JERREL PEREZ and J.P., a minor v. Shawn Guetschow

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 25-1617
JERREL P EREZ and J.P., a minor,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
v.
S HAWN GUETSCHOW ,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
No. 23-cv-153-pp — Pamela Pepper, Chief Judge.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 13, 2025 — DECIDED A PRIL 20, 2026
____________________
Before EASTERBROOK, LEE, and M ALDONADO, Circuit
Judges.
EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. A fight in a school’s cafeteria
has led to this appeal from an order denying a motion for
summary judgment based on qualified immunity. 2025 U.S.
Dist. LEXIS 43547 (E.D. Wis. Mar. 11, 2025). One important
principle governing such appeals is that our role is limited to
applying clearly established rules of law. Any material dis-
pute about the facts is for the district judge and, if necessary,

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2 No. 25-1617
a jury. Resolving a factual contest is outside the scope of pre-
trial appellate jurisdiction. Compare Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S.
304 (1995), with Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014). We
must decide whether this appeal presents a legal or a factual
question.
In 2022 Shawn Guetschow, a police officer in Kenosha,
Wisconsin, had a second job as a security officer at Kenosha
Unified School District. On March 4 he was called to the cafe-
teria, where two sixth-grade students, L.M. and J.P., were
having a confrontation. (The pleadings and district court’s
opinion refer to J.P. as “Jane Doe,” but Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2(a)(3)
calls for the use of initials.) Closed circuit TV shows that,
within a span of 44 seconds, Guetschow took J.P. to the
ground, knelt at least briefly on her neck, and placed her in
handcuffs. She contends in this suit under 42 U.S.C. §1983 that
Guetschow used excessive force, in violation of the Fourth
Amendment (applied to the states by the Fourteenth). The
district court denied Guetschow’s motion for summary judg-
ment, and he immediately appealed. (The district court’s
opinion resolved some issues concerning other parties, but
the appeal concerns Guetschow alone.)
Plaintiffs’ principal argument is that Guetschow applied
substantial force after J.P. had stopped struggling. Guetschow
concedes that this would have been improper but maintains
that J.P. continued to resist his effort to bring her under con-
trol. Guetschow asserts that he tried to apply a “three-point
stabilization technique” that would have ended the confron-
tation painlessly, had it succeeded—but it didn’t because (as
Guetschow concedes) the technique was used improperly
(which is why he landed with his knee and body weight on
J.P.’s neck). He calls this an error; plaintiffs see a deliberate

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No. 25-1617 3
use of excessive force. The record includes the evidence of a
police chief, testifying for plaintiffs as an expert witness, that
the circumstances justified the three-point technique but that
Guetschow went about it “completely wrong”. The chief
thought that what happened turned into a chokehold. That
would be excessive force, but Guetschow denies that this is
the proper characterization of what occurred.
The district judge summed up:
The parties agree that Guetschow took Doe from a standing posi-
tion to a prone position on the ground. They agree that
Guetschow placed his knee on the back of Doe’s neck. They gen-
uinely disagree over just about every other fact material to the ex-
cessive force determination. They disagree about “any effort
made by the officer to temper or limit the amount of force”—in
other words, whether Guetschow had the opportunity to do any-
thing that would have prevented the fight, or whether anything
he might have had time to do would have headed it off. They dis-
agree about the “severity of the security problem at issue”—
whether Doe “softly pushed” LM or whether the fight was “very
violent.” They disagree about the need for the use of force—again,
whether the fight was “violent,” as well as whether Doe was re-
sisting. They disagree about whether the “threat” was “reasona-
bly perceived” by Guetschow. They disagree about “the amount
of force used”—whether Guetschow pushed Doe’s head into the
floor, impeded her breathing or had his knee to her neck with
force and for how long. They even disagree on the extent of the
plaintiff’s injury. … The material facts surrounding the excessive
force claim are rife with genuine disputes; in most instances, that
ends the summary judgment discussion and requires the court to
start discussing trial dates.
2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43547 at *30–31. But Guetschow insists
that this appeal remains all about the law, rather than the
facts, because indisputable video evidence resolves all of
these factual issues. On this subject the district judge wrote:

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4 No. 25-1617
One video shows that Doe was flailing when Guetschow inter-
vened in the fight and that she continued to do so for a few mo-
ments after Guetschow took her to the ground. Only one of the
videos shows both Guetschow and Doe at the moment when
Guetschow placed his knee on Doe’s neck, the point at which the
plaintiffs claim that Doe was not resisting and that the defendants
assert that she was. Doe was prone for several seconds before
Guetschow placed his knee on her neck. But it appears that Doe
may have lifted her head immediately prior to Guetschow placing
his knee on her neck. It isn’t clear from the video whether Doe was
resisting or not at the time Guetschow applied the force to her
neck. And Guetschow gave deposition testimony that the place-
ment of his knee on Doe’s neck rather than her back was acci-
dental and that he immediately moved his knee when he realized
it was out of position. This is not remotely a case where the sur-
veillance camera footage is so clear that it “blatantly contradicts”
one party or another’s version of events. A factfinder will have to
resolve the factual disputes raised by the footage, the testimony
and the other evidence. A reasonable factfinder could conclude
that Doe was not resisting, or that if she was, the force used by
Guetschow was not reasonable under the totality of the circum-
stances.
Id. at *31–32 (cleaned up).
Video evidence that conclusively shows what happened
allows a court to set aside factual disputes and decide what
clearly established rules of law govern. See Scott v. Harris, 550
U.S. 372, 380 (2007). But cameras may be pointed in the wrong
direction, miss vital details, or produce grainy images. It isn’t
the existence of a video recording, but its quality, that enables
a court to conclude without a trial that one side rather than
another must be right about the facts. See Raddant v. Douglas
County, 170 F.4th 583, 590–92 (7th Cir. 2026); Steinhoff v.
Malovrh, 170 F.4th 647, 653–54 (7th Cir. 2026). The videos on
which Guetschow relies do not capture all of the action and
are pixelated, which obscures some details. We concur in the

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No. 25-1617 5
district judge’s conclusion that they do not conclusively show
when J.P. stopped struggling or whether Guetschow kept his
knee on her neck after she had surrendered.
Only a trial will reveal what happened—and until then it
is impossible to know whether Guetschow transgressed
clearly established rules of law.
The appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

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