Facts
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Armando Navejas, a seventy-year-old man, suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, conditions causing confusion, disorientation, and memory loss. His family had previously sought help from the El Paso Police Department (“EPPD”) when he wandered from his residence. Most recently, Armando went missing on the evening of October 23, 2021, after which officers found him and returned him home. About six hours later, at about 2:14 a.m. on October 24, Armando’s wife, Josephine, called the police. She reported that, when she tried to give Armondo his medicine, he became violent and tried to strangle her, and she was concerned he might hit her again. The call was classified as “Family Violence” and dispatched as an assault in progress. The dispatcher also recorded that Armando had no access to weapons, that no medical attention was needed, and that his wife was not then in immediate danger. Steven Jaso was dispatched to the residence.
According to Jaso, when he arrived he saw Armando running from the residence into a neighboring yard. Jaso ordered Armando to stop and speak with him, but Armando ignored him. Armando then reached down, picked up an object, charged Jaso, and threw the object, striking Jaso in the shin. Jaso continued ordering Armando to stop picking up objects. Armando did not comply. Jaso says Armando then picked up another object, held it above his head, and threw it toward him, barely missing. Jaso believed Armando had thrown a “broken half brick” at him. When Armando turned away, Jaso deployed his taser.
Certain details of Jaso’s account are disputed. The later-filed complaint claims Armando was “slowly and gingerly walking,” rather than charging Jaso, and disputes Jaso’s characterization of the objects as bricks. The complaint points to surveillance video and other evidence suggesting at least one object was a lightweight piece of shrub or wood. It also emphasizes that Armando was seventy years old, weighed about 130 pounds, suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s, and appeared confused. The surveillance video submitted to the district court (from a camera mounted on the house across the street) shows Armando walking through the neighboring property, bending down and picking up an “unidentifiable object,” and then walking toward the front of the driveway. At one point Armando raises his arm and lowers it in a throwing motion. A few seconds later, he steps toward Jaso while holding a “significantly larger object” with two hands, apparently a potted plant. Armando heaves the object toward Jaso but it lands on the hood of a parked car. Within a matter of seconds, Jaso runs around the car and tases Armando once in the back. Armando falls forward. The parties agree Armando was knocked unconscious by the fall and was handcuffed by assisting officers. Armando was hospitalized and later died.
Debbie Navejas, representing her father’s estate, alleged Jaso’s taser use constituted excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. Jaso moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion. The 5th affirmed.
Analysis
Navejas argues that the district court erred by granting Jaso qualified immunity because his tasing Armando constituted excessive force and violated clearly established law. She emphasizes the relatively minor threat she claims Armando posed, his age and mental condition, the availability of de-escalation techniques, the disputed nature of the objects he threw, and evidence that he was moving away from Jaso. She further argues Jaso should have given Armando additional time to comply before resorting to the taser.
Jaso responds that the undisputed facts show Armando’s active resistance, not passive noncompliance. He stresses that he was responding to a reported assault and that Armando ignored repeated commands, threw objects at him, struck him with one, and remained uncontrolled. He also argues the Fourth Amendment does not require officers to delay responding to a potentially serious threat merely because a suspect suffers from mental illness.
We resolve this question, as the district court did, based on the second prong of qualified immunity. We therefore assume arguendo that the tasing violated the Fourth Amendment. Even so, Navejas still must show that, on October 24, 2021, then-controlling precedent made the unlawfulness of that conduct sufficiently clear that every reasonable officer in Jaso’s position would have understood he was violating the Fourth Amendment. As explained below, she has failed to make that showing.
To argue that Jaso violated clearly established law, Navejas relies on our precedents teaching that officers may not abruptly resort to a taser against someone who poses no immediate threat and is not actively resisting. The cases Navejas cites involved officers’ gratuitous use of force against non-resisting or already restrained suspects. In Newman, for instance, officers repeatedly beat and tased a man merely for making a suggestive comment during a traffic stop. Similarly, in Ramirez, officers tased a man after he was subdued. Or again, in Hanks, an officer violently struck an otherwise compliant suspect during a stop solely because he passively resisted the officer’s command to kneel for twenty seconds.
Those cases are quite a ways from this one. Here it was undisputed that (1) Armando was the subject of a domestic violence call reporting he had tried to strangle his wife; (2) Jaso gave repeated commands that Armando ignored; (3) Armando threw objects at Jaso, one of which struck him; and (4) Jaso deployed his taser only once in order to subdue a noncompliant suspect. In short, none of these decisions “squarely governs” the particular situation confronted by Jaso.
That conclusion gains force in light of our cases discussing when officers may resort to a taser to subdue non-compliant suspects. In Cloud, we explained that a suspect’s active resistance to arrest may justify a taser. True, tasing may be excessive when an arrestee merely pulled his arm out of the officer’s grasp or when he had not attempted flight … or disobeyed any commands. On the other hand, tasing may be reasonable where a suspect resists arrest or fails to follow police orders.
In sum, these decisions confirm that Jaso violated no clearly established law by using his taser in this situation. Contrary to Navejas’s argument, there was nothing “passive” about Armando’s erratic behavior. Nor was he under any restraint when he was tased. To the contrary, he had repeatedly disregarded commands and thrown objects at Jaso. And, finally, Jaso tased Armando only once, which “shows a reasonable relationship between the need for force and the amount of force used.
In sum, the district court correctly granted summary judgment dismissing the excessive force claim against Officer Jaso.
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/25/25-51061-CV0.pdf