Opinion ID: 4535109
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Qualified Immunity for Defendants

Text: This Court reviews a grant of summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity de novo. Flint ex rel. Flint v. Ky. Dept. of Corr., 270 F.3d 340, 346 (6th Cir. 2001) (“Qualified immunity is a question of law also to be reviewed de novo by this Court.”). And courts “should not grant summary judgment on the issue of qualified immunity if there exists a genuine issue of material fact, ‘involving an issue on which the question of immunity turns, such that it cannot be determined before trial whether the defendant did acts that violate clearly established rights.’” Id. (quoting Poe v. Haydon, 853 F.2d 418, 426 (6th Cir. 1988)). A defendant is only entitled to summary judgment “if discovery fails to uncover evidence sufficient to create a genuine issue as to the truth of the allegations that the defendant in fact committed acts that violate clearly established law.” Poe, 853 F.2d at 425.
The Supreme Court has held that “government officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). The Court further held that judges on summary judgment motions “may determine, not only the currently applicable law, but whether that law was clearly established at the time an action occurred.” Id. Unless the law was clearly established at the time the action occurred, the government official will receive qualified immunity and be insulated from civil suit. Id. This Court has made it clear that once a defendant has raised a qualified immunity defense, the plaintiff bears the burden of showing that the defendant is not entitled to it. Johnson v. Moseley, 790 F.3d 649, 653 (6th Cir. 2015); Reilly v. Vadlamudi, 680 F.3d 617, 623 (6th Cir. 2012). On summary judgment, the judicial analysis into whether the defendant is entitled to qualified immunity consists of a “two-tiered inquiry.” Martin v. City of Broadview Heights, 712 F.3d 951, 957 (6th Cir. 2013). The first tier asks whether “taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, [] the facts alleged show that the officer’s conduct violated a No. 19-5143 Jones v. Clark Cty., Ky., et al. Page 22 constitutional right.” Silberstein v. City of Dayton, 440 F.3d 306, 311 (6th Cir. 2006). The second tier queries whether the right is clearly established. Id; see also Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009) (holding that district courts and courts of appeal can address the questions in either order). The Supreme Court has held that it does not “require a case directly on point, but existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011). The standards articulated by this Court in Silberstein and Poe effectively dispose of the first inquiry. The foregoing discussion of Jones’ continued detention illustrates that a genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether Murray violated Jones’ constitutional right “to be free from malicious prosecution by a defendant who has made, influenced, or participated in the decision to prosecute the plaintiff.” King, 852 F.3d at 582–83. If there was no probable cause for Jones’ continued detention and Murray withheld the forensics test results from the prosecutors, then Murray did violate Jones’ constitutional rights. The greater challenge is the second inquiry: whether the right was “clearly established” at the time of the alleged violation. The right must be “so clearly established in a particularized sense that a reasonable officer confronted with the same situation would have known that his conduct violated that right.” Moseley, 790 F.3d at 653. A court is to “zoom in close enough to ensure the right is appropriately defined” to reach a “concrete, particularized description of the right.” Martin, 712 F.3d at 960 (quoting Hagans v. Franklin Cty. Sheriff’s Office, 695 F.3d 505, 508 (6th Cir. 2012)). “If it defeats the qualified-immunity analysis to define the right too broadly . . . it defeats the purpose of § 1983 to define the right too narrowly.” Hagans, 695 F.3d at 508–09. And the Supreme Court has said that “[a] rule is too general if the unlawfulness of the officer’s conduct ‘does not follow immediately from the conclusion that [the rule] was firmly established.’” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590 (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 641 (1987)). This Court has repeatedly held that “individuals have a clearly established Fourth Amendment right to be free from malicious prosecution by a defendant who has made, influenced, or participated in the decision to prosecute the plaintiff.” King, 852 F.3d at 582–83. The right includes malicious prosecutions in which an officer participates by “knowingly or No. 19-5143 Jones v. Clark Cty., Ky., et al. Page 23 recklessly making false statements that are material to the prosecution either in reports or in affidavits filed to secure warrants.” Id. at 583. This Court has also held that “[f]reedom from malicious prosecution is a clearly established Fourth Amendment right.” Webb, 789 F.3d at 659; see also Thacker v. City of Columbus, 328 F.3d 244, 258 (6th Cir. 2003) (holding that this Court recognizes “a federal claim of malicious prosecution under the Fourth Amendment where plaintiffs alleged that defendants wrongfully investigated, prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated them”). This Court first acknowledged this right to be a “clearly established” Fourth Amendment right in Spurlock. 167 F.3d at 1006. This Court held that “malicious prosecution of an individual and continued detention of an individual without probable cause clearly violate[s] rights afforded by the Fourth Amendment.” Id. (citing Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 274 (1994)). This Court’s holding in Spurlock relied, in part, on its observation that “a reasonable police officer would know that fabricating probable cause, thereby effectuating a seizure, would violate a suspect’s clearly established Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures.” Id. In the present case, Defendants argue that: The law was not clear in 2013 (and still is not clear) that probable cause to prosecute a suspect on a child pornography charge requires forensic evidence of child pornography or that the identification of the subscriber for an IP address used to download child pornography coupled with other undisputed facts Deputy Murray learned is insufficient to establish probable cause for prosecution. Br. of Appellees at 29. Defendants do not demonstrate why their formulation of the requisite “clearly established law” is appropriate. There is an undoubted right “to be free from malicious prosecution by a defendant who has made, influenced, or participated in the decision to prosecute the plaintiff.” King, 852 F.3d at 582–83. This right applies in cases where the officer has falsified statements or withheld evidence and facilitated the continued detention of a plaintiff without probable cause. That is the right Jones argues was violated. And this has been the law since at least 1999, when Spurlock was decided. 167 F.3d at 1005–06. No. 19-5143 Jones v. Clark Cty., Ky., et al. Page 24 In King, this Court recently used this formulation of the right in reversing a district court’s grant of summary judgment to a police officer (Harwood) accused of malicious prosecution by King. 852 F.3d at 582–84. We discussed aspects of Harwood’s investigation that, when all reasonable inferences were drawn in King’s favor, raised multiple issues of material fact. Id. (discussing, for example, how Harwood “knew that King’s gun was not the murder weapon” and that Harwood knew that the bullet holes in King’s floor were not caused by the bullets that killed the victim King was accused of killing). We recognized that there was clearly established law prohibiting malicious prosecutions. Id. at 582–83. The specifics of the case only mattered with respect to assessing the viability of the malicious prosecution claim under the standard for summary judgment, not as a means of narrowly defining the right at issue. This Court reached a similar conclusion in Spurlock: We conclude that, here, plaintiffs sufficiently raised claims that allege violations of their constitutional and/or statutory rights. Namely, that Satterfield and other defendants wrongfully investigated, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated them; that Satterfield fabricated evidence and manufactured probable cause; that they were held in custody, despite a lack of probable cause to do so; and that Satterfield and others conspired to maliciously prosecute and convict them. 167 F.3d at 1005. Again, this Court defined the right as one against malicious prosecution (i.e., prosecution and continued detention without probable cause). And in Gregory we found that “[t]he Spurlock panel held that the right to be free of continued detention without probable cause was clearly established well before the 1993 events in question in the case at bar.” 444 F.3d at 749–50. We also observed that Spurlock affirmed the duty of investigating officials “to refrain from engaging in acts which continue[] a person’s detention without probable cause.” Id. at 749. In the present case, Jones contends that Murray violated his right against malicious prosecution by facilitating Jones’ unlawful continued detention after the forensics results produced no evidence that Jones’ devices contained child pornography. A reasonable jury could find that probable cause for Jones’ continued detention dissolved after the forensics test was completed and that rather than tell the prosecutors about this critical development in the case Murray withheld that information and thereby continued Jones’ detention. If a jury makes both determinations, then Murray would be liable for malicious prosecution of Jones. Such behavior is similar enough to the defendant officers and officials in cases like Gregory and Mills for No. 19-5143 Jones v. Clark Cty., Ky., et al. Page 25 Murray to “have known that his conduct violated [Jones’] right,” Moseley, 790 F.3d at 65, and for us to conclude that the unlawfulness of Jones’ detainment after Murray received the forensic examination results “follow[s] immediately from” the well-established right to be free from continued detention without probable cause. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590.