Author: Jim Chapman
In Morgan-Tyra v. City of St. Louis, 89 F.4th 1082 (8th Cir. 2024), St. Louis police officer
Officer Andrei Nikolov shot Jennifer Tyra-Morgan while responding to a report of a domestic disturbance. Thereafter, Morgan-Tyra filed a civil rights suit against Officer Nikolov, alleging that Officer Nikolov used excessive force against her in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights when he shot and permanently paralyzed her. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri granted Officer Nikolov’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed Tyra-Morgan’s case, finding that Officer Nikolov was immune from her suit based upon the doctrine of qualified immunity. Tyra-Morgan timely appealed the dismissal of her case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The relevant facts are as follows.
Officer Nikolov and his partner responded to a home in St. Louis, Missouri, after police dispatch received a 911 telephone call. The dispatcher informed Officer Nikolov and his partner that “Karla Nicholson [was] having a dispute with her . . . roommate [who] possibly ha[d] a gun and ha[d] threatened her. She [wa]s locked in her bedroom.”
The Parties dispute much of what happened from there, but they agreed on at least one point. There was a second 911 call at some point. A person named “Jennifer Tyra” called from the same location and reported that a “white female armed with a screwdriver [was] trying to attack [her]. Jennifer [wa]s armed with a gun [and had] threatened to shoot her if the female came close to her.” However, the Parties disagreed about whether Officer Nikolov heard about the second 911 call.
That being said, the Parties (generally) agreed about what happened next. After pounding on a closed metal screen door, the officers encountered a man inside of the home who said something along the lines of, “I tried to calm the situation down[;] they are in the back.” As they moved toward the standoff, Officer Nikolov first heard “screaming” and “swear words,” and then, he saw Plaintiff/Appellant Jennifer Morgan-Tyra standing in a hallway with a gun in her hands. The person on the other end of it—later identified as Nicholson—was in a bedroom around the corner, who was out of Officer Nikolov’s view. Someone directed Morgan-Tyra to drop the gun, but instead of complying, she continued to shout expletives at the person in the bedroom. According to her own deposition testimony, Morgan-Tyra’s intention was “to use [her] words to intimidate” and to make the other person “believe [that she] would shoot.” Where exactly Morgan-Tyra was pointing the gun is disputed.
It was undisputed that Officer Nikolov ended the standoff by firing at least nine shots, several of which struck Morgan-Tyra and which caused severe and lasting injuries, including paralyzing her. Thereafter, Mogan-Tyra filed a civil rights suit against Officer Nikolov under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that he had used excessive force against her in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights by shooting her. After initially denying summary judgment, the District Court reconsidered and granted Officer Nikolov’s motion for summary judgment, finding that he was immune from this suit based upon the doctrine of qualified immunity. Morgan-Tyra then timely filed an appeal to the Eighth Circuit, arguing that her excessive-force claim should have been resolved by a jury.
The Eighth Circuit began its consideration of Morgan-Tyra’s appeal by noting that, in a case involving a qualified-immunity defense, summary judgment is appropriate if: (1) the plaintiff-friendly version of the facts fails to establish a constitutional violation; or (2) the law at the time did not clearly establish the right. The Eighth Circuit further noted that a court may rely upon either element in granting a motion for summary judgment. The Eighth Circuit focused its inquiry on the second element of this test in dismissing Morgan-Tyra’s appeal and in affirming the District Court’s finding that Officer Nikolov was immune from this suit based upon the doctrine of qualified immunity.
In this appeal, Morgan-Tyra’s allegation was that Officer Nikolov used excessive force when he shot her multiple times. The Eighth Circuit stated that the Court applied an objective-reasonableness standard to the amount of force used, accounting for the fact that police officers are forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving. An unreasonable act in one situation may be reasonable in another. And just as excessive-force claims must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, qualified immunity depends on the factual situation the officer confronts. In this way, the law gives officers a double benefit of the doubt. In addition to the deference officers receive on the underlying Constitutional claim, qualified immunity can apply in the event the mistaken belief was reasonable.
Furthermore, the Eighth Circuit explained that, as fact-intensive as excessive-force cases usually are, the United States Supreme Court has provided a straightforward rule in situations like this one: officers may use deadly force when there is “probable cause to believe that [a] suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others.” Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11 (1985)(emphasis added). The only qualifier is that an officer should give some warning when it is feasible to do so. Both common sense and case law suggest that a warning is less likely to be feasible in a high-pressure situation that requires a split-second judgment.
Here, the Eighth Circuit opined that the situation “was about as high pressure as it gets.” The Eighth Circuit noted that the woman right in front of Officer Nikolov was holding a gun while shouting expletives at someone who he could not see. Officer Nikolov knew that this woman had been the subject of at least one 911 call (if not two) and was obviously angry at the person on the other end of the gun. In addition, Officer Nikolov had already encountered someone who had tried—without success—to deescalate the situation. Accordingly, the Eighth Circuit found that, even if the Court were to assume that Officer Nikolov’s split-second decision to shoot without warning was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances, he still did not violate a clearly established Constitutional right.
Morgan-Tyra countered with the fact that she was only defending herself, a legal right she had under Missouri law. But according to the Eighth Circuit, the problem with Morgan-Tyra’s argument was that a reasonable officer would not have known who was standing in front of him—the initial aggressor or a victim who had fought back. The Eighth Circuit acknowledged that it was true that the second message from a police dispatcher indicated that a woman named “Jennifer Tyra” had armed herself in response to an attack by her roommate. But the Eighth Circuit determined that it was too much to expect a reasonable officer to sort out everyone’s identity in the heat of the moment, especially when the person right in front of him appeared to be on the verge of shooting someone.
In other words, the Eighth Circuit held that, even if Officer Nikolov misjudged the threat, the Court could not say that he acted in a clearly unreasonable way. At most, his actions fell within the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force, which gave him the benefit of qualified immunity.
In sum, the Eighth Circuit opined that, given that the facts in this case involved an individual who made threats and possessed a firearm, there was not much room for Morgan-Tyra to argue that she had a clearly established right to be free from deadly force. The potential threat in this case had not passed. Officer Nikolov reasonably believed that Morgan-Tyra had a gun pointed in the general direction of someone in another room. And, as she admitted, Morgan-Tyra used expletives to make others believe that she would shoot. Although she made much of the fact that she was pointing the gun in a downward direction, that made no difference to the Eighth Circuit because, even crediting her version of facts, Morgan-Tyra was wielding it in a menacing fashion and appeared ready to shoot. Officer Nikolov, having just entered this tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving situation, had no way of knowing what Morgan-Tyra planned to do. Accordingly, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s judgment and the District Court’s finding that Officer Nikolov was immune from this suit based upon the doctrine of qualified immunity.
It is important to note, however, that the Eighth Circuit’s resolution of Morgan-Tyra’s appeal was not unanimous. One judge filed a dissenting opinion in which that judge stated that, based upon the two differing versions of the relevant facts, the District Court erred in not allowing this case to procced to and to be decided by a jury. According to the dissenting judge, when she was deposed in the hospital, Morgan-Tyra initially could not remember where she was pointing her gun when she was shot. She later explained that before she was shot, she was standing in the hallway at the threshold of the bedroom Nicholson was in. Morgan-Tyra said that she would aim her gun at the floor when Nicholson sat down on the bed in the room and that she would point it at Nicholson when Nicholson stood up. But Morgan-Tyra specified that, when she heard the gunshots and fell to the ground, Nicholson was sitting down. Therefore, the dissenting judge stated that, according to Morgan-Tyra, when Officer Nikolov shot her, her gun was down. Officer Nikolov described the situation differently. He said that Morgan-Tyra had been pointing her gun at an angle in front of her, but then, Morgan-Tyra lowered it from Nicholson. As she turned towards Officer Nikolov, Morgan-Tyra raised it directly at him, and therefore, he started shooting.
Based upon this contrasting testimony, the dissenting judge found that there was enough evidence for a jury to find in favor of either side. Accordingly, the dissenting judge opined that the District Court erred in dismissing Morgan-Tyra’s case on summary judgment.
Based upon the dissent, the reader is encouraged to remember that both claims for excessive force and the defense or qualified immunity are very fact specific and fact intensive inquiries.