IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
August 4, 2008
No. 08-30163 Charles R. Fulbruge III
Summary Calendar Clerk
SHAWN CONNORS
Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
WILLIE GRAVES; BRIAN SMITH; BEN SMITH
Defendants-Appellees
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Louisiana
Case No. 04-906-A-M1
Before HIGGINBOTHAM, SMITH, and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.
HAYNES, Circuit Judge:
Shawn Connors appeals an adverse summary judgment on his excessive
force, unlawful seizure, and conspiracy claims against law enforcement officers
Ben Smith and Brian Smith and the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office through
Sheriff Willie Graves. The district court determined that Connors could not
pursue his claims against the defendants because they were entitled to qualified
immunity. We affirm the district court’s judgment, but we do so on different
grounds than did the district court.1 We hold that Connors’s civil claims are
1
See Performance Autoplex II Ltd. v. Mid-Continent Cas. Co., 322 F.3d 847, 853 (5th
Cir. 2003) (“We may affirm summary judgment on any legal ground raised below, even if it was
No. 08-30163
barred under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), because success on those
claims would necessarily impugn Connors’s state criminal convictions which
arose from the same underlying facts.
I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
According to the defendants, Connors attempted to rob Hibernia Bank in
Albany, Louisiana, failed in those attempts, and then fled the scene. Law
enforcement officers, including officers Ben Smith and Brian Smith, pursued
Connors’s vehicle. During the pursuit, Connors allegedly fired his weapon at the
officers. After numerous attempts to deflate the tires on Connors’s vehicle failed,
he traversed the median of the interstate and began traveling in the opposite
direction. At this point, one of the officers fired his weapon, striking Connors in
the forearm. Connors then swerved and struck an occupied vehicle.
Connors filed the present lawsuit seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
resulting from the alleged deprivation of his constitutional rights by law
enforcement officers acting under the color of state law. In proceedings before
the district court in this case, Connors claimed that he never fired at the officers.
He alleged that officers Ben Smith and Brian Smith deprived him of his
constitutional rights to be free from excessive force and unlawful seizure. He
also claimed that the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office, through Sheriff Willie
Graves, acquiesced in and/or condoned this conduct. He also brought a
conspiracy claim against the defendants related to this conduct.2
The district court stayed Connors’s claims pending resolution of state
criminal charges arising from the same underlying conduct. Connors
subsequently pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle under
not the basis for the district court’s decision.”).
2
Although Connors’s complaint also purports to bring negligence and/or gross
negligence claims under Louisiana law, the district court declined to exercise supplemental
jurisdiction over those claims.
2
No. 08-30163
LA. REV. STAT. ANN. § 14:94(E) (1995), a felony under Louisiana law. See LA.
CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 933(3). He also pleaded guilty to attempted simple
burglary and negligent injury. Connors’s counsel then informed the federal
district court of Connors’s guilty pleas, stating that “[t]his completes the criminal
aspect of this case.” He also requested that the court set Connors’s claims on an
active docket. Connors does not assert in this appeal that he has challenged his
criminal convictions, either through a direct appeal or a habeas proceeding, and
the record does not indicate that any such action is pending.
The defendants filed a rule 12(b)(6) motion, arguing that Connors’s claims
were barred by the Heck doctrine or, alternatively, that the defendants were
entitled to qualified immunity. After notice, the district court converted the rule
12(b)(6) motion into a summary judgment motion and dismissed Connors’s
claims on the immunity grounds, expressing no opinion on the applicability of
Heck. The district court found that because Connors admitted discharging a
weapon at officers when he pleaded guilty under section 14:94(E), the officers
necessarily acted reasonably when they used deadly force to effectuate his
arrest.
II. DISCUSSION
On appeal, Connors contends that the district court erred in holding that
the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity for their actions. Despite his
guilty plea under section 14:94(E), Connors argues that he never fired his
weapon at the officers. Connors bases this contention on statements he made
during his state court plea colloquy that purportedly demonstrate that he did not
understand the charges he admitted to under section 14:94(E). He also relies on
an affidavit, executed after the state court proceedings, in which he claims that
he never fired at the officers. Based on this evidence, Connors argues that a fact
issue exists concerning whether the officers acted reasonably in using deadly
force to ensure his arrest.
3
No. 08-30163
We review a district court’s summary judgment de novo, viewing the
evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Ballard v. Burton,
444 F.3d 391, 396 (5th Cir. 2006). Summary judgment is appropriate if there is
no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment
as a matter of law. Id.
It is well settled under Heck that when an individual like Connors brings
a section 1983 claim against the arresting officers and their supervisors, “the
district court must first ‘consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff
would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.’” Hainze v.
Richards, 207 F.3d 795, 798 (5th Cir. 2000) (quoting Heck, 512 U.S. at 487). If
so, the claim is barred unless he proves that his “conviction or sentence has been
reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a
state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by
a federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.” Heck, 512 U.S. at 487.
Thus, in order to determine whether Heck precludes Connors’s section
1983 claims that officers used excessive force and unlawfully seized him, we
must first determine whether a judgment in Connors’s favor on these claims
would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction for discharging a firearm
from a motor vehicle under section 14:94(E). We conclude that it would.
To prevail on his section 1983 claim for damages due to the officers’
purported use of excessive force, Connors must prove that the officers’ use of
deadly force was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances. See Graham
v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395-97 (1989). Connor pleaded guilty to the felony of
“discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle located upon a public street or
highway” with the “intent . . . to injure, harm, or frighten another human being.”
§ 14:94(E). By pleading guilty under this statute, Connors essentially admitted
that the officers acted reasonably in using deadly force to effectuate his arrest.
Under LA. REV. STAT. ANN. § 14:20(2) (2006), police officers and other individuals
4
No. 08-30163
are entitled to use deadly force “for the purpose of preventing a violent or forcible
felony involving danger to life or of great bodily harm” if they “reasonably
believe[ ] that such an offense is about to be committed and that such action is
necessary for its prevention.” Here, the officers had just witnessed Connors
commit a violent, potentially deadly felony. Given that their high-speed pursuit
of Connors was still in progress, the officers could have reasonably concluded
that Connors was about to commit a second violent felony.
This circuit has applied Heck to bar a plaintiff’s excessive force claim
where officers acted pursuant to similar statutory authority authorizing the use
of deadly force. Thus, for example, in Sappington v. Bartee, 195 F.3d 234 (5th
Cir. 1999), we held that Heck barred an individual convicted of aggravated
assault from bringing an excessive force claim because Texas law permits
officers to use force up to and including deadly force to protect against
aggravated assault. Id. at 237. The same reasoning applies here. Because
section 14:20(2) authorized the use of any force in response to Connors’s decision
to fire at the officers, a finding that the officers used excessive force would
necessarily mean that Connors had not violated section 14:94(E). Thus, Heck
bars Connors’s excessive force claim because he has not proven that his
conviction under section 14:94(E) has been reversed or invalidated.3
Connors’s other section 1983 claims are barred for the same reasons.
Connors cannot prevail on his claim for unlawful seizure unless he proves that
the officers lacked probable cause. Fields v. City of South Houston, 922 F.2d
1183, 1189 (5th Cir. 1989). Connors admitted that the officers had probable
3
We note that the Heck doctrine would bar Connors’s excessive force claim even in the
absence of section 14:20(2). An officer’s use of deadly force does not violate the constitution if
“the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical
harm, either to the officer or to others.” Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11 (1985). By
pleading guilty to discharging a weapon from a motor vehicle, Connors admitted that the
officers had probable cause to use deadly force to apprehend him.
5
No. 08-30163
cause to seize him when he pleaded guilty under section 14:94(E) and to
attempted simple burglary. See Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964) (probable
cause exists where a prudent person would believe that the arrested individual
had committed or was committing an offense). If Connors were to prevail on his
unlawful seizure claim, he would necessarily undermine the validity of these
convictions. See State v. Thornton, 521 So. 2d 598, 600 (La. Ct. App. 1988)
(guilty plea is a conviction under Louisiana law). Finally, because Connors could
not prevail on either of his section 1983 claims without undermining the validity
of his criminal convictions, Heck also bars him from bringing section 1983 claims
against the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office or Sheriff Willie Graves. See Rios
v. City of Del Rio, 444 F.3d 417, 425-26 (5th Cir. 2006) (supervisor cannot be
liable under section 1983 absent underlying constitutional violation). Connors’s
conspiracy claim is barred for the same reasons. Hale v. Townley, 45 F.3d 914,
920 (5th Cir. 1995) (conspiracy claim is not actionable absent an actual violation
of section 1983).
Connors protests that Heck should not bar his section 1983 action for
excessive force, and presumably his other section 1983 claims, because his guilty
plea under section 14:94(E) can be reconciled with the proposition that he did not
fire upon the arresting officers. To support this argument, Connors notes that
during his state court plea colloquy the judge asked him to state in his own
words what he understood the charges under section 14:94(E) to mean. In
response, Connors stated that he “put a weapon in a place where it would
possibly be in harm’s [way] by other people who could come into contact with it.”
Thus, Connors argues that he is not trying to create a conflict between his guilty
plea and his present claim of excessive force.
Implicit within Connors’s argument is the proposition that section 14:94(E)
criminalizes the conduct of placing a weapon in a dangerous place. That is not
the case. The only conduct criminalized by section 14:94(E) is discharging a
6
No. 08-30163
weapon from a motor vehicle. Connors’s conviction for that crime cannot be
reconciled with his current claims that the arresting officers used excessive
force.4 As this circuit has recognized, the Heck doctrine emanates from the
“policy of finality that prevents the collateral attack of a criminal conviction once
that matter has been litigated.” Ballard, 444 F.3d at 397. We make that
determination by examining the elements of the convicted crime and the
elements of the civil cause of action–not the statements that the defendant made
during his plea colloquy. See id. at 401 (citations omitted) (“[T]he Heck
determination depends on the nature of the offense and of the claim.”).
Connors’s contention that he admitted to something other than the crime for
which he was convicted constitutes a claim that his guilty plea was not knowing
and voluntary–an issue properly raised only in either a direct appeal or a habeas
proceeding. Because Connors has not proven success in such an action, his
conviction under section 14:94(E) sits as an insurmountable barrier to his section
1983 claims.
Accordingly, we hold that Connors’s section 1983 claims are barred under
Heck. Thus, we do not reach the defendants’ claims that they were entitled to
qualified immunity. Performance Autoplex II Ltd. v. Mid-Continent Cas. Co., 322
F.3d 847, 853 (5th Cir. 2003) (“We may affirm summary judgment on any legal
ground raised below, even if it was not the basis for the district court’s
decision.”). The district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over
Connors’s purported state law claims, and we construe the district court’s
judgment as a dismissal of those claims without prejudice.
4
From this perspective, Connors’s reliance on our recent decision in Bush v. Strain, 513
F.3d 492 (5th Cir. 2008), is misplaced. In Bush, we held that Heck did not bar a plaintiff
convicted of resisting arrest from bringing an excessive force claim arising from the same
conduct because the plaintiff alleged that the officers’ use of excessive force continued after the
arrest. Id. at 498. We recognized in that situation that a favorable outcome on the plaintiff’s
civil claim would not necessarily impugn the validity of her resisting arrest conviction. Id.
That factual scenario is not presented here.
7
No. 08-30163
AFFIRMED.
8