Opinion ID: 198661
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: boulter's appeal

Text: 10 Like all Gaul, Boulter's appeal is divided into three parts. He assails the district court's handling of the section 1983 false arrest claim because the court (1) should not have permitted the claim, if ever properly in the case, to go to trial; (2) improvidently admitted evidence that was both irrelevant and prejudicial; and (3) erred in rejecting a qualified immunity defense. We examine these asseverations seriatim. 11
12 The wrangling over this issue breaks down into two subsidiary questions: Was the section 1983 false arrest claim properly pled? If so, did it survive summary judgment? The district court answered both questions affirmatively. So do we. 13 In narrowing the issues immediately prior to trial, a dispute arose concerning what claims were outstanding. Boulter considered only two claims to be zoetic: a section 1983 excessive force claim and a state-law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. In contrast, Iacobucci took the position that a section 1983 false arrest claim also remained in the case. After reviewing the complaint and the summary judgment record, the lower court concluded that Iacobucci had adequately pled a section 1983 false arrest claim, and that this claim had not been addressed (let alone terminated) at the summary judgment stage. Consequently, the court allowed Iacobucci to litigate the claim. 14 Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2) requires that a complaint contain a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief. The complaint in this case satisfied that undemanding criterion vis-a-vis the section 1983 false arrest claim: it specifically alleged that Boulter, while acting under color of state law, violated Iacobucci's constitutional right to be secure in his person and wrongfully deprived him of his liberty. This language, coupled with a prayer for money damages, adequately stated a section 1983 false arrest claim. 15 To be sure, the claim could have been pled more clearly. Here, however, Boulter has not identified a scintilla of prejudice that may have resulted from any obscurity in the wording of the plaintiff's complaint, nor is any such prejudice readily apparent. The section 1983 false arrest claim arises out of the same nucleus of operative fact as the other two tried claims (both of which Boulter acknowledges were in the case all along), and the parties' discussions with the court immediately before the start of trial clarified any uncertainty about whether the section 1983 false arrest claim was to be litigated. The sockdolager is this: had prejudice loomed, Boulter could have asked the court for a continuance. His failure to do so leads ineluctably to the conclusion that any claim of unfairness that he now might assert is nothing more than a post hoc rationalization sparked by a verdict that was not to his liking. See Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d 67, 85 (1st Cir. 1999) (explaining that a reviewing court may attribute special significance to the party's eschewal of a continuance and assume that the party did not require additional time to adjust his litigation strategy). 16 We likewise reject Boulter's plaint that the section 1983 false arrest claim, even if pled, did not survive the district court's summary judgment order. In hawking this proposition, Boulter points to the concluding passage in the trial court's summary judgment ruling, in which Judge Saris stated: With respect to Sergeant Boulter, the motion is DENIED on the excessive force claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. Otherwise it is ALLOWED. Boulter maintains that these final four words laid to rest any incipient section 1983 false arrest claim. 17 This argument is too cute by half. It overlooks that Boulter's motion, which set the stage for the court's summary judgment ruling, never sought brevis disposition as to the section 1983 false arrest claim. Thus, when Boulter made this very argument below, the district court rejected it, explaining that the otherwise language spoke only to the claims that had been debated in the summary judgment papers -- and that the section 1983 false arrest claim was not among that number. A trial court ordinarily is the best expositor of its own orders, see United States v. Podolsky, 158 F.3d 12, 17 (1st Cir. 1998); Martha's Vineyard Scuba Headquarters, Inc. v. Unidentified, Wrecked and Abandoned Steam Vessel, 833 F.2d 1059, 1066-67 (1st Cir. 1987), and Boulter offers no convincing reason why we should ignore this salutary principle here. Because the district court reasonably interpreted its own order as not terminating the section 1983 false arrest claim, we honor its interpretation. 18
19 Boulter next insists that the trial court erred in admitting the partially erased videotape into evidence. He bases this insistence on three grounds: lack of relevance, lack of a proper foundation, and undue prejudice. We review challenges to orders admitting or excluding evidence for abuse of discretion. See Faigin, 184 F.3d at 81 ; Williams v. Drake, 146 F.3d 44, 47 (1st Cir. 1998). We discern none here. 20 The facts are these. The videotape itself had been erased by parties unknown (although Iacobucci understandably suspected the police). At any rate, the audio portion of the tape picked up after the time that the police took Iacobucci into custody. It apparently recorded contemporaneous conversations amongst Boulter and his fellow officers. Boulter's objection runs to the admissibility of those comments. 21 Boulter's first line of attack emphasizes the temporal sequence. He argues that an after-the-fact recording necessarily lacks relevance. This ipse dixit is simply wrong. Evidence of subsequent events frequently sheds light upon, and thus assumes relevance in relation to, antecedent acts. See United States v. Lara, 181 F.3d 183, 204 (1st Cir. 1999); United States v. Sutton, 970 F.2d 1001, 1007 (1st Cir. 1992); United States v. Mena, 933 F.2d 19, 25 n.5 (1st Cir. 1991). 22 In this instance, the district court supportably determined that rational jurors might find that some of the statements made on the tape referred back to what had transpired at the time of the arrest. We recount a sampling in the margin. 1 Relevancy is a fluid concept under the Evidence Rules. See Fed. R. Evid. 401 (defining relevant evidence as having any tendency to make the existence of any material fact more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence). Consequently, relevancy typically presents a rather low barrier to admissibility. See, e.g., Fitzgerald v. Expressway Sewerage Constr., Inc., 177 F.3d 71, 75 (1st Cir. 1999); United States v. Saccoccia, 58 F.3d 754, 780 (1st Cir. 1995). Taking into account that the excessive force, emotional distress, and false arrest claims were being tried together, we conclude that Judge Saris acted within the encincture of her discretion in deciding that the challenged statements cleared this hurdle. 23 Boulter's second line of attack centers on his contention that the audio portion of the tape ought to have been excluded because Iacobucci's enhancement of it somehow destroyed the tape's integrity. This contention amounts to a claim that the evidence lacked a proper foundation. Such claims are committed to the trial judge's informed discretion. See United States v. Ladd, 885 F.2d 954, 956 (1st Cir. 1989); see also Fed. R. Evid. 901(a), 1001(2) & 1002. 24 Boulter's contention trenches on the frivolous. Iacobucci testified to the chain of custody. He also testified that he did not alter the tape in any way, but, rather, enhanced the sound by the simple expedient of listening to it on a high-quality play-back system that increased its audibility. The judge (and the jury, for that matter) were free to credit this testimony, especially since Boulter offered no evidence to contradict it. No more was exigible. 25 Boulter's final line of attack postulates that the failure to identify the voices on the tape prior to its admission into evidence created unfair prejudice. See Fed. R. Evid. 403. 2 This argument, too, strikes us as insubstantial. 26 As noted above, the tape itself was properly authenticated prior to its admission. Thereafter, several witnesses (mainly police officers) testified as to the identities of the speakers. Moreover, the officers whose voices were alleged to have been captured on the tape (Boulter among them) testified at trial; the jury thus had the opportunity to determine for itself who spoke which lines. 27 Against this backdrop, we see no Rule 403 problem. The rule does not aspire to eliminate prejudice -- after all, most evidence is offered precisely because the proponent believes it will prejudice the factfinder in his favor -- but only to eliminate unfair prejudice. See, e.g., Veranda Beach Club Ltd. Partnership v. Western Sur. Co., 936 F.2d 1364, 1372 (1st Cir. 1991); United States v. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d 153, 156 (1st Cir. 1989). Given the sound track's potentially significant probative value (especially in regard to Boulter's state of mind as it pertained to the section 1983 excessive force claim) and the absence of any unfairly prejudicial impact, we cannot fault the district court's overruling of Boulter's Rule 403 objection. See Freeman v. Package Mach. Co., 865 F.2d 1331, 1340 (1st Cir. 1988) (Only rarely -- and in extraordinarily compelling circumstances -- will we, from the vista of a cold appellate record, reverse a district court's on-the-spot judgment concerning the relative weighing of probative value and unfair effect.). 28
29 42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides a private right of action against officials who, while acting under color of state law, deprive individuals of federally assured rights. But this kind of rights-violating conduct does not translate automatically into money damages, for a state actor may enjoy an immunity (absolute or qualified). In this instance, Boulter says that the lower court erred in failing to exonerate him based on the doctrine of qualified immunity. 30 Qualified immunity is a medium through which the law strives to balance its desire to compensate those whose rights are infringed by state actors with an equally compelling desire to shield public servants from undue interference with the performance of their duties and from threats of liability which, though unfounded, may nevertheless be unbearably disruptive. Buenrostro v. Collazo, 973 F.2d 39, 42 (1st Cir. 1992) (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 806 (1982)). Hence, state officials exercising discretionary authority are entitled to qualified immunity insofar as their conduct does not transgress clearly established constitutional or federal statutory rights of which a reasonably prudent official should have been aware. Id. To ascertain a defendant's eligibility for such immunity, a court must inquire into the objective legal reasonableness of the defendant's actions, gauged in connection with the mosaic of legal rules that were clearly established when the defendant acted. See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639 (1987). In operation, the outcome of this inquiry depends substantially upon the level of generality at which the relevant 'legal rule' is to be identified. Id. 31 Iacobucci asserts that Boulter, a policeman acting under color of his official authority, lacked probable cause to arrest him and thereby violated his Fourth Amendment rights. In this wise, he observes that a citizen's right to be free from arrest in the absence of probable cause has long been clearly established. See, e.g., Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964). That observation sweeps so broadly, however, that it bears very little relationship to the objective legal reasonableness vel non of Boulter's harm-inducing conduct. See Wilson v. Layne, 119 S. Ct. 1692, 1699-1700 (1999). The right the official is alleged to have violated must have been 'clearly established' in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640. Our inquiry, then, reduces to whether a reasonable police officer, standing in Boulter's shoes, would have known that arresting Iacobucci for disorderly conduct, under all the attendant circumstances, would contravene clearly established law. That inquiry must proceed in light of the commonly held understanding that probable cause exists only if the facts and circumstances within the arresting officer's knowledge are sufficient to lead an ordinarily prudent officer to conclude that an offense has been, is being, or is about to be committed, and that the putative arrestee is involved in the crime's commission. Logue v. Dore, 103 F.3d 1040, 1044 (1st Cir. 1997). 32 Before wrestling with this question, we pause to voice some procedural concerns. Boulter first raised the issue of qualified immunity in a pretrial motion for summary judgment. Although he tries in this forum to assign error to the denial of that motion, a pair of procedural impediments frustrates the attempt. For one thing, an order denying summary judgment typically does not merge into the final judgment and therefore is not an independently appealable event if the case thereafter proceeds to trial. See Eastern Mountain Platform Tennis, Inc. v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 40 F.3d 492, 497 (1st Cir. 1994). 33 For another thing, in his notice of appeal, Boulter purported to challenge only the amended judgment entered by the district court on March 31, 1997 -- a decree sparked by the court's denial of his motion for judgment as a matter of law. It is black-letter law that a notice of appeal must specify the order or judgment to which the appeal is addressed. Lehman v. Revolution Portfolio LLC, 166 F.3d 389, 395 (1st Cir. 1999) (citing Fed. R. App. P. 3(c)). Boulter's failure to specify the order denying summary judgment in his notice of appeal thus bars his current attempt to contest the propriety of that ruling. See id. 34 In all events, the district court supportably concluded that Boulter's summary judgment motion did not seek to test the bona fides of the section 1983 false arrest claim. 35 Notwithstanding these infirmities, the qualified immunity issue is not a dead letter. Although qualified immunity normally should be resolved early in the litigation, see Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985), the defense, if preserved, may be pressed at later stages, including in a timeous post-trial motion. See, e.g., Consolo v. George, 58 F.3d 791, 794 (1st Cir. 1995). Because Boulter filed such a motion and now assigns error to its denial, the issue must be addressed. 3 36 In the ordinary course, we review the district court's denial of qualified immunity de novo, aligning the evidence most favorably to the non-movant and drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor. See, e.g., Camilo-Robles v. Hoyos, 151 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 1998); Amsden v. Moran, 904 F.2d 748, 752-53 (1st Cir. 1990). But this familiar formulation of the standard arises in connection with pretrial orders granting or denying qualified immunity, and Iacobucci maintains that the intervening trial and verdict pretermit (or, at least, reconfigure) the inquiry. He points out that when Boulter made the arrest, he charged Iacobucci with having committed two offenses: disorderly conduct and disturbing a public assembly. Iacobucci notes correctly that this charging decision circumscribes the inquiry into probable cause. Building on this foundation, he posits that we need not look beyond the verdict, in which the jury, answering a special interrogatory, found that no reasonable police officer would have believed that Iacobucci had committed either offense. Boulter resists this approach: he asserts that the jury's merits determination neither extinguishes nor bears upon his claim of entitlement to qualified immunity. 37 Not surprisingly, there is a middle ground. A state actor may be entitled to qualified immunity for rights-violating conduct as long as he had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that his conduct would not abridge the rights of others. See Camilo-Robles v. Zapata, 175 F.3d 41, 43 (1st Cir. 1999); Quintero de Quintero v. Aponte-Roque, 974 F.2d 226, 228 (1st Cir. 1992). This means, of course, that the reasonableness standards underlying the probable cause and qualified immunity inquiries are not coterminous. See Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641. Thus, the jury's determination does not squarely answer the question whether Boulter's conduct in arresting Iacobucci satisfied the criterion of objective legal reasonableness so as to entitle him to qualified immunity. 38 Nor does the procedural posture in which Boulter's appeal arises greatly influence the standard of review. When a qualified immunity defense is pressed after a jury verdict, the evidence must be construed in the light most hospitable to the party that prevailed at trial. See Thompson v. Mahre, 110 F.3d 716, 721 (9th Cir. 1997); Karnes v. Skrutski, 62 F.3d 485, 494 (3d Cir. 1995); Posr v. Doherty, 944 F.2d 91, 95-96 (2d Cir. 1991). One difference is that, in such an exercise, deference should be accorded to the jury's discernible resolution of disputed factual issues. See Frazell v. Flanigan, 102 F.3d 877, 886 (7th Cir. 1996). 39 With this paradigm in mind, we turn to the facts. The first of the two charges on which Boulter arrested Iacobucci -- disorderly conduct -- implicated Mass. Gen. Laws c. 272, § 53. 4 In pertinent part, the statute makes it a misdemeanor to be a disorderly person. To stave off constitutional attacks, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) originally construed section 53 to provide that one is guilty under that rubric 40 . . . if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he: (a) engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or (b) makes unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present; or (c) creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor. 41 Alegata v. Commonwealth, 231 N.E.2d 201, 211 (Mass. 1967) (quoting Proposed Official Draft of Model Penal Code § 250.2). 42 In the next decade, the SJC narrowed this definition of disorderly conduct to encompass only activities not implicating the lawful exercise of a First Amendment right. Commonwealth v. A Juvenile, 334 N.E.2d 617, 628 (Mass. 1975). To ensure that result, the SJC modified its earlier definition by striking subsection (b) entirely and interpreting subsections (a) and (c) to cover only conduct, not expressive activity. See id. at 629. Consistent with this approach, the SJC subsequently held that a verbal challenge, even when coupled with a refusal to obey a police officer's orders, does not constitute disorderly conduct within the meaning of section 53 as long as done in furtherance of a legitimate purpose. See Commonwealth v. Feigenbaum, 536 N.E.2d 325, 328 (Mass. 1989). To this extent, then, the contours of the disorderly conduct statute were clearly visible when Boulter confronted Iacobucci at the Pembroke Town Hall. 43 Context is important in police work, as elsewhere in human intercourse. Thus, upon being apprised of the ongoing events at the Town Hall, Boulter recognized that the circumstances required a reasonable police officer to take into account the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law, Mass. Gen. Laws c. 39, § 23B, and he took steps to refresh his recollection of that enactment. The statute requires that [a]ll meetings of a governmental body . . . be open to the public, and confers a right to videotape such meetings on any person in attendance. The right to videotape is not unfettered: the camera must be fixed in one or more designated locations determined by the governmental body, and the taping may not actively interfere with the conduct of the meeting. Id. Withal, the statute does not apply to any chance meeting, or a social meeting at which matters relating to official business are discussed so long as no final agreement is reached. Id. 44 Given this background, we are constrained to conclude that, taking the evidence in the light most flattering to Iacobucci, his constitutional right to act as he did without being arrested for disorderly conduct was sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would [have understood] that what he [was] doing violate[d] that right. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640; accord Wagenmann v. Adams, 829 F.2d 196, 209 (1st Cir. 1987). 45 Taking first the events that transpired in the meeting room, we note that Iacobucci had satisfied the basic prerequisites for entitlement to videotape a public meeting under the Open Meeting Law: he had situated his tripod in the only stationary location that would allow the mounted camera to capture the faces of both the commissioners and the applicants and there is no significantly probative evidence that his activities interfered with the ongoing meeting. 5 Indeed, his equipment had been placed in the very same location during prior Commission meetings, without incident. Moreover, after Hathon tired of trying to bully Iacobucci, the instant meeting proceeded without disruption and the Commission completed its business unimpeded by the filming. Iacobucci remained cool, calm, and collected throughout. Under the circumstances and in light of the clearly established law that obtained at the time of the incident, we agree with Judge Saris that an objectively reasonable officer would not have thought that Iacobucci was subject to arrest for disorderly conduct. 46 Taking next the hallway episode, we find nothing whatever to suggest that Iacobucci was fighting or threatening, or was engaged in any violent or tumultuous behavior. A Juvenile, 334 N.E.2d at 628; see also Sheehy v. Plymouth, 191 F.3d 15, 22 (1st Cir. 1999) . On any version of the events reflected in the record, no objectively reasonable police officer would have believed that Iacobucci had created a hazardous or physically offensive condition . . . which serve[d] no legitimate purpose. A Juvenile, 334 N.E.2d at 628. Even if the gathering was not a public meeting at that point, Iacobucci was doing nothing wrong: he was in a public area of a public building; he had a right to be there; he filmed the group from a comfortable remove; and he neither spoke to nor molested them in any way. 6 47 Boulter's repeated demands that Iacobucci cease recording do not change the disorderly conduct calculus. A police officer is not a law unto himself; he cannot give an order that has no colorable legal basis and then arrest a person who defies it. So it is here: because Iacobucci's activities were peaceful, not performed in derogation of any law, and done in the exercise of his First Amendment rights, Boulter lacked the authority to stop them. 48 The other ground of arrest fares no better under close scrutiny. That ground implicated Mass. Gen. Laws c. 272, § 40, which makes it a misdemeanor to willfully interrupt[] or disturb[] a school or other assembly. As to the events that transpired in the meeting room, the record, read as it must be in the light most favorable to Iacobucci, contains no evidence that he interrupted or disturbed the Commission's meeting. See supra note 5 and accompanying text. As to the events that transpired in the hallway, Boulter was adamant in his insistence that the hallway gathering was not a public meeting. 49 There is no point in flogging a dead horse. We conclude that the district court did not err in holding that Boulter's arrest of Iacobucci failed to attain the level of objective legal reasonableness. Hence, Boulter was not entitled to qualified immunity.