Stephen Lewis v. Whitney Walley

Greenville, Mississippi, personal injury lawyer represented the Plaintiff on a civil rights violation theory.

Stephen Lewis sued Detective Whitney Walley under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983 for alleged violations of his Fourth Amendment rights. The district
court denied defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings for the
Fourth Amendment search claim, thus denying Walley’s defense of qualified
immunity.

On November 1, 2020, an individual reported to the police that a debit
card had been stolen from his car and that bank records indicated that the
card had been used to purchase goods at a Best Buy store in Southaven, Mis-
sissippi. The Southaven Police Department (“SPD”) responded to inves-
tigate. Best Buy produced a receipt documenting the allegedly fraudulent
purchase and reviewed security tape for footage of the suspect who made the
purchase. Though the SPD did not immediately identify a suspect, it con-
tinued to investigate.
On November 13, in Greenville, Mississippi, 150 miles away, the
Washington County Sherriff’s Department (“WCSD”) arrested Lewis for
an unrelated automobile burglary. The investigator, Cory Weatherspoon,
searched Lewis’s phone for evidence pertinent to that investigation. Weath-
erspoon did not obtain a search warrant before conducting the search of
Lewis’s phone. During the search, Weatherspoon discovered evidence of
receipts from a Best Buy store in Southaven.
Weatherspoon called the SPD, informed the SPD that the WCSD
“had someone in custody for auto burglary and in the course of their inves-
tigation they located evidence of multiple fraudulent purchases with illegally
obtained credit cards including a receipt from Best Buy for a large amount.”
Walley of the SPD contacted Weatherspoon about the receipt. Weather-
spoon informed Walley that Lewis was arrested for automobile burglary and
that Weatherspoon had conducted a search of Lewis’s cell phone per a search
warrant, though Walley did not know that a warrant had not actually been
issued before the search. Weatherspoon confirmed that the phone contained
pictures of receipts from the Best Buy.
Weatherspoon emailed the images to Walley. Walley reviewed the
Case: 24-60379 Document: 92-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 02/23/2026No. 24-60379
3
images that contained a receipt that matched the date, time, items, and
amounts of the items purchased on the stolen credit card.
Based on the images of the receipt, along with copies of receipts pro-
vided by Best Buy, Walley prepared an arrest warrant for Lewis. Although
Lewis was indicted, the charges were eventually remanded to the file in 2022.
Lewis filed numerous constitutional claims against Walley. The dis-
trict court dismissed all but one. In the remaining claim, at issue on appeal,
Lewis alleged that Walley’s review of the photographs sent by Weatherspoon
constituted a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Walley moved for judgment on the pleadings, alleging there was no Fourth
Amendment violation and that she was entitled to QI.

* * *

“The doctrine of [QI] protects public officials from liability for civil
damages ‘insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statu-
tory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have
known.’” Jennings v. Patton, 644 F.3d 297, 300 (5th Cir. 2011) (quoting Pear-
son v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009)). Where a defendant asserts QI,
“the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show that the defense is not available.”
Trent v. Wade, 776 F.3d 368, 376 (5th Cir. 2015).

“[A] plaintiff seeking to overcome [QI] must show: (1) that the official
violated a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) that the right was clearly
established at the time of the challenged conduct.” Carmona v. City of
Brownsville, 126 F.4th 1091, 1096 (5th Cir. 2025). “Therefore, to succeed in
opposition to QI asserted in a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, even where
plaintiff adequately pleads the violation of a federal right, plaintiff still must
adequately plead that defendant’s conduct was objectively unreasonable in
light of clearly established law.” Id. (cleaned up). We “have discretion to
skip the first inquiry and resolve a case solely on clearly established grounds.”
Sims v. City of Madisonville, 894 F.3d 632, 638 (5th Cir. 2018) (per curiam)
(citing Pearson, 555 U.S. at 240).

A government official “violates clearly established law when, at the
time of the challenged conduct, the contours of the right are sufficiently clear
that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing
violates that right.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (cleaned
up). Although a case does not have to be “directly on point for a right to be
clearly established, existing precedent must have placed the statutory or con-
stitutional question beyond debate.” Kisela v. Hughes, 584 U.S. 100, 104
(2018).

The district court denied the motion.

Walley has not forfeited her defense of QI, and the defense succeeds.
Lewis has not shown that Walley’s conduct was a clearly established Fourth
Amendment violation. The judgment accordingly is REVERSED, and a
judgment of dismissal is RENDERED.