NOTICE: This opinion is subject to
formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the
Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States,
Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal
errors, in order that corrections may be made before the
preliminary print goes to press.
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.
