Christina Carter sued Deputy Sheriff Patrick Bishop under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after an April 2022 arrest at her sister's house in Alabama. Carter, a Navy veteran with PTSD, had gotten into a fight with her sister, whose vehicle was blocking Carter's truck. A neighbor called 911 and told the operator that Carter was beating her sister. Dispatchers separately told Bishop that the aggressor had a baseball bat and was trying to leave. When Bishop arrived, Carter was backing out of the driveway at high speed. She stopped only after Bishop hit the side of her truck with his hand, then got out and approached him, yelling that she had severe service-connected PTSD. Bishop ordered her to look into his camera and state her name. Carter screamed and backed away, and Bishop pepper-sprayed her. Later, after Carter refused multiple commands to put out her hands or go to her knees, three officers pressed her against a vehicle and struggled to handcuff her. During that struggle, her right arm broke. She was later charged with second-degree assault for kicking Bishop while resisting.
On the pepper-spray claim, Judge Edmund G. LaCour Jr. held that Bishop was not on clear notice that deploying pepper spray was unlawful. Carter relied on Fils v. City of Aventura and Howell v. Sheriff of Palm Beach County, both involving non-violent suspects who merely talked back to officers. The court distinguished those cases because Bishop had been told Carter committed a violent crime involving a baseball bat and had personally witnessed her refuse multiple orders.
The broken-arm claim presented the closer question. Carter argued that by the time her arm broke she had resigned herself to being handcuffed and was no longer resisting, bringing her case within Smith v. Mattox, the 1997 Eleventh Circuit decision that denied qualified immunity to an officer who broke the arm of a suspect who had docilely submitted. The court acknowledged Smith but held it did not clearly govern here. Unlike the plaintiff in Smith, who had complied with commands to lie on the ground, Carter had twice refused commands to extend her hands, three times refused commands to go to her knees, walked away from officers, and made statements such as "No, no you're not arresting me" and "Don't you f****** do it" as officers tried to cuff her. The court held that because Carter presented no clear indicia of submission, a reasonable officer could have believed she was still resisting or merely pausing her resistance, and that Smith — itself described in the opinion as a "very close case" applying a "hazy" "case-by-case balancing test" — did not put Bishop on notice that the force he used crossed the constitutional line.
The court also rejected Carter's malicious prosecution claim. Carter alleged Bishop fabricated the claim that she kicked him during the arrest to support the second-degree assault charge. The court held that Carter produced no affirmative evidence of intentional falsehood — only evidence that Bishop might have been mistaken. Given that four people were struggling at close quarters for almost 30 seconds, the court held it was entirely possible Bishop genuinely but mistakenly believed he had been kicked, and that general attacks on his credibility were insufficient to create a triable issue.
The court granted summary judgment on all three counts and ordered judgment to be entered by separate order.