Opinion ID: 2980755
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Arrest “Command”

Text: Howell claims that Sanders was not acting as an advocate when he commanded the police to arrest her. A prosecutor’s decision to initiate a prosecution, including the decision to file a criminal complaint or seek an arrest warrant, is protected by absolute immunity. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 430-31; Ireland, 113 F.3d at 1446. However, a prosecutor does not act as an advocate if he is merely “advising the police in the investigative phase of a criminal case.” Burns, 500 U.S. at 493; Prince, 198 F.3d at 61415 (rejecting absolute immunity for prosecutor who advised the police on the existence of probable cause before the prosecutor herself made the decision to initiate criminal proceedings). 3 Howell tries to link Sanders to additional conduct by referring to actions by his office. See, e.g., Appellant Br. at 13 (“Detective Frodge’s investigation log also reveals the in-depth corroboration of the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office.”). The Detective’s log, however, never references Rob Sanders, only Stefanie Kaster, an assistant prosecutor. Even assuming that Howell raised supervisory liability as a basis for her § 1983 claim, which she did not, such claims must be based “on more than respondeat superior, or the right to control employees.” Shehee v. Luttrell, 199 F.3d 295, 300 (6th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 530 U.S. 1264 (2000). Aside from Sanders’s name on a contact sheet and some allegations as to what Sanders purportedly “knew,” Howell offers nothing that would demonstrate that Sanders “either encouraged the specific incident of misconduct or in some other way directly participated in it.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). No. 10-5797 Howell v. Sanders Page 7 This court has previously held under very different circumstances that commanding an arrest is investigatory. In Harris v. Bornhorst, 513 F.3d 503, 510-511 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 554 U.S. 903 (2008), we denied absolute immunity for a prosecutor’s instruction to the police to make the arrest of the suspect upon hearing a recording of his confession. At first glance, Harris appears to support Howell’s argument: “[The prosecutor] went beyond merely advising the police; she instructed them to arrest Harris, without soliciting any officer’s opinion.” Id. at 510-511 (emphasis in original).4 But that same language demonstrates a key difference. In Harris, the prosecutor independently decided that probable cause existed upon watching a confession that was blatantly coercive and on that basis alone ordered the suspect’s arrest. See also Manetta v. Macomb Cnty. Enforcement Team, 141 F.3d 270, 274 (6th Cir. 1998) (prosecutor’s participation in arrest of suspects following stake-out not entitled to absolute immunity even though his later action to obtain arrest warrant was). Here, in contrast, a state judge made the determination that probable cause existed upon a complaint and affidavit filed by the investigating officer, and the prosecutor initiated the criminal proceedings by ordering the suspect’s arrest pursuant to the validly issued warrant. We see no reason to hold as a blanket rule that commanding the arrest of a suspect is per se outside the scope of a prosecutor’s role as an advocate, particularly when, as here, the instruction follows the issuance of a valid arrest warrant by a neutral judge and is supported by probable cause. Sanders’s act in this case was no less related to initiating criminal proceedings against Howell than if he had decided to seek and obtain the arrest warrant in the first place. See Ireland, 113 F.3d at 1446 (“A prosecutor’s decision to file a criminal complaint and seek an arrest warrant . . . fall[s] squarely within the aegis of absolute prosecutorial immunity.”). 4 And some cases even describe Harris as “affirming denial of absolute immunity to a prosecutor who instructed police to arrest suspect.” See Adams v. Hanson, 656 F.3d 397, 402-03 (6th Cir. 2011) (affirming absolute prosecutorial immunity in unrelated context). No. 10-5797 Howell v. Sanders Page 8