Background
In June 2023, Medina County Deputy Sheriff Jonathan Nunemaker stopped a vehicle in Castroville, Texas after learning it had been reported stolen and used in an aggravated robbery. He handcuffed the driver, seventeen-year-old Branden Sanchez, and placed him in the back of his patrol cruiser. Over the next roughly 50 minutes, Nunemaker searched the vehicle and discovered drugs, a rifle-style pellet gun, and other items, while four additional officers arrived on scene.
During that time, Sanchez became increasingly agitated — yelling, kicking the cruiser’s doors, and demanding to be taken to jail. Officers warned him repeatedly that he would be pepper-sprayed if he did not stop. After Sanchez refused to remain seated and Nunemaker forcibly pushed him into the seat — causing Sanchez’s head to strike the cage partition — Sanchez resumed kicking the door. Nunemaker opened the opposite door and deployed a Centurion Law Enforcement Deployment System (CLE) pepper-spray device from approximately 3.6 feet away, roughly half the manufacturer’s stated minimum safe distance of seven feet. The high-velocity jet of pepper spray struck Sanchez directly in the left eye, permanently blinding it.
Sanchez sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging Fourth Amendment excessive force. Nunemaker moved to dismiss on qualified immunity grounds. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas denied the motion, finding Sanchez had adequately pled both a constitutional violation and a violation of clearly established law. Nunemaker appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit affirmed, applying de novo review. On the constitutional violation prong, the court applied the Graham v. Connor totality-of-the-circumstances test. Although the suspected crimes were serious, the court found that Sanchez posed no immediate threat at the moment of the pepper-spray deployment: he was a slight seventeen-year-old, handcuffed, seat-belted, and surrounded by five officers, making no attempt to flee and seeking only to be transported to jail. His resistance — kicking the cruiser doors and refusing to sit properly — did not present a threat to any person. Discharging high-velocity pepper spray directly into his eye from half the manufacturer’s minimum safe distance plausibly constituted unreasonable, excessive force.
On the clearly established law prong, the court held that Ramirez v. Martinez, 716 F.3d 369 (5th Cir. 2013) — which found unconstitutional the use of a taser on a handcuffed suspect on the ground surrounded by officers — would have put a reasonable officer on notice that pepper-spraying a handcuffed, restrained, non-fleeing suspect who posed no immediate threat was unlawful. The court distinguished Nunemaker’s cited precedents: Brothers v. Zoss involved removing an unrestrained, potentially armed suspect from a vehicle, and Baldwin v. Stalder involved 19 inmates in an unfenced area near an armory — a far more dangerous situation — where spray was directed down the middle of a bus rather than into a single person’s face at close range.
The court expressly declined to decide whether deploying the CLE at below the minimum safe distance constituted “deadly force,” finding the qualified immunity defense failed even under the less demanding excessive-force standard. Sanchez’s complaint sufficiently overcame the qualified immunity defense at the motion-to-dismiss stage.
Key Takeaways
- A handcuffed, seat-belted, non-fleeing suspect surrounded by multiple officers does not pose an “immediate threat” sufficient to justify high-velocity pepper spray deployed at half the manufacturer’s minimum safe distance.
- Ramirez v. Martinez (5th Cir. 2013) remains a live clearly-established-law benchmark: using significant force — taser or chemical spray — on a restrained, non-threatening suspect violates the Fourth Amendment.
- Severity of the underlying suspected crime (here, armed robbery) does not, standing alone, justify force used against a suspect who is already fully restrained and controlled.
- A manufacturer’s safety instructions for a weapon can be relevant evidence in assessing whether an officer’s use of that weapon was objectively reasonable.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that qualified immunity does not shield officers who deploy force against suspects who are already completely secured, even when the original suspected crime was violent. By tying the clearly-established-law analysis to the factual parallel in Ramirez, the Fifth Circuit signals that chemical-spray deployments at dangerously close range against restrained detainees will face serious constitutional scrutiny — and that prior circuit precedent on restrained suspects is specific enough to defeat qualified immunity at the pleading stage.
For practitioners, the case is a reminder that qualified immunity challenges at the motion-to-dismiss stage require courts to accept plaintiff’s well-pled facts as true and view incorporated video evidence in the plaintiff’s favor unless it “blatantly contradicts” those facts. Officers and municipalities should also note that failure to follow a weapon’s manufacturer safety guidelines may itself become part of the Fourth Amendment reasonableness calculus.