Turner v. City of Champaign, No. 19-3446

979 F.3d 563

Chandra TURNER, as Special Administrator of the Estate of Richard Turner, deceased, and Chandra Turner, individually, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.CITY OF CHAMPAIGN, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 19-3446

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued September 17, 2020

Decided November 3, 2020

Victor P. Henderson, Kelsey A. VanOverloop, Attorneys, Henderson Parks, LLC, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Justin N. Brunner, David E. Krchak, Attorneys, Thomas Mamer, LLP, Champaign, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before Kanne and Hamilton, Circuit Judges.^*

Hamilton, Circuit Judge.

Richard Turner died during an encounter with police officers in Champaign, Illinois. The officers were trying to detain him to protect himself and others and to take him to a hospital for evaluation of his mental health. With hindsight we can say that his death might have been avoided. In this suit by Mr. Turner's estate, however, the central question is not whether officers used best police practices but whether they violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment by using excessive force against him. The district court found that undisputed facts, including a coroner's findings that Mr. Turner suffered no physical trauma but died of a cardiac arrhythmia, showed that the officers did not use excessive force. We agree and affirm summary judgment for the defendants.

I. Facts for Purposes of Summary Judgment

In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to Mr. Turner's estate, the non-moving party, giving the estate the benefit of reasonable inferences that can be drawn in its favor. Alicea v. Thomas , 815 F.3d 283, 288 (7th Cir. 2016). The estate must rely on the officers’ own testimony and the surveillance and dashboard camera footage that captured parts of the encounter. As a result, almost all of the facts we recount below are undisputed. We note where a fact is in dispute.

Mr. Turner was a homeless member of the Champaign community and was well-known to police. On the morning of November 16, 2016, someone called the police to check on Mr. Turner. He was walking in the streets, speaking to passersby, and rummaging through trash near the University of Illinois campus. Sergeant Thomas Frost, the most senior officer involved in this case, had known Mr. Turner for decades. He first noticed Mr. Turner's mental health deteriorate around 2010. Since then, police had often been dispatched to check on him and had hospitalized him on numerous occasions without a struggle. One of those incidents had occurred as recently as April 2016.

When officers responded on November 16, Mr. Turner seemed to them more disoriented than usual. Officer Young arrived first and spotted Mr. Turner on the corner of Green Street and Sixth Street. He was on the ground, rolling around with his pants down. Officer Young parked, approached him on foot, and asked how he was doing. Mr. Turner began flailing his arms and babbling unintelligibly. Officer Young told him not to yell at people on the street and then returned to his squad car to wait for backup.

When Officers Talbott and Wilson arrived, Mr. Turner walked past their car and jaywalked across Sixth Street. No traffic was present as he crossed. On the other side of the street, Mr. Turner pulled a construction tag from a building but put it back when Officer Young yelled at him to return it. Mr. Turner then crossed Sixth Street again. Officer Wilson, who was a trainee under Officer Talbott's supervision, approached and told Mr. Turner to leave the area. Mr. Turner did not comply. Instead, he began walking back and forth across the street several times. Seeing this behavior, Officer Wilson asked aloud whether Mr. Turner could leave the area given how disoriented he seemed. So Officer Wilson commanded Mr. Turner to approach and asked him what day of the week it was. Mr. Turner responded incoherently. The officers decided to detain Mr. Turner for his own protection and to send him to a hospital for mental-health treatment. Officer Wilson called for an ambulance.

While waiting for the ambulance, Officer Young approached Officer Wilson and asked Mr. Turner to sit on the curb. Mr. Turner instead turned and ran away across Green Street. He kept running. Officers Young and Wilson decided to pursue him on foot. Officer Talbott followed behind them. Officer Wilson testified that they caught up to Mr. Turner halfway down an alley north of Green Street. After unsuccessfully commanding Mr. Turner to stop, Officer Wilson grabbed Mr. Turner's shoulder. That was the first physical contact between the police and Mr. Turner that morning.

The parties dispute how to characterize what happened next. They agree, though, that Mr. Turner immediately pulled away and shoved Officer Wilson, knocking his radio off his uniform. A struggle ensued, during which it is undisputed that Mr. Turner was also grabbing at Officer Young with both hands. Officers Young and Wilson both testified that they responded by pulling Mr. Turner to the ground and turning him on his stomach. Then, while trying to handcuff him, Officer Young pressed his right knee onto Mr. Turner's shoulder to prevent him from moving. Officer Talbott then arrived and attempted to control Mr. Turner's flailing legs. He placed his knees on one leg and his hands on the other. Working together, the three officers were eventually able to handcuff Mr. Turner, but he was still kicking his legs.

As these officers were struggling to restrain Mr. Turner, Sergeant Frost heard the radio chatter and decided to help. Video from Sergeant Frost's dashboard camera shows him driving to the scene. By the time Mr. Turner was handcuffed, Sergeant Frost was close. He radioed to ask where the officers had ended up. Officer Talbott told him and asked him to bring a hobble—a strap used to restrain a person's legs. Sergeant Frost arrived with the hobble, which he and Officer Talbott then placed around Mr. Turner's legs. At first Mr. Turner kicked out of the hobble, so the officers secured it a second time.

None of this physical contact between Mr. Turner and the officers was captured on video. But the estate does not dispute that Mr. Turner continued to struggle against the officers during the entire process. The estate argues that Mr. Turner reacted this way because he was likely having difficulty breathing.

On the audio recording, shortly after securing the hobble, Sergeant Frost asked, "is he still breathing?" The officers quickly determined that Mr. Turner was not breathing. They rushed to get a portable defibrillator from a patrol car. Once the defibrillator was activated, it advised the officers not to administer a shock but to begin CPR. Around this time, the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over. Less than three minutes elapsed from the moment the officers noticed that Mr. Turner was not breathing until the paramedics arrived. The paramedics had the officers remove the handcuffs and hobble, and they rushed Mr. Turner to the hospital. They tried to revive him in the ambulance, but he never regained a pulse.

An autopsy later determined that Mr. Turner died from cardiac arrhythmia—his heart gave out after beating too fast during the encounter. The autopsy also showed that this arrhythmia was likely caused by an underlying condition. Mr. Turner had an enlarged heart and insufficient blood supply to one of his heart's chambers. The medical evidence showed no other causes of death. There were no signs of suffocation or trauma to Mr. Turner's body.

II. Procedural History

After Mr. Turner's death, his sister Chandra Turner filed this lawsuit as administrator of his estate. Seeking relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the estate alleged Fourth Amendment violations by Officers Young, Wilson, and Talbott for using excessive force against Mr. Turner and by Officer Talbott and Sergeant Frost for failing to intervene. The estate also asserted state-law claims for wrongful death, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress against Young, Wilson, Talbott, and Frost. Finally, the complaint sought to hold the City of Champaign liable under state law through respondeat superior and indemnification, and under federal law under Monell v. Department of Social Services , 436 U.S. 658, 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978) (local government may be liable for damages under § 1983 for injuries caused by unconstitutional policy, custom, or practice).

The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on all counts. Relying primarily on Fitzgerald v. Santoro , 707 F.3d 725 (7th Cir. 2013), the district court held that the officers acted legally to detain Mr. Turner and used reasonable force in response to his resistance. The court also held that qualified immunity would protect the officers even if they acted unreasonably because the case so closely resembles Estate of Phillips v. Milwaukee , 123 F.3d 586 (7th Cir. 1997), where we affirmed summary judgment for the officers in a similarly unfortunate fatal encounter between police and a mentally ill person who violently resisted efforts to detain him. The district court also dismissed the estate's state-law claims because Illinois law provides absolute tort immunity for officers carrying out protective functions, as distinct from law-enforcement functions.

We affirm. Reviewing the district court's decision de novo, e.g., Alicea , 815 F.3d at 288, we agree that this case closely mirrors Estate of Phillips and that the undisputed facts show that the officers here used reasonable force. The district court also correctly concluded that Illinois law bars the plaintiff's state tort claims.

III. Fourth Amendment Claims for Excessive Force

The estate's Fourth Amendment claims fail because the officers did not use excessive force. A claim for excessive force under § 1983 invokes the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizures. The reasonableness standard is objective, "judged from the...