District of Columbia v. Wesby

Incident Summary & Facts

Around 1 a.m. on March 16, 2008, D.C. Metropolitan Police received a complaint about loud music and illegal activities at a house in Northeast D.C. that, according to the caller (a former neighborhood commissioner) and several neighbors, had been vacant for months. After the officers knocked, a man looked out the window and ran upstairs, and a partygoer opened the door. Inside, the house was “in disarray” and nearly barren. The officers smelled marijuana and saw beer bottles and cups of liquor on a filthy floor. The living room had been turned into a makeshift strip club, and upstairs a naked woman and several men were on a bare mattress with open condom wrappers. Many partygoers scattered when they saw the uniformed officers. One hid in a closet, and another shut himself in a bathroom.

Officers interviewed all 21 people and got vague, inconsistent stories. Many said it was a bachelor party, but no one could identify the bachelor. Two women said a woman named “Peaches” was renting the house and had given permission. Reached by phone, Peaches was nervous, agitated, and evasive. She hung up twice and eventually admitted she had no permission to use the house, and the owner confirmed he had given no one permission. The officers arrested all 21 for unlawful entry. They were later charged with disorderly conduct, and the charges were dropped. The case did not involve a use-of-force encounter; it concerned arrests alleged to lack probable cause.

Sixteen partygoers sued for false arrest under § 1983 and District law. The district court granted them partial summary judgment, finding no probable cause and no qualified immunity for two officers. A jury awarded $680,000 in compensatory damages, nearly $1 million with attorney’s fees. A divided D.C. Circuit panel affirmed.

Core Legal Issue

(1) Whether the officers had probable cause to arrest the partygoers for unlawful entry; and (2) whether, even if they did not, the officers were entitled to qualified immunity because the unlawfulness of the arrests was not clearly established.

The Holding

The officers had probable cause to arrest, and in any event they were entitled to qualified immunity because no settled law showed the arrests were unlawful. The D.C. Circuit’s judgment was reversed and the case remanded.

The Court’s Analysis:

• Probable cause is judged on the totality of the circumstances. It “is not a high bar” and requires only a “substantial chance of criminal activity.” The condition of the house, the partygoers’ conduct, their flight and hiding (“strong indicia of mens rea”), their implausible answers, and Peaches’ lies together supported an “entirely reasonable inference” that the partygoers knew they lacked permission.
• The panel majority erred in two ways. It viewed facts “in isolation,” the “divide-and-conquer analysis” the totality test forbids. It also dismissed circumstances “susceptible of innocent explanation.” Probable cause does not require officers to rule out a suspect’s innocent explanation.
• Qualified immunity: Clearly established law must be “settled law,” dictated by “controlling authority” or “a robust ‘consensus of cases of persuasive authority,’” and must clearly prohibit the conduct “in the particular circumstances.” Specificity is “especially important in the Fourth Amendment context,” and courts must not define the law “at a high level of generality.”
• Even assuming no actual probable cause, the officers “reasonably but mistakenly conclude[d]” it was present. No precedent found a violation “under similar circumstances,” this was not an “obvious case,” and District and federal cases suggested that officers need not accept innocent explanations at face value.
• Concurrences: Justice Sotomayor would have decided the case only on qualified immunity. Justice Ginsburg questioned the rule that an officer’s actual reasons for acting are irrelevant to probable cause, but agreed that settled law did not support the judgment.