Nute v. White

Incident Summary & Facts

On March 1, 2020, Rainsville, Alabama police officers Bryant White and Yarbrough responded to a 911 call about Anthony Nute standing in his yard in his underwear. Body-camera video showed Nute staring into space, breathing almost convulsively, ignoring the officers and shouting “Get away from me!” He appeared to be under the influence of a powerful drug. When a paramedic approached, Nute swung his right arm at him. After roughly three more minutes of failed attempts to communicate, and after Nute refused repeated orders to put his hands behind his back, the officers wrestled him to the ground, tased him, and handcuffed his arms and legs behind his back. The police chief directed White to take him to the county jail in Fort Payne, which was better equipped to handle someone in his condition.

At the jail, once the restraints were removed, three jailers pushed Nute into a side room and cornered him. Surveillance video showed White standing near the doorway, about five to ten feet away. Roughly 13 seconds after they entered, the jailers began landing “apparently unprovoked blows.” White took three or four steps forward, stopped three to five feet away, and did nothing else. About 27 seconds after the beating began, White walked out without saying a word. He paused at the doorway and watched for six more seconds. The beating continued for roughly six and a half more minutes after he left, with punches, knees, kicks, repeated tasing and pepper spray, and it broke bones in Nute’s face and ribs. White admitted in his deposition that he recognized at the time that the force was unlawful. He later submitted an affidavit saying he called his police chief from his car afterward.

Procedural posture: This was an interlocutory appeal from the district court’s denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity for White on Nute’s Fourth Amendment failure-to-intervene claim.

Core Legal Issue

Was it clearly established in March 2020 that an officer working outside his city limits, with no authority over the officers using excessive force, violates the Fourth Amendment by remaining silent and leaving while jailers beat a helpless, non-resisting arrestee he delivered to them?

The Holding

Yes. White was not entitled to qualified immunity, and the denial of summary judgment was affirmed. The court also held that a later phone call to a supervisor who was not in a position to intervene in time does not discharge the duty to intervene. Nute’s cross-appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The Court’s Analysis:

• Discretionary authority: Under Alabama Code § 15-10-1, a city officer has the same law-enforcement authority anywhere in his county. White was therefore acting within his discretionary authority at the jail, and his argument that he had “no legal authority” to intervene failed.
• Duty doesn’t depend on rank or agency: An officer, “whether supervisory or not,” who fails to intervene in an unprovoked beating in his presence is directly liable (Byrd v. Clark). “The duty of an officer to intervene derives from the Constitution, not from a chain of command.”
• Realistic opportunity: This was “not a three-second case” like Brown v. City of Huntsville, which involved a half-second to three-second burst of pepper spray. White watched for 27 seconds, and an officer “cannot voluntarily leave the scene and then be let off the hook because he did not stay there long enough to intervene.” Had he stayed, he would have had about seven minutes.
• Unarmed and outnumbered is no excuse for silence: It had been clearly established for nearly 20 years (Priester) that an officer must “at least say something” to stop clear and continuing excessive force on a helpless arrestee.
• Reporting is not intervening: “[T]his is a failure to intervene case, not a failure to report case.” White was in a better position to reach the jail administrator than his chief was. The court expressly left open whether a verbal objection alone would have discharged the duty.