In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 17-1510

MAURICE LEWIS,

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. 16-CV-7592 — Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED FEBRUARY 6, 2018 — DECIDED JANUARY 23, 2019

____________________

Before RIPPLE, SYKES, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. Maurice Lewis spent more than two 

years in pretrial detention in the Cook County Jail based on 

police reports falsely implicating him for unlawfully possessing a firearm. After the charges against him were 

dropped, Lewis sued the City of Chicago and six police 

officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking damages for violation 
2 No. 17-1510

of his rights under the Fourth Amendment and the Due 

Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The district court dismissed the suit, ruling that both 

claims were time-barred. Lewis appealed. Twelve days later 

the Supreme Court decided Manuel v. City of Joliet

(“Manuel I”), 137 S. Ct. 911, 920 (2017), clarifying that detention without probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment

“when it precedes, but also when it follows, the start of legal 

process in a criminal case.” Id. at 918. The Court declined to

decide when such claims accrue, instead remanding the case 

to this court to resolve that issue. Id. at 922. In September the 

Manuel panel held that a Fourth Amendment claim for

wrongful pretrial detention accrues on the date the detention 

ends. Manuel v. City of Joliet (“Manuel II”), 903 F.3d 667, 670 

(7th Cir. 2018).

The combined effect of Manuel I and II saves part of 

Lewis’s case. Consistent with Manuel I, Lewis pleaded a 

viable Fourth Amendment claim for unlawful pretrial

detention. And Manuel II confirms that the claim is timely 

because Lewis filed it within two years of his release from 

detention.

The due-process claim is another matter. Manuel I makes

clear that the Fourth Amendment, not the Due Process

Clause, governs a claim for wrongful pretrial detention. To 

the extent Hurt v. Wise, 880 F.3d 831, 843–44 (7th Cir. 2018), 

holds otherwise, it is incompatible with Manuel I and II and 

is overruled.1 We therefore reverse the dismissal of the 

 1 Because this opinion resolves a conflict in our circuit caselaw, it was 

circulated to all judges in active service. See 7TH CIR. R. 40(e). None 
No. 17-1510 3

Fourth Amendment claim and affirm the dismissal of the

due-process claim, though on different grounds.

I. Background

On September 12, 2013, Chicago police officers searched 

an apartment on West Walton Street where they encountered Lewis and two others. During the search, the officers

discovered a handgun. Lewis alleges that the officers had no

basis to believe the gun was his. He claims that he didn’t live 

at the apartment and never told the officers otherwise. He 

further alleges that the officers never found anything in the 

apartment indicating that he lived there. 

The officers arrested Lewis for illegally possessing the

firearm. Lewis claims that the officers prepared police 

reports falsely stating that he “had admitted to residing in 

the Walton Street Apartment” and that the officers “had 

found and seized evidence establishing that [Lewis] resided 

in the Walton Street Apartment.”

The day after Lewis’s arrest, a state-court judge held a 

probable-cause hearing and found cause to believe that 

Lewis illegally possessed the weapon, 720 ILL. COMP. STAT.

5/24-1.1(a), and violated Illinois’s armed habitual criminal 

statute, id. § 5/24-1.7(a). The judge ordered Lewis held for 

trial. Two weeks later a prosecutor amended the charges, 

and a different judge held a probable-cause hearing on the 

new charges. Officer Abraham Mora testified that the search 

of the apartment uncovered a handgun and two documents 

addressed to Lewis at the Walton Street address. The judge

 

favored a hearing en banc. Circuit Judge Amy J. St. Eve did not participate.
4 No. 17-1510

found probable cause to detain Lewis for trial. He sat in the 

Cook County Jail for two years until the charges were

dropped on September 29, 2015.

On July 26, 2016, Lewis sued the City and six officers under § 1983 alleging that he was held in jail pending trial 

based on falsified evidence, violating his rights under the 

Fourth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due 

Process Clause. He also raised a claim under Illinois law for 

malicious prosecution.

The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint under

Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The 

judge granted the motion, dismissing the constitutional 

claims with prejudice after finding them time-barred under 

the two-year statute of limitations applicable to § 1983 claims 

in Illinois. The judge then relinquished supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claim, dismissing it without 

prejudice.

II. Discussion

We review a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal de novo. Jakupovic v. 

Curran, 850 F.3d 898, 901 (7th Cir. 2017). To survive a motion 

to dismiss, a complaint must contain “factual content that 

allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the 

defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. 

Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).

A. Fourth Amendment Claim

Lewis maintains that he pleaded a viable Fourth 

Amendment claim for unlawful pretrial detention based on 

falsified evidence. He also argues that the claim is timely.

Under Manuel I and II, he is correct on both points.
No. 17-1510 5

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable ... 

seizures.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. A person is “seized” 

whenever an official “restrains his freedom of movement” 

such that he is “not free to leave.” Brendlin v. California, 

551 U.S. 249, 254–55 (2007). “[T]he general rule [is] that 

Fourth Amendment seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if based 

on probable cause to believe that the individual has committed a crime.” Bailey v. United States, 568 U.S. 186, 192 (2013)

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

Lewis alleges that he was detained—that is to say, 

“seized”—in the Cook County Jail for two years based on 

falsified police reports and that this injury is actionable 

under § 1983 as a violation of his Fourth Amendment right 

to be free from unreasonable seizure. Our circuit caselaw

once foreclosed this theory. See, e.g., Newsome v. McCabe, 

256 F.3d 747, 750 (7th Cir. 2001). Prior to Manuel I, our cases 

held that “once detention by reason of arrest turns into 

detention by way of arraignment—once police action gives 

way to legal process—the Fourth Amendment falls out of 

the picture and the detainee’s claim that the detention is

improper becomes a claim of malicious prosecution violative 

of due process.” Llovet v. City of Chicago, 761 F.3d 759, 763

(7th Cir. 2014).

The Supreme Court superseded this circuit precedent in 

Manuel I. Elijah Manuel was arrested for possession of

unlawful drugs. After a probable-cause hearing based on 

evidence allegedly fabricated by the police, a local judge 

found probable cause and sent Manuel to the county jail to 

await trial. There he sat for 48 days until the prosecutor 

dismissed the charge. Manuel I, 137 S. Ct. at 915–16. He 
6 No. 17-1510

sought damages under § 1983 alleging that his pretrial 

detention violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court

dismissed the claim based on binding circuit precedent and 

we affirmed. Id. at 916. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Manuel stated a Fourth Amendment claim when he 

sought relief “not merely for his (pre-legal-process) arrest, 

but also for his (post-legal process) pretrial detention.” Id. at 

919.

The Court jettisoned the malicious-prosecution analogy 

and the due-process source of the right, instead grounding

the claim in long-established Fourth Amendment doctrine:

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government 

officials from detaining a person in the absence 

of probable cause. That can happen when the 

police hold someone without any reason before 

the formal onset of a criminal proceeding. But 

it can also occur when legal process itself goes 

wrong—when, for example, a judge’s 

probable-cause determination is predicated 

solely on a police officer’s false statements. 

Then, too, a person is confined without constitutionally adequate justification. Legal process 

has gone forward, but it has done nothing to 

satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s probablecause requirement. And for that reason, it cannot extinguish the detainee’s Fourth Amendment claim—or somehow, as the Seventh 

Circuit has held, convert that claim into one 

founded on the Due Process Clause.

Id. at 918–19 (citations omitted).
No. 17-1510 7

Manuel I thus clarified that the constitutional injury arising from a wrongful pretrial detention rests on the fundamental Fourth Amendment principle that a pretrial 

detention is a “seizure”—both before formal legal process

and after—and is justified only on probable cause. Id. at 918.

Manuel alleged that his detention was not supported by 

probable cause because the judge’s order holding him for 

trial was based only on “police fabrications.” Id. at 919. If 

that proved to be true, his detention was unreasonable in 

violation of the Fourth Amendment. Id.

Put another way, the initiation of formal legal process 

“did not expunge Manuel’s Fourth Amendment claim 

because the process he received failed to establish what that 

Amendment makes essential for pretrial detention—

probable cause to believe he committed a crime.” Id. at 919–

20. As we explained in our decision on remand in Manuel II, 

a Fourth Amendment claim for wrongful pretrial detention 

is concerned with “the detention rather than the existence of 

criminal charges.” 903 F.3d at 670.

Lewis’s allegations are materially indistinguishable from

Manuel’s. He has therefore pleaded a plausible Fourth 

Amendment claim. The officers respond with an assertion of 

qualified immunity. “Qualified immunity attaches when an 

official’s conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person 

would have known.” Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1151 

(2018) (per curiam) (quoting White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 548, 

551 (2017) (per curiam)). Qualified immunity requires a twopart inquiry: we must determine (1) whether facts alleged or 

shown by a plaintiff make out a violation of a constitutional 

right, and (2) if so, whether that right was clearly established 
8 No. 17-1510

at the time of the defendant’s alleged misconduct. Pearson v. 

Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009). 

It has been clear since at least Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 

154 (1978), that falsifying the factual basis for a judicial 

probable-cause determination violates the Fourth Amendment. A judicial determination of probable cause is normally 

entitled to a presumption of validity, but

this presumption is premised on an “assumption ... that there will be a truthful showing” of 

probable cause. [Franks, 438 U.S.] at 164–65, 98 

S. Ct. 2674 (emphasis in original). Accordingly, 

the presumption may give way on a showing 

that the officer who sought the warrant “knowingly or intentionally or with a reckless disregard for the truth, made false statements to the 

judicial officer, and that the false statements 

were necessary to the judicial officer’s determination that probable cause existed for the arrest.” Beauchamp v. City of Noblesville, Ind., 

320 F.3d 733, 742–43 (7th Cir. 2003) (citing 

Franks, 438 U.S. at 155–56, 98 S. Ct. 2674).

Whitlock v. Brown, 596 F.3d 406, 410 (7th Cir. 2010) (omission 

in original) (alterations omitted).

Lewis alleges that the officers falsely asserted, both in 

their police reports and in testimony at the probable-cause 

hearing, that he admitted residing at the apartment where 

the gun was found and that they found evidence showing 

that he lived there. Accepting these allegations as true, as we 

must at this stage, no reasonable officer could have thought 

this conduct was constitutionally permissible. It makes no 
No. 17-1510 9

difference that our circuit caselaw situated the constitutional 

violation in the Due Process Clause rather than the Fourth 

Amendment.

The question remains whether the claim is timely. A

§ 1983 claim borrows the statute of limitations for analogous 

personal-injury claims in the forum state; in Illinois that 

period is two years. 735 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/13-202; Wallace v. 

Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388–89 (2007). But federal law determines 

when the claim accrues. Wallace, 549 U.S. at 388–89.

Manuel II addressed the accrual question the Supreme 

Court remanded in Manuel I, holding that a Fourth Amendment claim for wrongful pretrial detention accrues when the

detention ceases. 903 F.3d at 669. Two considerations supported this conclusion. First, because the constitutional 

violation is “ongoing” rather than “discrete,” the claim 

accrues when the ongoing violation ends. Id. Second, “a 

claim cannot accrue until the would-be plaintiff is entitled to 

sue, yet the existence of detention forbids a suit for damages 

contesting that detention’s validity.” Id. at 670 (citing Preiser 

v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475 (1973), and Heck v. Humphrey, 

512 U.S. 477 (1994)). 

Under Manuel II, Lewis’s Fourth Amendment claim is

timely. Lewis remained in jail until the charges against him

were dropped on September 29, 2015. He filed this § 1983 

suit less than a year later on July 26, 2016, well within the 

two-year statute of limitations.2 He is entitled to move

forward on his Fourth Amendment claim.

 2 We note that the Supreme Court has granted certiorari to resolve a 

circuit split on the claim-accrual question reserved in Manuel I. See 

McDonough v. Smith, No. 18-485, 2019 WL 166879 (Mem.) (Jan. 11, 2019).
10 No. 17-1510

B. Due-Process Claim

Lewis argues that this same misconduct by law enforcement—falsifying the police reports that led to his pretrial 

detention—also violated his right to due process, giving rise 

to an additional constitutional claim under § 1983. Manuel I

holds otherwise, as does our decision on remand in 

Manuel II.

To reiterate, Manuel I explained that “[i]f the complaint is 

that a form of legal process resulted in pretrial detention 

unsupported by probable cause, then the right allegedly 

infringed lies in the Fourth Amendment.” 137 S. Ct. at 919. 

As we’ve noted above, Manuel I clarified that the initiation of 

formal legal process “cannot extinguish the detainee’s 

Fourth Amendment claim—or somehow, as the Seventh Circuit 

has held, convert that claim into one founded on the Due Process 

Clause.” Id. at 918–19 (emphasis added). It’s now clear that a 

§ 1983 claim for unlawful pretrial detention rests exclusively

on the Fourth Amendment.

Lewis relies on Hurt v. Wise as support for his position 

that pretrial detention based on fabricated evidence violates 

rights secured by two constitutional provisions—the Fourth 

Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth—

and is actionable under § 1983 as two separate constitutional 

claims. Hurt conflicts with Manuel I and II, so we take this 

opportunity to clear up the conflict.

In Hurt the police arrested three siblings for their suspected roles in the death of their uncle. “But one by one, 

each was absolved”: one sibling was never criminally 

charged, the next saw the charges against her dropped after 

four months in jail, and the third was acquitted at trial after 
No. 17-1510 11

eight months in jail. Hurt, 880 F.3d at 835. The three siblings

sued the officers accusing them of fabricating evidence—

including confessions—and seeking relief under § 1983 and 

Illinois law. Id. The officers moved for summary judgment 

based on qualified immunity. The district court denied the 

motion, id. at 839, and we mostly affirmed.

As relevant here, Hurt first rejected the officers’ qualifiedimmunity defense on the Fourth Amendment claim, concluding that in light of the evidence in the summaryjudgment record, a reasonable trier of fact could find that the 

plaintiffs “were arrested without even arguable probable 

cause[] and thus in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Id.

at 843 (citing Manuel I, 137 S. Ct. at 918–19).

Two of the Hurt plaintiffs—the two that were held in jail 

pending trial—argued that the same police misconduct 

supported an additional claim for violation of their right to 

due process, relying on the malicious-prosecution/dueprocess theory embedded in our circuit caselaw. See, e.g., 

Julian v. Hanna, 732 F.3d 842 (7th Cir. 2013); Newsome, 

256 F.3d 747. Hurt determined that Manuel I had not disturbed the general rule of the Newsome line of cases: while 

there is “no free-standing constitutional tort of malicious 

prosecution,” other constitutional rights protect people 

against “abusive arrests [and] fabrication of evidence.” 

880 F.3d at 843. What mattered was that the plaintiffs had 

“identified the constitutional right at issue”—the Due 

Process Clause, which “forbids the [S]tate from depriving a 

person of liberty (including by pre-trial detention) based on 

manufactured evidence.” Id.

But in Manuel II—decided nine months after Hurt—we 

explained that all § 1983 claims for wrongful pretrial deten-
12 No. 17-1510

tion—whether based on fabricated evidence or some other 

defect—sound in the Fourth Amendment. Like the plaintiffs 

in Hurt, Manuel relied on the tort of malicious prosecution

as an analogy. 903 F.3d at 669. We explained that while this

“might have seemed sensible before the Supreme Court 

spoke,” after Manuel I it is the “wrong characterization”; 

indeed, “the Justices deprecated the analogy to malicious 

prosecution.” Id. at 669–70 (citing Manuel I, 137 S. Ct. at 917–

20). Instead, the constitutional right in question is the “right 

not to be held in custody without probable cause,” the 

violation of which gives rise to a “plain-vanilla Fourth 

Amendment” claim under § 1983 because the essential 

constitutional wrong is the “absence of probable cause that 

would justify the detention.” Id. at 670 (citing Manuel I, 

137 S. Ct. at 917–20). In other words, the Fourth Amendment, not the Due Process Clause, is the source of the right 

in a § 1983 claim for unlawful pretrial detention, whether 

before or after the initiation of formal legal process.

We overrule precedent only in limited circumstances; a

clear intracircuit conflict is one of them. Glaser v. Wound Care 

Consultants, Inc., 570 F.3d 907, 915–16 (7th Cir. 2009).

Manuel II and Hurt cannot be reconciled. Indeed, Hurt is 

hard to square with Manuel I. The Supreme Court held that 

the initiation of formal legal process following an arrest does 

not convert a Fourth Amendment unreasonable-seizure 

claim “into one founded on the Due Process Clause.” 

137 S. Ct. at 919. The injury of wrongful pretrial detention 

may be remedied under § 1983 as a violation of the Fourth 

Amendment, not the Due Process Clause. To the extent Hurt 

holds otherwise, it is overruled.
No. 17-1510 13

We close by noting the important point that a claim for

wrongful pretrial detention based on fabricated evidence is 

distinct from a claim for wrongful conviction based on fabricated evidence: “[C]onvictions premised on deliberately

fabricated evidence will always violate the defendant’s right 

to due process.” Avery v. City of Milwaukee, 847 F.3d 433, 439 

(7th Cir. 2017) (emphasis added); see also Mooney v. Holohan, 

294 U.S. 103, 112 (1935) (explaining that the use of perjured 

testimony “to procure the conviction and imprisonment of a 

defendant is as inconsistent with the rudimentary demands 

of justice as is the obtaining of a like result by intimidation”);

Whitlock v. Brueggemann, 682 F.3d 567, 580 (7th Cir. 2012). 

Moreover, misconduct of this type that results in a conviction might also violate the accused’s right to due process 

under the rubric of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and 

Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995), if government officials 

suppressed evidence of the fabrication. Avery, 847 F.3d at 

443–44. We reiterate that we deal here only with a claim of 

wrongful pretrial detention, not a claim of wrongful conviction.

* * *

Applying Manuel I and II, we hold that Lewis timely filed 

a viable Fourth Amendment claim for wrongful pretrial 

detention. We therefore reverse the dismissal of that claim

and remand for further proceedings. Under Manuel I and II,

the Due Process Clause does not apply, so the judgment is 

otherwise affirmed. 

AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED AND REMANDED in part.