Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/94/1052/602175/
Timestamp: 2019-09-22 03:55:53
Document Index: 496789949

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983']

Charles Booker, Plaintiff-appellant, v. James Ward and Thomas Kelly, Chicago Police Detectives,defendants-appellees, 94 F.3d 1052 (7th Cir. 1996) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Seventh Circuit › 1996 › Charles Booker, Plaintiff-appellant, v. James Ward and Thomas Kelly, Chicago Police Detectives,defen...
Charles Booker, Plaintiff-appellant, v. James Ward and Thomas Kelly, Chicago Police Detectives,defendants-appellees, 94 F.3d 1052 (7th Cir. 1996)
US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit - 94 F.3d 1052 (7th Cir. 1996) Argued June 6, 1996. Decided Aug. 29, 1996
On August 7, 1987, the defendants arrested Charles Booker for the murder of his fiancée, Lucy Williams. Booker confessed shortly after his arrest, and a jury convicted him of first degree murder. The Illinois Appellate Court found that probable cause did not exist to arrest Booker, reversed the conviction, and remanded the case for a hearing on the admissibility of Booker's confession. People v. Booker, 209 Ill.App.3d 384, 393, 395, 154 Ill.Dec. 211, 218, 219, 568 N.E.2d 211, 218, 219 (Ill.App. 1 Dist.1991) ("Booker I "). After the trial court found the confession sufficiently attenuated from the arrest to be admissible, the Appellate Court again reversed, holding that Booker's confession was the product of an unlawful arrest. People v. Booker, No. 92-0956, unpublished (Ill.App. 1 Dist.1994). The trial court then dismissed the charges upon the prosecution's motion for a nolle prosequi order.
The district court dismissed Booker's unlawful arrest claims against Lewis and Owens because Booker had not sued them within the two-year statutory limitations period. The district court concluded that Booker's § 1983 claim for unlawful arrest in violation of the Fourth Amendment accrued at the time of his arrest on August 7, 1987. We review the district court's ruling de novo. Reed v. City of Chicago, 77 F.3d 1049, 1051 (7th Cir. 1996).
Booker claims that the defendants arrested him without probable cause on August 7, 1987. But he did not sue Lewis and Owens for unlawful arrest pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 until February 13, 1995. The statute of limitations for section 1983 claims arising in Illinois is two years. See Farrell v. McDonough, 966 F.2d 279, 282 (7th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1084, 113 S. Ct. 1059, 122 L. Ed. 2d 364 (1993). To determine when Booker's § 1983 claim against Lewis and Owens accrued, we look to a recent Supreme Court decision on which both sides rely for opposite conclusions, Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S. Ct. 2364, 129 L. Ed. 2d 383 (1994).
In Heck, the § 1983 plaintiff sued county prosecutors and a state police investigator for committing unlawful acts to secure his state court conviction. The Court affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff's action, holding that a plaintiff seeking damages for an allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harms caused by unlawful actions that would render a conviction or sentence invalid, has no § 1983 cause of action until the conviction or sentence is reversed, expunged, invalidated, or impugned by the grant of a writ of habeas corpus. Id. at ----, ----, 114 S. Ct. at 2372, 2373. In other words, if a judgment in favor of the plaintiff "would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence," id., at ----, 114 S. Ct. at 2372 (emphasis added), the lawsuit cannot go forward unless the plaintiff's conviction or sentence already has been invalidated. If, on the other hand, the "plaintiff's action, even if successful, will not demonstrate the invalidity of any outstanding criminal judgment against the plaintiff," then the plaintiff does have a § 1983 cause of action. Id. (emphasis in original). Heck added that, because of doctrines such as independent source, inevitable discovery, and harmless error, claims seeking damages for unreasonable searches were the type that "would not necessarily imply that the plaintiff's conviction was unlawful." Id., at ---- n. 7, 114 S. Ct. at 2373 n. 7 (emphasis in original).
Booker contends that success on his unlawful arrest claim would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction, and that therefore under Heck he could not bring his § 1983 unlawful arrest claim until October 1994, when the trial court vacated his conviction. We disagree, because a wrongful arrest claim, like a number of other Fourth Amendment claims, does not inevitably undermine a conviction; one can have a successful wrongful arrest claim and still have a perfectly valid conviction. See Simpson v. Rowan, 73 F.3d 134, 136 (7th Cir. 1995), petition for cert. filed (May 16, 1996) (No. 95-8993); Perez v. Sifel, 57 F.3d 503, 505 (7th Cir. 1995). See also Rooding v. Peters, 92 F.3d 578 (7th Cir. 1996). Although in this case the Illinois Appellate Court's conclusion that Booker's confession was the inadmissible product of an unlawful arrest ultimately resulted in the dismissal of murder charges against Booker, in many cases, the prosecutor will have other witnesses or other evidence that will support a retrial. As it happens, here the prosecutor did not have such other evidence to produce against Booker. But there is nothing necessary or inevitable about that result. Indeed, the Appellate Court's remand for an attenuation hearing shows that success on Booker's unlawful arrest claim would not necessarily undermine the validity of his conviction. We conclude that Booker's § 1983 unlawful arrest claim against Owens and Lewis accrued on the day of his arrest, August 7, 1987. Because he did not bring his § 1983 claim against Owens and Lewis until February 1995, the two-year statute of limitations bars his suit.
Booker relies in the alternative on a ground the district court addressed sua sponte: that the statute of limitations was equitably tolled while the case was dismissed pending the conclusion of state court proceedings. The doctrine of equitable tolling provides that "a person is not required to sue within the statutory period if he cannot in the circumstances reasonably be expected to do so." Heck v. Humphrey, 997 F.2d 355, 357 (7th Cir. 1993), aff'd. on other grounds, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S. Ct. 2364, 129 L. Ed. 2d 383 (1994). But equitable tolling does not give a plaintiff "an automatic extension of indefinite duration, no matter how much his carelessness or sloth may have contributed to the delay in the prosecution of his claim." Id. Instead, it gives the plaintiff only the extra time that he needs, despite all due diligence on his part, to file his claim. Id.
The district court concluded that, even if the doctrine of equitable tolling otherwise would apply, Booker's lack of diligence in adding Owens and Lewis as defendants at an earlier stage of the proceedings precluded it. We agree. Booker's case was pending for eighteen months before the district court dismissed it with leave to reinstate, and Booker had numerous opportunities to name Owens and Lewis as defendants during that time. Their names were not hidden from Booker. In fact, Owens and Lewis testified at Booker's trial, and the Illinois Appellate Court's January 1991 decision in Booker I specifically mentioned them by name. Because Booker did not act diligently in naming Owens and Lewis as defendants before the district court dismissed the case with leave to reinstate, the doctrine of equitable tolling does not save him. See Cada v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 920 F.2d 446, 453 (7th Cir. 1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1261, 111 S. Ct. 2916, 115 L. Ed. 2d 1079 (1991).
The district court granted summary judgment for Ward and Kelly on Booker's unlawful arrest claim because it concluded that the detectives had probable cause to arrest Booker and that even if probable cause did not exist, the detectives were entitled to qualified immunity. We review the district court's summary judgment order de novo. Sheik-Abdi v. McClellan, 37 F.3d 1240, 1243 (7th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S. Ct. 937, 130 L. Ed. 2d 882 (1995).
As we noted above, the Illinois Appellate Court found that probable cause did not exist to arrest Booker for Williams' murder on August 7, 1987. Booker urges us to "adopt a strict rule that the finding by a state appellate court that an arrest was made without probable cause is enough evidence to defeat the arresting officer's motion for summary judgment on the same issue in a federal civil rights case." Indeed, Booker urges us to go further and hold that such a finding is conclusive on the probable cause issue. We decline to adopt either proposition because Ward and Kelly were not parties to the state court proceedings and did not have a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue of whether they had probable cause to arrest Booker. See Kraushaar v. Flanigan, 45 F.3d 1040, 1050-51 (7th Cir. 1995); Williams v. Kobel, 789 F.2d 463, 470 (7th Cir. 1986).
To succeed on his unlawful arrest claim against Ward and Kelly, Booker must prove that they arrested him without probable cause. Jones by Jones v. Webb, 45 F.3d 178, 181 (7th Cir. 1995). A law enforcement officer has probable cause to arrest when "the facts and circumstances within [his] knowledge and of which [he has] reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that the [suspect] had committed or was committing an offense." Id., quoting Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S. Ct. 223, 225, 13 L. Ed. 2d 142 (1964). We evaluate probable cause "not on the facts as an omniscient observer would perceive them but on the facts as they would have appeared to a reasonable person in the position of the arresting officer--seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard." Mahoney v. Kesery, 976 F.2d 1054, 1057 (7th Cir. 1992) (emphasis in original). Although the issue of probable cause in a damages suit like this one generally is a jury question, the court appropriately may conclude that probable cause existed as a matter of law "when there is no room for a difference of opinion concerning the facts or the reasonable inferences to be drawn from them." Sheik-Abdi, 37 F.3d at 1247.
In deciding whether the district court properly resolved this issue on summary judgment, we consider only the information actually known to Ward and Kelly when they arrested Booker after he admitted lying to them about his activities the night of Williams' murder. At that time, Kelly and Ward had seen the physical evidence at the crime scene, including evidence of "overkill" and that the attack was planned, which suggested that Williams' killer knew her and was filled with rage against her. They had learned from Williams' cousin Elaine Sims about Booker's and Williams' failed relationship and that Williams had lied to Booker about her miscarriage. Sims also told them that Booker was jealous, drank heavily, and often forgot what he did while drinking. Booker himself told the detectives that he had been drinking with friends the previous evening. Ward and Kelly knew that Booker had not passed the polygraph examination. See Bennett v. City of Grand Prairie, Texas, 883 F.2d 400, 405-06 (5th Cir. 1989) (results of polygraph examination can be considered in probable cause determination). See also Prokey v. Watkins, 942 F.2d 67, 73 (1st Cir. 1991); Marx v. Gumbinner, 905 F.2d 1503, 1507 (11th Cir. 1990). Ward and Kelly also knew that Booker had lied to them about being in the vicinity of Williams' apartment building during the night and early morning hours. This lie, taken with the other information known to Ward and Kelly, established probable cause to arrest Booker, not only because lying about an incriminating fact can indicate guilt, see United States v. Leung, 929 F.2d 1204, 1208 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 906, 112 S. Ct. 297, 116 L. Ed. 2d 241 (1991), but because Booker's subsequent admission placed him near the crime scene at around the time Williams likely was killed.
Booker contends that he was arrested earlier in the day, when Ward and Kelly first gave him Miranda warnings and before he took the polygraph examination, and that probable cause did not exist to arrest him at that time. But Ward and Kelly did nothing to restrain Booker; they only interviewed him and asked him to take a polygraph examination. Booker voluntarily agreed to both the interview and the polygraph because he "wanted to help in any way he could." In these circumstances, Booker was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Burns, 37 F.3d 276, 279 (7th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S. Ct. 2592, 132 L. Ed. 2d 840 (1995). Though Booker focuses on the fact that the detectives and the polygraph examiner gave him Miranda warnings, the mere giving of such warnings even when not required does not transform noncustodial questioning into nonconsensual custodial interrogation. Sprosty v. Buchler, 79 F.3d 635, 642 (7th Cir. 1996), petition for cert. filed (June 21, 1996) (No. 95-9393).