Opinion ID: 1457749
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Fourth Amendment Cause of Action: Invocation of Privilege

Text: The absence of probable cause also supports Beck's Fourth Amendment cause of action. The Smiddy I framework, however, requires more. For the reasons we have explained, we address that framework here. We need not, however, consider, as did the district court, whether the evidence Beck presented was sufficient to meet the plaintiff's Smiddy I burden of rebutting the presumption of prosecutorial independence. Smiddy I held that where invocations of privilege render relevant evidence concerning the prosecutor's decision to prosecute unavailable, no presumption of prosecutorial independence arises, and the plaintiff need not rebut it. 665 F.2d at 267-68. [18] Here, the prosecutor, Gaetano, invoked privilege to shield relevant evidence. The basis for this privilege-based limitation on the plaintiff's Smiddy I burden is the same concern that led the Supreme Court in Hartman to abjure a subjective inquiry into the prosecutor's state of mindnamely, that ascertaining that state of mind is likely to be exceedingly difficult. See Hartman, 547 U.S. at 264, 126 S.Ct. 1695. Where the prosecutor claims privilege regarding key factual inquiries essential to rebutting the Smiddy I presumption, it is unfair to the plaintiff to apply the presumption, and, pursuant to Smiddy I 's caveat, we may not do so. Gaetano did answer some questions with regard to his charging decision: He explained the nature of the process and said that he had not actually been ordered by Chief Thouvenell or Sergeant Mendenhall to prosecute Beck. But Gaetano twice asserted privilege when asked if he had been swayed or pressure[d] by the police in his charging decision. The answers to the questions Gaetano refused to answer are obviously central to the presumption of independent judgment that underlies Smiddy I 's causal analysis. Among the bases for overcoming the Smiddy I presumption is a showing that the district attorney was pressured or caused by the investigating officers to act contrary to his independent judgment. Smiddy I, 665 F.2d at 266. With Gaetano's answers to questions directed precisely at that consideration off the table, Beck cannot be required to come forward with evidence to rebut the presumption of Gaetano's independent judgment. Instead, the burden of showing that Gaetano acted independently falls on the officers. A rational jury could find that the officers had not met their burden to show that Gaetano's judgment was sufficiently independent as to amount to an intervening cause shielding them from liability. See id. at 267. The officers were the purported victims of the crime. Their own descriptions of the incident were at the core of the brief police report. Gaetano testified that he conducted no additional legal or factual investigation of his own. Even when privilege is not asserted, we have expressed concern about the application of the Smiddy I presumption where [t]he prosecutor's only information came from the police reports. Barlow v. Ground, 943 F.2d 1132, 1137 (9th Cir. 1991); see also Blankenhorn, 485 F.3d at 484; Newman v. County of Orange, 457 F.3d 991, 995 (9th Cir.2006); Borunda v. Richmond, 885 F.2d 1384, 1390 (9th Cir. 1988). Here, in addition to the presence of police as victims and Gaetano's failure to do any additional investigation, Gaetano's decision to charge Beck's comments as a felony, as the police report suggested, and the omission of Thouvenell's comments to Beck in the police report all call the independence of Gaetano's judgment into serious question. In short, Beck has demonstrated that there was no probable cause for his arrest, and the officers have not met their burden to show that Gaetano's judgment acted as an intervening cause. We therefore hold that, on the present record, Beck's Fourth Amendment cause of action may go forward.