Trial News

The Eighth Circuit has reversed summary judgment based on qualified immunity for officers who kept a man in handcuffs during a traffic stop even after a pat down revealed no contraband and the man was calm and cooperative. The court held the officers’ actions violated the man’s Fourth Amendment right against an unreasonable seizure, which was clearly established at the time of the incident. (Haynes v. Minnehan, 2021 WL 4269143 (8th Cir. Sept. 21, 2021).)

Three officers—two in a marked cruiser and one in an unmarked van—were patrolling a neighborhood in Des Moines, Iowa, known for illegal drug activity. The officer in the unmarked van observed Dejuan Haynes briefly stop his vehicle, an expensive Volkswagen that looked out of place, along a sidewalk where someone approached his passenger-side window. The officer reported that he saw Haynes pass something to the other person, and that based on his experience and knowledge of the area, it could have been an illegal drug transaction. The officers in the cruiser followed Haynes and then pulled him over at a stop sign. As they approached Haynes, he placed his hands outside his window to show that they were empty. When asked what he had been doing, he told the officers that he had given some spare change to the person on the sidewalk.

The officers then asked for identification, but Haynes could not find his driver’s license. Instead, he produced a credit card, a Costco card with his photo on it, and his insurance card—all bearing his name. He also gave the officers his birthdate, address, and Social Security Number. Despite Haynes being cooperative and the officers not observing anything suspicious in his demeanor or any weapons or drug paraphernalia in the car, they asked Haynes to exit his vehicle. The officers handcuffed him, explaining that this was standard department procedure when a driver didn’t have identification during a traffic stop. An officer patted down Haynes and found nothing illegal. When asked if he had anything illegal in the car, Haynes said no and said the officers could search the vehicle, which they declined to do. Nearly five minutes after the frisk concluded, the officers removed the handcuffs and released Haynes.

Haynes filed federal and state claims against the officers and the city for violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable seizure, alleging that the officers had no reason to keep him in handcuffs on the side of the road after ascertaining that he wasn’t carrying anything illegal and didn’t pose a safety risk. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment based on qualified immunity. It held that Haynes did not have a clearly established right not to be kept in handcuffs after the frisk ended.

On appeal, the Eighth Circuit analyzed whether the officers conducted a lawful stop under Terry v. Ohio (392 U.S. 1 (1968)), which allows law enforcement to briefly detain someone they reasonably suspect of committing a crime, rather than under the higher probable cause standard. Terry stops are evaluated under two prongs: whether the stop began lawfully and whether the stop was conducted in a way that “was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” The court explained that a Terry stop that begins lawfully can become a violation of the Fourth Amendment “if it is excessively intrusive in its scope or manner of execution.” The plaintiff did not contend that the stop itself was unlawful, so the court focused on the second prong.

Noting that while handcuffs may be used legitimately during a stop-and-frisk, because handcuffs are more than a “de minimis intrusion” on someone’s rights, an officer must demonstrate that their use was objectively reasonable under the circumstances—namely a reasonable belief that the detained person may be armed or otherwise pose a safety threat.

Handcuffing the plaintiff was reasonable at the outset, the court found, because he was suspected of a drug-related offense and case law has established that the well-known connection between drug trafficking and weapons makes it reasonable for an officer to believe that a person detained for that crime may be armed. However, this legitimate initial belief is not without limitations: As the stop continues and officers obtain new information, “a reasonable belief can dissolve into an unreasonable one.”

As the officers learned more about the plaintiff’s identity, observed his cooperative behavior, and found no evidence of contraband, their reasonable belief that handcuffs were necessary evaporated, the court explained. Furthermore, the circumstances weighed against the officers’ reasonably believing their safety was at risk if the plaintiff were not handcuffed: The officers outnumbered the plaintiff; the stop occurred during daylight; the plaintiff was not larger in size than any of the officers; and when another cruiser approached and offered help, the officers said they were fine—and yet they continued to keep the plaintiff handcuffed. Because of these facts, the officers’ actions failed the second Terry stop prong and therefore violated the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights.

The court then considered whether this right was clearly established at the time of the violation. It concluded that several of its prior cases put the officers on notice that it is “well established that if suspects are cooperative and officers have no objective concerns for safety” then handcuffs cannot be justified “absent any extraordinary circumstances.” It also pointed to previous cases involving frisks that produced no illegal items in which the court determined that handcuffs could no longer be justified once the search yielded nothing. Consequently, the officers were on notice that they could not handcuff the plaintiff without an objectively reasonable safety concern and therefore were not entitled to qualified immunity.

Des Moines attorney Gina Messamer, who represents the plaintiff, said that even though the encounter did not involve excessive force against Haynes as is too often the case, the court’s recognition of the violation is important. “You still have your constitutional rights—even very basic simple ones like not to be handcuffed—so I am glad that the court vindicated that.”