The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently addressed the limits of advanced pain-compliance techniques in Franke v. Janes, 168 F.4th 797 (6th Cir. 2026). This case arose from an officer’s use of a half-nelson and wrist torque technique while escorting a handcuffed man to a police vehicle, where inconclusive body-camera footage left unresolved whether the man was actively resisting.
Summary of the Facts
In March 2022, Ryan Franke attended his daughter’s basketball game at the local community center. After the game, Franke and his ex-wife got into an argument. Another individual standing nearby, laughed at the interaction, which led to a physical altercation between the man and Franke. Officer Janes responded to the call regarding the potential assault, and upon his arrival, Franke could be heard claiming self-defense in the background. Officer Janes spoke with the individuals on scene, including one person who stated that the other man attacked Franke. Franke’s ex-wife then approached Officer Janes and informed him of her argument with Franke. She explained that he threatened her with physical violence. Once Officer Janes noticed the redness on her neck, Franke’s ex-wife told him that he pushed her and her current husband several times. She also informed him that they had gone to court previously for domestic violence disputes.
Officer Janes approached Franke, ordered him to put his hands behind his back, and told him that he was being handcuffed “for now.” As he escorted Franke towards the police vehicle, Franke was agitated, yelled towards his ex-wife, and used profanity. Whether Franke stopped walking or physically resisted is a central dispute. Franke stated that Officer Janes “put him in a half-nelson, which shoved him forward” and then accused him of then pulling away. This “torqued” his wrist against the police SUV, causing injury. Officer Janes, however, testified that Franke pulled away and made sharp, jerking movements towards the parking lot. In response, officer Janes utilized “pain compliance” to keep Franke moving forward. Once Franke was secured in the back of the police car, he continually complained about shoulder and wrist pain. Officer Janes loosened the handcuffs, and the officers proceeded to review the video footage as a part of the investigation. After determining that Franke did not assault his ex-wife, officer Janes released Franke and did not charge him. Ultimately, Franke underwent surgery on his right wrist to repair the damage caused by the interaction.
In the aftermath, Franke filed suit against officer Janes under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging excessive use of force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. After discovery, officer Janes moved for summary judgment on all claims. The district court granted summary judgment, finding that the use of force was reasonable under the circumstances and holding that qualified immunity shielded him from the federal excessive force claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Franke appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
On appeal, Franke argued that the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of officer Janes, alleging that genuine disputes of material fact existed regarding the objective reasonableness of Officer Janes’s use of force. The court cited the Supreme Court cases that govern qualified immunity, which hold that law enforcement officers are entitled to qualified immunity unless they violate “clearly established” constitutional rights that any reasonable officer would know at the time of the incident. For this inquiry, the court considers three factors: (1) the severity of the crime, (2) whether the suspect poses an immediate threat, and (3) whether the suspect is actively resisting or attempting to flee. The court evaluated the severity of the crime for both Franke’s initial potential assault of the man and the alleged domestic violence against Franke’s ex-wife. Here, Officer Janes responded to a “fight call” and maintained that he heard Franke assert that he “f***ing beat the s*** out” the man who attacked him. Therefore, the court found that a reasonable officer could believe that, even if it was an act self-defense, Franke was involved in violent conduct, which could escalate quickly under these circumstances. Officer Janes also investigated the potential domestic violence against Franke’s ex-wife based on the claims she expressed to him. Under Sixth Circuit precedent, “domestic violence calls can often provide grounds to use force.” Moreover, Franke’s ex-wife had visible red marks on her neck, claimed that Franke had pushed her, and informed officer Janes of previous domestic violence issues. Taken together with Franke’s previous violent statements, the court concluded that this factor weighed in favor of Officer Janes.
The court then reviewed whether Franke posed an immediate threat to safety to those at the community center. Although Franke grew increasingly agitated, repeatedly cursed, and became more irritated when officer Janes mentioned the marks on his ex-wife’s neck, the court found material factual disputes on two central issues: (1) whether Franke stopped walking; and (2) whether Franke struggled against Janes’s guidance to the police vehicle. As to the first issue, the court cited the body-worn camera footage and explained that the video appeared to show Franke still moving when he yells to his family. The court concluded that this raised a factual question of whether Franke was disregarding officer Janes’s commands or being verbally or physically combative to the point that he could be viewed as an immediate threat. The court explained that this factual question must be left to a jury. For the second issue, the court explained that the body-worn camera footage was inconclusive as to whether Franke struggled. Moreover, officer Janes and Franke offered conflicting accounts about whether Franke was pulling away. Franke stated that Janes was hurting him during the encounter and maintained that he was not pulling away, while officer Janes claimed the opposite. Therefore, the court concluded that Franke’s testimony that the half‑nelson technique shoved him forward and that he was not pulling away, created a factual dispute for a jury to consider whether he posed a threat or engaged in active resistance when Janes twisted his wrist.
The court then turned to whether Franke resisted or attempted to flee Officer Janes’s attempt to detain him. Under Sixth Court precedent in Shumate v. City of Adrian, Michigan, “active resistance…requires ‘some outward manifestation, either verbal or physical’ that suggests ‘volitional and conscious defiance.’” However, explicit, threatening speech or conduct is needed for “verbal jabs and non-threatening language” to be deemed as active resistance. The court explained that Officer Janes instructed Franke to put his hands behind his back two minutes before he was placed in the police vehicle. The court recognized that while Franke was agitated and continually cursed, his words did not threaten anyone and could not be interpreted as “volitional or conscious defiance.” Therefore, the Sixth Circuit agreed with the district court that Franke’s words were “not ‘overtly threatening’” even though they were profane. Moreover, the court found that the body camera footage of Franke yelling at his family only depicted slight resistance since he stopped for a brief moment while yelling to them. Further, the court stated that it is still unclear as to whether Franke was pulling away due to their conflicting testimonies. The court concluded that because the video did not conclusively resolve which account is accurate, this factor weighed in favor of Franke.
The court then turned to whether Officer Janes violated Franke’s clearly established rights. The Sixth Circuit considered, “whether it was clearly established in March 2022 that a police officer violates a person’s rights during an investigatory detention by using advanced pain compliance techniques — here a half nelson and painfully twisting a wrist with enough force to cause an injury that required surgery — on a handcuffed individual not resisting arrest.” The court concluded that binding Sixth Circuit precedent shows that it was clearly established at the time of the encounter. Under Sixth Circuit precedent in Hughey v. Easlick, Morrison v. Board of Trustees of Green Township, Pigram v. Chaudoin, and Solomon v. Auburn Hills Police Department, this Circuit repeatedly recognized that gratuitous force against a handcuffed or otherwise incapacitated individual may constitute excessive force. Those cases condemned conduct ranging from a slap that caused no injury to forceful arm yanking or twisting that caused a torn rotator cuff. The throughline for these cases is that officers’ use of violent force against unresisting detainees who are partially or fully handcuffed amounts to gratuitous violence that violates the Fourth Amendment. As such, the cited cases clearly established that a reasonable officer would have been on notice in March 2022 that it was unlawful to apply pain compliance techniques like a half nelson and twisting of a wrist to a handcuffed individual who offered no voluntary physical resistance. Therefore, the Sixth Circuit ultimately reversed the grant of the summary judgment on the § 1983 excessive force claim and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Key Takeaways
Franke emphasizes that verbal agitation alone does not ultimately amount to active resistance. The court explained that profanity, yelling, or briefly pausing during an escort does not, without more, establish the volitional defiance necessary to treat an individual as actively resistant. When body-camera footage cannot resolve whether a handcuffed individual resisted by pulling away, that factual dispute may preclude qualified immunity at summary judgment. Under Sixth Circuit precedent, advanced pain-compliance techniques used against a handcuffed, nonresistant individual may constitute gratuitous force in violation of clearly established law.