Force-to-Handcuff After a Prolonged Chase: “Active Resistance” and Full-Context Reasonableness Defeat Excessive-Force Claims (and Experts Cannot Opine on Constitutionality)

1. Introduction

This appeal arose from a nighttime traffic encounter that escalated into a prolonged vehicle pursuit and a physical struggle during handcuffing. Plaintiff Jared Kennedy, after leading police on an approximately 20-minute chase that included a crash and vehicle damage, drove into his own driveway. When he exited, officers reported noncompliance and physical resistance to handcuffing. Two officers—Deputy Gary Hicks and Sheriff Aaron Acree—used strikes and other force to secure Kennedy’s hands. Kennedy later pleaded guilty to wanton endangerment, criminal mischief, and failure to maintain insurance, then filed a civil suit alleging excessive force under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and related Kentucky tort claims.

The central issues on appeal were:

• Fourth Amendment: Whether Hicks and Acree used “objectively unreasonable” force during the arrest.
• Qualified immunity: Whether any constitutional violation was clearly established under sufficiently similar precedent.
• Expert evidence: Whether the district court properly excluded portions of Kennedy’s police-practices expert testimony as impermissible legal conclusions.

Kennedy did not appeal the grant of summary judgment to Officer Micah Kaminski.

2. Summary of the Opinion

3. Analysis

3.1 Precedents Cited

A. Fourth Amendment framework: objective reasonableness and totality of circumstances

• Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989): The court applied Graham’s familiar “objective reasonableness” test and its three nonexclusive guideposts: (1) severity of the crime, (2) immediate threat, and (3) active resistance or flight. Graham supplied the governing lens for assessing the force used during handcuffing.
• Barnes v. Felix, 605 U.S. 73 (2025): The opinion relied heavily on Barnes to reject any artificial “time-slicing” of the encounter. Barnes’s statement that the totality inquiry “has no time limit” allowed the panel to treat the earlier chase as directly informing what a reasonable officer would perceive at the driveway struggle.
• Cunningham v. Packard, 2023 WL 7000906 (6th Cir. Oct. 24, 2023): Quoted for the same anti-time-slicing principle—courts should not “artificially restrict the relevant timeline.” This reinforced that the chase context was relevant to the reasonableness of later force used to secure hands.

B. Flight and the seriousness of evading police

• Dunn v. Matatall, 549 F.3d 348 (6th Cir. 2008): Used for two critical points: (i) evading officers is not a minor traffic matter once it escalates into flight; and (ii) officers need not accept a suspect’s verbal claim of compliance when contemporaneous conduct indicates resistance. Dunn supported the panel’s conclusion that the chase elevated both the “severity” and “threat” factors under Graham.

C. “Active resistance” and permissible force to secure hands

• Hagans v. Franklin County Sheriff's Off., 695 F.3d 505 (6th Cir. 2012): Cited for the proposition that officers may use force when a suspect actively resists and refuses to be handcuffed.
• Rudlaff v. Gillispie, 791 F.3d 638 (6th Cir. 2015): Provided the definition of “active resistance,” including “physically struggling,” “disobeying,” and refusing to present hands for cuffing when coupled with other defiance. The court treated Kennedy’s act of burying his hands under his body and pushing up as classic active resistance.
• Aaron v. King, 171 F.4th 822 (6th Cir. 2026): Served as a close analog on permissible strikes during a struggle to secure arms for handcuffing. The panel used Aaron both to justify reasonableness (knee strikes to gain arm control) and to underscore the lack of clearly established law prohibiting similar conduct.
• Williams v. Ingham, 373 F. App'x 542 (6th Cir. 2010): Cited as an example that “two closed-fist blows” were not excessive under similar circumstances when used to secure a resisting suspect.
• Marvin v. City of Taylor, 509 F.3d 234 (6th Cir. 2007): Used in the clearly-established analysis to show that even when a suspect says he cannot place his arms behind his back, officers may still use force to handcuff where resistance persists. This undercut Kennedy’s reliance on his statements (“nobody is resisting,” “my arm won’t bend that way”).
• Jones v. City of Cincinnati, 736 F.3d 688 (6th Cir. 2012): Offered by Kennedy but read by the panel as approving force to subdue resisting suspects—thus not “squarely” establishing unlawfulness here.

D. Qualified immunity: “beyond debate” and “squarely governs”

• Zorn v. Linton, 146 S. Ct. 926 (2026) (per curiam): Quoted for the baseline principle that officials are immune unless conduct violates clearly established law; also used to emphasize that precedent must not merely exist but must fairly warn that the specific conduct is proscribed.
• District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48 (2018): Used for the “unlawful in the situation confronted” framing—qualified immunity turns on the particularized context.
• Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 (1987): Cited for the requirement that the unlawfulness must be sufficiently clear to a reasonable official.
• Moore v. Oakland County, 126 F.4th 1163 (6th Cir. 2025) and Campbell v. Riahi, 109 F.4th 854 (6th Cir. 2024): Supplied the summary judgment/qualified immunity posture and standard of review.
• Shreve v. Jessamine County Fiscal Ct., 453 F.3d 681 (6th Cir. 2006) and Baker v. City of Hamilton, 471 F.3d 601 (6th Cir. 2006): Discussed by the district court and referenced by the panel as not altering the outcome; the Sixth Circuit declined to add much beyond the district court’s analysis.

E. Expert testimony boundaries in excessive-force litigation

• Adkins v. Marathon Petroleum Co., LP, 105 F.4th 841 (6th Cir. 2024): Provided the abuse-of-discretion standard for evidentiary rulings.
• Champion v. Outlook Nashville, Inc., 380 F.3d 893 (6th Cir. 2004): Recognized that qualified experts may testify about “discrete police-practice issues” if it assists the factfinder.
• Berry v. City of Detroit, 25 F.3d 1342 (6th Cir. 1994) and DeMerrell v. City of Cheboygan, 206 F. App'x 418 (6th Cir. 2006): Stand for the prohibition against experts offering legal conclusions—especially opinions that force was “unreasonable” in the constitutional sense.
• Brown v. Chapman, 814 F.3d 447 (6th Cir. 2016) (quoting Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007)): Cited for the proposition that whether force is constitutional is a “pure question of law,” reinforcing exclusion of testimony that labeled the force “excessive unconstitutional.”

3.2 Legal Reasoning

A. The court’s “full-context” view of reasonableness

The opinion’s central move is methodological: it treats the driveway struggle as inseparable from the preceding chase. Invoking Barnes v. Felix, the panel rejected any approach that would confine the reasonableness inquiry to the seconds of the physical struggle alone. On the court’s account, the chase altered what a reasonable officer could infer about danger and volatility at the arrest scene—particularly at night, in an unlit driveway, at a house the officers could not connect to a known identity due to the removed plate.

B. Application of the Graham factors to these facts

• Severity: What began as speeding escalated into flight, a crash, vehicle damage, and continued evasion. Citing Dunn v. Matatall, the court treated this as materially more serious than a “minor traffic violation.”
• Threat: The officers’ uncertainty (unknown driver, unknown house, unknown weapons/warrants) and the demonstrated willingness to flee and continue after crashing supported a heightened perception of danger.
• Resistance/flight: Kennedy had just fled for ~20 minutes and, once on the ground, refused to present his hands, kept his arms under his body, and pushed up while officers tried to cuff him—conduct the court categorized as “active resistance” under Rudlaff v. Gillispie.

C. Why strikes and baton use were deemed reasonable here

Taking Kennedy’s allegations in the light most favorable to him, the panel still concluded that baton strikes, punches, and kicks used to secure his hands were reasonable because they were used during an ongoing struggle to gain control for handcuffing, and force ceased once handcuffs were applied. The court analogized to cases approving targeted strikes during handcuffing when a suspect physically prevents arm control, including Williams v. Ingham and Aaron v. King.

D. The rejection of Kennedy’s “I wasn’t resisting” narrative

Kennedy argued his resistance was driven by pain from a pre-existing injury and that his verbal statements should have signaled non-resistance. The court treated that contention as legally insufficient because the Fourth Amendment test is objective and turns on what officers reasonably perceived at the time. Since Kennedy admitted the officers had no reason to know of the injury, his words could not override his physical conduct—especially under Dunn v. Matatall, which recognizes officers may discount verbal claims of compliance when actions contradict them.

E. Qualified immunity as an independent backstop

Even assuming a constitutional violation, the court held Kennedy failed the “clearly established” prong because he did not identify factually similar precedent that would make it “beyond debate” that these officers’ specific conduct was unlawful. The panel emphasized:

• Kennedy’s cited cases (Rudlaff v. Gillispie, Jones v. City of Cincinnati, Marvin v. City of Taylor) were read as permitting force to overcome resistance, not forbidding it under these circumstances.
• Under District of Columbia v. Wesby and Anderson v. Creighton, the inquiry is particularized: the question is whether the unlawfulness was clear “in the situation confronted,” not at a general level (“no significant force against non-resisting suspects”).

F. Expert testimony: permissible police-practice opinions vs. impermissible legal conclusions

The court reaffirmed a familiar line: experts may educate the factfinder on police practices (Champion v. Outlook Nashville, Inc.), but may not tell the court/jury what the Constitution means on the ultimate issue. Because Kennedy’s disclosure and report framed the opinion as “excessive unconstitutional force,” the district court properly excluded that portion as a legal conclusion (DeMerrell v. City of Cheboygan; Berry v. City of Detroit), especially given that constitutionality is a “pure question of law” (Brown v. Chapman quoting Scott v. Harris).

3.3 Impact

Although unpublished, the opinion is instructive in three recurring litigation battlegrounds in the Sixth Circuit:

• “No time limit” reasonableness: It operationalizes Barnes v. Felix to keep the entire chain of events—especially a dangerous chase—within the force-reasonableness frame, making it harder for plaintiffs to isolate the moment of arrest from preceding conduct.
• Handcuffing struggles and “active resistance”: It reinforces that refusing to produce hands (especially while physically bracing or pushing up) can justify intermediate force—including strikes—until control is gained, particularly when force stops promptly after cuffing.
• Expert testimony discipline: It signals that plaintiffs must draft police-practices expert reports carefully: describing tactics, training, and alternative methods may be admissible, but labeling conduct “unconstitutional” or “objectively unreasonable” in the legal sense risks exclusion at summary judgment and trial.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

• Qualified immunity: A two-step protection for officers sued under § 1983. The plaintiff must show (1) a constitutional violation and (2) that existing case law made it clearly established—i.e., obvious “beyond debate”—that the specific conduct was unlawful.
• “Objectively reasonable” force: The court does not ask what the officer intended or what the suspect intended; it asks what a reasonable officer would do given the facts known at the time (Graham v. Connor).
• Totality of the circumstances / “no time limit”: The reasonableness analysis can include earlier events (like a chase) because those events shape what risk the officer reasonably perceives later (Barnes v. Felix).
• Active resistance: Not just punching or running—also physically preventing cuffing (e.g., hiding hands under the body) when combined with defiance (Rudlaff v. Gillispie).
• PIT maneuver: A police driving technique intended to stop a fleeing car by causing it to spin/lose traction (“immobilization technique” in the record).
• Expert “legal conclusion”: An expert can explain police standards and tactics but cannot testify that conduct was “unconstitutional” because that is the court’s legal determination (DeMerrell v. City of Cheboygan; Brown v. Chapman).

5. Conclusion

The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Hicks and Acree by framing the arrest as the culmination of a dangerous, extended pursuit and an on-the-ground struggle to secure hands. Applying Graham v. Connor through the “full-context” lens emphasized in Barnes v. Felix, the court held that strikes and baton use during active resistance were objectively reasonable—especially where force stopped once handcuffs were applied. Separately, qualified immunity barred the claim because Kennedy could not identify precedent that squarely made the officers’ specific conduct unlawful. Finally, the panel reinforced that police-practices experts may not testify in the language of constitutional verdicts, such as “excessive unconstitutional force.”