Serrano v. Guevara
Serrano v. Guevara
Opinion of the Court
Manish S. Shah, United States District Judge *1031Plaintiffs Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez each spent over two decades in prison for a murder they did not commit. Now, they both bring suit against the City of Chicago-and former police officers Reynaldo Guevara, Ernest Halvorsen, and Edward Mingey-as well as Cook County-and former prosecutors Matthew Coghlan and John Dillion. Their suits include claims for constitutional violations and torts they allege were committed during the investigation and prosecution of the case against them. The City and County defendants now move to dismiss portions of the complaints for the failure to state a claim. For the reasons stated below, defendants' motions are granted in part, denied in part.
I. Legal Standards
A complaint must contain factual allegations that plausibly suggest a right to relief. Ashcroft v. Iqbal ,
II. Facts
Plaintiffs Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez were wrongly convicted for the murder of Rodrigo Vargas.
Wilda Vargas told the detectives about a trip that she and her husband took to the gas station the night before he was murdered. Wilda said that her husband had just gone to the bank, so he had a roll of cash on him when he went inside to pay. Cash was found on Vargas's dead body the next day. Wilda also remembered that her husband honked at three Latino men in a tan-colored car that blocked his way at the gas station. With this information, the detectives invented a theory in which Vargas's murder was an armed robbery gone wrong, and they decided to frame three Latino men with histories of armed robberies to close the case. They settled on Serrano, Montanez, and Jorge Pacheco. The detectives showed Wilda photos of the three men, telling her that they were the Latino men she remembered from the tan car. The detectives drove Wilda to Montanez's house to show her his car (which she agreed was similar to the tan one she saw), and the detectives told her lies about the car being linked to her husband's shooting by ballistics evidence and witness statements.
Then the detectives decided to use a resource they had recently stumbled across-Francisco Vicente. Vicente was a heroin addict who was arrested and charged with several armed robberies, suffering in jail from the effects of heroin withdrawal and facing up to 97 or 100 years in prison for his pending charges. The detectives told two prosecutors-Assistant State's Attorneys Coghlan and Dillion-that "the street" was saying plaintiffs and Pacheco were responsible for the Vargas murder, but they needed more evidence to bring them in. So the detectives proposed that they use Vicente to drum up evidence against plaintiffs and Pacheco in addition to suspects in two other murders. The prosecutors agreed and arranged to transport Vicente to their offices. By the time Vicente met with the prosecutors and detectives to discuss the Vargas murder, the detectives had already used violence (including hitting him with a phonebook) to coerce Vicente into giving false testimony against a suspect in a different murder.
With the prosecutors and Halvorsen present, Guevara handed Vicente crime scene photos and fed him a narrative in which Vicente would say he was an eyewitness to plaintiffs' attempted robbery of Vargas. Everyone in the room knew that narrative was false. Vicente refused to say he was an eyewitness or that the suspects gave him the murder weapon, so Halvorsen suggested that Vicente say Montanez confessed to him and implicated Serrano and Pacheco along the way. The prosecutors promised Vicente they would protect him by getting him moved to special witness quarters at the jail and secure him a lower sentence. Vicente agreed to give the false testimony. After the meeting, the detectives prepared a supplemental police report stating that a confidential informant told them that Montanez confessed to his involvement in the Vargas murder and that Montanez had also implicated Serrano and Pacheco. The detectives used the false *1033report as a basis to arrest Serrano. But after about 24 hours of physical and psychological abuse, Serrano refused to make an inculpatory statement and was released.
So the detectives turned to Timothy Rankins, a 19-year-old facing charges for robbery. Rankins had experience serving as an informant for the detectives' supervisor, Sergeant Edward Mingey. The officers (Mingey, Guevara, and Halvorsen) knew that Rankins did not know anything about the Vargas murder, but they told Rankins that they wanted him to say he was an eyewitness. When Rankins initially refused, Guevara beat him, including by putting a phonebook against his head and striking it. Guevara showed Rankins photos of plaintiffs and Pacheco while feeding him the narrative he wanted Rankins to give. After more abuse, Rankins agreed to say that he saw plaintiffs and Pacheco shoot and kill Vargas and signed a statement saying so. Now armed with (faulty) probable cause, the detectives immediately arrested Serrano and, sometime later, Montanez and Pacheco.
Not long after the officers met with Rankins, the prosecutors brought Vicente back to their offices to sign his false witness statement. The statement, written by Halvorsen, said that Vicente was hanging out on a street corner when plaintiffs and Pacheco drove up in a tan car. The statement went on to say that Montanez told Vicente that he, Serrano, and Pacheco saw a Mexican man at a gas station with a wad of cash, attempted to rob him, and then shot him. Vicente signed the statement in the presence of a different prosecutor (one who was not present for the previous discussions with Vicente).
A grand jury was convened. Both Rankins and Vicente testified consistent with their written statements, and the grand jury returned an indictment against plaintiffs and Pacheco. Nine months later, Rankins recanted his testimony and fled Chicago. Vicente was transferred to the special witness quarters he was promised and received other benefits, like cash, drugs, and conjugal visits. Vicente continued to be shuttled to the prosecutors' offices to be coached by the prosecutors on his testimony for the three murder prosecutions he was a witness in, including plaintiffs' prosecution.
About two years later, in 1995, plaintiffs were convicted in a bench trial. Their co-defendant, Pacheco, was acquitted. Guevara and Halvorsen testified for the prosecution, and so did Vicente, who largely kept to his written statement and grand jury testimony. The prosecutors, who had helped form Vicente's false testimony, knew it was a lie. Before trial, the prosecutors had helped get Vicente additional pre-trial custody credit to reduce his sentence, a fact that was not disclosed to plaintiffs' lawyers. Wilda could not credibly testify that plaintiffs were the men in the tan car at the gas station, so her identification testimony was rejected. Plaintiffs were each sentenced to 55 years in prison.
At post-conviction evidentiary hearings over a decade later, plaintiffs presented an affidavit from Vicente, admitting that his entire testimony was false. Although relief was initially denied, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed those decisions.
*1034III. Analysis
A. The Prosecutors
Prosecutors are absolutely immune from federal tort liability for actions they take as prosecutors carrying out their prosecutorial duties. See Imbler v. Pachtman ,
Qualified immunity protects officials from civil liability if their conduct "does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Pearson v. Callahan ,
1. Evidence Fabrication
Plaintiffs allege that the prosecutors, along with Officers Guevara and Halvorsen, fabricated evidence by coercing Vicente to falsely implicate plaintiffs in the Vargas murder. The County argues that the prosecutors are protected by absolute immunity because their interview of Vicente was within the scope of their prosecutorial responsibilities. The County is right that interviewing witnesses to decide whether charges should be filed can be protected by absolute immunity under some circumstances, see, e.g. , Bianchi v. McQueen ,
The County also argues that "no evidence was actually procured at this alleged meeting that resulted in an arrest for a charge for murder" and that by the time Vicente signed his sworn statement, Rankins had provided the authorities with independent probable cause. [60] at 17. I take the County's point to be that the evidence used to prosecute plaintiffs came after probable cause and after the prosecutors' immunity attached. But Vicente's testimony was the evidence that convicted plaintiffs, see S. Compl. ¶ 64; M. Compl. ¶ 1, and that testimony derived from the fabricated evidence that the prosecutors obtained as investigators. They are not absolutely immune from the deprivation of liberty caused by that fabricated evidence. See Avery v. City of Milwaukee ,
Nor does qualified immunity protect the prosecutors from the evidence fabrication claims. The County asserts that the complaints only allege that the prosecutors "promised to protect Vicente and give him special privileges in exchange for his testimony," which the County says constitutes coercion, not fabrication. [60] at 19. But this characterization ignores the context of the prosecutors' conduct. Plaintiffs allege that the prosecutors were sitting in a room with Detectives Guevara and Halvorsen as they proposed multiple false narratives to Vicente until one stuck. See S. Compl. ¶¶ 41-43; S. Compl. ¶¶ 38-42. So the prosecutors did not just offer Vicente protection and rewards to coerce him to testify-they offered those things to coerce him to testify to what they knew were falsehoods. That conduct is not just coercion; it is also fabrication. See Fields II ,
The County relies on Buckley IV to argue that the prosecutors' coercion of Vicente may have violated his rights, but it did not violate plaintiffs' rights as third parties. Buckley IV does acknowledge that coercion of a witness only violates that witness's rights,
The County's motion to dismiss the evidence fabrication claims against the prosecutors is denied.
2. Suppression of Evidence
Absolute immunity bars Serrano's claim that the prosecutors suppressed exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland ,
In support of their argument, plaintiffs cite to a case in which prosecutors who were alleged to have fabricated evidence sought immunity against a Brady violation claim. Saunders v. City of Chicago , No. 12-CV-09158,
*1037The County's motion to dismiss the Brady violation claims against the prosecutors is granted. Because it is based on absolute immunity grounds, the dismissal is with prejudice. See Koorsen v. Dolehanty , 401 Fed.App'x 119, 120 (7th Cir. 2010).
3. Prolonged Detention
Only Serrano brings what he labels a "malicious prosecution" claim under
Assuming the complaint can be amended to adequately allege pre-trial detention, qualified immunity would not bar the claim against the prosecutors at this stage. The County argues that the prosecutors are entitled to qualified immunity for Serrano's claim because the law is unclear now and was unclear at the time of violation. Prolonged detention claims are cognizable, as Manuel made clear. That Manuel was decided recently does not necessarily mean that defendants are immune. "[W]hen the question is whether to grant immunity to a public employee, the focus is on his conduct, not on whether that conduct gave rise to a tort in a particular case." Fields II ,
The County's motion to dismiss Serrano's prolonged detention claim against the prosecutors is granted, because pre-trial detention was not alleged.
4. Failure to Intervene
The County also invokes qualified immunity to shield the prosecutors from plaintiffs' failure to intervene claims. I agree with plaintiffs that "a prosecutor acting as an investigator can be held liable for failing to intervene." Harris v. City of Chicago , No. 15 CV 3859,
In 1993, Byrd v. Brishke , which stated that "one who is given the badge of authority *1039of a police officer may not ignore the duty imposed by his office and fail to stop other officers[']" wrongdoing, had been on the books for twenty years.
The County's motion to dismiss the failure to intervene claims against the prosecutors is granted. Because it is based on qualified immunity grounds, the dismissal is with prejudice. See Hinnen v. Kelly ,
5. Conspiracy
The County argues that prosecutors do not lose their immunity when they are alleged to be part of a broader conspiracy. It is true that a prosecutor who is absolutely immune from liability because her conduct was within the scope of her prosecutorial duties does not lose that absolute immunity when engaged in an alleged conspiracy. See French v. Corrigan ,
The County's motion to dismiss the conspiracy claims against the prosecutors is denied.
6. Claims Against Cook County
The County requests dismissal of plaintiffs' respondeat superior and indemnification claims against it. I agree that the County cannot be held liable for the prosecutors' actions under a respondeat superior theory, because the Cook County State's Attorney's Office (run by an elected state official) acts independently from the County. See Gordon v. Devine , No.
The motion to dismiss the respondeat superior claims against the County is granted. The motion to dismiss the indemnification claims against the County is denied.
B. The Officers
1. Rankins Statement
The City moves to dismiss plaintiffs' evidence fabrication claims to the extent they are based on conduct related to Rankins. Evidence fabrication only violates due process if it results in a deprivation of liberty. See Bianchi , 818 F.3d at 319.
Plaintiffs argue that evidence fabrication claims may also be based on pre-trial detention resulting from the use of fabricated evidence to secure an indictment. See Hurt ,
The City argues that plaintiffs' Brady violation claims cannot be based on the Rankins statements either, primarily because they are just recharacterizations of plaintiffs' evidence fabrication claims. I agree. Plaintiffs "seek[ ] to charge the officers with a Brady violation for keeping quiet about their wrongdoing, not for failing to disclose any existing piece of evidence to the prosecution," but Seventh Circuit case law "makes clear that Brady does not require the creation of exculpatory evidence, nor does it compel police officers to accurately disclose the circumstances of their investigations to the prosecution." Saunders-El v. Rohde ,
Plaintiffs also ask me to make a "fair inference" that Mingey suppressed the "bloody phonebook" with which he allegedly beat Rankins. The Montanez complaint does allege that defendants "put a phone book against Rankins's head and struck the phone book," but it does not say anything about hiding or suppressing the phone book (nor does the complaint describe the phonebook as "bloody," instead indicating that the type of abuse did not leave physical marks). M. Compl. ¶ 64. The Serrano complaint does not even mention a phonebook. To find that the complaint alleges suppression of the phonebook would not be a "fair inference"-it would be reading in an absent allegation.
Because I find that plaintiffs' Brady violation claims are impermissible recasts of the evidence fabrication claims and do not allege the suppression of then-existing exculpatory evidence, I need not address the City's other arguments. But for the sake of completeness, I am not persuaded by the City's argument that evidence regarding the abuse or coercion of Rankins was not *1042material. Even though Rankins did not testify at trial, it is plausible that evidence that the officers used coercive tactics when conducting their investigation could give rise to a reasonable probability that the verdict would have been different. Surely, it could have impacted the credibility of the officers and the investigation. See Kyles v. Whitley ,
The City's motion to dismiss the evidence fabrication and Brady violation claims against the officers is granted with respect to the portions of the claims based on Rankins-related conduct.
2. Statute of Limitations Arguments (Prolonged Detention and IIED)
The City argues that plaintiffs' prolonged detention and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims are time-barred, because they accrued at or around the time of plaintiffs' arrests in 1993. Plaintiffs argue that the claims did not accrue until their convictions were favorably terminated in 2016, relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Heck v. Humphrey ,
As I noted in relation to Serrano's prolonged detention claim against the prosecutors, plaintiffs have not alleged pre-trial detention in their complaints. So their prolonged detention claims must be dismissed *1043against the officers too. But if plaintiffs amend their complaints to adequately state prolonged detention claims, the claims would not be time-barred. When Fourth Amendment prolonged detention claims begin to accrue is a question currently before the Seventh Circuit on remand. See Manuel ,
Similarly, IIED claims based on wrongful convictions do not accrue until the conviction is overturned. See Walker ,
The City's motion to dismiss the prolonged detention claims against the officers is granted. The City's motion to dismiss the IIED claims against the officers is granted to the extent the claims are based on Rankins-related conduct, but otherwise denied.
3. Other Claims
The City asserts that plaintiffs cannot sustain state-law malicious prosecution claims against the officers because the officers did not prosecute plaintiffs, the prosecutors did. "[S]uccessful malicious prosecution claims against police officers are rare." Cooper v. Butler , No. 96-3415,
The City also moves to dismiss the federal conspiracy and failure to intervene claims because they are derivative claims that must be dismissed if the underlying federal claims are dismissed. Although the federal claims based on Rankins-related *1044conduct have been dismissed, federal claims remain on the non-Rankins conduct that the City has not moved to dismiss (for example, Vicente-related conduct). Since those claims survive, so do the derivative conspiracy and failure to intervene claims. Similarly, the City argues that the state civil conspiracy, respondeat superior, and indemnification claims must be dismissed if the other state-law claims are dismissed, but the IIED claims survive in part, so the other state-law claims survive too.
The City's motion to dismiss the malicious prosecution claims against the officers is granted. The City's motion to dismiss the § 1983 conspiracy, failure to intervene, state civil conspiracy, respondeat superior, and indemnification claims is denied.
IV. Conclusion
The County's motion to dismiss [46] and the City's motion to dismiss [55] are granted in part, denied in part. The dismissals are without prejudice unless otherwise noted. Plaintiffs have permission to file amended complaints curing the pleading deficiencies described in this opinion. Amended complaints must be filed by June 19, 2018, and responses to any amended complaints are due by July 10, 2018. A status hearing is set for July 19, 2018 at 9:30 a.m.
Serrano and Montanez each brought their own lawsuits against defendants, but their lawsuits are based on a criminal investigation and prosecution in which they were co-defendants and so their factual allegations and claims are largely identical. For this reason, the two cases were consolidated for pre-trial and discovery purposes, and the largely overlapping motions to dismiss are amenable for resolution in a single opinion.
The facts are taken from the operative complaints, with inferences drawn in plaintiffs' favor. Bracketed numbers refer to entries on the Serrano district court docket, unless otherwise indicated. The County asserts that the complaints (in particular, the Montanez complaint) use improper group pleading. The complaints do sometimes refer to "defendants" collectively instead of specifying which particular defendants they are referring to. The Serrano complaint is more specific than the Montanez complaint, so I rely on the details provided by Serrano where applicable. Otherwise, I assume references to "defendants" include all defendants, and plaintiffs intend to prove that every defendant engaged in the alleged conduct. As the facts develop, it may become clear that the facts do not support a group allegation. That will be dealt with at a later stage of the litigation. See Bolden v. City of Chicago ,
This was not the first or the last time Guevara would use these tactics. For decades, Guevara used methods like physical assault, emotional manipulation, and threats (against "suspects" and their family members). See S. Compl. ¶¶ 84-125; M. Compl. ¶ 104. Halvorsen was involved in one of these incidents. See S. Compl. ¶ 120; M. Compl. ¶ 104(nn).
See People v. Serrano ,
After the initial Vicente interview, Serrano was arrested and detained for 24 hours before being released. S. Compl. ¶¶ 47-48. Serrano was re-arrested after the detectives secured Rankins's statement. S. Compl. ¶ 55. The Montanez complaint is not clear on when exactly he was arrested, but a reasonable inference is that it was after the Vicente interview. See M. Compl. ¶ 70.
The County also argues that the prosecutors are absolutely immune from liability for presenting false evidence at trial. I agree. See Soulier v. Haukaas , 477 Fed.App'x 388, 390 (7th Cir. 2012) ("[P]rosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity from civil liability under § 1983 for prosecutorial functions such as...the presentation of a state's case at trial."). To the extent any of plaintiffs' claims against the prosecutors are based on their presentation of false evidence at trial, they are dismissed.
Montanez only brings his Brady violation claim against the defendant officers.
There is perhaps a separate argument to be made that a prosecutor who acts as an investigator could conceivably be liable not for violating the prosecutor's duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense, but for violating the investigator's duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to the prosecution. See Johnson v. Dossey ,
To the extent plaintiffs' base their "malicious prosecution" claims on the Fourteenth Amendment, they are barred because state-law malicious prosecution claims (which plaintiffs also allege) provide them with a remedy. See Bolden ,
The County points to a pre-Manuel case in which the Seventh Circuit noted that the issue of "whether a malicious-prosecution claim is ever cognizable as a Fourth Amendment violation remediable under § 1983" was the subject of dispute and held that "[w]ith the law this unsettled, qualified immunity applies." Bianchi v. McQueen ,
Albright was decided in January 1994, after the investigation commenced in 1993. But Serrano was not tried until 1995, after the Albright opinion was issued.
The County correctly notes that where "every defendant is alleged to be a state actor...a standalone conspiracy claim is usually superfluous." Walker v. White , No. 16 CV 7024,
Although the County summarily stated that "all of the claims against [the prosecutors] are barred by absolute prosecutorial immunity or qualified immunity," [60] at 7, the County did not provide actual argument for the state law claims of malicious prosecution, civil conspiracy, and IIED. This may be because the County argues that the specific conduct underlying those claims is protected by immunity. But all the prosecutors' conduct is not shielded by immunity, and so, in the absence of other argument, those claims are not dismissed.
Serrano's complaint includes violations of the Fifth Amendment in the claims of evidence fabrication and evidence suppression. As the City points out, "there are no allegations that Serrano made any statements-coerced or otherwise-to police, much less that any such statements were used against him in his criminal proceedings," [68] at 14, and so the Fifth Amendment was not violated. Plaintiffs made no argument to contest this. See Cty. of McHenry v. Ins. Co. of the W. ,
Plaintiffs also say that Cook County court records show that plaintiffs were incarcerated from their arrests through their trial and ask me to take judicial notice of those records. But plaintiffs do not provide me with the records (either by link or attachment), and I will not go searching for them.
The parties dispute to what extent Mingey is implicated by plaintiffs' allegations in the complaints. From the City's perspective, Mingey is only alleged to have been involved in conduct related to Rankins. But plaintiffs say that Mingey, a supervisor of the other defendant officers, is alleged to be involved in much more than that, including fabricating evidence from Vicente and Wilda Vargas; suppressing evidence of systemic abuse; and "aiding, facilitating, and failing to intervene during the constitutional violations of the others." [72] at 25. The citations to the complaints provided by plaintiffs in support of their assertion are not convincing. Many of the citations are to allegations about the other (specifically named) defendants. Others are to generic references to "defendants" in the Montanez complaint that, when compared to the Serrano complaint's allegations on the same topic, actually do not appear to include Mingey. Compare, e.g., M. Compl. ¶¶ 29-31, with S. Compl. ¶¶ 27-30. The fact that Mingey was the other officers' supervisor does not automatically implicate him in their constitutional violations, absent adequately pleaded personal involvement. See Doyle v. Camelot Care Centers, Inc. ,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Armando SERRANO v. Reynaldo GUEVARA, and Jose Montanez v. Reynaldo Guevara
- Cited By
- 16 cases
- Status
- Published