Richard Harrold, an amputee with a serious medical condition, filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Officer Lewis Hagen of the Chesterfield County Police Department. The dispute arose from an incident in December 2021 when Harrold broke into a car dealership. After police arrived, Harrold fled upstairs and hid in a storage room. Officer Hagen, accompanied by his K-9, Kona, located Harrold in the room. According to the complaint, Harrold was in a submissive, fetal-like position when Hagen signaled the dog to attack. The dog inflicted severe injuries, including deep bites to Harrold's buttocks, legs, and amputated stump, requiring emergency medical intervention. The district court dismissed the case, granting Hagen qualified immunity on the grounds that the specific right to be free from this type of K-9 deployment was not clearly established at the time. Harrold appealed, arguing that the right was clearly established under Fourth Circuit precedent.
Judge King, writing for the majority, agreed with Harrold that the district court erred in its qualified immunity analysis. The court first addressed the nature of the constitutional right at issue. While the district court focused narrowly on whether Officer Hagen provided a final verbal warning before deploying the dog, the Fourth Circuit defined the right more broadly: the right of a non-threatening, unarmed, and passively resisting suspect to be free from unnecessary, gratuitous, and disproportionate force by deployment of a police K-9. The court found this right was clearly established as of 2013, well before the 2021 incident. The majority relied on the 2013 decision in Meyers v. Baltimore County, which held that the use of any unnecessary, gratuitous, and disproportionate force precludes an officer from receiving qualified immunity if the subject is unarmed and secured. The court viewed the allegations in the complaint in the light most favorable to Harrold, accepting that he was in a submissive position, posed no immediate threat, and was passively resisting. Under these facts, the deployment of K-9 Kona to attack Harrold's sensitive areas was deemed objectively unreasonable. The court rejected the officer's argument that he reasonably believed Harrold was armed, noting that such assertions were outside the four corners of the complaint and not supported by evidence at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage. The majority also clarified that while the district court considered body-worn camera footage to contradict the complaint's allegation of no warnings, the footage did not blatantly contradict the core allegation that Harrold was passively resisting when the dog was deployed.
The decision vacates the dismissal of Harrold's excessive force claim, allowing the case to proceed to trial. Officer Hagen is no longer shielded by qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss stage, meaning he must defend his actions against a jury. The ruling clarifies that in the Fourth Circuit, deploying a K-9 against a suspect who is unarmed, non-threatening, and passively resisting is likely to be considered a violation of clearly established law, even if the suspect is a burglary suspect who has fled. However, the dissent highlights that this standard remains contested and that the specific application of force may still depend on the totality of circumstances, including the officer's reasonable perception of threat at the time.