F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
APR 18 2000
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
TENTH CIRCUIT
GENA CHILDRESS and DUANE
CHILDRESS, individually and as next
friends of CAITLYN CHILDRESS, a
minor,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v. No. 98-6451
CITY OF ARAPAHO, OKLAHOMA;
LARRY WILLIAMS; JERRY
MCGRATH; SAM SHELTON, Lake
Patrol Officer; THOR CARLSON;
DANNY HONEYCUTT, Trooper; JOE
WILLIAMS, Trooper; LYLE LUBBERS,
Trooper; MARVIN NOYES, Trooper;
C.L. PARKINS, Trooper; NICKY
SMITH; JERRY JONES; TIM
TROXELL; LT. BRUCE PEOPLES,
Defendants - Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA
(D. Ct. No. CIV-96-988-L)
Roy S. Dickinson, Norman, Oklahoma (Robert Pottroff, Myers, Pottroff & Ball,
Manhattan, Kansas, with him on the brief), appearing for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Jason C. Wagner, Collins, Zorn, Jones & Wagner, P.C., Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma, appearing for Defendants-Appellees McGrath and Jones.
Wellon B. Poe, Assistant Attorney General, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Kent
McGuire and Phil Anderson, Whitten & McGuire, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for
Appellees City of Arapaho and Smith; Chris J. Collins and Robert Applegate,
Collins, Zorn, Jones & Wagner, P.C., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Appellees
Jones and McGrath, with him on the brief), appearing for Defendants-Appellees
L. Williams, Shelton, Carlson, Honeycutt, J. Williams, Lubbers, Noyes, Parkins,
Troxell, and Peoples.
Before SEYMOUR, Chief Judge, HOLLOWAY, and TACHA, Circuit Judges.
TACHA, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiffs filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that defendants
violated their Fourth Amendment and substantive due process rights during a
pursuit of escaped prison inmates. The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ Fourth
Amendment claims and entered summary judgment in favor of defendants on the
due process claims. Plaintiffs appeal from both rulings. We exercise jurisdiction
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.
I.
On August 5, 1995, two prisoners escaped from the Oklahoma State
Reformatory in Granite. On August 7, the prisoners stole a gray automobile, two
shotguns and a pistol from a family near Retrop. Later that day, the prisoners
forced entry into the Childress house north of Elk City. They abducted Gena
Childress and her two-year-old daughter, Caitlyn, and stole the family’s minivan.
One prisoner drove the minivan and the other the stolen gray vehicle.
-2-
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol aired a bulletin describing the stolen gray
vehicle. A truck driver who heard the bulletin notified the Highway Patrol that
the gray car was traveling in tandem with a minivan near Elk City. The truck
driver saw a male driving each vehicle and reported that there appeared to be
additional passengers in the minivan. At the request of the Highway Patrol, the
truck driver followed the car and minivan for approximately six miles until they
turned onto a road that would not support the weight of his vehicle. After the
truck driver lost sight of the vehicles, one of the escapees drove the gray car into
a pond in an attempt to conceal it. Both escapees and the hostages continued on
in the minivan.
Shortly thereafter, a deputy with the Custer County Sheriff’s Department
encountered the minivan. He noticed three or four passengers in the van and
radioed this information to dispatch. The deputy activated his lights and siren in
an attempt to stop the vehicle, but the van began to accelerate. One of the
escapees fired a shot at the deputy from the van.
Over the next forty minutes, more than nine law enforcement agencies
established ten separate roadblocks in an effort to stop the minivan. Officers
from the Custer County and Roger Mills County Sheriff Departments established
the first two roadblocks. Neither the officers nor the escapees fired shots at either
of these roadblocks. Defendant Sam Shelton set up the third roadblock and fired
-3-
one shot at the van. The district court found that, prior to discharging his gun,
Shelton had heard a police broadcast about the possibility of hostages in the van.
Officers from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections manned the fourth
unsuccessful roadblock and did not fire any shots.
After the fourth roadblock, the encounters escalated. At the fifth
roadblock, defendants Joe Williams and Dan Honeycutt both fired two rounds in
an attempt to disable the vehicle. Both Williams and Honeycutt had heard the
broadcast about the possibility of hostages. At the sixth roadblock, defendants
Marvin Noyes and Lyle Lubbers fired on the van. Lubbers remembered hearing
the hostage broadcast before the roadblock; Noyes did not recall ever receiving
any information about hostages. As the van passed through the seventh
roadblock, defendant Jerry Jones fired two rounds at the grill area of the vehicle,
and defendant Thor Carlson fired two shots when the van passed his position.
Both defendants fired additional shots at the rear of the van. At the eighth
roadblock, defendant Nicky Smith fired one round. Defendants C.L. Parkins and
Jerry McGrath had positioned a single vehicle as the ninth roadblock. Parkins
fired two rounds at the left rear tire of the van, and McGrath fired on a tire and
the engine compartment. After the van passed through this roadblock, Parkins
saw one of the convicts hold Caitlyn Childress out the window. The Oklahoma
Highway Patrol then broadcast this information.
-4-
The van reached the final roadblock less than two minutes after the
broadcast concerning Caitlyn. Various defendants fired a total of twenty-one
rounds at the van as it passed through an intersection. This fusillade disabled the
vehicle, and the officers apprehended the escapees. Mrs. Childress and Caitlyn
both suffered injuries during the chase. Mrs. Childress was shot in the hip, leg,
lungs, chest, arm and hand. Caitlyn received injuries to her chest, legs and back.
There is no dispute that the shots fired by defendants injured both Mrs. Childress
and Caitlyn.
II.
42 U.S.C. § 1983 “provides a remedy against any person who, under color
of state law, deprives another of rights protected by the Constitution.” Radecki v.
Barela, 146 F.3d 1227, 1229 (10th Cir. 1998). Plaintiffs assert that defendants’
actions at the roadblocks effected a seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ § 1983 claim under Fed. R. Civ. P.
12(b)(6). The sufficiency of a complaint is a question of law, and we therefore
review the district court’s ruling de novo. Sutton v. Utah State Sch. for the Deaf
& Blind, 173 F.3d 1226, 1236 (10th Cir. 1999).
The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from “unreasonable searches
and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. To state a claim under the Fourth
Amendment, plaintiffs must show both that a “seizure” occurred and that the
-5-
seizure was “unreasonable.” Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 599
(1989). We have previously considered when police pursuit rises to the level of a
Fourth Amendment seizure. Bella v. Chamberlain, 24 F.3d 1251 (10th Cir. 1994).
In Bella, the plaintiff owned and operated a helicopter. Id. at 1253. A woman
chartered the helicopter under false pretense and then forced the plaintiff to assist
in the escape of some prison inmates. Id. Law enforcement personnel, in
another helicopter, fired upon the plaintiff’s helicopter and eventually forced him
to land. Id. According to the plaintiff, law enforcement officials knew during the
chase that he was an innocent hostage. Id.
We found that the shots fired by the officers did not result in a seizure of
the plaintiff-hostage because “[t]he shots constituted an assertion of authority, but
they did not cause [the plaintiff] to submit.” Id. at 1256. We noted “that it may
not be a foregone conclusion that a Fourth Amendment ‘seizure’ would have
occurred even had the officer’s shot accidentally hit [plaintiff].” Id. at 1256 n.6.
Given the facts before us in Bella, we found it unnecessary to address that
question further. Today, we reach the issue left undecided in the Bella footnote.
“Violation of the Fourth Amendment requires an intentional acquisition of
physical control. A seizure occurs even when an unintended person or thing is the
object of the detention or taking, but the detention or taking itself must be
willful.” Brower, 489 U.S. at 596. Plaintiffs contend that the police actions in
-6-
this case meet the Brower threshold of intent and thus qualify as a Fourth
Amendment seizure. Specifically, plaintiffs argue that the officers deliberately
fired upon the minivan at the final roadblock with knowledge that hostages were
inside. They claim this conduct qualifies as “willful” under Brower.
Other courts of appeal, construing Brower, have already decided the
question before us. In Landol-Rivera v. Cosme, 906 F.2d 791 (1st Cir. 1990), a
fast-food worker was taken hostage by an armed robber. In apprehending the
robber, police shot the hostage with a bullet intended for his captor. Id. at 792.
The First Circuit found that the police had not seized the fast-food worker,
“reject[ing] the notion that the ‘intention’ requirement [from Brower] is met by
the deliberateness with which a given action is taken.” Id. at 795. The court
concluded that “[a] police officer’s deliberate decision to shoot at a car
containing a robber and a hostage for the purpose of stopping the robber’s flight
does not result in the sort of willful detention of the hostage that the Fourth
Amendment was designed to govern.” Id.
Additional circuits presented with similar facts have reached the same
conclusion. Medeiros v. O’Connell, 150 F.3d 164, 169 (2nd Cir. 1998) (holding
that no seizure occurred when police officers wounded a hostage during pursuit of
a fugitive), Rucker v. Harford County, Md., 946 F.2d 278, 279 (4th Cir. 1991)
(holding that no seizure occurred when officers wounded a bystander in an
-7-
attempt to shoot the tires of a fugitive’s car). But cf. Roach v. City of
Fredericktown, Mo., 882 F.2d 294, 297 (8th Cir. 1989) (finding that a claim by
individuals who were struck by a police car in pursuit of a fugitive “is most
properly characterized as one invoking the protections” of the Fourth Amendment,
but ultimately holding that the high speed pursuit was reasonable under the
circumstances).
The police officers in the instant case did not “seize” plaintiffs within the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment but rather made every effort to deliver them
from unlawful abduction. The officers intended to restrain the minivan and the
fugitives, not Mrs. Childress and Caitlyn. The injuries inflicted were the
unfortunate but not unconstitutional “accidental effects of otherwise lawful
conduct.” Brower, 489 U.S. at 596. In keeping with our sister circuits, we hold
that no Fourth Amendment seizure occurred in the instant case.
III.
Plaintiffs also assert that the officers violated their Fourteenth Amendment
guarantee of substantive due process. The district court entered summary
judgment in favor of defendants on this § 1983 claim. We review the district
court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same legal standard
used by the district court. Simms v. Oklahoma ex rel. Dep’t of Mental Health &
Substance Abuse Servs., 165 F.3d 1321, 1326 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 120 S. Ct.
-8-
53 (1999).
In County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998), the Supreme Court
clarified the substantive due process standard of culpability for an officer
involved in a police pursuit. The Court held that “in a high-speed automobile
chase aimed at apprehending a suspected offender . . . only a purpose to cause
harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest” is sufficiently “shocking to the
conscience” to establish a due process violation. Id. at 836. In rejecting a
“deliberate indifference” standard of fault, the Court stressed that such a standard
is workable “only when actual deliberation is practical.” Id. at 851. Police
officers giving chase make decisions “in haste, under pressure, and frequently
without the luxury of a second chance.” Id. at 853 (internal quotation marks and
citation omitted). Given these pressures, the Court concluded that “high-speed
chases with no intent to harm suspects physically or to worsen their legal plight
do not give rise to liability under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. at 854.
Applying Lewis, we have previously directed dismissal of claims brought
on behalf of an innocent bystander killed during a police struggle with a suspect.
Radecki v. Barela, 146 F.3d 1227, 1232 (10th Cir. 1998). The Lewis principles
therefore apply whether the claimant is a police suspect or an innocent victim.
The touchstone is whether the officers “acted with an intent to harm the
participants or to worsen their legal plight.” Id.
-9-
Reviewing the record before us, we find no genuine issue of material fact
precluding summary judgment. Plaintiffs claim that the officers were grossly
negligent, reckless and even deliberately indifferent to their plight. Nowhere do
plaintiffs present specific facts suggesting that the officers harbored an intent to
harm them. Thus, there is no constitutional liability under Lewis. We therefore
affirm the district court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
and related provisions. 1
AFFIRMED.
1
In their initial complaint, plaintiffs also alleged that defendants conspired
to abridge their constitutional rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1985 and 1986.
The district court found that plaintiffs had abandoned these claims in their second
amended complaint. Even assuming these claims were not abandoned below, we
affirm the district court’s dismissal. Section 1985(3), the subsection on which we
presume plaintiffs rely, and Section 1986 create no independent substantive
causes of action. Wheeler v. Swimmer, 835 F.2d 259, 261 (10th Cir. 1987). The
only substantive claims plaintiffs assert are the constitutional grounds that we
have rejected.
-10-