Author: Jim Chapman
In Doriety for Estate of Crenshaw v. Lewis, 109 F.4th 670 (4th Cir. 2024), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit considered an issue of first impression: whether a district court may consider a video recording submitted at the motion to dismiss stage of a § 1983 action when the video recording is integral to the complaint and when its authenticity is not challenged. The relevant facts are as follows.
Nasanto Antonio Crenshaw, who was age seventeen (17) at the relevant time, was shot and killed by Officer Matthew Sletten, a City of Greensboro, North Carolina, police officer, who was trying to stop an allegedly stolen car that Crenshaw was driving. Crenshaw’s mother, Wakita Doriety (the Plaintiff/Appellant in this case), filed suit against Officer Sletten, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging a claim of excessive force in violation of Crenshaw’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Thereafter, Officer Sletten filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina granted Officer Sletten’s motion dismiss after the District Court viewed a video recording of Officer Sletten’s encounter with Crenshaw. Contrary to the Plaintiff’s allegations in her amended complaint, the District Court found—based on a review of the video—that the stolen car driven by Crenshaw in a parking lot “was moving directly towards” Officer Sletten. The District Court held that Officer Sletten was, therefore, justified in firing one shot through the car’s front windshield and other shots through the car’s right passenger window. Accordingly, the District Court dismissed the Plaintiff’s excessive force claim against Officer Sletten.
The Fourth Circuit began its consideration of Plaintiff’s appeal by noting that law enforcement officers are prohibited from using excessive force when attempting or executing a seizure of a person. Such a determination depends on whether the use of force was objectively reasonable. The focus of a district court’s review of the reasonableness of a seizure is on the moment that force is employed, and the district court should consider whether a reasonable officer in the same circumstances would have concluded that a threat existed to justify the particular use of force. Finally, the Fourth Circuit noted that an officer may reasonably apply deadly force to a fleeing suspect—even someone suspected of committing a serious felony—only if the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant and immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.
Here, the Plaintiff argued that the District Court erred in reviewing and in weighing what the video recording showed or did not show in relation to the allegations that the Plaintiff made in her amended complaint. The Plaintiff asserted that the District Court should have accepted her well-pleaded allegations in her amended complaint without reference to or review of the video recording. The Plaintiff contended that, in reviewing the video recording and in contrasting that evidence with the amended complaint’s allegations, the District Court committed reversible error because, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, a district court must accept a plaintiff’s allegations as true.
The Fourth Circuit noted that the Court had not previously addressed whether and in what manner a district court may consider a video recording at the motion to dismiss stage. But the Fourth Circuit noted that it had explained that, when a district court considers a video recording of a police encounter at the summary judgment stage, a district court must credit the plaintiff’s version of the facts to the extent they are not “blatantly contradicted” by the recording. As the phrase “blatantly contradicts” implies, this standard is a very difficult one to satisfy and requires that the plaintiff’s version of events be “utterly discredited” by the video recording.
Accordingly and in agreement with the other circuits courts that have considered this issue, the Fourth Circuit held in this case that the same standard applies to a district court’s consideration of a video recording at the motion to dismiss stage. Specifically, the Fourth Circuit held that a district court can consider a video recording submitted at the motion to dismiss stage when (1) the video is “integral” to the complaint and its authenticity is not challenged, but (2) only to the extent that the video “clearly depicts a set of facts contrary to those alleged in the complaint,” or “blatantly contradicts” the plaintiff’s allegations, rendering the plaintiff’s allegations implausible.
Whether the recording video was “integral” to the Plaintiff’s amended complaint in the present case, according to the Fourth Circuit, was not entirely clear. But because any error was invited by the plaintiff’s reliance on the video recording in response to Officer Sletten’s motion to dismiss, the Fourth Circuit did not address that threshold requirement. Instead, the Fourth Circuit concluded that the video recording fell far below the high bar of blatantly contradicting the plaintiff’s allegations in her amended complaint.
The Fourth Circuit went on to note that it was difficult to discern many critical details from the video. Initially, the video did not make clear Officer Sletten’s location as he moved “to the rear” of his patrol vehicle or the distance between where he stood and the moving stolen car. Similarly, the video did not demonstrate the entire direction in which the stolen car was moving in relation to where the officer stood, including whether or when Crenshaw “turned” the stolen car to the left away from Officer Sletten. Given these uncertainties, the Fourth Circuit found that the District Court was not permitted to find, contrary to the allegations and reasonable inferences arising from the amended complaint, that Crenshaw drove the car “directly” at the officer “for approximately one second” and that the officer ceased firing his weapon when the stolen car turned away from the Officer Sletten.
In addition, the Fourth Circuit explained that the video recording did not clearly depict (at the time that Officer Sletten fired the additional shots into the passenger window) Officer Sletten’s location, the path of the stolen car, or the distance between Officer Sletten and the stolen car. As a result, the Fourth Circuit determined that the District Court should have construed the facts regarding these additional shots in accord with the plaintiff’s plausible allegations contained within the Plaintiff’s amended complaint and the reasonable inferences that could be drawn from those allegations. Had the District Court done so, the Fourth Circuit concluded that the District Court would have considered, at this stage of the proceedings, that the stolen car was moving past Officer Sletten when he fired the additional shots and that Officer Sletten fired multiple times into the side of the stolen car, hitting Crenshaw on the right side of his body.
Therefore, the Fourth Circuit held that, at the motion to dismiss stage, the plaintiff’s allegations contained within her amended complaint were sufficient to allege a plausible claim of excessive force in violation of Crenshaw’s Fourth Amendment rights against Officer Slatten. Because the video recording did not blatantly contradict the plaintiff’s allegations regarding the location of Officer Slatten and the trajectory of the moving car at the time each shot was fired, the Fourth Circuit found that the District Court erred in construing the facts in a manner inconsistent with the plaintiff’s allegations. Based on the plaintiff’s allegations, a reasonable officer in Officer Sletten’s position would not think that the stolen car, which was moving away from the officer, posed a significant and immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer that would justify his conduct of firing one shot through the car’s windshield and additional shots through the car’s passenger window. The Fourth Circuit, thus, reversed the District Court’s ruling on the plaintiff’s excessive force claim and remanded for further proceedings.
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