United States District Court

for the

Southern District of Florida

Juan Leonardo Raudez, Plaintiff,

v.

Village of Biscayne Park and 

others, Defendants.

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Civil Action No. 20-22004-Civ-Scola

Order Dismissing Case

Previously, the Court granted Defendants Village of Biscayne Park, Police 

Chief Raimundo Atesiano, and Officer Guillermo Ravelo’s motions to dismiss

(ECF Nos. 25, 27, 28), dismissing as untimely all but Plaintiff Juan Leonardo 

Raudez’s claims for malicious prosecution. (Order, ECF No. 47.) In its order, 

however, the Court noted, upon its own review, that Raudez had also failed to 

state claims against any of the Defendants for malicious prosecution. (Id. at 7.) 

In making that assessment, the Court afforded Raudez an opportunity to 

respond to the Court’s order to show cause as to why his case should not be 

dismissed in its entirety. (Id. at 9–10.) After receiving an extension, Raudez 

timely filed his response to the Court’s order. (Pl.’s Resp., ECF No. 52.) After 

careful review, the Court finds Raudez’s response lacking and dismisses his 

case in its entirety.

As the Court advised Raudez in its order, to properly alleged malicious 

prosecution, he must supply facts showing the affidavits supporting his 

criminal prosecution were constitutionally infirm in that either (1) the officer 

who submitted the affidavits should have known that the affidavits failed to 

establish probable cause or (2) an official involved in the legal process 

intentionally or recklessly made misstatements or omissions necessary to 

support the prosecution. Williams v. Aguirre, 965 F.3d 1147, 1165 (11th Cir. 

2020). Raudez has not alleged such facts in his amended complaint nor has he 

proffered that he can allege such facts in a second amended complaint.

Throughout most of his response, Raudez simply describes, once again, 

the sequence of events that led to his traffic stop, his arrest, and resulting 

prosecution, guilty plea, and sentencing. In doing so, he acknowledges there 

was nothing improper about Ravelo’s initial traffic stop: Raudez was driving a 

van, without its headlights on, at midnight. (Pl.’s Resp. ¶ 12.) Raudez also 

concedes Ravelo had probable cause to arrest him based on Raudez’s initially 

providing Ravelo with false information and driving while his driver’s license 

was suspended. (Id.) Raudez further sets forth that Ravelo “claims that Raudez 

made voluntary statements confessing to the theft of AC units that were in the 

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rear of the . . . van.” (Id.) Tellingly, Raudez never alleges or even suggests he did 

not actually make these statements to Ravelo. 

Instead, in trying ward off dismissal, Raudez points, first, to what he 

considers weaknesses in Ravelo’s affidavit. For example, Raudez says that, in 

Ravelo’s affidavit, the officer “is unable to connect the name and address of any 

owner of the [three] stolen AC units.” (Id. ¶¶ 14, 16, 21.) Raudez also complains 

that the facts supporting the probable-cause determination for the three felony 

charges against him “were limited solely to Officer Ravelo’s statements that 

Officer Ravelo personally wrote into the narrative of [the] [a]rrest [a]ffidavit.” (Id. 

¶ 15.) Raudez additionally highlights an interoffice memo from a supervisor at 

the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office reminding Ravelo “about the 

importance of accurately completing the back of the pink copy of the Arrest

Form.” (Id. ¶ 17.) Next, Raudez points out what he describes as other 

inconsistencies in the affidavit: Ravelo stated that all three AC units in the van 

were gray and stolen from someone named Larissa Garzon Garnett but Garnett 

herself only reported one missing AC unit and said that the unit “had ‘pink’ 

color on it.” (Id. ¶ 21.) But none of these issues, either singly or taken together, 

demonstrate a lack of probable cause, especially when Raudez does not ever 

actually dispute pointedly telling Ravelo, “[T]here are three central A/C units in 

the rear of the van that are hot.” (Id.)

Next, Raudez focuses on the Court’s concern that he provided no factual 

support for his claim that to the extent his “plea of nolo contendere is deemed a 

confession, it was obtained through coercion and unconstitutional tactics . . . 

including the threat of the potential imposition of a much longer prison term.” 

(Am. Compl., ECF No. 21, ¶ 30.) In an attempt to provide that missing support, 

Raudez highlights the following: Raudez “was forced to enter a plea where he 

would be required to serve a short period of time in jail” “[b]ecause [he] was 

facing an extended term of imprisonment”; his “plea decision was based on his 

belief that juries hold police officers in high esteem”; and he “feared backlash 

from a jury when it learned of his less than perfect past.” (Pl.’s Resp. ¶ 22.) 

None of these allegations, however, comes anywhere close to supporting a 

claim for malicious prosecution against any of the Defendants.

Finally, Raudez once more recounts the details of the scheme, described 

more fully in the Court’s earlier order, to which Atesiano and Ravelo ultimately 

pleaded guilty in federal court. (Id. ¶¶ 19–20, 24.) But, again, Raudez neglects 

to allege a single actual fact that would establish that the scheme was applied 

to him specifically. As the Court pointed out previously, while the charges 

against Atesiano and Ravelo, along with their eventual guilty pleas, no doubt 

taint every single arrest they made during the relevant period, that does not 

mean, in turn, that every single arrest they happen to have made during that 

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timeframe was necessarily unconstitutional or otherwise violative of state law.

In short, all Raudez has done, again, is provide facts showing that, on the one 

hand, he was arrested based on a confession that he does not dispute making 

and, on the other, the arresting officer and his chief were simultaneously 

perpetrating a reprehensible scheme to artificially boost their solved-cases rate 

at the expense of innocent defendants who happened to have criminal records. 

In his response, Raudez continues to leave these parallel events wholly 

unconnected. 

Nothing Raudez has presented in his response to the Court’s order to 

show cause disturbs the Court’s finding that Raudez failed to state a claim for 

malicious prosecution against any of the Defendants in his amended 

complaint. Further, Raudez has not proposed any new facts that he could 

incorporate into a second amended complaint that would sufficiently bolster 

his defective allegations to avoid dismissal.

Accordingly, the Court dismisses the remainder of Raudez’s amended 

complaint (ECF No. 21), with prejudice, and directs the Clerk to close this 

case. Any pending motions are denied as moot. 

Done and ordered, at Miami, Florida, on November 24, 2020.

________________________________

Robert N. Scola, Jr.

United States District Judge

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