and that is whether an officer is untile the qualified immunity when he submits a warrant application for criminal stalking based upon the sending of communications to third parties and the affidavit does not describe the contents of those communications in any in this case the affidavit was charging mr jordan the appellant with criminal stalking stalking in louisiana under louisiana by statute forty fourteen colin forty point t has four elements it is the intentional and repeated following or harassing of another person that would cause a reasonable person to feel alarmed or to suffer emotional distress there's more t the the core of the statute in this case the affidavit relative to mr jordan's actions made three separate allegations that he intentionally and and repeatedly harassed the alleged victim by sending letters to him quote employers and clients to that he arrested staff for whom she worked in the courts during the time he had a case in which he was convicted for trespassing in two thousand and nine and three also harassed the judge who sentences him and the judge's wife and family in this case in this case i'm going to focus on the final two elements which are the meat of the stalking statute which are the harassing of another person that would cause a reasonable person to suffer emotional distress of focusing on harassing rather following was there subsection c one and seat two other definitions that further explain what constitutes harassing essentially boils down to harassing as a pattern of uninvited conduct whether it be verbal but it is further narrowed by the statute over even the base definition of harassment of the statute requires the identification of a victim to whom the alleged harassment is directed that's when you know  in this case the affidavit did not include any representations of the contents of the letters so it was impossible to say whether they constituted in direct attempts to communicate with the victim or otherwise affect the victim in any fashion other was simply no telling that is missing there's not even an allegation that there's no allegation that anything was directed towards the alleged victims secondly you know again in those subsection c one and   exercise its expertise the city has argued that officer rumsfeld is not a expected to be a you know first i'm an expert in the field and of course that is true but he has to give sufficient facts relatives the complaint also specifically allege that letters were based on those news reports and a letter from the new orleans inspector general and that they quote did not contain any threats or subjective response it's an objective standard subjective reasonable person standard and without knowing the contents there was no way for the magistrate to make any independent or determination as to whether or not a reasonable person would allegations of course without the contents of the letters that's a problem but these additional allegations of harassing the staff and the courts arresting the judge i believe can be completely disregarded because they're whol needed to describe the underlying cause furthermore you know to the extent that he was it was alleged that he was harassing you know the court staff and as earlier in this proceeding that was occurred several years before litigant who had been convicted of stalking his judge because his conduct which consisted of calling in writing the judge and showing up to court even on days when this court case wasn't called might have been annoying but it was constitutionally protected against constitutionally protect actually you know an element within the events and it is up to the officer to provide adequate facts to allow the magistrate to make that determination of whether or not issues pertaining to likely intent of a party which is obviously present here it's in fact one of the elements of the statute it's normally inappropriate for that it's inappropriate in the first amendment cases where there are rights that sta essentially this this would obviously be better position from the perspective of the city if it got up on summary judgment and i believe that it was essentially treated as such and the judge raised merely repeated what the victim told him which first of all doesn't seem to really was because there was virtually no information that there was virtually no information in the affidavit and two it is my it is  of course the plaintiff that isn't entitled to all reasonable assumptions and not the defendant in those cases last but just to cite one other issue if the to the extent you know the officer was using harassment you know just as a generic term rather than a specific legal term under the statute that actually makes this even more problematic because  that there were letters but he would have had a state of what they actually said that made the progress a and there was nothing to indicate that they were or even directed towards the alleged victim really turns on the answers to two relatively straightforward questions the first one is based on the facts as played by mr jordan accepted as true and with all reasonable inferences drawn in his favor was it entirely unreasonable for officer brumfield to have even applied for a ward and what are those facts that he that he himself has pledged that mr jordan was in fact previously convicted court of a crime by judge all sense that mr jordan believed that his case had been mishandled and subsequently filed complaints against that judge for that case that he then took it upon himself to mail targeted letters about the members of judge since his family including the complainant here and sent it to their employers and their clients not publicly distributed scented targeted letters to employers and and business s about members of judge sends his family to their employers and and clients and he also acknowledges in the complaint that he was in fact a founding member of this group in the french quarter of going in the resists who got together in response to a crime problem in the french quarter so given all of that in the complaint that he himself readily admits was it entirely unreasonable did the fact that a neutral magistrate look at the avid a bit found the probable cause that exists that sever the requisite causal link between officer brownfields actions and mr jordan's arrest us immunizing of saddam field from liability as well as the city and a judge africa has looked at these questions and issued two separate rulings concluding both times that a reasonable officer could have concluded that a warrant should issue under the circumstances the officer brumfield is therefore entitled to qualified immunity and the case must be dismissed and mr jordan has not shown that judge  violate the law and here the facts alleged by mr jordan in the complaint simply do not allow for a reasonable inference officer brownfields actions were indeed plainly incompetent or knowingly violated the law and the qualified immunity doctoring ensures that insubstantial claims against officials are resolved at the earliest possible stage of litigation even prior to discovery and the purpose behind that is clear because an officer who is given information suggesting that a crime may have been committed should not be forced to choose between facing charges of dereliction of duty for choosing not to act on that information or conversely choosing to act on the information and the later being hit with civil damages because it turns out that indeed no crime is in fact committed and once the defendant has raised qualified immunity the burden at that point shifts to the plaint that indeed the constitutional right was violated that it was but that constitutional right was clearly established at the time of the violation and three that it was done through conduct that was objective lete on reasonable so accepting for the moment the premise that an improper arrest would be a violation of constitutional right that was clearly established then the question has been becomes was officer brumfield conduct objective we are reasonable and again judge african clue that it was not the general rule in the search in the circuit under triplett is that a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate is the clearest indication that an officer has acted in an objective a reasonable manner and of course that's what happened here it lays out for exceptions to that to that basic rule two of those exceptions judge afric looked at and decided that they categorically those exceptions do not apply to the facts in this case and i don't believe that mr jordan challenges that find so there are two potential triplett exceptions that judge africa looked at the first being whether the officer has intentionally misled the magistrate or recklessly disregarded the truth and mr jordan simply pleads no facts in the complaint that would allow this court to drop or or any court to draw a reasonable inference that officer brumfield had intentionally misled the magistrate he doesn't lead anywhere in the complaint that officer brumfield withheld information from the magistrate or otherwise misrepresented information to him in fact he readily admits most of the allegations in the affidavit that mr jordan wrote the letters that he was targeting members of the sens family and that he was a member of this group in the french quarter and indeed judge africa found exactly the opposite he found that it is reasonable to conclude that officer brumfield simply listed in the affidavit the information provided to him by the victim including jordan's reputation as a gun rights advocate and left it for the magistrate judge to decide a probable cause existed and entered your honour's it is not this court's job or the district court's job to consider every possible factual scenario beyond what was exception do not apply so the final exception that could potentially ply would be whether the warrant application is so completely bereft of information demonstrating the existence of probable cause that it is entirely unreasonable for the officer to believe it and hear your honour's we would submit that although you know this may not have been the most eloquent affidavit ever written in history there was enough information in that affidavit to allow the magistrate to determine that yes there was probable cause it was more likely than not that a crime had been committed officer who requested the warrant cannot be held liable and again that that is precisely what happened here the magistrate looked at this and decided that it would provide for probable cause now mr jordan does point to the spencer easton case and the e you know this court didn't fact overturn a grant of qualified immunity finding it was a bare bones affidavit but in that case is very distinguishable from here that was the affidavit submitted by the officer to the judge  helped i'm sorry helps the murder suspects evade law enforcement that was it was the entire affidavit provided absolutely no information about what when where or how that was committed here officer brumfield has a full paragraph of information makes it absolutely clear that mr jordan is alleged to have harassed his victim that he had done it before that the harassment was in the form of sending these letters to third parties and submit that this is more than the food from ation from out straight to find probable cause the fact that the district attorney later chose not to prosecute mr jordan for the crime does not affect whether or not it was in the range of professional competence for the magistrate simply  if i could quickly address his first memory claims  it is clear that the first amendment does not provide in unfettered rights to say or write anything at any time about anyone there are indeed the court has indeed recognized limits to first amendment protections there are some types of speech that are categorically recognized as not being protected that includes conduct integral to conduct interviews criminal conduct or communications interrupt of criminal conduct and here the communications suggested even if the communications were protected that ignores the critical piece that says that that constitutional right must have been clearly established at the time of the incident now we have lawyers and judges determining whether or not these particular communications were protected first amendment speech or unprotected conduct well officer brumfield as an officer he is not a constitutional scholar that can sit and ponder these questions and he made a determination in the course of duty that this was not protected and it would it is not required that he be held accountable for probable cause existed then of course he's in health qualified immunity and the claims against the city must be dismissed because of course the city cannot be held liable for an officer who acted reasonably however that being said if it is determined the officer brumfield was not reasonable then the claims against the city turn on the mono case which says that municipality cannot be held liable under section one thousand nine hundred three unless it was shown that the behavior of arose from the execution of a government's policy or custom and again decisions of the supreme court in this court since mondale have made it clear that this is a very high bar for a plaintiff to declare in all in this court said that actions and decisions by officials that are merely inept erroneous ineffective or negligent do not amount to deliberate indifference so to establish liability under mondale mr george would have to show an official policy or custom implemented a policy maker for the city and that was the moving force behind a violation of his constitutional rights and there is simply no city policy or custom here there's been established that encourages officers to arrest citizens without probable cause  city based on the findings of that report but there was no specific connection between the findings of that report in two thousand and eleven and the actions of the officer here that would took place in two thousand and fourteen and because there is no connection between those two things you cannot use that as a basis for and of course as i mentioned before there must be established a causal link between officer brumfield actions and mr jordan's arrest this court said previously that a fax supporting an arrest or place before an intimate independent issued the warrant mr jordan has simply not shown that officer brownfields actions were an objective leean reasonable and that no reasonable officer could have possibly concluded under the circumstances that  some detail description of harassing behavior the only thing it said is that letters were said let's cut to the chase i mean we know you differ in terms of the scenario in all land but you know you heard qualified immunity to go through the elements of the offense you don't really say what actually happened he didn't describe anything that would win lation tim occasion you can't win i mean similarly a great but i'm saying i don't know you can win a case were in any way directed to the allegedly rectum or an attempt to communicate with or there was nothing stated regarding the letters except that they were sent to quote employers and clients that said you're  known that in order to say that these that this conduct constituted stalking that he had to describe the letters and some of our he would have said if it would have only taken like one word if you had said these letters included threats you  within them but my understanding of it was they relied on test testimony or statements from the nascent crowd and i'm asking you whether that's your understanding of what was asserted or not and what do you understand that y some way employers and clients and i don't like it and i felt subjective emotional distress that's all i can gather along with you know and he was annoying in court you know two thousand and nine a again this is not