In Maxwell v. County of San Diego, published September 13, 2012, a divided Ninth Circuit panel reversed summary judgment in favor of county sheriff's deputies who responded to a shooting. A sheriff's deputy shot his wife at his parents'-in-law's home. The wife was initially stable and able to talk. When responding deputies arrived shortly after the shooting, the shooter confessed and was arrested. An ambulance was going to leave to take the wife to an air ambulance, but deputies delayed its departure for seven minutes during the investigation. During the trip to the air ambulance, the wife's condition worsened and she died. The deputies investigating the scene detained the family there for five hours while questioning him. When the wife's father was told of the wife's death, he disobeyed police orders not to go to the mother to tell her. The police pepper-sprayed, clubbed, and handcuffed him. The district court granted the deputies qualified immunity.
The Ninth Circuit majority reversed. The delay of the ambulance raised triable issues of fact on whether the officers were deliberately indifferent to the wife's constitutional rights by worsening her situation, and thus violated her 14th Amendment due process rights to bodily security. Her rights were sufficiently established that the officers would not be entitled to qualified immunity. The deputies' five-hour detention of the family may have violated their 4th Amendment rights, particularly since the shooter had confessed and the crime scene was secured. The use of pepper spray on a man whose only offense was disobeying a peace officer's order (possibly an unlawful one) raised triable issues about whether the deputies violated his 4th Amendment rights to freedom from excessive force used in arrest. Finally, the superior officers' inaction at the scene raised triable issues of fact on whether they violated the family's rights, and whether they were entitled to qualified immunity.
Judge Ikuta dissented. He opined that a seven-minute delay of the ambulance transporting a person who appeared to be stable warranted qualified immunity, as did detention of a family while the officers executed a search warrant of the residence and a brief use of pepper spray on a witness who disobeyed a police command not to talk to a fellow witness. He further opined that the plaintiffs had not shown that the supervisors committed any act that injured them, or created any policy, practice, or custom that led to their injury.