SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
CHADRIN LEE MULLENIX
v. BEATRICE LUNA, individually and
as representative of theESTATE OF ISRAEL LEIJA, JR.,
et al.
on petition for writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the fifth circuit
No. 14–1143. Decided November 9, 2015
Per Curiam.
On the night of March 23, 2010, Sergeant Randy Baker of the
Tulia, Texas Police Department followed Israel Leija, Jr., to a
drive-in restaurant, with a warrant for his arrest. 773 F. 3d 712,
715–716 (CA5 2014). When Baker approached Leija’s car and informed
him that he was under arrest, Leija sped off, headed for Interstate
27. 2013 WL 4017124, *1 (ND Tex., Aug. 7, 2013). Baker gave chase
and was quickly joined by Trooper Gabriel Rodriguez of the Texas
Department of Public Safety (DPS). 773 F. 3d, at 716.
Leija entered the interstate and led the officers on an
18-minute chase at speeds between 85 and 110 miles per hour.
Ibid. Twice during the chase, Leija called the Tulia Police
dispatcher, claiming to have a gun and threatening to shoot at
police officers if they did not abandon their pursuit. The
dispatcher relayed Leija’s threats, together with a report that
Leija might be intoxicated, to all concerned officers.
As Baker and Rodriguez maintained their pursuit, other law
enforcement officers set up tire spikes at three locations. Officer
Troy Ducheneaux of the Canyon Police Department manned the spike
strip at the first location Leija was expected to reach, beneath
the overpass at Cemetery Road. Ducheneaux and the other officers
had received training on the deployment of spike strips, including
on how to take a defensive position so as to minimize the risk
posed by the passing driver.
Ibid.
DPS Trooper Chadrin Mullenix also responded. He drove to the
Cemetery Road overpass, initially intending to set up a spike strip
there. Upon learning of the other spike strip positions, however,
Mullenix began to consider another tactic: shooting at Leija’s car
in order to disable it. 2013 WL 4017124, *1. Mullenix had not
received training in this tactic and had not attempted it before,
but he radioed the idea to Rodriguez. Rodriguez responded “10–4,”
gave Mullenix his position, and said that Leija had slowed to 85
miles per hour. Mullenix then asked the DPS dispatcher to inform
his supervisor, Sergeant Byrd, of his plan and ask if Byrd thought
it was “worth doing.” 773 F. 3d
, at 716–717. Before
receiving Byrd’s response, Mullenix exited his vehicle and, armed
with his service rifle, took a shooting position on the overpass,
20 feet above I–27. Respondents allege that from this position,
Mullenix still could hear Byrd’s response to “stand by” and “see if
the spikes work first.”
Ibid.[
1]*
As Mullenix waited for Leija to arrive, he and another officer,
Randall County Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Shipman, discussed whether
Mullenix’s plan would work and how and where to shoot the vehicle
to best carry it out. 2013 WL 4017124, *2. Shipman also informed
Mullenix that another officer was located beneath the overpass. 773
F. 3d, at 717.
Approximately three minutes after Mullenix took up his shooting
position, he spotted Leija’s vehicle, with Rodriguez in pursuit. As
Leija approached the overpass, Mullenix fired six shots. Leija’s
car continued forward beneath the overpass, where it engaged the
spike strip, hit the median, and rolled two and a half times. It
was later determined that Leija had been killed by Mullenix’s
shots, four of which struck his upper body. There was no evidence
that any of Mullenix’s shots hit the car’s radiator, hood, or
engine block.
Id., at 716–717; 2013 WL 4017124, *2–*3.
Respondents sued Mullenix under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C.
§1983, alleging that he had violated the Fourth Amendment by using
excessive force against Leija. Mullenix moved for summary judgment
on the ground of qualified immunity, but the District Court denied
his motion, finding that “[t]here are genuine issues of fact as to
whether Trooper Mullenix acted recklessly, or acted as a
reasonable, trained peace officer would have acted in the same or
similar circumstances.” 2013 WL 4017124, *6.
Mullenix appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit affirmed. 765 F. 3d 531 (2014). The court agreed with the
District Court that the “immediacy of the risk posed by Leija is a
disputed fact that a reasonable jury could find either in the
plaintiffs’ favor or in the officer’s favor, precluding us from
concluding that Mullenix acted objectively reasonably as a matter
of law.”
Id., at 538.
Judge King dissented. She described the “ ‘fact issue’
referenced by the majority” as “simply a restatement of the
objective reasonableness test that applies to Fourth Amendment
excessive force claims,” which, she noted, the Supreme Court has
held “ ‘is a pure question of law.’ ”
Id., at
544–545 (quoting
Scott v.
Harris, 550 U. S. 372, 381,
n. 8 (2007) ). Turning to that legal question, Judge King concluded
that Mullenix’s actions were objectively reasonable. When Mullenix
fired, she emphasized, he knew not only that Leija had threatened
to shoot the officers involved in his pursuit, but also that Leija
was seconds away from encountering such an officer beneath the
overpass. Judge King also dismissed the notion that Mullenix should
have given the spike strips a chance to work. She explained that
because spike strips are often ineffective, and because officers
operating them are vulnerable to gunfire from passing cars,
Mullenix reasonably feared that the officers manning them faced a
significant risk of harm. 765 F. 3d, at 548–549.
Mullenix sought rehearing en banc before the Fifth Circuit, but
the court denied his petition. Judge Jolly dissented, joined by six
other members of the court. Judge King, who joined Judge Jolly’s
dissent, also filed a separate dissent of her own. 777 F. 3d 221
(2014) (
per curiam). On the same day, however, the two
members forming the original panel’s majority withdrew their
previous opinion and substituted a new one. 773 F. 3d 712. The
revised opinion recognized that objective unreasonableness is a
question of law that can be resolved on summary judgment—as Judge
King had explained in her dissent—but reaffirmed the denial of
qualified immunity.
Id., at 715, 718. The majority concluded
that Mullenix’s actions were objectively unreasonable because
several of the factors that had justified deadly force in previous
cases were absent here: There were no innocent bystanders, Leija’s
driving was relatively controlled, Mullenix had not first given the
spike strips a chance to work, and Mullenix’s decision was not a
split-second judgment.
Id., at 720–724. The court went on to
conclude that Mullenix was not entitled to qualified immunity
because “the law was clearly established such that a reasonable
officer would have known that the use of deadly force, absent a
sufficiently substantial and immediate threat, violated the Fourth
Amendment.”
Id., at 725.
We address only the qualified immunity question, not whether
there was a Fourth Amendment violation in the first place, and now
reverse.
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.’ ”
Pearson v.
Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 231 (2009) (quoting
Harlow v.
Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 818 (1982)
). 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,
566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 5) (internal quotation
marks and alteration omitted). “We do 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) . Put simply,
qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or
those who knowingly violate the law.”
Malley v.
Briggs, 475 U. S. 335, 341 (1986) .
“We have repeatedly told courts . . . not to define
clearly established law at a high level of generality.”
al-Kidd,
supra, at 742. The dispositive question is
“whether the violative nature of
particular conduct is
clearly established.”
Ibid. (emphasis added). This inquiry
“ ‘must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the
case, not as a broad general proposition.’ ”
Brosseau
v.
Haugen, 543 U. S. 194, 198 (2004) (
per curiam)
(quoting
Saucier v.
Katz, 533 U. S. 194, 201 (2001)
). Such specificity is especially important in the Fourth Amendment
context, where the Court has recognized that “[i]t is sometimes
difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant legal
doctrine, here excessive force, will apply to the factual situation
the officer confronts.” 533 U. S., at 205.
In this case, the Fifth Circuit held that Mullenix violated the
clearly established rule that a police officer may not “ ‘use
deadly force against a fleeing felon who does not pose a sufficient
threat of harm to the officer or others.’ ” 773 F. 3d, at
725. Yet this Court has previously considered—and rejected—almost
that exact formulation of the qualified immunity question in the
Fourth Amendment context. In
Brosseau, which also involved
the shooting of a suspect fleeing by car, the Ninth Circuit denied
qualified immu-nity on the ground that the officer had violated the
clearly established rule, set forth in
Tennessee v.
Garner, 471 U. S. 1 (1985) , that “deadly force is only
permissible where the officer has probable cause to believe that
the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the
officer or to others.”
Haugen v.
Brosseau, 339 F. 3d
857, 873 (CA9 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). This Court
summarily reversed, holding that use of
Gar-ner’s “general”
test for excessive force was “mistaken.”
Brosseau, 543
U. S., at 199. The correct inquiry, the Court explained, was
whether it was clearly established that the Fourth Amendment
prohibited the officer’s conduct in the “ ‘situation [she]
confronted’: whether to shoot a disturbed felon, set on avoiding
capture through vehicular flight, when persons in the immediate
area are at risk from that flight.”
Id., at 199–200. The
Court considered three court of appeals cases discussed by the
parties, noted that “this area is one in which the result depends
very much on the facts of each case,” and concluded that the
officer was entitled to qualified immunity because “[n]one of [the
cases]
squarely governs the case here.”
Id., at 201
(emphasis added).
Anderson v.
Creighton, 483 U. S. 635 (1987) , is
also instructive on the required degree of specificity. There, the
lower court had denied qualified immunity based on the clearly
established “right to be free from warrantless searches of one’s
home unless the searching officers have probable cause and there
are exigent circumstances.”
Id., at 640. This Court faulted
that formulation for failing to address the actual question at
issue: whether “the circumstances with which Anderson was
confronted . . . constitute[d] probable cause and exigent
circumstances.”
Id., at 640–641. Without answering that
question, the Court explained, the conclusion that Anderson’s
search was objectively unreasonable did not “follow immediately”
from—and thus was not clearly established by—the principle that
warrantless searches not supported by probable cause and exigent
circumstances violate the Fourth Amendment.
Id., at 641.
In this case, Mullenix confronted a reportedly intoxi-cated
fugitive, set on avoiding capture through high-speed vehicular
flight, who twice during his flight had threatened to shoot police
officers, and who was moments away from encountering an officer at
Cemetery Road. The relevant inquiry is whether existing precedent
placed the conclusion that Mullenix acted unreasonably in these
circumstances “beyond debate.”
al-Kidd,
supra, at
741. The general principle that deadly force requires a sufficient
threat hardly settles this matter. See
Pasco v.
Knoblauch, 566 F. 3d 572, 580 (CA5 2009) (“[I]t would
be unreasonable to expect a police officer to make the numerous
legal conclusions necessary to apply
Garner to a high-speed
car chase . . .”).
Far from clarifying the issue, excessive force cases involving
car chases reveal the hazy legal backdrop against which Mullenix
acted. In
Brosseau itself, the Court held that an officer
did not violate clearly established law when she shot a fleeing
suspect out of fear that he endangered “other officers on foot who
[she]
believed were in the immediate area,” “the occupied
vehicles in [his] path,” and “any other citizens who
might
be in the area.” 543 U. S., at 197 (first alteration in
original; internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added). The
threat Leija posed was at least as immediate as that presented by a
suspect who had just begun to drive off and was headed only in the
general direction of officers and bystanders.
Id., at
196–197. By the time Mullenix fired, Leija had led police on a
25-mile chase at extremely high speeds, was reportedly intoxicated,
had twice threatened to shoot officers, and was racing towards an
officer’s location.
This Court has considered excessive force claims in connection
with high-speed chases on only two occasions since
Brosseau.
In
Scott v.
Harris, 550 U. S. 372 , the Court
held that an officer did not violate the Fourth Amendment by
ramming the car of a fugitive whose reckless driving “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 384. And in
Plumhoff v.
Rickard, 572 U. S. ___ (2014), the
Court reaffirmed
Scott by holding that an officer acted
reasonably when he fatally shot a fugitive who was “intent on
resuming” a chase that “pose[d] a deadly threat for others on the
road.” 572 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10). The Court has thus
never found the use of deadly force in connection with a dangerous
car chase to violate the Fourth Amendment, let alone to be a basis
for denying qualified immunity. Leija in his flight did not pass as
many cars as the drivers in
Scott or
Plumhoff;
traffic was light on I–27. At the same time, the fleeing fugitives
in
Scott and
Plumhoff had not verbally threatened to
kill any officers in their path, nor were they about to come upon
such officers. In any event, none of our precedents “squarely
governs” the facts here. Given Leija’s conduct, we cannot say that
only someone “plainly incompetent” or who “knowingly violate[s] the
law” would have perceived a sufficient threat and acted as Mullenix
did.
Malley, 475 U. S., at 341.
The dissent focuses on the availability of spike strips as an
alternative means of terminating the chase. It argues that even if
Leija posed a threat sufficient to justify deadly force in some
circumstances, Mullenix nevertheless contravened clearly
established law because he did not wait to see if the spike strips
would work before taking action. Spike strips, however, present
dangers of their own, not only to drivers who encounter them at
speeds between 85 and 110 miles per hour, but also to officers
manning them. See,
e.g., Thompson v.
Mercer, 762
F. 3d 433, 440 (CA5 2014); Brief for National Association of
Police Organizations et al. as
Amici Curiae 15–16. Nor are
spike strips always successful in ending the chase. See,
e.g.,
Cordova v.
Aragon, 569 F. 3d 1183, 1186 (CA10
2009); Brief for National Association of Police Organizations et
al. as
Amici Curiae 16 (citing examples). The dissent can
cite no case from this Court denying qualified immunity because
officers entitled to terminate a high-speed chase selected one
dangerous alternative over another.
Even so, the dissent argues, there was no governmental interest
that justified acting before Leija’s car hit the spikes. Mullenix
explained, however, that he feared Leija might attempt to shoot at
or run over the officers manning the spike strips. Mullenix also
feared that even if Leija hit the spike strips, he might still be
able to continue driving in the direction of other officers. The
dissent ignores these interests by suggesting that there was no
“possible marginal gain in shooting at the car over using the spike
strips already in place.”
Post, at 4 (opinion of Sotomayor,
J.). In fact, Mullenix hoped his actions would stop the car in a
manner that avoided the risks to other officers and other drivers
that relying on spike strips would entail. The dissent disputes the
merits of the options available to Mullenix,
post, at 3–4,
but others with more experience analyze the issues differently.
See,
e.g., Brief for National Association of Police
Organizations et al. as
Amici Curiae 15–16. Ultimately,
whatever can be said of the wisdom of Mullenix’s choice, this
Court’s precedents do not place the conclusion that he acted
unreasonably in these circumstances “beyond debate.”
al-Kidd, 563 U. S., at 741.
More fundamentally, the dissent repeats the Fifth Circuit’s
error. It defines the qualified immunity inquiry at a high level of
generality—whether any governmental interest justified choosing one
tactic over another—and then fails to consider that question in
“the specific context of the case.”
Brosseau v.
Haugen, 543 U. S., at 198 (internal quotation marks
omitted). As in
Anderson, the conclusion that Mullenix’s
reasons were insufficient to justify his actions simply does not
“follow immediately” from the general proposition that force must
be justified. 483 U. S., at 641.
Cases decided by the lower courts since
Brosseau likewise
have not clearly established that deadly force is inappropriate in
response to conduct like Leija’s. The Fifth Circuit here
principally relied on its own decision in
Lytle v.
Bexar
County, 560 F. 3d 404 (2009), denying qualified immunity to a
police officer who had fired at a fleeing car and killed one of its
passengers. That holding turned on the court’s assumption, for
purposes of summary judgment, that the car was moving away from the
officer and had already traveled some distance at the moment the
officer fired. See
id., at 409. The court held that a
reasonable jury could conclude that a receding car “did not pose a
sufficient threat of harm such that the use of deadly force was
reasonable.”
Id., at 416. But, crucially, the court also
recognized that if the facts were as the officer alleged, and he
fired as the car was coming towards him, “he would likely be
entitled to qualified immunity” based on the “threat of immediate
and severe physical harm.”
Id., at 412. Without implying
that
Lytle was either correct or incorrect, it suffices to
say that
Lytle does not clearly dictate the conclusion that
Mullenix was unjustified in perceiving grave danger and responding
accordingly, given that Leija was speeding towards a confrontation
with officers he had threatened to kill.
Cases that the Fifth Circuit ignored also suggest that
Mullenix’s assessment of the threat Leija posed was reasonable. In
Long v.
Slaton, 508 F. 3d 576 (2007), for example,
the Eleventh Circuit held that a sheriff’s deputy did not violate
the Fourth Amendment by fatally shooting a mentally unstable
individual who was attempting to flee in the deputy’s car, even
though at the time of the shooting the individual had not yet
operated the cruiser dangerously. The court explained that “the law
does not require officers in a tense and dangerous situation to
wait until the moment a suspect uses a deadly weapon to act to stop
the suspect” and concluded that the deputy had reason to believe
Long was dangerous based on his unstable state of mind, theft of
the cruiser, and failure to heed the deputy’s warning to stop.
Id., at 581–582. The court also rejected the notion that the
deputy should have first tried less lethal methods, such as spike
strips. “[C]onsidering the unpredictability of Long’s behavior and
his fleeing in a marked police cruiser,” the court held, “we think
the police need not have taken that chance and hoped for the best.”
Id., at 583 (alteration and internal quotation marks
omitted). But see
Smith v.
Cupp, 430 F. 3d 766,
774–777 (CA6 2005) (denying qualified immunity to an officer who
shot an intoxicated suspect who had stolen the officer’s cruiser
where a reasonable jury could have concluded that the suspect’s
flight did not immediately threaten the officer or any other
bystander).
Other cases cited by the Fifth Circuit and respondents are
simply too factually distinct to speak clearly to the specific
circumstances here. Several involve suspects who may have done
little more than flee at relatively low speeds. See,
e.g.,
Walker v.
Davis, 649 F. 3d 502, 503 (CA6 2011);
Kirby v.
Duva, 530 F. 3d 475, 479–480 (CA6 2008);
Adams v.
Speers, 473 F. 3d 989, 991 (CA9 2007);
Vaughan v.
Cox, 343 F. 3d 1323, 1330–1331, and n. 7
(CA11 2003). These cases shed little light on whether the far
greater danger of a speeding fugitive threatening to kill police
officers waiting in his path could warrant deadly force. The court
below noted that “no weapon was ever seen,” 773 F. 3d, at 723,
but surely in these circumstances the police were justified in
taking Leija at his word when he twice told the dispatcher he had a
gun and was prepared to use it.
Finally, respondents argue that the danger Leija represented was
less substantial than the threats that courts have found sufficient
to justify deadly force. But the mere fact that courts have
approved deadly force in more extreme circumstances says little, if
anything, about whether such force was reasonable in the
circumstances here. The fact is that when Mullenix fired, he
reasonably understood Leija to be a fugitive fleeing arrest, at
speeds over 100 miles per hour, who was armed and possibly
intoxicated, who had threatened to kill any officer he saw if the
police did not abandon their pursuit, and who was racing towards
Officer Ducheneaux’s position. Even accepting that these
circumstances fall somewhere between the two sets of cases
respondents discuss, qualified immunity protects actions in the
“ ‘hazy border between excessive and acceptable force.’ ”
Brosseau,
supra, at 201 (quoting
Saucier, 533
U. S., at 206; some internal quotation marks omitted).
Because the constitutional rule applied by the Fifth Circuit was
not “ ‘beyond debate,’ ”
Stanton v.
Sims,
571 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (
per curiam) (slip op., at
8), we grant Mullenix’s petition for certiorari and reverse the
Fifth Circuit’s determination that Mullenix is not entitled to
qualified immunity.
It is so ordered.