NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

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

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued April 24, 2018

Decided August 21, 2018

Before

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

No. 17-2905

HEATHER STONE,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

DOYLE T. WRIGHT,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United 

States District Court for the 

Southern District of Indiana, 

Terre Haute Division.

No. 2:17-cv-00092-JMS-MJD

Jane E. Magnus-Stinson, Chief 

Judge.

Order

Heather Stone was arrested in May 2014, released on bond after a day or two, and 

exonerated in November 2015, when the charges against her were dismissed. In October 

2016 she filed this suit seeking damages for arrest without probable cause (in violation 

of the Fourth Amendment) and malicious prosecution. The district court dismissed the 

false-arrest charge as untimely, citing Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384 (2007), which holds 

that a Fourth Amendment claim accrues when a person is detained pursuant to judicial 

process. 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 129528 (S.D. Ind. Aug. 15, 2017). (The district court applied

Indiana’s two-year time for personal-injury suits.) The malicious-prosecution claim 

failed, to the extent it rested on federal law, because its success would have depended 
No. 17-2905 Page 2

on the time-barred false-arrest claim. In other words, the district judge held that malicious prosecution is not an independent constitutional tort but depends on proof that 

some particular constitutional provision has been violated.

Before the district judge released her opinion, the Supreme Court held in Manuel v. 

Joliet, 137 S. Ct. 911 (2017), that a Fourth Amendment claim does not invariably accrue 

at the outset of judicial process. The district court did not mention Manuel, perhaps because the parties did not notice its potential significance. In this court, too, the parties’ 

briefs disregard Manuel. They also disregard the possibility that Stone should be treated 

as still in custody while subject to the conditions of her bond. Stone now appears to 

concede (Br. 9) that her Fourth Amendment claim is untimely. She contends only that 

she has a viable “constitutional malicious prosecution” claim—a phrase we enclose in 

scare quotes because it is hard to locate any part of the Constitution that creates such a 

claim. Manuel says that there is no such thing as “Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution.” Wrongful arrest or detention creates a wrongful-seizure claim, plain and simple, and the constitutional objection is to wrongful custody rather than to a criminal 

prosecution. 137 S. Ct. at 917–20.

Well before Manuel, this circuit too had held that the Constitution does not create a 

freestanding malicious-prosecution claim. Although aspects of that state-law tort may 

play roles in litigation under 42 U.S.C. §1983, the plaintiff still must show a violation of 

some specific constitutional right. See, e.g., Hurt v. Wise, 880 F.3d 831, 843 (7th Cir. 2018) 

(citing cases); Serino v. Hensley, 735 F.3d 588, 593 (7th Cir. 2013) (“[T]here is no such 

thing as a constitutional right not to be prosecuted without probable cause. Thus, [a 

plaintiff] must allege something else that does amount to a constitutional violation 

(even if he calls it malicious prosecution).”); Newsome v. McCabe, 256 F.3d 747, 751 (7th 

Cir. 2001). The district judge’s conclusion that Stone could not do this, given her delay 

in seeking relief for the wrongful arrest and detention, led the court to dismiss the complaint under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

Stone’s appellate brief proceeds as if there were a stand-alone federal constitutional 

right not to be prosecuted without probable cause, despite this court’s contrary decisions. She does not ask us to reexamine these decisions; instead she ignores them. Nor 

does she ask us to treat the Fourth Amendment theory as live to the extent that it is 

used derivatively (through the lens of malicious prosecution). This strategy cannot succeed. The district court was right to hold, under decisions not questioned here, that 

Stone lacks a federal, stand-alone claim equivalent to the state-law tort of malicious 

prosecution. (Stone’s reply brief does hint at a challenge to the law of this circuit, but 

the challenge is not express and at all events comes too late.)
No. 17-2905 Page 3

The district court’s decision sent all of Stone’s state-law claims to state court. That is 

where they belong.

AFFIRMED