Butler v. Smith

85 F.4th 1102

Kameron BUTLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Charlene SMITH, individually, Defendant-Appellee City of Conyers, Georgia, Defendant.

No. 22-11141

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

Filed: October 27, 2023

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-03150-JPB.

Cary Stephen Wiggins, Wiggins Law Group, Atlanta, GA, Craig Goodmark, Goodmark Law Firm, LLC, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Frances L. Clay, Chambless Higdon Richardson Katz & Griggs, LLP, Macon, GA, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before Jordan, Newsom, and Ed Carnes, Circuit Judges.

Newsom, Circuit Judge:

The Court sua sponte VACATES its prior opinion, issued October 25, 2023, and substitutes the following in its place. The only change is the deletion of the former footnote 5.

* * *

Parenting is hard. Raising children requires patience, sacrifice, and tenderness. It also requires tough choices. And sometimes it requires tough love. Even the most well-intentioned parents struggle to get the balance just right.

That struggle was real for Kameron Butler, a single mother of three who worked outside the home as a medical assistant. When Butler and her family moved to a new school district, she gave her 17-year-old son, Jayden, a choice: He could either enroll at the school for which he was now zoned, in which case he would have access to bus service to and from campus, or he could remain at the school where he'd been for three years, in which case, due to her work schedule, they'd have to get creative about his afternoons. If he opted to stay, she said, Jayden could either walk several miles home or spend the afternoons at school or at a local park until she could pick him up. Given the choice, Jayden opted to stay at the school he knew.

We'll get into the details soon enough, but in short, a school resource officer, Charlene Smith, took issue with Butler's plan for managing Jayden's afternoons and, eventually, sought and obtained arrest warrants for first- and second-degree child cruelty—felonies that are punishable by mandatory prison terms and that target conduct, respectively, that "willfully deprives the child of necessary sustenance to the extent that [his] health or well-being is jeopardized" and that "with criminal negligence causes a child under the age of 18 cruel and excessive physical or mental pain." Ga. Code Ann. § 16-5-70(a), (c). Butler was arrested, charged with both crimes, and spent four days in jail before posting bond. All charges were eventually dismissed.

Butler sued Officer Smith for malicious prosecution under both federal and state law. The Fourth Amendment, under which federal-law claims for malicious prosecution arise, affords police officers significant latitude to seek arrest warrants based on "probable cause"—a reasonable (even if mistaken) belief that a crime has been committed. The doctrine of qualified immunity extends that latitude further, protecting an officer against liability provided that she had arguable probable cause. State-law immunity doctrines likewise give officers ample breathing room to make reasonable mistakes.

But even the most officer-protective doctrines have their limits. Officer Smith had Butler arrested on extraordinarily serious felony charges based on conduct that, by any objective measure, doesn't remotely qualify. And to make matters worse, the affidavits that Officer Smith submitted in support of her warrant applications conspicuously omitted material exculpatory information. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Butler, as we must, we hold that Officer Smith is not entitled to qualified immunity on Butler's Fourth Amendment claim and that Butler has presented a genuine factual dispute regarding Officer Smith's entitlement to official immunity on her state-law claim. We therefore reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment.

I

A

In the fall of 2017, Kameron Butler was a single, working mother. Her 17-year-old son, Jayden, was starting his fourth year at Rockdale County High School in central Georgia. Like so many other parents and teens, Butler and Jayden had a strained relationship.

When the family moved to a new apartment zoned for the neighboring Salem High School, Butler gave Jayden a choice: He could either transfer to Salem, in which case he could ride the bus to and from school, or he could stay at Rockdale, but without the benefit of bus service. Bus service mattered, Butler explained, because while she could drop Jayden off in the mornings, her work schedule would prevent her from picking him up promptly after school in the afternoons. So if Jayden opted to remain at Rockdale, he could either (1) walk several miles home, (2) hang out in front of the school until early evening, when Butler could retrieve him, or (3) go to a local park to wait for her. Given the choice, Jayden decided to remain at Rockdale.

As expected, the afternoons proved challenging. None of Jayden's after-school options was perfect. If he walked home, he wouldn't be able to get into the family's apartment because Butler had taken away his key after he had repeatedly skipped school and had friends over; instead, he would have to sit either in the apartment leasing office until it closed or underneath a shaded gazebo on the complex property. Remaining on school grounds violated school policy. Neither the school nor the park had vending machines, and the school lacked outdoor water fountains—meaning, in either event, that Jayden would have to plan ahead to pack a snack, water bottle, etc. Jayden's attempt to improvise a fourth alternative—going to the Brandon Glen apartments to hang out with friends—ended after he repeatedly got in trouble there; Butler flatly forbade him to go to Brandon Glen.

While at Rockdale, Jayden befriended the school resource officers—local cops assigned to the high school. Jayden developed a particularly close relationship with SRO Charlene Smith, with whom he frequently ate lunch and discussed his activities—for instance, his participation on the school's wrestling team, for which he was trying to "drop weight." Officer Smith occasionally gave Jayden money, got him a used bike, and, on a few occasions, drove him home without logging her trip, as department policy required officers to do when transporting minors.

On September 26, 2017, Jayden went to Brandon Glen apartments after school despite his mother's clear prohibition. When his mother refused to pick him up there, he chose to stay the night rather than walk home. The following morning, Jayden complained to Officer Smith, and the two of them called Butler to discuss his afternoon situation. Officer Smith recorded the call. Officer Smith told Butler that Jayden wasn't allowed to be on campus unsupervised after school. In response, Butler explained her side of the story: (1) She worked and thus couldn't pick Jayden up immediately after school; (2) Jayden could walk home, but if he did, he couldn't get into the apartment because she had taken his key after he "skipp[ed] school" and "ha[d] people in the house"; (3) she would rather her fiancé not pick Jayden up because "there [was] a lot more to this going on" and because they had been having "serious behavior issues with Jayden since ninth grade"; but (4) Jayden could always walk to "Pine Log [Park]," and she would "pick him up from there." Butler also explained to Officer Smith why she had prohibited Jayden to go to Brandon Glen apartments: "We've had that discussion a million times—he's not allowed at Brandon Glen because he gets in trouble when he goes" there. "[B]ecause [Jayden was] not allowed" at the apartments, Butler continued, she would "not pick him up from there"—to which Office Smith responded: "That makes sense. If you told him not to go, and he goes, that makes sense."

During the call, Officer Smith told Butler that "the whole totality of things that [she was] doing" constituted "cruelty to children," that "school social workers [and] the police [were] involved," and that Butler could face "criminal charges." Butler responded by telling Officer Smith that she planned to "transfer [Jayden] to Salem." The three concluded the call by planning for that afternoon. Officer Smith reported that Jayden had said "he d[idn't] want to sit in the heat" at the park, and when Butler asked whether Jayden could "walk home and just wait for [a family member] to open the door," Officer Smith said that he "d[idn't] want to do that either." When Butler admitted that she didn't "know what to tell him" then, Officer Smith relayed Jayden's comment that "he'll just walk."

Rather than walk home that afternoon as he had said he would, Jayden went the one place his mother had told him not to go: Brandon Glen. In a call to his mother that he secretly recorded, Jayden asked her to come pick him up. Butler refused, emphasizing that Jayden knew that she had forbidden him to go to Brandon Glen and that he had told her that he planned to walk home. Unaware that she was being recorded, and clearly frustrated, Butler was unfiltered:

Jayden, I told you [that I would pick you up at] the school or Pine Log [Park]. That's what I told that bitch, that Officer Smith or whoever the fuck that was. I said the school or Pine Log. And she said you didn't want to go to either one, so you [were] gonna walk home.

Holding her ground, Butler repeatedly told Jayden that she wouldn't pick him up from Brandon Glen: "You went back to Brandon Glen. I made it perfectly clear to [Officer Smith] and you that I would not pick you up from Brandon Glen, that you're not allowed to go to Brandon Glen, and you do it anyway. And you did it again." Butler told Jayden that he should "just go home." When Jayden asked if she would pick him up from Pine Log Park, Butler responded—seemingly in response to his disobedience—"No, I'm not now, no." Instead, she said, he could "[g]et [a] ride from somebody over in Brandon Glen, call Officer...