UN PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 16
- 7634

WILHELMINA WASHINGTON , Plaintiff

- Appellant ,

v. ALAN WILSON, in his individual capacity as the Attorney General of the State of South Carolina; WAYNE ALLEN MYRICK, JR., in his individual capacity as Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General; SOUTH CAROLINA OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL , Defendants

- Appellees , and JOHN E FOLLIN, III, in his individual capacity as Special Agent with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division; SOUTH CAROLINA LAW ENFORCEMENT DIVISION; MEGAN WINES BURCHSTEAD, in her individual capacity as Assistant Attorney General , Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina , at Florence

. R. Bryan Harwell , District Judge. ( 4:14

- cv - 00416

- RBH )

Submitted : August 25, 2017 Decided: September 26, 2017

Before TRAXLER , AGEE, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by un published per curiam opinion

.2 Patrick J. McLaughlin, WUKELA LAW FIRM, Florence, South Carolina, for Appellant. Eugene H. Matthews, RICHARDSON PLOWDEN & ROBINSON, P.A., Columbia, South Carolina ; Alan Wilson, Attorney General, Robert D. Cook, Solicitor General, J. Emory Smith, Jr., Deputy Solicitor General, Columb ia, South Carolina, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.3 PER CURIAM: Wilhelmina Washington , formerly a clerk of a municipal court in Florence County, South Carolina , was charged with forgery and miscond uct in offic e . The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office conducted the prosecution. Washington’ s first trial
and a retrial both ended in a hung jury and mistrial. The charges against Washington

were dismissed. Washington then filed suit against the Sout h Carolina Attorney General, a Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General, the trial attorney, and the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office itself (“SCAG”) (collectively, “SCAG Defendants”) , along with a Special Agent of the South Carolina Law Enforcemen t Division (“SLED”) and SLED itself. Washington alleg ed that her prosecution was vindictive and improper and in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2012) and the South Carolina Tort Claims Act (“SCTCA”) , S.C. Code Ann. §§ 15

- 78

- 10 to 15

- 78

- 220 ( 2005 & Supp. 2016 ) . The district court a do pted the magistrate judge’s recommendation to grant a Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss filed by the SCAG Defendants on the grounds of absolute prosecutorial immunity. The claims against the SLED agent and SLED were ultimately resolved, and are not before us on appeal. Washington appeals from the order granting the SCAG Defendants’ motion to dismiss. She rais es two issues as to all SCAG Defendants excep t the trial attorney (“the Supervisory Defendants”) : (1) whether the district court erred as a matter of law in rulin g that the S upervisory Defendants were entitled to absolute immunity , thus barring her federal and state claims ; and (2) whether the district court committed an error of law by resolving fa ctual disputes in favor of the S upervisory De fendants. We affirm.4 We review de novo a district court’s ruling on a Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion, accepting factual allegations in the complaint as true and drawing all reasonable
i nferences in favor of the nonmoving p arty. Mason v. Machine Zone, Inc. , 851 F.3d 315, 319 (4th Cir. 2017). To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a complaint must
contain suffici ent “facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly , 550 U.S . 544, 570 (2007). We review de novo a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss on grounds of prosecutorial immunity. Cf. Guttman v. Khalsa , 446 F.3d 1027, 1033 (10th Cir. 2006) (applying de novo review to grant of summary judgment on prosecutorial immunity grounds)

. First, as the district court properly concluded , the Supervisory Defendants’ disputed conduct merited absolute prosecutorial immunity because their actions and
inactions arose from their roles as advocates for the State of South Carolina in prosecuting Washington. See Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 , 423

- 28 (1976) (holding prosecutor, as quasijudicial officer , enjoy s absolute immunity when performing prosecutorial functions as Sta te advocate ); see also Van de Kamp v. Goldstein , 555 U.S. 335, 342

- 43 (2009) ( us ing functional test to determine whether absolute prosecutorial immunity applies ; holding supervisory prosecutors warrant s ame protection as trial prosecutors ) ; Burns v. Reed , 500 U.S. 478, 486 (1991) (collecting cases applying functional approach to immunity analysis ). Second, we find no reversible error in the district court’s legal conclusion that the

contes ted actions and i nactions of the Supervisory Defendants were part o f the prosecution of Washington. While the district court , in analyzing the SCAG D efendants’5 Rule 12(b)(6) motion , was required to accept Washington’s factual allegations in the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor, Mason , 851 F.3d at 319, “a plaintiff’s obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.” Twombly , 550 U.S . at 555 ( brackets and int ernal quotation marks omitted). Thus, b are legal conclusions “ are not entitled to the assumption of truth ” and are insufficient to state a claim. Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 679 (2009). Accordingly, we affirm on the reasoning of the district court

. Washington v. Wilson , No. 4:14

- cv - 00416

- RBH (D.S.C. Sept. 24, 2014). We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

AFFIRMED