16‐3980

Morales v. Weiss

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

SUMMARY ORDER

RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT.    CITATION TO A SUMMARY

ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF

APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT=S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1.    WHEN CITING A SUMMARY

ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL

APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION ASUMMARY ORDER@).    A PARTY

CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY

COUNSEL.

At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the

Second Circuit, held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40

Foley Square, in the City of New York, on the 24th day of January, two thousand

eighteen.

PRESENT:   

DENNIS JACOBS,

REENA RAGGI,

PETER W. HALL,

Circuit Judges.   

_____________________________________

Santos Morales,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.    16‐3980

Steven Weiss, Mitchell Rubin,

Defendants‐Appellees,

Michael Mulhall, Ramon Gibson, Terry   
2

Lauf, Anna Futyma, John Doe, ASA, Joseph

Darling, Leo C. Arnone, City of Stamford,   

Jessica Bloomer, Richard Roe, Officer,

Andrew Czubatyi, Richard Phelan,

    Defendants.

_____________________________________

FOR PLAINTIFF‐APPELLANT: Santos Morales, pro se,

Stamford, CT.

FOR DEFENDANTS‐APPELLEES: Stephen R. Finucane (Terrence

M. OʹNeill, Neil Parille, on the

brief) Assistant Attorneys

General, for George Jepsen,

Attorney General of the State

of Connecticut, Hartford, CT.

Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District

of Connecticut (Eginton, J.).

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED,

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court is

AFFIRMED.   

Appellant Santos Morales, pro se, filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint against

two state prosecutors, Steven Weiss and Mitchell Rubin.    Morales asserted that

after his arrest for felony possession of a firearm, defendants refused to contact

witnesses on his behalf and asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement

(“ICE”) to place a detainer on him after he filed a bond motion.    Morales was

placed in immigration detention by ICE for approximately three months, then

returned to state custody for approximately nineteen months, and finally

discharged back to ICE after the state dropped the charges against him in April

2011.    The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, finding
3

that Weiss and Rubin were entitled to absolute immunity for their decision not to

interview witnesses, and Weiss was entitled to qualified immunity for contacting

ICE.    We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the

procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal.

We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo and

focus on whether the district court properly concluded that there was no genuine

issue as to any material fact.    See Sotomayor v. City of New York, 713 F.3d 163,

164 (2d Cir. 2013).    “Absolute immunity bars a civil suit against a prosecutor for

advocatory conduct that is intimately associated with the judicial phase of the

criminal process,” Giraldo v. Kessler, 694 F.3d 161, 165 (2d Cir. 2012) (internal

citation and quotation marks omitted), and applies to “virtually all acts,

regardless of motivation, associated with [the prosecutor’s] function as an

advocate,” Dory v. Ryan, 25 F.3d 81, 83 (2d Cir. 1994).    Defendants “are entitled

to qualified immunity if they can establish either that (1) a constitutional right

was not violated or (2) the right was not clearly established.”    Royal Crown Day

Care LLC v. Dep’t of Health and Mental Hygiene of City of New York, 746 F.3d

538, 543 (2d Cir. 2014) (internal citation, alteration, and quotation marks omitted).   

The district court properly granted summary judgment, and we affirm for

substantially the reasons stated by the district court in its July 19, 2016 decision:

Weiss and Rubin were entitled to absolute immunity for their decision not to

contact witnesses, see Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 273 (1993); and Weiss

was entitled to qualified immunity for contacting ICE because that act did not

violate any clearly established constitutional or statutory right, see Royal Crown

Day Care, 746 F.3d at 543.

We have considered all of Morales’s remaining arguments and find them to

be without merit.    Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

FOR THE COURT:   

Catherine O=Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court