1 week Ago
A federal judge concluded on Friday that a Denver officer did not violate a man's clearly established constitutional rights by using excessive force during a physical confrontation at a downtown hotel. Officer Michael Pineda attempted to arrest Nicholas Munden at The Art Hotel after staff received complaints about his behavior. Munden resisted and Pineda ended up using his taser on Munden at least four times and as many as eight.
Munden sued Pineda, but U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N.
Sweeney, in reviewing the video evidence and other testimony, believed Munden's own actions "transformed a routine trespass into a much more serious criminal offense." It is not the case, she wrote on Nov. 8 , that "reasonable officers in Officer Pineda’s position would have had fair warning that employing their Taser — whether it was four times or eight times — under similar circumstances violated the Fourth Amendment.
" Pineda responded to the hotel on May 9, 2022 based on a report of alleged trespassing. He encountered Munden and the hotel manager, with Munden claiming he had a room at the hotel and was not leaving. The manager reported that Munden allegedly made "some weird comments" to a female guest in the fitness center.
The manager asked Munden to leave after he could not provide documentation that he was a guest. Munden allegedly had a similar interaction with a second female guest. The hotel manager told Pineda that even if Munden was a guest, he wanted Munden to leave.
After Munden refused to show his identification, Pineda informed Munden he was under arrest. A physical altercation ensued, at which point Pineda's body-worn camera fell off. Surveillance video from The Art Hotel in Denver shows Nicholas Munden, at bottom, and Officer Michael Pineda on May 9, 2022.
Source: Munden v. Pineda Hotel surveillance footage depicted Munden running to the street-level lobby. Pineda followed him and began to strike him with his wooden baton.
Munden retreated and shoved a sculpture toward Pineda. The parties disputed whether Pineda warned Munden before tasing him, but Pineda proceeded to deploy his Taser repeatedly. Munden alleged Pineda activated his Taser eight times, and made contact on seven instances.
However, documentation Munden submitted to the court only showed four activations. Prosecutors subsequently charged Munden with assault, resisting arrest, trespass and other charges. He pleaded guilty to trespass and received a jail sentence.
In response to Munden's allegations of excessive force, Pineda asserted qualified immunity, which is a judicially created doctrine shielding government employees from civil lawsuits unless they violate a person's clear legal rights. Pineda argued the tasings were justified because of Munden's belligerent conduct. "Plaintiff actively resisted arrest in the stairwell and then evaded arrest by fleeing down the stairwell and out of the Hotel.
When he re-entered the Hotel, Plaintiff refused to comply with officers’ commands and actively resisted officers’ attempts to take him into custody," wrote attorney William T. O’Connell III. Munden countered that his only crime was trespassing and possibly evading arrest.
Those offenses, he contended, were not severe enough to justify being tased seven times in less than one minute. Without answering whether Pineda violated Munden's constitutional rights, Sweeney determined no prior court decisions made it clear that, under similar circumstances, an officer would be acting unreasonably by responding as Pineda did. Therefore, Pineda was entitled to qualified immunity.
The case is Munden v. Pineda..
