Opinion ID: 201791
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Second Prong

Text: 53 We now inquire whether the constitutional right that the officer allegedly violated was `clearly established' at the time of the incident such that it would `be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.' Riverdale Mills, 392 F.3d at 65 (quoting Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151). One tried and true way of determining whether this right was clearly established at the time the defendants acted, is to ask whether existing case law gave the defendants fair warning that their conduct violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights. Suboh, 298 F.3d at 93. This inquiry must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151. On the other hand, officials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002). Consequently, the salient question ... is whether the state of the law in [1999] gave [Dunford] fair warning that [his] alleged treatment of [Wilson] was unconstitutional. Id. Finally, we examine not only Supreme Court precedent, but all available case law, Suboh, 298 F.3d at 93, including both federal cases outside our own circuit, Hatch v. Dep't for Children, Youth & Their Families, 274 F.3d 12, 23 (1st Cir.2001), and state court decisions of the state wherein the officers operated, Starlight Sugar, 253 F.3d at 144. 54 We conclude that pre-1999 case law gave police officers ample warning that arresting and detaining someone incorrectly swept up in a mass arrest sting aimed at individuals with outstanding arrest warrants would violate her Fourth Amendment rights. While the parties have not identified any cases in which this issue has arisen in the context of an entirely innocent person who unwittingly was caught in a planned mass arrest, courts have addressed two closely related situations. 55 First, it has been clearly established for decades that if one officer instructs another officer to make an arrest, the arrest violates the Fourth Amendment if the first officer lacked probable cause, regardless of how reasonable the second officer's reliance was. See Hensley, 469 U.S. at 231, 105 S.Ct. 675; Whiteley, 401 U.S. at 568, 91 S.Ct. 1031; Meade, 110 F.3d at 193-94 & n. 2. 56 Second, it was well established in other federal courts and in Massachusetts state court, if not in this circuit, that an arrest made on the basis of a facially valid warrant which turns out to have been cleared before the arrest violates the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., Murray v. City of Chicago, 634 F.2d 365, 366 (7th Cir.1980) (ten weeks after court quashed and recalled a warrant for appellant's arrest, police arrested her on the basis of the warrant; court found it clear that appellant sustained a violation of constitutional rights by being arrested and detained pursuant to an invalid warrant); Commonwealth v. Hecox, 35 Mass.App.Ct. 277, 619 N.E.2d 339, 340-44 & n. 2 (1993) (where officer mistakenly believed that a warrant was outstanding for defendant's arrest, but in fact a warrant either never had issued or had been subsequently cleared, arrest pursuant to that warrant violated Fourth Amendment); 13 see also McMurry v. Sheahan, 927 F.Supp. 1082, 1088 (N.D.Ill.1996) (holding that it was clearly established for § 1983 purposes that an arrest founded upon a recalled warrant violates the Fourth Amendment). 57 If it was clearly established that the Fourth Amendment proscribes an arrest based on a warrant that was once valid but has since been cleared, then a fortiori it was clearly established that the amendment proscribes an arrest based on a warrant that never existed in the first place. Taken together, the two principles cited above — that an arrest based on a request by another officer is lawful only if the first officer had probable cause, and that an arrest based on a facially valid, but actually recalled, warrant violates the Fourth Amendment — gave unmistakable warning to Massachusetts police that the Fourth Amendment prohibits arresting someone solely on the basis of a nonexistent warrant. We therefore conclude that the second prong has been satisfied.