Post details: CA9: Detaining shooting witnesses for five hours and keeping ambulance from leaving stated Fourth Amendment claim
02/15/13
CA9: Detaining shooting witnesses for five hours and keeping ambulance from leaving stated Fourth Amendment claim
Plaintiffs were detained for five hours and interrogated as witnesses after a shooting, and they stated a claim that the detention was unreasonable. The decedent’s estate also had a claim under the “danger creation” doctrine because the officers at the scene refused to let the ambulance leave timely, and that led to the death from lack of hospital care. Maxwell v. County of San Diego, 708 F.3d 1075 (9th Cir. 2013) (on rehearing from 697 F.3d 941):
We conclude that the Sheriff's officers were on notice that they could not detain, separate, and interrogate the Maxwells for hours. The Sheriff's officers have never claimed they had probable cause to arrest the Maxwells or reasonable suspicion for a temporary Terry detention. The crime was solved, and even if it had not been, it is a "settled principle that while the police have the right to request citizens to answer voluntarily questions concerning unsolved crimes they have no right to compel them to answer." Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 727 n.6 (1969). Even in the Terry stop context-which involves a suspicion of criminal activity that is absent here-the Supreme Court has never endorsed a detention longer than 90 minutes. See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 709-10 (1983).
The Sheriff's officers' reliance on Walker v. City of Orem, 451 F.3d 1139 (10th Cir. 2006), is unavailing. In Walker, police officers shot a man and then forced his family into their house and interrogated them for 90 minutes. 451 F.3d at 1145. The Tenth Circuit held the detention was unconstitutional but granted qualified immunity because there was no clear circuit precedent prohibiting such a detention. Id. at 1151. This decision does not show the right was uncertain in this case. Walker held a detention like the one here unconstitutional six months before December 2006.
Walker also noted that our circuit has clearly established case law on investigative witness detentions and strongly suggested it would have ruled differently if our holding in Ward governed. Id. at 1148. Further, Walker noted that the events in question predated Lidster. Thus, unlike the Sheriff's officers, the officers in Walker were not necessarily on notice that witness detention was subject to the Fourth Amendment reasonableness test. See 451 F.3d at 1151.
We also reject the argument that various exigencies made the detention reasonable as a matter of law. The Sheriff's officers cite Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93 (2005), which held that "[a]n officer's authority to detain incident to a search is categorical." Id. at 98. Muehler is inapposite. The Maxwells' detention was not incident to a search. The Sheriff's officers did not obtain a search warrant until more than four hours after the detention began. The Maxwells were not "occupant[s] of [their house] at the time of the search." Id. at 98.
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