Reported / Citable
Background
El Paso Police Officer Steven Jaso responded alone to a reported domestic assault involving seventy-year-old Armando Navejas, who had dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Although the parties disputed whether Navejas charged the officer and whether the objects he threw were bricks, surveillance video and undisputed evidence showed that Navejas ignored repeated commands, threw multiple objects toward Jaso, and struck him with one object. Jaso then deployed his Taser once into Navejas’s back, causing him to fall and lose consciousness. Navejas was hospitalized and later died.
Navejas’s daughter, representing his estate, brought a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim against Jaso under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and municipal-liability claims against El Paso. The district court granted summary judgment to both defendants, holding that Jaso was entitled to qualified immunity and that the evidence did not establish the City’s deliberate indifference. The estate appealed and also sought additional discovery.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Without deciding whether the Taser use violated the Fourth Amendment, the court held that no controlling precedent clearly established that an officer could not deploy a Taser once against an unsecured suspect who was reportedly involved in domestic violence, repeatedly ignored commands, threw objects at the officer, and struck him with one. Earlier cases involving gratuitous force against compliant, passively resistant, subdued, or restrained individuals did not squarely govern Jaso’s encounter with Navejas.
The court also upheld summary judgment for the City on every municipal-liability theory. The estate presented no pre-incident pattern establishing deliberate indifference, could not rely for the first time on appeal on incidents discussed in other cases, and did not qualify for the narrow single-incident exception because Jaso had received extensive use-of-force and mental-health training. The record likewise did not establish a custom of failing to discipline officers, deliberate indifference in the Crisis Intervention Team’s overnight scheduling, or ratification through an extreme and obvious constitutional violation. The court also found no abuse of discretion in allowing 78 additional discovery days rather than the requested 120, particularly because the estate neither sought another extension nor invoked Rule 56(d) when opposing summary judgment.
Key Takeaways
- Existing precedent involving force against compliant, passively resistant, or already-controlled suspects did not clearly prohibit a single Taser deployment against an unsecured person who ignored commands and threw objects at an officer.
- A municipal failure-to-train claim ordinarily requires evidence of similar constitutional violations predating the incident; different pattern evidence cannot be introduced for the first time on appeal.
- The single-incident exception did not apply because the City provided relevant use-of-force and mental-health training, even if the estate’s expert believed that training should have been better or different.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the factual specificity required to defeat qualified immunity in Fifth Circuit excessive-force cases. General decisions restricting Taser use against nonthreatening or subdued individuals will not clearly establish unlawfulness when the person remains unsecured, actively resists commands, and directs physical force toward an officer.
It also illustrates the evidentiary and preservation demands of Monell litigation: plaintiffs must develop and present pre-incident pattern evidence in the district court, connect it to the alleged policy deficiency, and timely invoke Rule 56(d) if additional discovery is necessary to oppose summary judgment.