CA11: Knee on the neck of nonresisting suspect [who happened to be innocent] was excessive

Plaintiff was at the wrong place at the wrong time of a threatened robbery. He was taken from his car at gunpoint and an officer held him down with a knee to the neck nearly asphyxiating him. While no case is exactly in point, the court finds it clearly established anyway. He had no weapon, he posed no threat justifying that kind of force. Shepard v. Sheriff of Wakulla Cty., 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 15689 (11th Cir. June 25, 2025):

While it’s true our precedent does not capture the specific situation here, an officer pressing a knee onto the back of a handcuffed suspect’s neck with so much pressure that the suspect is asphyxiated for minutes is clearly within the “wide variety of later factual circumstances” of the broad principle that “an arresting officer may not use gratuitous force on a non-resisting suspect who no longer poses a threat to his safety.” Id. at 1351; Acosta, 97 F.4th at 1242. And our conclusion in Croom that law enforcement placing a knee on a suspect’s back to secure a scene with multiple suspects was a de minimis use of force by no means gives officers a free pass to use truly gratuitous force against a subdued, non-resisting suspect who poses no threat. Accepting Shepard’s version of the events, as we must, no factually particularized, preexisting case law is necessary for it to be clearly established to a reasonable officer that pressing his full body weight onto the back of a suspect’s neck after he is on the ground, subdued, and not resisting, constitutes the kind of excessive force the Fourth Amendment proscribes.