Estevis v. Cantu, No. 24-40277 (5th Cir. 2025)

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Alejandro Estevis was involved in a high-speed chase with the Laredo Police Department (LPD) that lasted two hours and reached speeds over 100 mph. The chase ended when officers forced Estevis's truck off the road. Estevis then rammed a police cruiser and attempted to flee again, prompting two officers to fire nine shots at him, injuring him severely. Estevis sued the officers, claiming they used excessive force.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas granted the officers qualified immunity for the first three shots but denied it for shots four through nine. The court found that while Estevis posed a threat initially, the threat had diminished by the time the later shots were fired. The court reasoned that Estevis had stopped revving his engine and was no longer an immediate threat, making the additional shots potentially excessive.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reviewed the case and reversed the district court's decision. The appellate court held that the officers did not violate clearly established law by firing the additional shots under the circumstances. The court noted that the situation was dangerous and unpredictable, and the officers had reason to believe they were still under threat. The court found that existing precedent did not clearly establish that the officers' actions were unlawful, and thus, they were entitled to qualified immunity for all shots fired. The court rendered judgment granting the officers qualified immunity for shots four through nine.

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Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ____________ No. 24-40277 ____________ Alejandro Estevis, United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED April 16, 2025 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk Plaintiff—Appellee, versus Ignacio Cantu, In his individual capacity; Eduardo Guajardo, In his individual capacity, Defendants—Appellants. ______________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas USDC No. 5:22-CV-22 ______________________________ Before Haynes, Duncan, and Wilson, Circuit Judges. Stuart Kyle Duncan, Circuit Judge: After a two-hour, high-speed pursuit of Alejandro Estevis through the nighttime streets of Laredo, officers from the Laredo Police Department (LPD) forced Estevis’s truck off the road and boxed him in. Unwilling to surrender, Estevis rammed his truck into one of the police cruisers and lurched off the road into a fence, wheels smoking and engine revving. At that point, two LPD officers fired nine shots into the truck over the course of ten seconds, badly injuring Estevis, who sued them for using excessive force. Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 The district court granted the officers qualified immunity for shots 1– 3 but denied it for shots 4–9. We reverse and render judgment granting the officers qualified immunity for all shots fired. At a minimum, the officers did not violate clearly established law by firing those additional shots under the dangerous and unpredictable circumstances facing them. I A On April 9, 2020, around three in the morning, LPD Officer Karla Pruneda noticed Estevis slumped over inside his pickup truck on the side of the road. Intending to perform a welfare check, she parked her patrol car behind the truck and activated her bar lights. Estevis ed. For the next two hours, police chased Estevis through the city and surrounding area, with Estevis running stop signs and tra c lights and, at times, reaching speeds over 100 mph. At some point, LPD o cers were ordered to disengage, but some, including O cer Guajardo, eventually rejoined the pursuit. Meanwhile, o cers from other agencies—the Texas Department of Public Safety and the United States Border Patrol—placed spike strips in Estevis’s path. By around 5 a.m., o cers had succeeded in de ating some of Estevis’s tires. Yet Estevis continued to ee, albeit at a low speed. At this point, responding to a request by LPD Sergeant Lozano, O cer Cantu used his Crown Victoria to slowly force Estevis o the road and onto a grassy area past the shoulder. That maneuver and what follows were captured on several dashcam and body-cam videos from multiple angles. 1 _____________________ 1 Two of the videos contain body-cam footage from Officer Guajardo and Officer Cantu. The other two videos contain dash-cam footage from a third officer and Guajardo. 2 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 3 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 O cer Guajardo positioned his vehicle directly behind Estevis’s stopped truck. Both o cers then exited their vehicles, O cer Cantu drawing his gun. Estevis immediately threw his truck into reverse and, smoke billowing from his wheels, rammed Guajardo’s vehicle. Guajardo screamed “Stop!” and warned advancing o cers, “Watch the cross re!” Seconds after hitting Guajardo’s car, Estevis’s truck lurched forward and Guajardo red three shots at the truck’s cabin (shots 1–3). Estevis hopped the right-hand curb and collided with a fence, engine revving. During the next four-to- ve seconds, Guajardo advanced and, just as the engine stopped revving, red three more times (shots 4–6). One-to-two seconds after that, Cantu also red three times (shots 7–9). Estevis was struck by at least two of the nine bullets. One hit his upper back and lodged in his spine, likely paralyzing him permanently. After the shooting stopped, the o cers waited for ballistic shields before apprehending Estevis because they did not know whether he had a weapon. Emergency medical personnel later arrived and extracted Estevis from the vehicle. 2 B In 2022, Estevis sued O cers Cantu and Guajardo in federal district court for using excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. 3 He also brought municipal liability claims against the City of Laredo. All _____________________ 2 The LPD subsequently disciplined Cantu for executing an unsanctioned maneuver to force Estevis o the road. Guajardo was disciplined for resuming the chase against orders. Neither o cer was disciplined for the shooting. Estevis was later charged with aggravated assault on Border Patrol Agent Marco Solis and DPS Trooper Armando Baldazo for nearly striking them with his vehicle. Estevis pled guilty to the assault on Solis. 3 To establish such a claim, a plainti must show “(1) injury, (2) which resulted directly and only from a use of force that was clearly excessive, and (3) the excessiveness of which was clearly unreasonable.” Rucker v. Marshall, 119 F.4th 395, 403 (5th Cir. 2024) (quoting Byrd v. Cornelius, 52 F.4th 265, 270 (5th Cir. 2022)). 3 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 4 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 defendants moved for summary judgment, which the court granted in part. It dismissed the claims against the City and ruled the o cers were protected by quali ed immunity as to shots 1–3. As to shots 4–9, however, the court denied quali ed immunity. The court reasoned as follows. First, the court considered whether the o cers used excessive force by examining the Graham factors: (1) the crime’s severity; (2) whether the suspect posed an immediate threat to o cers or others; and (3) whether the suspect was resisting arrest or trying to ee. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989). The court found the rst and third factors favored the o cers. As to the rst, Estevis had engaged in “high-speed ight from o cers,” which is “no doubt a serious crime and places the public at signi cant risk of harm.” As to the third, Estevis “was indeed attempting to evade arrest,” and “[a]lthough he may have stopped revving the truck engine a second before shots 4–6, that was not a clear signal that he was giving up on his two-hour ight from law enforcement.” The second factor, the court found, favored the o cers but only as to shots 1–3. Guajardo red those shots “immediately” after Estevis rammed his cruiser and so “could reasonably have perceived that the truck presented a serious enough threat of harm.” Not so for shots 4–9, though. By the time they were red, Estevis had “driven away,” was “stopped against a fence,” and had ceased revving his engine “just before” the o cers shot. “Most importantly,” the court thought, the o cers “advanced” before ring, no o cer was in the truck’s “immediate path,” and Cantu testi ed in his deposition that the truck “ceased to be a threat” once the engine stopped 4 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 5 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 revving. 4 So, the court found that, for shots 4–9, the second factor “tilt[ed] . . . strongly against” the o cers. Based on this weighing of the Graham factors, the court ruled there was “[a] genuine dispute of material fact” whether shots 4–9 were “excessive in proportion to the threat [Estevis] presented.” The court thought the o cers had “more defensive options” available rather than shooting Estevis and should have taken a “safer approach.” The court added that, once Estevis’s truck was “stalled in the grass” and surrounded by police vehicles, “it presented less of a threat than it did before O cer Cantu drove it o the road.” Second, the court considered whether shots 4–9 violated clearly established law. The court found they did, based primarily on our decision in Lytle v. Bexar County, 560 F.3d 404 (5th Cir. 2009). That case involved an o cer’s shooting at a eeing suspect’s car that was, the suspect claimed, “three or four houses” down the street when the o cer red. Id. at 408. The court also cited what it believed to be a “robust consensus” of sister circuit authority denying o cers quali ed immunity when they “ red into the side or rear of cars that were moving away from them.” The o cers timely appealed. II We review the denial of quali ed immunity de novo. Rucker v. Marshall, 119 F.4th 395, 399 (5th Cir. 2024) (citation omitted). To deny quali ed _____________________ 4 The district court characterized O cer Cantu’s deposition testimony as con rmation of the fact that Estevis’s truck “ceased to be a threat once the engine stopped revving and the tires stopped spinning.” This is not an accurate depiction of Cantu’s testimony, however, which unambiguously explained that he red shots 4–9 while believing that Estevis was still an immediate threat. 5 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 6 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 immunity, a district court must nd that (1) “the alleged conduct amounts to a constitutional violation” and (2) “the right was clearly established at the time of the conduct.” Id. at 400 (quoting Buehler v. Dear, 27 F.4th 969, 980 n.13 (5th Cir. 2022)). While we are generally limited on interlocutory appeal to examining the materiality of fact disputes identi ed by the district court, see Joseph v. Bartlett, 981 F.3d 319, 331 (5th Cir. 2020), we can review genuineness when available video shows a party’s account of the facts is false. Rucker, 119 F.4th at 400 (citations omitted); see Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380–81 (2007). III The o cers argue that, as to shots 4–9, the district court erred on both prongs of quali ed immunity. Regardless of our thoughts on prong one, the court undoubtedly erred at prong two. So, we resolve the appeal on that ground. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009) (courts may resolve quali ed immunity on either prong). To satisfy prong two, squarely governing precedent had to place the excessiveness of shots 4–9 beyond debate. See District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63–64 (2018); Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 11–12 (2015) (per curiam); Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012); Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011); see also Kisela v. Hughes, 584 U.S. 100, 104 (2018) (“Use of excessive force is an area of the law in which the result depends very much on the facts of each case,’ and thus police o cers are entitled to quali ed immunity unless existing precedent squarely governs’ the speci c facts at issue.”) (quoting Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 13). But the district court identi ed no such precedent, and Estevis fails to do any better on appeal. The district court relied heavily on our decision in Lytle. See Estevis v. City of Laredo, 5:22-CV-22, 2024 WL 1313900, at *10 (S.D. Tex. Mar. 27, 2024) (“Lytle guides the Court’s analysis.”). Lytle denied quali ed immunity 6 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 7 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 to an o cer who shot at a eeing car and accidentally killed a passenger. 560 F.3d at 407–08. But Lytle bears little resemblance to this case. To begin with, there was no video in Lytle and so we had to accept the plainti ’s version of the facts. Id. at 409 (“We . . . adopt Lytle’s version of the facts ….”). In that telling, the o cer brie y chased the suspect for about a half-mile before the suspect’s car collided with a parked car. Id. at 407. The suspect began backing toward the o cer but then changed direction and ed down the street. Ibid. The o cer did not re until the suspect had “made it three or four houses down the block.” Id. at 409. Our facts are dramatically di erent, as the multiple videos show. Estevis’s truck, driven o the road and boxed in by police cars, suddenly reversed and rammed Guajardo’s cruiser, triggering shots 1–3. Wheels smoking and engine revving, Estevis then lurched forward over the curb and into a fence. Shots 4–9 came seconds later as both o cers advanced toward the still-running truck. Critically, all the shots were red within ten seconds. During that brief time, it would have impossible for the o cers to know for certain that the threat from Estevis’s truck had ceased. Even assuming shots 4–9 were excessive (which we do not decide), Lytle would have given the o cers no guidance about whether to re them. See Ramirez v. Escajeda, 44 F.4th 287, 294 (5th Cir. 2022) (explaining the second prong’s focus is whether precedent gave o cers fair notice their conduct was unlawful). The suspect in Lytle was eeing down an open road and already “three or four houses” away when the o cer red. By contrast, Estevis was boxed in by police, had just rammed a police car and driven into a fence, and showed no signs of giving up. On these facts—which are plain from the videos—the o cers had good reason to believe they were still under threat from an erratic suspect who seconds earlier had decided to use his truck as a 5,000-pound weapon. See, e.g., Morrow v. Meachum, 917 F.3d 870, 7 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 8 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 876 (5th Cir. 2019) (because “excessive-force claims often turn on splitsecond decisions’ to use lethal force . . . the law must be so clearly established that . . . every reasonable o cer would know it immediately”) (quoting Pasco ex rel. Pasco v. Knoblauch, 566 F.3d 572, 582 (5th Cir. 2009)). As the o cers point out, their situation is far closer to the one in Plumho v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014), where police cornered a fleeing suspect in a parking lot. Id. at 769. The suspect spun into reverse and struck a police cruiser, and, tires spinning, tried to escape. Id. at 769–70. One officer fired three shots at the suspect’s vehicle after it backed into one of the cruisers. Id. at 770. As the suspect sped away, officers fired twelve more times for a total of 15 shots within ten seconds, killing both driver and passenger. Ibid. Reversing the court of appeals, the Supreme Court held it was not “clearly established” that it was unconstitutional to shoot a fleeing driver “to protect those whom his flight might endanger.” Id. at 779. In any event, Estevis bore the burden to negate qualified immunity by showing shots 4–9 violated clearly established law. See King v. Handorf, 821 F.3d 650, 653 (5th Cir. 2016) (when qualified immunity is asserted, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to “show that the defense is not available” (cleaned up)). He failed to do so. Not only is Lytle factually dissimilar but the closer case, Plumhoff, strongly suggests officers could use deadly force to apprehend a boxed-in suspect who uses his vehicle as a battering ram. The district court read Lytle for the proposition that officers cannot shoot at a suspect who has “driven away from them” if the officers have “enough time” to realize the fleeing car was no longer a threat. That reads Lytle too generally. Prong two demands precedent that squarely governs the 8 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 9 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 particular circumstances facing officers. 5 As noted, the Lytle suspect had already “driven away” from officers for some distance on an open road. But Estevis had “driven away” only in the sense that, after ramming one officer’s car, he then lurched in the opposite direction and slammed into a fence. The two cases are alike only in the most abstract sense. That is not the “specificity and granularity” demanded by prong two of the qualified immunity analysis. Morrow, 917 F.3d at 874–75. We also disagree with the district court that a “robust consensus” of sister circuit cases showed the officers used excessive force. In some of the cited cases, the facts were in dispute—unlike here, where videos showed the continuing threat to the officers from multiple angles. 6 And two of the cases granted officers summary judgment on finding no violation of clearly established law. 7 So, we fail to see how a “consensus” of sister circuit authority could have forbidden beyond debate the officers’ use of deadly force under these dangerous circumstances. See Morrow, 917 F.3d at 876 (clearly established law “comes from holdings, not dicta” and must “put the relevant question ‘beyond debate’”) (citations omitted). _____________________ 5 See Morrow, 917 F.3d at 874–75 (in analyzing clearly established law, “we must frame the constitutional question with speci city and granularity”); Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 12 (second prong requires “the violative nature of particular conduct [to be] clearly established . . . in light of the speci c context of the case, not as a broad general proposition” (cleaned up)). 6 Cf. Cowan ex rel. Estate of Cooper v. Breen, 352 F.3d 756, 763 (2d Cir. 2003); Abraham v. Raso, 183 F.3d 279, 299 (3d Cir. 1999); Smith v. Cupp, 430 F.3d 766, 775 (6th Cir. 2005); Orn v. City of Tacoma, 949 F.3d 1167, 1174–77 (9th Cir. 2020); Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d 1323, 1332 (11th Cir. 2003). 7 See Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471, 482 (4th Cir. 2005); Cordova v. Aragon, 569 F.3d 1183, 1190 (10th Cir. 2009). 9 Case: 24-40277 Document: 56-1 Page: 10 Date Filed: 04/16/2025 No. 24-40277 In sum, the o cers did not violate clearly established law by ring shots 4–9 under the circumstances shown by the videos. IV We REVERSE the district court’s judgment and RENDER judgment granting O cer Guajardo and O cer Cantu quali ed immunity for shots 4–9. 10

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