BENTON COUNTY : Court: Deputy immune from suit
Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008
What’s a sheriff ’s deputy to do when faced with serving an Arkansas arrest warrant at a house that sits in Oklahoma but whose mailbox and telephone number are officially within Arkansas’ borders ?
On Monday, a divided three-judge panel of the 8 th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis determined that a Benton County deputy who found himself in just such a predicament in 2005 was within his authority to make an arrest, and therefore is entitled to qualified immunity from a civil lawsuit filed by the man he arrested.
One of the three judges disagreed, however, saying that the deputy had no authority to make an arrest in another state, and since he worked in a county bordering another state, should have been aware of the jurisdictional lines.
The case also caused dissension at the trial level. There, a U. S. magistrate judge who reviewed the lawsuit recommended that a U. S. district judge grant the deputy’s motion to dismiss the case on the immunity issue. But the district judge rejected the magistrate’s recommendation and kept the lawsuit intact — only to find himself overturned on Monday by the 8 th Circuit.
The lawsuit over whether the deputy violated Stephen James Engleman’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures by arresting him in Oklahoma on an Arkansas warrant stemmed from a 911 call that Engleman placed on Jan. 11, 2005.
The call, placed from the 479 area code that is assigned to phone numbers in Northwest Arkansas, was routed to the Benton County sheriff ’s office. The 911 system’s caller identification indicated that Engleman placed the call, in which he reported prowlers, from his parents’ home at 24512 Van Fleet Road in Siloam Springs.
Deputy Keith Murray and a Gentry police officer responded to the call, learning while en route that there was an outstanding warrant for Engleman’s arrest.
Once at the house, Engleman’s father told them they were in Oklahoma, but the officers went inside and found Engleman, who during a scuffle with the officers told them they couldn’t arrest him because he was in Oklahoma, according to the 8 th Circuit opinion.
Engleman’s mother also told the officers they were in Oklahoma, the opinion states.
Engleman later sued Gentry’s police chief, the Benton County sheriff and Deputy Murray, alleging that the arrest was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
During the course of litigation, the opinion notes, a Global Positioning System map revealed that the house was in Oklahoma, while the parties agreed that the Englemans’ mailbox is in Arkansas.
While rejecting the magistrate’s finding about Deputy Murray, the district judge did agree to dismiss the case against the police chief and the sheriff.
Reviewing the record in the light most favorable to Engleman, wrote U. S. Circuit Judge Raymond W. Gruender of St. Louis, the appellate panel considered whether a reasonable officer would have known that Murray’s conduct violated a clearly established right, in light of the law and the information he possessed at the time.
Gruender cited a line from one of the appellate court’s 2004 opinions: “Officials are not liable for bad guesses in gray areas; they are liable for transgressing bright lines.”
Although the arrest warrant for outstanding charges of failing to appear in an earlier case was valid and supported by probable cause, Arkansas Statute 16-81-105 doesn’t authorize out-of-state arrests, Gruender noted.
The majority of the panel, Gruender and Senior U. S. Circuit Judge C. Arlen Beam of Lincoln, Neb., determined that Murray was entitled to immunity because, in looking at the totality of the circumstances, “It was objectively reasonable for an officer in Deputy Murray’s position to have believed that he was executing the arrest in Arkansas.”
U. S. Circuit Judge Kermit E. Bye of Fargo, N. D, dissented. Bye said he believes that genuine facts — which are for juries to decide — remain in dispute about whether it was reasonable for Murray to believe that he was arresting Engleman in Arkansas. Bye wrote that “the officer executed an arrest warrant in a state where he knew he was unlicensed and had no authority.”
Bye also argued that “a reasonable officer” would have known that the Engleman home is on a state-line road, in which case, “From the very moment of arriving on the scene, a reasonable officer would and should have questioned whether the home was in Oklahoma, notwithstanding the fact that its mailbox may have carried an Arkansas address.”
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