Background
Richard Harrold sued Officer Lewis Hagen under Section nineteen eighty-three of Title forty-two of the United States Code, alleging excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The incident occurred in December two thousand and twenty-one when Harrold broke into a car dealership. Police responded, and Harrold hid in a storage room. Officer Hagen deployed a K-9 named Kona, which attacked Harrold while he was in a submissive position on the floor. The district court dismissed the claim, ruling that the constitutional right was not clearly established at the time.
The court’s reasoning
The Fourth Circuit agreed with the plaintiff that the constitutional right at issue was clearly established. The court defined the right as that of a non-threatening, unarmed, and passively-resisting suspect to be free from unnecessary, gratuitous, and disproportionate force by the deployment of a police K-9. The court relied on its two thousand and thirteen decision in Meyers versus Baltimore County, which held that the use of unnecessary force precludes qualified immunity if the subject is unarmed and secured. The appellate court concluded that the district court erred by focusing only on whether a verbal warning was given, rather than analyzing the reasonableness of the force itself against a passive suspect.
the Fourth Amendment 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 was clearly established.
The dissent
Qualified immunity is controversial, contested, and binding.
RICHARDSON
What it means going forward
The case is sent back to the district court for further proceedings. The officer is no longer shielded by qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss stage, allowing the plaintiff’s excessive force claim to proceed.