FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
December 22, 2009
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
BERTHA GONZALES; JADE
GONZALES,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v. No. 08-2184
WILLIAM DURAN; STEVE HALL;
RICHARD DILLEY; MARY
KENDRICK, in their individual
capacities; CITY OF
ALBUQUERQUE,
Defendants - Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW MEXICO
(D.C. No. 01-CV-00898)
Paul Kennedy (Mary Y.C. Han and Darin M. Foster, with him on the briefs) of
Kennedy & Han, P.C., Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiffs - Appellants.
Kathryn Levy, Deputy City Attorney, City of Albuquerque (Lisa Entress Pullen of
Civerolo, Gralow, Hill & Curtis, P.A., with her on the brief), Albuquerque, New
Mexico, for Defendants - Appellees.
Before KELLY, EBEL, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.
KELLY, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiffs-Appellants Bertha and Jade Gonzales appeal from the district
court’s judgment on a jury verdict in favor of Defendants-Appellees police
officers, William Duran, Steve Hall, Richard Dilley, and Mary Kendrick, and the
City of Albuquerque. Plaintiffs maintain that the district court 1 improperly
submitted the issue of qualified immunity (for the defendant police officers) to
the jury. Our jurisdiction arises under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and we affirm finding
harmless error.
Background
In this federal civil rights action, Plaintiffs claimed that the Defendants
violated Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights based upon an unlawful
detention and interrogation during an investigation. Aplt. Br. at 2. On June 14,
1999, Sam Gonzales, the husband of Bertha Gonzales and father of Jade
Gonzales, was shot when Jade went to get a gun for Sam. Aplt. App. 65. Jade
was 12 years old at the time and Sam died shortly thereafter. Aplt. App. 65. The
police suspected that Sam was murdered by members of his family. Aplt. App.
370. The case was submitted to the jury on two basic claims.
The first claim was that Plaintiffs were detained without probable cause in
violation of their Fourth Amendment rights as incorporated by the Fourteenth
1
The case was tried to a magistrate judge by consent.
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Amendment. This claim ran against Defendants Duran, Hall and Dilley and arose
out the following facts. On July 12, 1999, Albuquerque Police Department
officers obtained a warrant to install a listening device in the Gonzales’s home.
Aplt. App. 374-78. The warrant authorized the officers to install the device by a
ruse. Apt. App. 378. The ruse involved telling the Plaintiffs and their neighbors
that, because a fictional armed burglar was in the area, evacuation of the “danger
zone” was necessary. Aplt. App. 379-80. Bertha Gonzales returned from a
grocery trip to find police officers on her street. Aplt. App. 527-28. An officer
told Bertha that because of a hostage situation involving a gun, she could not
return to her home. Aplt. App. 527-31. At the officer’s instruction, Bertha and
her children, including Jade, waited in a police mobile unit for an hour-and-a-half
to two hours. Aplt. App. 530.
The second claim was that Jade was deprived of her substantive due
process rights as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment—specifically, the
right to be free of arbitrary and abusive governmental conduct that shocks the
conscience. This claim ran against all of the individual Defendants and stemmed
from Jade’s arrest on the night of August 7, 1999. Plaintiffs contended that APD
officers interrogated Jade without advising her of her right to have her attorney or
mother present, and refused Jade access to her attorney or mother. Aplt. App. 69.
Plaintiffs disputed that Jade waived her rights. Aplt. App. 69-70.
The Defendant officers raised qualified immunity as an affirmative defense
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to both claims. Aplt. App. 157. The district court denied Defendants’ motion for
judgment as a matter of law, as well as denying the Defendant officers qualified
immunity—both at the close of the Plaintiffs’ case-in-chief and at the close of the
Defendants’ case. Aplt. App. 620-28; Aplt. App. 635. The court instructed the
jury on the Plaintiffs’ unlawful detention and unlawful interrogation claims under
42 U.S.C. § 1983. Aplt. App. 148-53. Over Plaintiffs’ objections, the court also
instructed the jury on qualified immunity. 2
2
The court instructed:
If you find that one or more of the Plaintiffs have proven their
claims, you must then consider the Defendants’ affirmative defenses
that their conduct was objectively reasonable in light of the legal
rules clearly established at the time of the incident and that they are
therefore not liable. This reasonableness inquiry is an objective one:
the question is whether the officer’s actions are objectively
reasonable in light of the fact and circumstances [sic] confronting the
officer, without regard to the officer’s underlying intent or
motivation.
Police officers are presumed to know about the clearly
established constitutional rights of citizens. In this case, citizens
have a clearly established right to be free from an unreasonable
seizure. The Plaintiffs are not required to prove that Defendant(s)
acted with the specific knowledge of this constitutional right.
If, after considering the scope of discretion and responsibility
generally given to police officers in the performance of their duties,
and after considering all of the surrounding circumstances of the case
as they would have reasonably appeared at the time of the seizure,
you find by a preponderance of the evidence that Defendant(s) had an
objectively reasonable belief that their actions would not violate the
constitutional rights of the Plaintiffs, then you cannot find the
(continued...)
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Plaintiffs objected to this instruction on the ground that it put “the issue of
qualified immunity to the jury.” Aplt. App. 637. They noted that it was adapted
from a Fifth Circuit pattern jury instruction, see Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instr.
Civ. 10.1 at 126-27 (2009 rev.), and a note accompanying the instruction
explained that where there is agreement as to the historical facts, a court must
resolve the issue of qualified immunity, not a jury. Id. at 126 n.2 (citing Mangieri
v. Clifton, 29 F.3d 1012, 1016 (5th Cir. 1994)). The underlying historical facts
going to qualified immunity were not in dispute, Plaintiffs argued, so “the issue
of the availability of the qualified immunity defense must be resolved at the
summary judgment stage by the court, not in a trial by the jury.” Aplt. App. 638.
The court also provided the jury with special interrogatories. Aplt. App.
179-83. Several are important to this appeal and are set out below. 3
2
(...continued)
Defendant(s) liable even if one or more of the Plaintiffs’ rights were
in fact violated as a result of Defendant(s)’ action.
Aplt. App. 157.
3
The special interrogatories provided in pertinent part (with the jury’s
answers indicated by a check mark):
1. Did any of the following Defendants violate Jade Gonzales’ Fourth
Amendment right not to be detained without probable cause?
William Duran Yes _____ No _____U
Steve Hall Yes _____ No _____U
Richard Dilley Yes _____ No _____U
(continued...)
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3
(...continued)
. . . . If you answered “No” to all of the above Defendants, please go to Question
No. 2.
....
2. Did any of the following Defendants violate Bertha Gonzales’ Fourth
Amendment right not to be detained without probable cause?
William Duran Yes _____ No _____U
Steve Hall Yes _____ No _____U
Richard Dilley Yes _____ No _____U
. . . . If you answered “No” to all of the above Defendants, please go to Question
No. 3.
....
3. Did Defendant William Duran in his supervisory capacity participate
and acquiesce in the Defendants Hall, Dilley and Kendrick’s interrogation?
Yes _____ No _____U
. . . . If you answered “No,” go to Question No. 4.
....
4. Was each Defendant’s conduct objectively reasonable as explained to
you in the jury instructions?
William Duran Yes _____UNo _____
Steve Hall Yes _____UNo _____
Richard Dilley Yes _____UNo _____
Please answer Question No. 5.
5. Did any of the following Defendants violate Jade Gonzales’ Fourteenth
Amendment Right to be free of arbitrary and abusive governmental conduct that
shocks the conscience?
William Duran Yes _____ No _____U
Steve Hall Yes _____ No _____U
Richard Dilley Yes _____ No _____U
Mary Kendrick Yes _____ No _____U
(continued...)
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Question No. 1 asked whether individual Defendants (Duran, Hall, and Dilley)
violated the Jade Gonzales’s “Fourth Amendment right to not be detained without
probable cause.” Aplt. App. 179. Question No. 2 asked the same question
regarding Bertha Gonzales’s Fourth Amendment rights. Aplt. App. 180. The jury
answered both questions “No” as to each defendant. Aplt. App. 179-80. To
Question No. 3, whether Duran as supervisor “participate[d] and acquiesce[d] in .
. . Hall, Dilley, and Kendrick’s interrogation,” the jury checked “No.” Aplt. App.
179-80. The interrogatories then instructed that if the jury answered “No” to
Question No. 3, it was to proceed to Question No. 4 on qualified immunity. After
a question on causation (which would not have applied given the jury’s answers),
the interrogatories instructed “If you answered ‘No’ to all of the three previous
questions or the sub-parts, please go to Question No. 5.” Aplt. App. 179-80. The
jury then proceeded to answer Question No. 4: “Was each Defendant’s conduct
objectively reasonable as explained to you in the jury instructions?” The jury
answered “Yes” as to each individual Defendant. Aplt. App. 181. Finally, the
jury proceeded to Question No. 5: “Did any of the following Defendants violate
3
(...continued)
. . . . If you answered “No” to all of the above Defendants, and you answered
“No” to Questions 1, 2, and 3, or the subparts, then you are not to answer any
further questions.
Aplt. App. 179-181.
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Jade Gonzales’ Fourteenth Amendment Right to be free of arbitrary and abusive
governmental conduct that shocks the conscience?” The jury answered “No” as to
each individual Defendant. Aplt. App. 181. Based on the jury’s verdict, the court
entered judgment on July 31, 2008. Aplt. App. 184.
Discussion
We review de novo whether the court erroneously instructed the jury on the
applicable law. Sherouse v. Ratchner, 573 F.3d 1055, 1059 (10th Cir. 2009).
“Despite this standard of review, we do not require perfection, but ‘we must be
satisfied that, upon hearing the instructions, the jury understood the issues to be
resolved and its duty to resolve them.” Smith v. Ingersoll-Rand Co., 214 F.3d
1235, 1250 (10th Cir. 2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). This court
reviews de novo both a district court’s ruling on qualified immunity, Farmer v.
Perrill, 288 F.3d 1254, 1259 (10th Cir. 2002), and the submission of qualified
immunity to the jury. Maestas v. Lujan, 351 F.3d 1001, 1007 (10th Cir. 2003).
Qualified immunity “protects government officials from liability for civil
damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Pearson
v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808, 815 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Therefore, qualified immunity requires four determinations: (1) what actually
happened, (2) whether the plaintiff asserted a violation of a constitutional or
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statutory right, (3) whether the law had clearly established that right, and (4)
whether an objectively reasonable defendant would have understood his conduct
to violate that clearly established right. See Maestas, 351 F.3d at 1006-07.
Qualified immunity is “almost always” a question of law. Keylon v. City
of Albuquerque, 535 F.3d 1210, 1217 (10th Cir. 2008). Like many other
questions of law raised in pre-trial motions, the trial court often decides the issue
before trial. Id. A trial court may submit a question of qualified immunity to the
jury only “‘in exceptional circumstances’ [where] historical facts [are] so
intertwined with the law that a jury question is appropriate as to whether a
reasonable person in the defendant’s position would have known that his conduct
violated [the] right [at issue].” Id. at 1217-18 (quoting Maestas, 351 F.3d at
1007). Thus, the predicate for submitting a qualified immunity question to the
jury is the existence of disputed issues of material fact — that is, the question of
what actually happened.
Where such factual disputes are present, there are three possible ways for a
trial court to submit the qualified immunity question to the jury. First, the court
could submit special interrogatories to the jury to establish the facts. Based on
the jury’s findings, the court could then determine whether the defendant’s
conduct was objectively reasonable in light of the clearly established law.
Second, the judge could define the clearly established law for the jury. Then, the
court could instruct the jury to determine what the defendant actually did and
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whether it was reasonable in light of the clearly established law defined by the
judge. This second approach is the one apparently taken by the district court in
this case. Third, the court could simply allow the jury to determine what the
clearly established law is, what the defendant actually did, and whether the
defendant’s conduct was objectively reasonable in light of the clearly established
law found by the jury. This last approach, of course, is clearly inappropriate.
Although our cases have allowed the second approach, they have done so
only when narrow issues of disputed material fact are dispositive of the qualified
immunity inquiry. Keylon, 535 F.3d at 1219. Consideration of the proper
division of labor between courts and juries in civil actions suggests that the
second approach should be used rarely for several reasons. First, an “essential
characteristic” of the federal court system is that it “assigns the decisions of
disputed questions of fact to the jury.” Byrd v. Blue Ridge Coop., 356 U.S. 525,
537 (1958). Legal questions are reserved to the courts.
Second, in deciding whether a right is clearly established, an essential part
of the qualified immunity inquiry, a court must assess whether the right was
clearly established against a backdrop of the objective legal reasonableness of the
actor’s conduct. Keylon, 535 F.3d at 1218. Letting the jury determine whether
the officer’s actions were reasonable in light of the clearly established law has the
potential of asking the jury to resolve a legal question.
Third, allowing the jury to decide qualified immunity almost always
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generates an issue on appeal as to whether the circumstances were exceptional
enough to warrant such a procedure. In those few cases where qualified immunity
may turn on a jury’s resolution of discrete factual questions, we think that the
better approach is for the court to submit special interrogatories to the jury to
establish the facts. 4 We think that such a procedure is fully consistent with, and
indeed better supported by, our past cases.
In Lutz v. Weld County School District No. 6, we held that a court may
instruct the jury on qualified immunity only where parties raise “a fact issue as to
whether there were exceptional circumstances such that a reasonable person in
[the defendants’] positions would not have known of the relevant legal standard.”
784 F.2d 340, 343 (10th Cir. 1986). Because no disputed facts material to
qualified immunity existed, “the jury instruction on immunity was erroneously
given.” Id. However, we held the error to be harmless upon observing that the
court’s charge regarding the plaintiff’s constitutional rights was clear and “that
the jury was given no role in deciding whether the law was clearly established.”
Id.
4
Such fact-finding interrogatories require the court to focus on which
disputed facts are dispositive of the qualified immunity inquiry and ensures the
proper allocation of responsibility between the judge and jury. Once the jury
determines the purely historical facts, the judge then decides the three legal
questions of qualified immunity: whether the actions violated the plaintiff’s
constitutional rights, whether those constitutional rights were clearly established,
and whether the objectively reasonable defendant “would have known that his
conduct violated that right.” Maestas, 351 F.3d at 1007.
-11-
Our decision in Walker v. Elbert applied a similar harmless error analysis.
75 F.3d 592 (10th Cir. 1996). The trial court in Walker asked the jury whether, in
light of clearly established law, a person in the defendant’s “position [should]
reasonably have been aware of this law.” Id. at 598. Citing circuit precedent, we
noted that “a defendant may rely on special circumstances to raise an issue of fact
to be determined by a jury.” Id. (citing Cannon v. City & County of Denver, 998
F.2d 867, 876 (10th Cir. 1993); Lutz, 784 F.2d 340). Following Lutz, we found it
dispositive that the defendant “presented evidence of circumstances which would
entitle the jury to find that a reasonable person in his position would not have
known of the relevant legal standards.” Id. at 599. Therefore, “[w]hether [the
defendant] was entitled to immunity as a matter of law, or whether he was entitled
to immunity under a finding of fact by the jury, we find there was no error on the
issue of the immunity defense.” Id. This summary treatment is not exactly clear.
Either the defendant was entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law (in
which case the issue was not a jury question) or the disputed facts raised a proper
jury question. One of the two approaches must have been error. The most
sensible construction of Walker, especially in light of our nod to Cannon and
Lutz, is that we deemed the jury instruction to be harmless error. In other words,
because the jury could properly decide disputed historical facts, the erroneous
submission of the broader legal question of objective reasonableness to the jury
was harmless.
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Our most recent cases favor a narrow approach where a jury decides only
disputed historical facts underlying a qualified immunity defense. In Maestas v.
Lujan, we held “that a contested issue of fact that is material to the qualified
immunity analysis gives rise to a jury question.” 351 F.3d at 1008. Nonetheless,
we approved an instruction allowing the jury to evaluate the objective
reasonableness of a defendant’s conduct. Id. at 1009-10. We did so only because
specific key, disputed facts were “dispositive of the qualified immunity issue.”
Id. at 1010. We emphasized this point: “A jury question exists only when a
disputed issue of material fact concerning the objective reasonableness of the
defendant’s actions exists.” Id.
Relying heavily on Maestas, this court in Keylon held that the district court
erroneously submitted the question of qualified immunity to the jury. Keylon,
535 F.3d at 1218. “Because any factual dispute in this case does not go to the
question of the objective reasonableness of [the defendant officer’s] actions, this
case is not an exceptional circumstance, and the qualified immunity question
should not have been submitted to the jury.” Id. at 1219-20 (internal quotation
marks omitted). Keylon clarified that exceptional circumstances exist only where
the jury must decide disputed historical facts.
In this case, had the parties disputed historical facts crucial to the qualified
immunity determination, the trial court could have submitted those facts to the
jury for a determination. Plaintiffs have consistently argued, both below and on
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appeal, that the facts material to the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims
were not disputed and therefore the objective reasonableness question was
entirely legal. See Aplt. Br. at 9, 14-16; Aplt. App. 638. On the other hand, the
Defendants argue generally that there were disputed facts on the Fourth
Amendment claim going to objective reasonableness, and specifically that there
were disputed facts concerning Plaintiff Jade Gonzales’s Fourteenth Amendment
claim, such as whether Defendant Duran asked her any questions, whether Jade
was allowed to use the bathroom and the length of her detention. Aplee. Br. at
15-16, 21, 29. The court instructed the jury on the qualified immunity defense
and submitted the entire issue to the jury. Aplt. App. 157, 181. This was
certainly error as to the Fourth Amendment claim because no factual disputes
dispositive of the qualified immunity inquiry existed. 5
Defendants argue that any error in submitting the question of objective
reasonableness to the jury was harmless because the jury’s other answers
indicated a total defense verdict. Aplee. Br. at 14-15. We agree. “Unless justice
requires otherwise, no error in admitting or excluding evidence – or any other
error by the court or a party – is ground for granting a new trial, for setting aside
a verdict, or for vacating, modifying, or otherwise disturbing a judgment or
5
The qualified immunity interrogatory followed interrogatories on the
Fourth Amendment claims, and preceded an interrogatory on the Fourteenth
Amendment claim.
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order.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 61. “An erroneous jury instruction requires reversal . . .
only if the error is determined to have been prejudicial, based on a review of the
record as a whole.” Sherouse, 573 F.3d at 1059 (internal quotation marks
omitted). See also World Wide Ass’n of Specialty Programs v. Pure, Inc., 450
F.3d 1132, 1139 (10th Cir. 2006) (“Even if the district court erred, we will affirm
as long as the error is harmless in the context of the trial as a whole.”). As
reflected in the special interrogatories and resulting judgment, the jury decided
the Plaintiffs’ claims on the merits and determined that the individual Defendants
were not liable. Aplt. App. at 179-81, 184. This obviated the need for an
affirmative defense of qualified immunity.
Plaintiffs suggest that the qualified immunity instruction was not harmless.
The instruction confused the jury and resulted in prejudice, their argument goes,
because the trial court had already denied the Defendants’ renewed motion for
judgment as a matter of law. Aplt. Br. at 13. “By requesting that the jury
consider an issue already resolved as a matter of law by the court, the trial judge
created a situation of inherent jury confusion.” Aplt. Br. at 14. This argument is
counter-factual: the trial judge explained that “[t]he jury will be instructed on the
defense of qualified immunity and at this point, I think I’ll leave it up to them as
to whether they feel that that’s a valid defense.” Aplt. App. 627-28. Thus, the
trial judge did not make a ruling on qualified immunity. Moreover, even had the
issue been decided, the qualified immunity issue may be reviewed after trial
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through a post-trial motion. Cassady v. Goering, 567 F.3d 628, 634 (10th Cir.
2009).
Though Plaintiffs argue “inherent jury confusion,” Aplt. Br. at 13-14, Aplt.
Reply Br. at 6, they cannot point to any remark or finding by the trial judge that
might have confused the jury. Without more, speculation is not sufficient for us
to conclude that the court confused the jury merely by instructing them (and
having them complete an interrogatory) on an issue that the court should have
decided. In light of the jury’s answers on liability, the error was harmless.
Finally, we note that the City of Albuquerque is before this court on this
problematic qualified immunity jury instruction for the second time in about a
year-and-a-half. See Keylon, 535 F.3d at 1212. At trial, which in fairness
concluded about one week before our decision in Keylon, the City told the trial
court that the City “routinely puts this in.” Aplt. App. 648. Given our clear
instructions in Keylon and this case, we trust that a reevaluation of that practice
has already or will occur.
AFFIRMED.
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08-2184, Gonzales v. Duran, et al.
Ebel, J., Concurring.
I join the majority opinion completely and write this brief concurrence only
to emphasize one point: if a district court submits the question of qualified
immunity to the jury because there are disputed historical facts material to
resolving the immunity question, the district court should submit to the jury only
the disputed factual contentions underlying the immunity question and should
reserve for itself the legal question of objective reasonableness.
I agree with the majority that a court may submit the issue of qualified
immunity to the jury only where there is a dispute of fact pivotal to determining
whether the defendant is entitled to qualified immunity. I also agree with the
majority that there were no such material facts in dispute with respect to the
Gonzales’ Fourth Amendment claims, but that the error in submitting the
qualified immunity question to the jury on that claim was harmless. See supra at
14-15.
However, I would prefer to conclude unequivocally that there were
disputed material facts with respect to Jade Gonzales’ Fourteenth Amendment
claim. Thus, in my opinion, if the qualified immunity defense was submitted to
the jury regarding the Fourteenth Amendment claim (and the majority opinion
correctly notes that that proposition is far from clear), then I would conclude that
there would have been no error in submitting that defense to the jury had the
submission been limited to the factual components. But, I think the district court
erred in phrasing the qualified immunity interrogatory in a manner that allowed
the jury to resolve the legal question of whether the defendants’ conduct was
“objectively reasonable” in light of the clearly established law. Nonetheless, I
would find that Gonzales waived her right to rely on this error, and even if she
had not, the error was harmless. On this basis, I concur with the majority and
agree that this court should affirm.
DISCUSSION
A. The Fourteenth Amendment Claim
Normally, a district court must resolve the question of qualified immunity.
Keylon v. City of Albuquerque, 535 F.3d 1210, 1217 (10th Cir. 2008). A district
court may submit the question of qualified immunity to the jury only where
historical facts necessary to resolution of that question are disputed, see Maestas
v. Lujan, 351 F.3d 1001, 1007 (10th Cir. 2003); that is, if a district court were to
view the disputed facts first in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and then in
the light most favorable to the defendant, the district court would reach a different
conclusion as to the qualified immunity question under the two views of the facts.
In such a situation, a reasonable jury could accept either version of the facts, and
the resolution of the qualified immunity issue would turn on which version the
jury accepts.
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In this case, there were disputed facts pivotal to whether the defendants’
conduct in interrogating Jade Gonzales was “objectively reasonable” in light of
clearly established law. Jade Gonzales, who was twelve at the time of the
interrogation, presented evidence from which a jury could find that Officers Hall,
Dilley, Duran, and Kendrick severely berated Gonzales with curse words, threats
of jail, and comments that her mom did not “give a shit about [her]” (Aplt. App.
at 569-27), questioned her about her father’s sexual affairs, caused her to soil
herself in front of three adult men, intentionally ignored her requests for an
attorney, and intentionally did not Mirandize her. Viewed in the light most
favorable to the defendants, however, a jury could find that Gonzales was not
abusively yelled at, Officer Duran was never even present during the interview,
the interview was a spontaneous, short discussion, Gonzales never requested an
attorney, and Gonzales never wet herself as she was made to wait only a short
time to use the restroom. If the jury accepted Gonzales’ version of the facts, the
defendants’ conduct would not be objectively reasonable in light of Gonzales’
clearly established substantive due process rights. However, if the jury accepted
the defendants’ version of the facts, a court would reach the contrary legal
conclusion. Thus, the disputed facts are material to the qualified immunity issue,
and the district court did not err in submitting the qualified immunity question to
the jury.
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B. The Phraseology of the Qualified Immunity Question
While the district court may not have erred in submitting this particular
qualified immunity question to the jury, it did err in how it stated the immunity
question to the jury. Specifically, to the extent the interrogatory asked the jury to
decide whether the defendants’ conduct was objectively reasonable, the district
court erred. Stating that a district court may “submit the question of qualified
immunity to the jury” when there are material disputed facts is somewhat
misleading. Whether a defendant’s conduct is objectively reasonable is always a
question of law for the court. The only reason a district court does not resolve the
qualified immunity question before the case goes to the jury is because there are
underlying disputed historical facts necessary to resolution of that legal issue.
The jury needs only to resolve those disputed facts to allow the court to resolve
the legal question of objective reasonableness. Thus, the district court should
have submitted specific fact-finding interrogatories to the jury that would have
allowed it to resolve the material disputed facts, but the district court should have
reserved for itself the question of whether the defendants’ conduct was
objectively reasonable in light of clearly established law. See, e.g., Curley v.
Klem, 499 F.3d 199, 211 (3d Cir. 2007) (“[W]hether an officer made a reasonable
mistake of law and is thus entitled to qualified immunity is a question of law that
is properly answered by the court, not a jury . . . [and] [w]hen a district court
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submits that question of law to a jury, it commits reversible error.” (internal
citation omitted)); Zellner v. Summerlin, 494 F.3d 344, 368 (2d Cir. 2007) (“Once
the jury has resolved any disputed facts that are material to the qualified
immunity issue, the ultimate determination of whether the officer’s conduct was
objectively reasonable is to be made by the court.”); Willingham v. Crooke, 412
F.3d 553, 559-60 (4th Cir. 2005); Littrell v. Franklin, 388 F.3d 578, 585-86 (8th
Cir. 2004); Pouillon v. City of Owosso, 206 F.3d 711, 718-19 (6th Cir. 2000);
Warlick v. Cross, 969 F.2d 303, 305-06 (7th Cir. 1992); Prokey v. Watkins, 942
F.2d 67, 73 (1st Cir. 1991).
In this case, however, the district court’s improper submission of the
“objectively reasonable” question to the jury does not mandate reversal. First,
Gonzales waived this ground for relief by failing to object at trial to the
phraseology of the interrogatory. See Fischer v. Forestwood Co., 525 F.3d 972,
978 n.2 (10th Cir. 2008) (“[A]rguments not raised in the district court are waived
on appeal.” (citing Rosewood Servs., Inc. v. Sunflower Diversified Servs., Inc.,
413 F.3d 1163, 1167 (10th Cir. 2005)). Second, even if Gonzales had raised this
issue, the error would be harmless because, as the majority explained in its
harmless error analysis, supra at 14, the jury separately reached the merits of Jade
Gonzales’ Fourteenth Amendment claim and concluded that the defendants
committed no constitutional violation. Because this conclusion obviated the need
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to reach the merits and Gonzales has not otherwise shown prejudice, the error in
phrasing the immunity question was harmless. See supra at 14-15.
I think a court should never ask the jury to resolve the legal question of
whether a defendant’s conduct is objectively reasonable. Nonetheless, I do not
find it necessary to quarrel with the majority or to urge en banc review of our
precedents because of the way I resolve this issue.
I concur with the majority’s judgment in this case and agree that this court
should affirm.
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