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"Defund the police" has been a rallying cry in recent protests. (Photo at BLM encampment, New York City, June 26, 2020, by Felton Davis CC BY 2.0.) |
Authoring the unanimous opinion, Justice David A. Lowy characterized the case as "disturbing." The court recited the facts as most favorable to the plaintiff, Mark S. Tinsley, the non-moving party. According to that recitation, Tinsley, who is African American, was stopped by Framingham, Massachusetts, police for speeding in 2012. Suspecting Tinsley of hiding something, police ordered Tinsley from the car, and he refused. The traffic stop by two police officers became a physical struggle with five to pull Tinsley from the car. Once he was out of the car, on the ground,
several police officers began beating him. Tinsley did not resist. He tried to put his hands behind his back so that the police officers would handcuff him and thus, he thought, stop hitting him. The police officers did not stop. [One officer] struck Tinsley's collarbone and upper shoulder, and stomped on Tinsley's left hand. [A second officer] sprayed Tinsley with pepper spray. [A third officer] called Tinsley a "fucking n[word]" [footnote: "At trial, [the third officer] denied that he or any other police officer swore at Tinsley or called him 'any names.'"] and kicked Tinsley in the head. While Tinsley was on the ground, an officer handcuffed him [footnote omitted quoting Tinsley's trial testimony]. Tinsley suffered a broken nose, a broken finger, and a wound on the side of his head that required stitches.
Tinsley was convicted on counts including assault and battery (criminal), carrying a dangerous weapon ("a spring assisted knife"), and resisting arrest. While criminal charges were pending, Tinsley sued for civil rights violation and tort claims including assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false arrest. Upon two motions, the latter decided after the conclusion of the criminal proceeding, the trial court entered judgment for defendants police and town on all counts.
The question on appeal was whether the trial court properly recognized in the civil proceeding the collateral estoppel effect of Tinsley's criminal conviction. The doctrine of collateral estoppel precludes a later civil court from re-trying facts and conclusions of law that were determined by jury and court in an earlier criminal proceeding. Thus, after conviction, a defendant may not argue his innocence in a later case.
However, the facts deemed determined in the earlier criminal proceeding are limited to the facts that supported conviction. Tinsley argued, and the Court agreed, that the jury's conviction was not inconsistent with Tinsley's claim of excessive force for the beating he endured on the ground, outside the car, after his arrest. The Court reasoned that Tinsley was placed under arrest when he was seized inside the car. Insofar as Tinsley was resisting arrest inside the car, then, collateral estoppel pertains, precluding suit on the tort of false arrest. But the jury may have based its conviction on a fact pattern that ended before Tinsley was on the ground. So the facts of the beating, occurring after arrest, remain arguable in the civil case.
The Court explained,
Even where the use of force to effect an arrest is reasonable in response to an individual's resistance, the continued use of force may well be unreasonable, as an individual's conduct prior to arrest or during an arrest does not authorize a violation of his or her constitutional rights.... To hold differently would implicitly permit police officers, in response to a resisting individual, to exert as much force as they so choose "and be shielded from accountability under civil law," so long as the prosecutor could successfully convict the individual of resisting arrest.
Accordingly, the Court vacated judgment for defendants on the civil rights claim and the assault, battery, and IIED counts, and remanded the civil case to proceed. The false arrest claim was properly barred.
The case is Tinsley v. Town of Framingham, No. SJC-12826 (Mass. Sept. 17, 2020). Chief Justice Gants participated in deliberations before his death.
