Policing and Public Transportation (2022)

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TCRP LRD 58 13 Regarding the significance of the Court’s decision in Taylor, first, the decision appears to be consistent with existing law that a constitutional violation occurs when the government or a police officer acts with deliberate indifference to a person’s constitutional rights. In Taylor, the Court stated that “although an officer-by-officer analysis will be necessary on remand, the record suggests that at least some officers involved in Taylor’s ordeal were deliberately indifferent to the conditions of his cells.”123 The Court stated that “any reasonable officer should have realized that Taylor’s conditions of confinement offended the Constitution.”124 Second, the use of the term extreme circumstances ap- pears to mean that an officer may not have qualified immunity when the circumstances attendant a person’s arrest or incar- ceration are so egregious that any “reasonable officer” would or should have recognized that the circumstances likely violate the Constitution—in Taylor’s case the Eighth Amendment. Thus, the Taylor decision arguably may have sanctioned an ex- ception to qualified immunity that does not require a decision on whether a police officer violated a municipal agency’s own policy or custom or on whether there was deliberate indiffer- ence to a defendant’s constitutional rights. In Taylor, the Court held that the facts concerning Taylor’s confinement constituted “extreme circumstances” that were sufficient to provide officers “‘with some notice that their alleged conduct violate[d]’ the Eighth Amendment.”125 Alternatively, rather than the existence of extreme conditions being an exception to qualified immunity, the Taylor decision may mean that the bar to having qualified immunity is high- er when the question is whether a reasonable officer would or should have recognized that the extreme circumstances known to the officer very likely violate the Constitution. Third, in Taylor’s case, the Court found that the conditions of Taylor’s confinement were so extreme that a reasonable officer would or should have known that the extreme conditions likely violate the Eighth Amendment. However, the Court and lower courts could distinguish the Taylor decision on the ground that it is confined to cases arising under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments and, therefore, does not apply in all cases alleging extreme circumstances. After the Supreme Court’s remand of Taylor’s case to the Fifth Circuit, the appeals court remanded the case to the district court. The Fifth Circuit did not express an opinion on “what proceedings the [district] court should conduct on remand or what decisions it should make.”126 As of the time of this digest, there had been no decision on remand by the district court. 123 Id., 141 S. Ct. at 54, 208 L.Ed.2d at 165 (emphasis supplied). 124 Id. 125 Id. (quoting Hope v. Peizer, 536 U.S. 730, 745, 122 S. Ct. 2508, 153 L. Ed.2d 666 (2002)). 126 Taylor v. Stevens, 982 F.3d 959 (5th Cir. 2020). B. Whether Qualified Immunity Exists when a Reasonable Officer would or should Have Recognized that Extreme Circumstances attendant a Defendant’s Arrest or Confinement likely Violate the Constitution The question in this subsection is whether a police officer has qualified immunity: (1) when a reasonable police officer would or should have understood that there was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, or (2) that a reasonable police officer would or should have understood that the circumstances of a defendant’s arrest or confinement were so extreme that the arrest or con- finement likely violates the Constitution. In Taylor v. Riojas,116 decided in 2020, the Supreme Court held that correctional officers did not have qualified immunity when they incarcerated Taylor, the Petitioner, under conditions that were so “extreme” that the conditions violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. Taylor alleged that correctional officers of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice incarcerated him for six days in September 2013 in two “shockingly unsanitary cells.”117 Taylor was confined, first, in a cell that “was covered, nearly floor to ceiling, in ‘massive amounts of feces’: all over the floor, the ceiling, the window, the walls, and even ‘packed inside the water faucet.’ . . . Fearing that his food and water would be con- taminated, Taylor did not eat or drink for nearly four days.”118 When correctional officials moved Taylor to a second cell it was a “frigidly cold cell, . . . equipped with only a clogged drain in the floor to dispose of bodily wastes. . . . Because the cell lacked a bunk, and because Taylor was confined without clothing, he was left to sleep naked in sewage.”119 Although Taylor’s conditions of confinement violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments,120 the Fifth Circuit held that because of “its assess- ment that ‘[t]he law wasn’t clearly established’ that ‘prisoners couldn’t be housed in cells teeming with human waste’ . . . ‘for only six days,’ . . . prison officials responsible for Taylor’s con- finement did not have ‘fair warning’ that their specific acts were unconstitutional.”121 In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case, holding that the Fifth Circuit erred when it granted the officers qualified immunity. The Court held that “no reasonable correctional officer could have concluded, under the extreme circumstances of this case, that it was constitutionally permissible to house Taylor in such deplorably unsanitary con- ditions for such an extended period of time.”122 116 141 S. Ct. 52, 208 L. Ed.2d 164 (2020) (per curiam). 117 Id., 141 S. Ct. at 53, 208 L.Ed.2d at 164 (footnote omitted). 118 Id. (some internal quotation marks omitted). 119 Id. 120 Id. 121 Id. (citations omitted) (some internal quotation marks omitted). 122 Id., 141 S. Ct. at 53, 208 L.Ed.2d at 165 (citations omitted).