Plaintiff’s 1983 claim of the police using her as sexual bait to arrest a police officer and failure to protect fails on qualified immunity. Whitley v. Hanna, 726 F.3d 631 (5th Cir. 2013)*:
On appeal, Whitley presents two theories of liability she asserts warrant reversal of the district court’s decision. First, relying on our decision in Doe v. Taylor Independent School District, 15 F.3d 443 (5th Cir. 1994) (en banc), Whitley argues that Appellees are liable under § 1983 for acting with deliberate indifference to her constitutional rights by engaging in an investigation premised on catching Ariaz (the primary constitutional wrongdoer) in the act of abusing her. Second, citing to Hale v. Townley, 45 F.3d 914 (5th Cir. 1995), Whitley asserts that Appellees are liable under § 1983 under a theory of bystander liability because they failed to stop Ariaz, a fellow officer, from violating Whitley’s fundamental liberty interest in her bodily integrity.fn2 Lastly, Whitley contends that the district court erred in denying her motion to amend her complaint.
fn2 Whitley also asserts that she has sufficiently stated a constitutional violation under Rochin v. California, because Appellees’ conduct shocked the conscience. See 342 U.S. 165, 166, 172-74 (1952) (conduct “shock[ed] the conscience” and violated the Due Process Clause where arresting police officers ordered doctors to pump suspect’s stomach to induce him to vomit two morphine capsules). During oral argument, Whitley expressly limited the grounds on which she sought relief and it thus is unclear whether she is still pursuing a claim under Rochin’s shocks-the-conscience standard.
As will be discussed, however, the alleged facts do not rise to the level of shocking the conscience: Whitley has not alleged that Appellees themselves sexually abused her; at best, she has shown that Appellees conducted a deficient investigation and failed to intervene earlier. Such circumstances do not conform to the extreme cases in which the shocks-the-conscience standard typically has been satisfied. See, e.g., Morris v. Dearborne, 181 F.3d 657, 668 (5th Cir. 1999) (teacher fabricated sexual abuse charges against a student’s father); Rogers v. City of Little Rock, Ark., 152 F.3d 790, 797 (8th Cir. 1998) (police officer raped woman in her house after stopping her for traffic violation).
We address each of her theories below, and conclude that Whitley fails to state a claim under either her deliberate indifference or bystander liability theory.3 Our conclusion that Whitley fails to state a claim as to any of the Appellees also resolves the question of qualified immunity raised in Hanna and Bullock’s motion to dismiss. See Lytle v. Bexar Cnty., Tex., 560 F.3d 404, 410 (5th Cir. 2009) (“If we determine that the alleged conduct did not violate a constitutional right, our inquiry ceases because there is no constitutional violation for which the government official would need qualified immunity.”); Hampton v. Oktibbeha Cnty. Sheriff Dep’t, 480 F.3d 358, 363 (5th Cir. 2007). …
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
