Officer gets qualified immunity for tasing a deaf 15 year-old

A police officer who tased a deaf 12-year-old boy twice has been granted qualified immunity by the Second Circuit, which dismissed the civil rights case on the basis that a reasonable police officer would have believed the tasing was necessary to prevent the boy from acting out any further and hurting someone.

The case is Muchette v. Gionfriddo, issued on December 7. The boy was a student at the American School for the Deaf in Connecticut. He got into an argument with a teacher and ran out of the dorm and entered a nearby, fenced-off construction area, where he hit the teacher, Hammond, with a stick and picked up a large rock before sitting down with the rock, refusing to return to the school. After the police arrived, school officials -- 15 feet away from the boy -- told the boy through sign language to put down the rock. At the officer's behest, the school officials also "told" the boy he would be tased if he did not comply with that order. When the boy appeared to ignore the warning, he got tased. The officer then tased him again when they were unable to place him in handcuffs. The trial court denied the officer's qualified immunity motion, setting this case down for trial, but the officer took up an immediate appeal, and the Second Circuit (Pooler, Walker and Jacobs) reverses the trial court and the officer gets qualified immunity, which means the case is over.

Qualified immunity allows public defendants to avoid suit if their actions were objectively reasonable under the circumstances. Few Second Circuit cases address when the officer can tase someone, but the court applies the cases that deal with the general excessive use of force against noncompliant arrestees and other malcontents who just won't listen.

The district court summarized the evidence:

Officer Gionfriddo shot A.M. in the back with his Taser gun, and electroshock was administered for a period of 5 seconds. However, the two officers were unable to handcuff A.M. at that time, so Gionfriddo administered a second round of electroshock. After the second Taser deployment, the officers were able to handcuff A.M.

Paramedical personnel on the scene removed the Taser prongs and transported A.M. in an ambulance to a hospital. A physical evaluation at the hospital revealed a Taser mark on A.M.'s back, an abrasion to his chest, and a scratch to his right hand.

At deposition, Officer Gionfriddo admitted that A.M. did not make any quick, adverse moves before Gionfriddo fired the projectile prongs into A.M.'s back. Nor did A.M. threaten to throw any rocks in Gionfriddo's presence. Moreover, Gionfriddo testified that if A.M. were to have made any quick moves, Goinfriddo was comfortable that he could disarm him by deploying the Taser at that time.

Gionfriddo was on the scene for under three minutes before resorting to his Taser.

 The officer gets immunity because the school told him the child threw a chair at a staff member, hit Hammond with a stick and threw rocks at Hammond and other staffers. This led the officer to reasonably believe the student was a danger to others. The officer also had a reasonable basis to believe his warnings made their way to the student, as the school-people conveyed them through sign language. While there was some dispute whether the student got the message, the officer reasonably believed the teachers conveyed that message to him, as they were after all school officials who would have wanted to warn the student so that he would not suffer any tasing. As for the second tasing, the Court says plaintiff's lawyer did not make a serious argument on this point.

So what looks like a slam dunk for the student turns into qualified immunity for the officer. I listened to oral argument for this case, and the officer's lawyer opened by acknowledging that his case at first glance looked like an uphill battle, as we are after all talking about two tasings of a deaf child who was situated away from everyone else and did not appear to pose an immediate threat to anyone. But qualified immunity is unforgiving, and it allows police officers substantial leeway. Under qualified immunity, courts will give the police the benefit of the doubt in close cases.