Opinion ID: 8414561
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Grand Jury Indictment and Chain of Causation

Text: First, the “broken chain of causation” cases show that an officer who wrongly arrests is not necessarily liable for the later decision to maliciously prosecute. I agree. The bad actor in a false arrest is pot necessarily the same as in a malicious prosecution. See Reed v. City of Chicago, 77 F.3d 1049, 1053 (7th Cir. 1996) (“[T]he State’s Attorney, not the police, prosecutes a criminal action.”). In this case, however, the claim is based not on a wrongful arrest but on Willing-ham’s alleged lie after the arrest in the arrest report. Crutcher’s claim is that after the officers arrested him, Willingham took malicious steps to ensure his prosecution. This claim fits squarely within the rule the majority cites from Reed: “the chain of causation is broken by an indictment, absent an allegation of pressure or influence exerted by the police officers, or knowing misstatements by the officers to the prosecutor.” Ante at 655, citing Reed, 77 F.3d at 1053 (emphasis altered). There is evidence that Willingham acted to influence the prosecution by lying in the report after Crutcher’s arrest. Second, as a practical matter, the majority never confronts the implausibility of its assumption. According to the majority, the prosecutor never told the grand jury about' Crutcher’s alleged admission in the arrest report. That is, the prosecutor seeking the indictment for knowing possession of a firearm that was found in someone else’s locked bedroom never presented the grand jury with information that Crutcher had confessed he knew the gun was in the home. On this record, Officer Willingham’s arrest report was the prosecutor’s only evidence that Crutcher knew about the gun in Colbert’s bedroom closet. I find it difficult to believe that a competent prosecutor would fail to present this evidence to a grand jury. At the very least, we should not make such an improbable assumption in favor of the defense in reviewing summary judgment for the defense.