Cite as: 538 U. S. 760 (2003)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
U. S. C. § 1983, maintaining that Chavez's actions violated his Fifth Amendment right not to be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," as well as his Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to be free from coercive questioning. The District Court granted summary judgment to Martinez as to Chavez's qualified immunity defense on both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment claims. Chavez took an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the District Court's denial of qualified immunity. Martinez v. Oxnard, 270 F. 3d 852 (2001). Applying Saucier v. Katz, 533 U. S. 194 (2001), the Ninth Circuit first concluded that Chavez's actions, as alleged by Martinez, deprived Martinez of his rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Ninth Circuit did not attempt to explain how Martinez had been "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Instead, the Ninth Circuit reiterated the holding of an earlier Ninth Circuit case, Cooper v. Dupnik, 963 F. 2d 1220, 1229 (1992) (en banc), that "the Fifth Amendment's purpose is to prevent coercive interrogation practices that are destructive of human dignity," 270 F. 3d, at 857 (internal quotation marks omitted), and found that Chavez's "coercive questioning" of Martinez violated his Fifth Amendment rights, "[e]ven though Martinez's statements were not used against him in a criminal proceeding," ibid. As to Martinez's due process claim, the Ninth Circuit held that "a police officer violates the Fourteenth Amendment when he obtains a confession by coercive conduct, regardless of whether the confession is subsequently used at trial." Ibid.
The Ninth Circuit then concluded that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights asserted by Martinez were clearly established by federal law, explaining that a reasonable officer "would have known that persistent interrogation of the suspect despite repeated requests to stop violated the sus-
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