Nahmod Law

In its 2014 Term the Supreme Court handed down a qualified immunity per curiam decision dealing with warrantless entries into the home. The police officer emerged victorious.

Carroll v. Carman

In Carroll v. Carman, 135 S. Ct. 348 (2014)(per curiam), revg, Carman v. Carroll, 749 F.3d 192 (3^rd Cir. 2014), a police officer was sued under § 1983 and the Fourth Amendment for entering plaintiffs’ property in July 2009 by going into their backyard and onto their deck without a warrant. The police officer argued that his entry was lawful under the “knock and talk” exception to the warrant requirement because he stayed on that portion of plaintiffs’ property that the general public was allowed to go on.

The Third Circuit held that the officer violated the Fourth Amendment since he did not go first to the front door as required (so the Third Circuit read its own precedent as saying) by the “knock and talk” exception. It also ruled that the officer violated clearly established Fourth Amendment law.

Reversing, the Supreme Court held that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity because clearly settled law did not exist at the time. Even assuming that a single Third Circuit decision could suffice for this purpose, the decision that the Third Circuit cited did not stand for the proposition that the Third Circuit said it did.

The Court went on: “The Third Circuit’s decision is even more perplexing in comparison to the decisions of other federal and state courts, which have rejected the rule the Third Circuit adopted here.” However, the Court emphasized that it was not deciding the constitutional merits here but only qualified immunity.

Comment

What is interesting to me about this decision is the Court’s non-deferential approach to the Third Circuit’s understanding of its own precedent. The Court may also have signaled that it disagreed with the Third Circuit’s rule on the merits, although it said that it did not decide the constitutional merits.

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In its 2014 Term, the Supreme Court handed down a qualified immunity decision dealing with the shooting of a mentally disturbed woman. As has become the norm in recent qualified immunity cases before the Court, the police officers prevailed.

San Francisco v. Sheehan

San Francisco v. Sheehan, 135 S. Ct. 1765 (2015), involved the near-fatal shooting of a mentally disturbed woman in a group home in August 2008. When the officers initially entered her room, she grabbed a kitchen knife and told them to leave, which they did. After conferring, they then re-entered her room by forcing open the door and blinding her with pepper spray. However, she continued to resist with her knife, so they shot her repeatedly.

Although the Supreme Court had granted certiorari to decide whether the Americans with Disabilities Act required the officers to “accommodate” the plaintiff’s disability, the Court did not address that question because it was not properly raised by San Francisco. Instead, reversing the Ninth Circuit, the Court ruled that the officers were protected by qualified immunity from § 1983 Fourth Amendment liability because there was no clearly established law prohibiting this conduct.

The Court rejected the Ninth Circuit’s contrary qualified immunity holding that its precedents would have placed “any reasonable, competent officer on notice that it is unreasonable to forcibly enter the home of an armed, mentally ill suspect who had been acting irrationally and had threatened anyone who entered when there was no objective need for immediate entry.”

But even assuming that was true, the Court continued, no precedent clearly established that there was not “an objective need for immediate entry” here. “[A]n officer could not know that reopening [plaintiff’s] door to prevent her from escaping or gathering more weapons would violate the Ninth Circuit’s test, even if all the disputed facts are viewed in respondent’s favor.”

Justices Scalia and Kagan concurred in part and dissented in part, maintaining that the Court should not have addressed the qualified immunity issue.

Comment

The Supreme Court did not defer to the Ninth Circuit’s understanding of its own Fourth Amendment precedents  as to the general rule in such cases.

Similarly, the Court did not defer to the Ninth Circuit’s application of its “objective need for immediate entry” criterion.

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Happy New Year to all of my readers.

WordPress sent me this summary of 2014 views of nahmodlaw.com.

One thing I found of interest was the fact that many views were of older posts on First Amendment, constitutional law and section 1983. I intended this blog to have educational durability and that seems to be the case, which is gratifying.

I thank you all.

Sheldon Nahmod

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 66,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

My videos–some lengthy, some relatively brief–on constitutional law (including the First and Second Amendments), section 1983 and the Supreme Court, are now available in one place on Youtube right here:  https://www.youtube.com/user/ChicagoKentLaw/playlists?sort=dd&shelf_id=12&view=50

Check them out and let me know what you think. Email me: snahmod@kentlaw.edu.

Thanks to Chicago-Kent techies for setting this up and thanks to you for visiting my blog.

Follow me on Twitter @NahmodLaw

I blogged on January 20, 2014, about Lane v. Franks, the public employee free speech case currently before the Supreme Court, scheduled to be argued on April 28, 2014.

Here is a five-minute video on the case: http://youtu.be/3bKstfw0jRM

I hope you find it informative.

Follow me on Twitter @NahmodLaw

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 38,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I will be grading exams and papers and then taking a vacation. The blog will return next year.

All the best to my readers.

Sheldon

I am now tweeting on Twitter. My handle is @NahmodLaw.

Most of my tweets will be related to section 1983, constitutional law and the First Amendment, the subjects of this blog.

However, my tweets will occasionally cover other subjects.

I hope you follow me.

Thanks.

It has been a while since I reorganized all of my posts (including several videos and podcasts) in order to provide greater and more efficient accessibility for readers. There are now more than 100 posts.

I consider this reorganization important, and I hope it is also useful to you, because my posts are not intended to be of short-term utility.

Instead, they are intended to serve the continuing educational needs of  lawyers, law students, academics and the public at large.

I thank all of you for your growing support of this blog.

Sheldon Nahmod (snahmod@kentlaw.edu)

What follows is a list comprising all of my posts (with links) divided into the following four parts: PART I: SECTION 1983; PART II: CONSTITUTIONAL LAW; PART III: FIRST AMENDMENT; PART IV: EDUCATION

PART I: SECTION 1983

Section 1983 Supreme Court Decisions–2009: A Video Presentation

A Section 1983 Podcast: Damages and Procedural Defenses

From Monroe to Connick: Video

From Monroe to Connick: Podcast

Article: The Long and Winding Road from Monroe to Connick

“Section 1983 Is Born”: A Working Paper

A Section 1983 Primer (1): History, Purposes and Scope

A Section 1983 Primer (2): The Seminal Decision of Monroe v. Pape

A Section 1983 Primer (3): Constitutional States of Mind

A Section 1983 Primer (4): Causation and the Mt. Healthy Burden-Shift Rule

A Section 1983 Primer (5): Statutes of Limitations

A Section 1983 Primer (6): Claim and Issue Preclusion

A Section 1983 Primer (7): Introduction to Absolute Individual Immunity

A Section 1983 Primer (8): Absolute Legislative Immunity

A Section 1983 Primer (9): Absolute Judicial Immunity

Read the rest of this entry »

The blog is on break grading exams and papers, doing some writing and enjoying Chicago’s theater, music and culture scene until the middle of January, when the spring semester begins at Chicago-Kent College of Law (on January 17, 2012).

Next year I will  continue to blog on section 1983 and constitutional law.

I also expect to have a post or two on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case currently pending in the Supreme Court.

And since I will be teaching a First Amendment course and a Constitutional Law and Religion seminar in spring 2012, I will likely blog on these subjects as well.

Happy holidays to you and best wishes for a healthy new year.

Sheldon Nahmod