King v. Hill

615 F. App'x 470
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedJune 24, 2015
Docket14-5073
StatusUnpublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 615 F. App'x 470 (King v. Hill) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
King v. Hill, 615 F. App'x 470 (10th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

SCOTT M. MATHESON, Jr., Circuit Judge.

Lamont Hill, a deputy sheriff with the Tulsa County Sheriffs Department, shot *471 and wounded plaintiff Donald Francis King during a domestic disturbance call. Mr. King sued Deputy Hill under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, complaining that Deputy Hill had used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied Deputy Hill’s motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, and he appeals. We affirm the denial of summary judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

In this qualified immunity appeal we “take, as given, the facts that the district court assumed when it denied summary judgment.” Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 319, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). The district court summarized the facts as follows:

On December 1, 2010, King’s step daughter, Kasey Apple, called 911. Apple reported to the 911 dispatcher that her mother, Sherral Dalton, had reported to Apple by phone that King (Dalton’s husband) was making threats and had broken a water line at the home where Dalton and King lived on Iroquois Avenue. Apple reported that King is bipolar and was “off his meds.” In response to the dispatcher’s questions, Apple reported multiple times that there were no known weapons in the Iroquois Avenue house.
Immediately after Apple’s call to 911, at 3:31 p.m., a “domestic disturbance” dispatch call went out to the Tulsa County Sheriffs Office (TCSO) to respond to the Iroquois Avenue home. The dispatch call stated that King had broken a water line at the house, was threatening to harm a horse, “there are no known weapons” at the location, and that King was “10-85.” Upon hearing the dispatch call, Deputy Lamont Hill instructed his trainee, Allen Goodson, to respond on the radio that they would take the call, with Deputy Brian Walker also responding. The three TCSO deputies proceeded to the Iroquois Avenue location, with Hill and Goodson in one vehicle and Walker in another. All three of the deputies understood that the dispatcher’s radio report of “10-85” meant that King was mentally ill. Upon arrival near the Iroquois Avenue house, Hill encountered Sherral Dalton (King’s wife), who was standing in the driveway to the home of a neighbor, Richard Harmon, Jr. Hill spoke to Dalton for about 15 or 20 seconds, and Dalton informed Hill that King had not hit or otherwise physically injured her. The deputies then drove toward the house where King was located.
Deputy Walker parked in front of the property, blocking the long driveway leading to the house. Walker and Good-son positioned themselves closer to talk to King, approximately 25 to 30 yards from King, while Hill stayed back at a distance of 65 to 75 yards. The testimony conflicts as to where, specifically, King was located when the deputies drove up to the property. Hill testified that King “ran” and “bolted for the house,” while Deputy Walker and another witness testified that King was walking toward the house from his yard.
The record contains varying versions of what happened next. At some point, King was standing in the doorway of the home or just outside on the step leading out from the home, and it appeared to some witnesses that he was holding something. King was wearing a camouflage jacket, and was holding or carrying another camouflage jacket. The deputies assert that the second jacket was draped over both of King’s arms and

*472 that the deputies believed that King could have had a “long gun” under that jacket. Neighbor Harmon testified that he could see both of King’s hands and King did not have anything in his hands. Another neighbor, Chester Jones Jr., testified that it was clear that King did not have anything in his hands, although he did have a coat, which was folded and draped over King’s left arm. Jones testified that it was not possible that King had a long gun under that coat:

Q. Mr. Jones, could [King] have possibly had a long gun under that coat? A. No. No. I own four long guns, and I couldn’t — no. It’d’ve been sticking way out like this (indicating) or— couldn’t — couldn’t hold a long gun, not ... You can’t hold a long gun like this (indicating).

Deputy Hill went to the trunk of his vehicle and retrieved his AR-15 rifle, inserted a magazine in the rifle, and trained his rifle on King. According to Jones, after Hill got his rifle out of his car and inserted a clip, Hill told Jones “Go back in the house, dog” and then “I thought I told you, go back in the house, dog. You don’t want to see this.” 1

According to some witnesses (including Deputy Walker), Walker asked King to come out to talk. Walker testified that he told King to “put down whatever he had in his hands and that we just needed to talk.” In response, King shouted at the deputies to “get back,” “get off my property,” or “get the fuck off the property.” Some witnesses stated that King said that he had black powder, while others provided statements that King indicated that he had black powder “in the house.” Hill asserts that King threatened to “blow you-all’s asses up,” while Walker testified that King said “I’ve got enough explosives to blow this place up. I’ll — you don’t know if I’ll do it. Get off my property.”

According to Deputy Hill’s deposition testimony, immediately before he fired his rifle, King “raised his hands up closer to his face from his middle of the chest area up here and said, ‘that’s it, mother fuckers,’” and Hill then fired multiple rounds from his AR-15 rifle. In contrast, at a TCSÓ Critical Incident Review Board hearing, Hill stated that, immediately before he shot him, King yelled “Get on the fucking ground right now. I’m going to kill you right now.” Hill did not report that King threatened to shoot the deputies:

Q. So was he also threatening to shoot you?
A. That I don’t know.

Deputy Walker testified that, immediately before the shooting, King took a step toward him and Walker continued to yell at him to put down whatever he had in his hands. Neighbor Harmon testified that King was not making any threatening motions toward the deputies, but was just standing there in the doorway of the house. Harmon testified that one deputy yelled at King to show his hands, and King responded by starting to raise his hands, which he did in a manner that was not threatening. Some witnesses testified that King was off the porch, in the yard, when he was shot, while others testified that King was on the steps immediately adjacent to the front door when he was shot and then he fell off the steps after he was hit with the gunfire.

*473 After firing the first shot, Hill did not think King was hit, because-King “started to hunker down” to make himself smaller and more difficult to hit. 2 Hill rapidly fired two or three more shots at King.

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Bluebook (online)
615 F. App'x 470, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/king-v-hill-ca10-2015.