Facts
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On August 19, 2021, Santa Fe Independent School District (SFISD) Chief Ruben Espinoza monitored traffic in front of the Roy J. Wollam Elementary School during morning drop-off hours. He was tasked with, inter alia, preventing illegal left-hand turns into the school parking lot. Taylor Rogers—a mother dropping her son off at school—attempted such a turn and was directed by Espinoza to enter through a different entrance. Before Espinoza finished his instructions, Rogers drove away and made an improper turn into the exit of an employee parking area. Officer Elizabeth Moore (another SFISD officer), pursuing both on foot and in her patrol car, attempted to stop Rogers but was unsuccessful. Rogers, driving rapidly through a crowded school parking lot, disregarded Moore’s commands to stop and shouted, “you do not touch my car!” After opening her door and dropping her dog from the vehicle, Rogers exited the parking lot, again heading in an improper direction.
Thereafter, Chief Espinoza crashed his vehicle into Rogers’s in order to stop her. Espinoza and Moore, who by then had run up on foot, repeatedly directed Rogers to exit her vehicle. After Rogers opened her door, Espinoza pulled her to the ground. He then pinned Rogers’s hands behind her back so Moore could handcuff her. Moore briefly held Rogers’s cuffed hands behind her back before sitting up and calling for backup.
During Rogers’s arrest, City of Santa Fe, Texas, Officer Christian Carranza arrived on scene and held Rogers’s hands behind her back. Throughout the arrest, Rogers ignored the officers’ commands and—in a state of hysteria—screamed, cursed, and thrashed about. She failed to comply when Carranza stated, “I’ll stop [applying force] when you stop,” and when Espinoza asked her to “remain calm.” Eventually, Officer Carranza resorted to the use of a leg-leverage technique to subdue Rogers; he crossed her legs behind her and kneeled on them.
Moments later, Rogers screamed that she felt ants on her face. An unnamed officer confirmed the presence of fire ants on her. As the officers attempted to lift Rogers, she fell back to the ground screaming and was again told to “calm down.” Chief Espinoza then asked the other officers if they “want[ed] to secure her in the back of [a patrol] car.” The unnamed officer finally lifted Rogers from the ground and moved her to another area. At this point, a different unnamed officer stated he had “some water [to] pour on her face and get t[he] ants off.” But it is not clear that anyone did so, at least at the arrest scene. The officers managed to move Rogers to a patrol car and escort her to booking, but not before she unleashed a final torrent of profanity towards them.
In the wake of this incident, Rogers pled guilty to a charge of felony evading arrest with a motor vehicle. On July 27, 2023, she brought an action in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Officers Espinoza and Carranza. She asserted a bystander-liability claim against Espinoza for his alleged failure to prevent Carranza’s excessive force. Officers Carranza and Espinoza both asserted qualified immunity. The District Court denied qualified immunity to the officers. The 5th reversed.
Analysis
A. Failure to Intervene against Chief Espinoza
She asserts Chief Espinoza failed to intervene as he stood idly watching Carranza use pain compliance techniques on a restrained and defenseless woman for over 2 minutes.
To show a constitutional violation, she must demonstrate that Espinoza: (1) knew a fellow officer was violating an individual’s constitutional rights, (2) was present at the scene of the constitutional violation, (3) had a reasonable opportunity to prevent the harm but nevertheless, (4) chose not to act.
We need not decide whether a violation occurred because she fails to show her rights were clearly established. For Rogers to prove her rights were clearly established, she must identify a case—usually a body of relevant case law—in which an officer acting under similar circumstances . . . was held to have violated the Constitution. While there need not be a case directly on point, the unlawfulness of the challenged conduct must be beyond debate.
The cases Rogers cites in support of her position are inapposite to bystander liability—they concern only direct excessive-force claims. In other words, the cases show a plaintiff’s right to be free from certain actions; not inaction by an officer not involved in the use of force. Accordingly, she fails to substantiate that her rights were clearly established at the time of Chief Espinoza’s alleged violation.
B. Rogers’s excessive-force claim against Officer Carranza
Rogers takes issue with Officer Carranza’s use of leverage techniques to subdue her, alleging those techniques constituted excessive force. For support, she cites multiple cases, contending they clearly establish that violation. But the cases Rogers offers do not sustain her claim.
The facts in Joseph bear no resemblance to this matter. There, the officers “kicked [plaintiff] twelve to thirteen times . . . [and] punched [him] in the head three times.” In Ramirez, the officer “tased [plaintiff] in the chest” in response to his non-compliance. The officers in Deville, “[i]n response to [plaintiff’s] passive resistance, . . . broke her window, pulled her out of her car, and threw her up against the vehicle.”
Goodson is also distinguishable—the officers there “tackled a plaintiff to the ground, broke his shoulder, jerked his arm back, and cuffed him after he complained his arm was broken.” Moreover, the officers in Goodson “lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or frisk [Goodson].” Finally, the officer in Doss “brutally and without provocation punched [plaintiff] several times in the head and struck him with his pistol.”
Suffice it to say, a reasonable police officer could miss the connection between the situations in those cases and here. Those cases either involved passive resistance, contrasting with Rogers’ active and vociferous resistance, or substantially more force than was applied here, absent the very regrettable presence of an ant bed right where the officers took Rogers to the ground—something the officers did not know until Rogers alerted them of the danger.
Because Rogers fails to point to analogous case law, she is left with the burden of showing that this is a rare or obvious case, where analogous case law is not needed because the unlawfulness of the challenged conduct is sufficiently clear even though existing precedent does not address similar circumstances. The standard for obviousness is sky high, and this case does not meet it.
Officers Espinoza and Carranza are entitled to qualified immunity on Rogers’s claims. She fails to show her rights were clearly established concerning Espinoza’s alleged bystander liability for other officers’ actions. Rogers’s excessive force claim against Carranza fails for the same reason—her rights were not clearly established at the time of the alleged violation.
For the foregoing reasons, we DENY Rogers’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and REVERSE AND RENDER the district court’s order denying Chief Espinoza and Officer Carranza summary judgment on their defense of qualified immunity.
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/25/25-40367.0.pdf