at a high level of generality,” id., at ___
(slip op., at 10), since doing so avoids the crucial question
whether the official acted reasonably in the particular
circumstances that he or she faced. We
think our decision in Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U. S. 194 (2004)
(per curiam) squarely demonstrates that no clearly established law
precluded petitioners’ conduct at the time in question. In
Brosseau, we held that a police officer did not violate clearly
established law when she fired at a fleeing vehicle to prevent
possible harm to “other officers on foot who [she] believed were in
the immediate area, . . . occupied vehicles in [the
driver’s] path[,] and . . . any other citizens who might
be in the area.” Id., at 197 (quoting 339 F. 3d 857, 865 (CA9
2003); internal quotation marks omitted). After surveying lower
court decisions regarding the reasonableness of lethal force as a
response to vehicular flight, we observed that this is an area “in
which the result depends very much on the facts of each case” and
that the cases “by no means ‘clearly establish[ed]’ that [the
officer’s] conduct violated the Fourth Amendment.” 543 U. S.,
at 201. In reaching that conclusion, we held that Garner and
Graham, which are “cast at a high level of generality,” did not
clearly establish that the officer’s decision was unreasonable. 543
U. S., at 199.
Brosseau makes plain
that as of February 21, 1999—the date of the events at issue in
that case—it was not clearly established that it was
unconstitutional to shoot a fleeing driver to protect those whom
his flight might endanger. We did not consider later decided cases
because they “could not have given fair notice to [the officer].”
Id., at 200, n. 4. To defeat immunity here, then, respondent
must show at a minimum either (1) that the officers’ conduct
in this case was materially different from the conduct in Brosseau
or (2) that between February 21, 1999, and July 18, 2004,
there emerged either “ ‘controlling authority’ ” or a
“robust ‘consensus of cases of persuasive authority,’ ”
al-Kidd, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 10) (quoting Wilson v. Layne,
526 U. S. 603, 617 (1999) ; some internal quotation marks
omitted), that would alter our analysis of the qualified immunity
question. Respondent has made neither showing.
To begin, certain facts
here are more favorable to the officers. In Brosseau, an officer on
foot fired at a driver who had just begun to flee and who had not
yet driven his car in a dangerous manner. In contrast, the officers
here shot at Rickard to put an end to what had already been a
lengthy, high-speed pursuit that indisputably posed a danger both
to the officers involved and to any civilians who happened to be
nearby. Indeed, the lone dissenting Justice in Brosseau emphasized
that in that case, “there was no ongoing or prior high-speed car
chase to inform the [constitutional] analysis.” 543 U. S., at
206, n. 4 (opinion of Stevens, J.). Attempting to distinguish
Brosseau, respondent focuses on the fact that the officer there
fired only 1 shot, whereas here three officers collectively fired
15 shots. But it was certainly not clearly established at the time
of the shooting in this case that the number of shots fired, under
the circumstances present here, rendered the use of force
excessive.
Since respondent cannot
meaningfully distinguish Brosseau, her only option is to show that
its analysis was out of date by 2004. Yet respondent has not
pointed us to any case—let alone a controlling case or a robust
consensus of cases—decided between 1999 and 2004 that could be said
to have clearly established the unconstitutionality of using lethal
force to end a high-speed car chase. And respondent receives no
help on this front from the opinions below. The District Court
cited only a single case decided between 1999 and 2004 that
identified a possible constitutional violation by an officer who
shot a fleeing driver, and the facts of that case—where a
reasonable jury could have concluded that the suspect merely
“accelerated to eighty to eighty-five miles per hour in a
seventy-miles-per-hour zone” and did not “engag[e] in any evasive
maneuvers,” Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F. 3d 1323, 1330–1331 (CA11
2003)—bear little resemblance to those here.
* * *
Under the
circumstances present in this case, we hold that the Fourth
Amendment did not prohibit petitioners from using the deadly force
that they employed to terminate the dangerous car chase that
Rickard precipitated. In the alternative, we note that petitioners
are entitled to qualified immunity for the conduct at issue because
they violated no clearly established law.
The judgment of the
Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
