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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued August 5, 2015

Decided August 21, 2015

Before

 DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

 DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge

No. 14-3455

TARNCHE HULL,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al.

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of 

Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 13 C 1563

Amy J. St. Eve,

Judge.

O R D E R

Tarnche Hull brought this civil-rights lawsuit after some Chicago police officers 

arrested him on a warrant that named his brother, Latoine Hull. Latoine had previously 

used Tarnche’s name and social security number as an alias, and Tarnche had 

occasionally (though not recently) used Latoine’s identity. Tarnche was detained for a 

little less than a week, but he was released after the mix-up came to light. He then sued 

the three responsible police officers and the City of Chicago under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 

asserting claims of unreasonable seizure and detention in violation of the Fourth and 

Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and false imprisonment in violation of 

state law. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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claims. We conclude that the undisputed facts show that the officers’ mistaken 

identification was reasonable, and so we affirm the district court’s judgment.

I

Because this appeal comes to us from a grant of summary judgment, we present 

the facts in the light most favorable to the opposing party, Tarnche. See Schlemm v. Wall, 

784 F.3d 362, 364 (7th Cir. 2015). In October 2012 Chicago police officers Robert Brown 

and Armando Garza were patrolling a neighborhood on the southeast side of Chicago. 

They spotted a vehicle parked near a fire hydrant and approached it. Seated inside the 

car were Tarnche (in the passenger seat) and a different brother, Antoine (in the driver’s 

seat). They asked Antoine to produce his license; he handed over instead an Illinois state 

identification card. Officer Brown then ordered the brothers out of the car and searched 

them. During the search, he found Tarnche’s state ID card, which listed his name as 

“Tarnche B. Hull.” 

Brown then contacted a police dispatcher to check both names. The dispatcher 

replied that there was a “possible hit” for someone named Latoine E. Hull, that Latoine 

used several aliases, but that the officers should not “search, detain, or arrest based 

solely on” that record. Latoine was Antoine’s twin and Tarnche’s brother. A month 

earlier, Latoine had failed to appear for a court date, and so a state judge had issued a 

warrant for his arrest. The officers decided to allow Tarnche to leave the scene, but they 

arrested Antoine based on the warrant for Latoine. An hour later, they released Antoine 

when they determined that he was not the person named in the warrant.

Brown and Garza then returned to the police station, where they conducted 

additional computer searches for the two brothers they had encountered. Tarnche’s 

criminal history contained no active arrest warrants, but it did show that he had used the 

alias “Latoine Hull” on two occasions long ago—one in 1997, and the other in 2004. 

Brown also pulled up on the computer the warrant for Latoine, along with the 

accompanying report. The report stated that the target used as aliases nine different 

names, ten birthdays, and two social security numbers. Two of those aliases were 

“Tarnche Hull” and “Tarnche B. Hull.” Based on this research, Brown believed that 

Tarnche was the person described by the arrest warrant. Physical traits reinforced his 

view: the report indicated that the target was an African-American male; Tarnche’s ID 

card said that he was 5’9”, and his criminal-history report said that he weighed 185

pounds. (Tarnche later admitted that on the day of his arrest he weighed 169 pounds.)

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Later that night Tarnche went to the police station to retrieve his ID card. When 

he arrived, Brown arrested him based on the warrant for Latoine, over Tarnche’s 

repeated protests that there was no warrant for his arrest. Brown and Garza did, 

however, continue checking police records for the names Tarnche and Latoine Hull. 

They discovered that both the FBI number (a federally-assigned, unique identification 

number generated from a record based on a person’s fingerprints) and state 

identification number (SID—a similar number issued by the state) on Tarnche’s 

criminal-history report matched the FBI and SID numbers on the report accompanying 

the warrant for Latoine. In addition, the report with the warrant stated that the target 

had tattoos on his left and right arms and a scar near his left upper arm or back. The 

officers examined Tarnche and found similar identifying marks. The only difference was 

that unlike the target, Tarnche had only one, not three, tattoos on his left arm.

Once Tarnche was detained, Brown and Garza prepared an arrest report for him; 

that report was approved by Valery Roytman, the watch commander that evening. More 

than 24 hours after his arrest, Tarnche was transferred to the custody of the Cook County 

Sheriff. Four days later he was released when an assistant state’s attorney realized the 

mistake and told a state judge that Tarnche was not the intended target of the warrant. 

In the wake of these events, Tarnch sued unnamed police officers under 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983; he later amended his complaint to name Brown, Garza, Roytman, and the City. 

He alleged false arrest, unreasonable detention, and a failure on Roytman’s part to verify 

the validity of the arrest warrant independently, all in violation of the Fourth and 

Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He also raised a supplemental 

state-law claim for false imprisonment.

The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on all counts. It 

ruled that the arrest was lawful because the officers reasonably believed that Tarnche

was the target of the arrest warrant, that his detention was reasonable and supported by 

probable cause, and that he could not prevail on his false-imprisonment claim because 

the officers did not act willfully or wantonly, as required under the state tort immunity 

act before local government employees may be found liable. Tarnche has appealed from 

all of these rulings.

II

Tarnche first asserts that the district court erred by concluding that his arrest was 

constitutional and that it was reasonable under the circumstances for the officers to 

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mistake him for Latoine. Essentially, he criticizes the officers for not doing more to make 

sure that they had the right man. He contends that because he was arrested in the 

“unusually controlled environment” of the police station, where the officers had access 

to computer resources that could prove that he was not the person named in the arrest 

warrant, the officers’ mistake was not objectively reasonable. 

Tarnche is asking more of the police than they are required to deliver. When 

police officers mistakenly arrest the wrong person based on a valid arrest warrant that is 

supported by probable cause (and no one doubts that the warrant for Latoine met those 

criteria), the arrest is constitutional as long as the mistake was reasonable. Hill v. 

California, 401 U.S. 797, 802 (1971); Catlin v. City of Wheaton, 574 F.3d 361, 365 (7th Cir. 

2009); Rodriguez v. Farrell, 280 F.3d 1341, 1345–46 (11th Cir. 2002). A mistake in 

identifying the target of a warrant may be reasonable even when the arrestee has a name 

and physical characteristics different from those of the real target. See Catlin, 574 F.3d at 

365 n.4 (reasonable mistake to arrest person having different name from target’s but of 

similar age, height, weight, when arrestee was driving similar motorcycle in area where 

target was expected to be found); Tibbs v. City of Chi., 469 F.3d 661, 664 (7th Cir. 2006) 

(reasonable mistake to arrest person having same name, race, sex as target of warrant 

but different middle initials and 6-year age difference); Brown v. Patterson, 823 F.2d 167, 

168–70 (7th Cir. 1987) (affirming dismissal for failure to state a claim of unlawful arrest 

when officer arrested man whose name was the same as an alias used by the target); 

Johnson v. Miller, 680 F.2d 39, 40‒41 (7th Cir. 1982) (affirming dismissal for failure to state 

a claim where officers arrested woman with same name but different race as target of 

warrant). 

Brown and Garza had a valid warrant for Latoine, and Latoine had previously 

used Tarnche’s name, birthday, and social security number as an alias. Additionally, the 

brothers resembled each other, even if they were not carbon copies: they were the same 

race and height (5’9”), their weights were similar (165 and 169 pounds), and their hair 

and eye colors (black, brown) matched. This was enough to support the reasonableness 

of the arrest. The City also stresses the fact that after the arrest, the officers confirmed that 

the FBI and SID numbers listed for Latoine in the warrant matched the numbers on 

Tarnche’s criminal-history report. We do not rely, however, on this after-acquired 

information.

As we noted, Tarnche urges that the arrest could not have been reasonable based 

only on the superficial investigation that the officers conducted. He insists that if the 

officers had looked closely at his and his brothers’ criminal-history reports, they would 

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have seen that the arrest that precipitated the issuance of the warrant for Latoine’s 

failure to appear did not show up on Tarnche’s record. But once an officer establishes 

probable cause to arrest, she has no constitutional duty to seek out exculpatory evidence 

or to investigate further. See Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 145–46 (1979); Matthews v. 

City of East St. Louis, 675 F.3d 703, 707 (7th Cir. 2012); Tibbs, 469 F.3d at 665. 

Tarnche finally argues that the district court should not have granted summary 

judgment on his state-law false-imprisonment claim because he presented evidence that 

Brown, Garza, and Roytman intentionally and willfully arrested him despite knowing 

that he was not the target of the warrant. In order to show that their actions were “willful 

and wanton,” Tarnche points to Brown’s use of profanity and threats when Tarnche told 

him that he was not the right person. But probable cause is an absolute bar to a claim of 

false imprisonment, see Hawkins v. Mitchell, 756 F.3d 983, 994 (7th Cir. 2014); Poris v. Lake 

Holiday Prop. Owners Ass’n, 983 N.E.2d 993, 1007 (Ill. 2013), and here, as we already have 

indicated, the police had probable cause to believe that Tarnche was Latoine. 

Because the undisputed facts thus show that Officers Brown and Garza made a 

reasonable mistake by arresting Tarnche on the basis of the warrant for Latoine, and the 

rest of Tarnche’s arguments cannot succeed when that is the case, we AFFIRM the 

judgment of the district court. 

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