Ian Miller v. Spencer Jackson and Sean Roycroft

Boston, Massachusetts, personal injury lawyers represented the Plaintiff on a civil rights wrongful death excessive force case.



Robert Miller died during a run-in with Barnstable

police officers Sean Roycroft and Spencer Jackson at his Cape Cod

home in 2019. He was 63. A big question is how this happened.



The parties (whose names appear in our caption) give differing

accounts. But at this stage, we (as will be seen) must credit

Miller's representative's version if there's evidence to support

it. And that's the version we set out here and throughout.



The tragedy impelling this litigation unfolded in just

minutes. Responding to a 911 call from Miller's girlfriend that

he "need[ed] a psych evaluation," Roycroft got to Miller's place

at 7:09 p.m. (she made the call around 7:03 p.m. and reported no

crime (to be clear)). Jackson got there about a minute later.

And by 7:12 p.m. — after struggling to handcuff him while on the

floor of the home's office area — the officers needed an ambulance

for the now-lifeless Miller, who was pronounced dead at 8:00 p.m.

Miller's son (whom we'll just call "plaintiff") sued the

officers on behalf of the estate, alleging a federal excessive-

force claim. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Following discovery, the

officers moved for summary judgment on qualified-immunity grounds.



Qualified immunity (broadly speaking) protects them from this suit

unless they violated clearly established constitutional norms.

See, e.g., district judge (roughly speaking) thought that plaintiff raised

triable issues because of questions concerning what reasonable

jurors could infer about the officers' conduct (described more

fully below) after "Roycroft and Miller tripped and fell to the

floor in the office space area." See Est. of Miller v. Roycroft,

No. 21-CV-10738-AK, 2024 WL 1416066, at *12 (D. Mass. Mar. 31,

2024).



* * *



Qualified immunity shields police officers from § 1983

suits unless the officers violated clearly established federal law

apparent to a rational officer standing in their shoes when they

acted. See, e.g., Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232, 234

(2009) (holding that the qualified-immunity defense turns on

whether (1) the officers violated constitutional guarantees

(2) that governing caselaw clearly established the violation when

it occurred — adding also that courts can resolve the defense under

the first or second prong, as there's no "rigid order of battle").

See generally Dist. of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63-64 (2018)

(remarking that while in the "rare" case a clearly established

right may be "obvious," clearly establishing a right typically

requires "'controlling'" caselaw or a "'consensus'" of

"'persuasive'" caselaw that puts the constitutional question

"'beyond debate"" (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741-

42 (2011))); McKenney, 873 F.3d at 81 (discussing the qualified-

immunity standard in exquisite detail). Summary judgment in these

kinds of cases turns on whether the record — read most favorably

to plaintiff, with every reasonable inference it permits — reveals

a material-fact dispute barring the officers' qualified-immunity

claim or shows their righte.g., Rivera-Corraliza v. Puig-Morales, 794 F.3d 208, 214 (1st

Cir. 2015) (stressing that "[c]ourts penalize officers for

violating 'bright lines,' not for making 'bad guesses

in gray areas'" (quoting Maciariello v. Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298

(4th Cir. 1992))).



Orders denying summary judgment usually aren't

immediately appealable. See, e.g., Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S.

304, 309 (1995) (discussing 28 U.S.C. § 1291). And that's because

they're not final orders in the traditional sense. See id. (noting

that § 1291 "grants appellate courts jurisdiction to hear appeals

only from 'final decisions' of the district courts"). An exception

exists for a summary-judgment order denying a qualified-immunity

request if the appeal is about legal issues. Id. at 317. Qualified

immunity, you see, is a defense from suit — not just liability.

Id. at 312. And forcing officers who lost on summary judgment to

wait for a jury verdict before appealing would kibosh an essential

piece of the defense. Id. But — an important but — while we have

jurisdiction to resolve purely legal issues, we have no

jurisdiction to resolve fact disputes. See id. Put most simply,

"the interlocutory appeal to vindicate the right not to be tried

is unavailable when there is no legal uncertainty; there is no

separate 'right not to be tried' on the question whether the

defendants did the deeds alleged; that is precisely the question

for trial." 1991). See generally Brown v. Dickey, 117 F.4th 1, 6 (1st Cir.

2024) (stressing that we lack jurisdiction if the officers' appeal

turns on their "claim that 'the facts asserted by the plaintiff[]

are untrue, unproven, warrant a different spin, tell only a small

part of the story, [or] are presented out of context'" (quoting

McKenney, 873 F.3d at 80-81)

Defendants' motion for summary judgment was denied.



Affirmed