Amos v. Kelly

Background

Howard W. Amos filed a self-represented lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against several defendants concerning his September 2, 2016 arrest. Earlier in the case, the court dismissed several defendants for failure to complete service on time, dismissed the North Memorial defendants for failure to prosecute, and dismissed Amos’s state-law assault and battery claims. The remaining defendants were Minneapolis Police Officer Ryan Kelly and Sergeant Kurtis Schoonover.

Amos alleged that Kelly used excessive force during the arrest and that Kelly and Schoonover failed to intervene to prevent excessive force. Amos initially described these claims as violations of the Eighth Amendment. In response to the summary-judgment motion, he asked the court to treat his allegations as Fourth Amendment claims as well.

Court’s analysis

The report first concluded that the Eighth Amendment does not govern excessive-force claims arising during an arrest before conviction or incarceration. It then liberally construed Amos’s allegations as asserting Fourth Amendment excessive-force and failure-to-intervene claims.

For Kelly’s use-of-force claim, the court applied the objective-reasonableness standard, which asks whether the officer’s conduct was reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances known at the time. The court considered evidence including declarations, police reports, vehicle and body-worn-camera footage, and Amos’s submissions. It found that Kelly had probable cause to believe Amos posed a serious threat when Kelly struck him with a flashlight: Amos had led police on a high-speed chase, crashed into parked vehicles after striking a pedestrian who later died, fled on foot, resisted efforts to stop him, and attempted to take control of an occupied running vehicle while Kelly was partly inside it. The court also found that earlier efforts to stop Amos, including punches and two uses of a taser, had been ineffective. It concluded that Kelly’s conduct did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

The court rejected Kelly’s failure-to-intervene claim because the evidence did not show that Kelly observed or had reason to know that another officer was using excessive force. The evidence showed that Amos continued resisting until officers secured both handcuffs and that the officers stopped using force once he was handcuffed.

The court rejected Amos’s failure-to-intervene claim against Schoonover because it found no evidence of excessive force and because uncontroverted evidence showed Schoonover was not present when officers used force to handcuff Amos. The court also addressed Amos’s suggestion that Schoonover covered up a violation by losing photographs of officers’ injuries. It concluded that the evidence showed, at most, a negligent mistake caused by technological problems or ineptitude, and that Amos offered no evidence of intentional or reckless misconduct.

Because the court found no constitutional violation, it did not continue to the remaining parts of the qualified-immunity analysis. Qualified immunity is a defense that can protect government officials from damages when their conduct did not violate a constitutional right or a clearly established right.

Recommendation and procedural posture

The report recommends that Ryan Kelly and Kurtis Schoonover’s amended motion for summary judgment be granted and that all claims against them be dismissed with prejudice. The report expressly states that it is not an order or judgment of the District Court and is not directly appealable to the Eighth Circuit. It says that a party may file specific written objections within 14 days after being served with the report.