Opinion ID: 3010151
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cain's Objective Element

Text: The district court concluded that the facts known to the prosecutor at the time the agreement was concluded justified finding that the enforcement of the release-dismissal agreement would be in the public interest. The court explained its conclusion as follows: Here, Judge Cicchetti, who presided over the criminal trial against Mrs. Livingstone and who supervised the execution of the release-dismissal agreement, stated in the colloquy that he was supportive of the agreement because he saw no benefit to a criminal trial and that it was in everyone's best interest to resolve the matter. Mr. Heneks, the assistant district attorney who was assigned to the case stated that he believed that the Commonwealth would be well-served by the resolution as well. Later, in a sworn statement, Mr. Heneks indicated that continuation of the criminal trial would have created further conflict between the Livingstones and their daughter who had reconciled their differences since the night of the incident. In addition, he stated that the agreement saved the Commonwealth from spending further resources to prosecute. The reasons stated by Mr. Heneks are factors that were known to him at the time the agreement was executed. In the absence of evidence that the motivation was improper, we may accept his explanation. In addition, each reason constitutes an independent, legitimate reason which is directly related to his prosecutorial responsibilities. SeeRumery, 480 U.S. at 398. App. at 380-381. The court's analysis posits three public-interest rationales for upholding the release-dismissal agreement: the agreement's supervision by Judge Cicchetti, the desire of the Commonwealth to avoid further conflict between the Livingstones and their daughter, and the Commonwealth's wish to avoid expending more of the Commonwealth's resources to prosecute Mrs. Livingstone. We will consider these three rationales seriatim. As to the first of the three rationales, it is of course true that (1) the Rumery plurality noted that judicial supervision of release-dismissal agreements can help ensure that the agreements did not result from prosecutorial misconduct, 480 U.S. at 399 n.10, and (2) Justice O'Connor observed that such supervision can bear on whether a release was voluntary and not the product of overreaching, id. at 401-02. Judicial supervision can indeed be important in ensuring that an agreement was concluded voluntarily, and, to a lesser extent, that the prosecutor's stated reasons for seeking an agreement are genuine. Judicial supervision is less relevant to Cain's objective inquiry, however, which focuses on the information known to the prosecutor. At best, judicial supervision may help to reinforce a subsequent court's independent determination that a prosecutor had a sound public-interest reason for concluding a release-dismissal agreement. As will become clear, it seems unlikely that Judge Cicchetti's supervision of the dismissal of the charges against Mrs. Livingstone played that role here. Nor does Heneks' asserted desire to avoid further stress to the Livingstone family serve a particularly strong public interest. It is, of course, commendable for prosecutors to give some thought to the welfare of the accused's family. In practice, however, the public would be rightly surprised were a prosecutor to place these considerations above, for instance, the public interest in punishing crime, or the public interest, expressed in section 1983, in exposing official abuse. We do not think that the public's interest in avoiding strain to a defendant's family can, standing alone, be a legitimate reason for concluding a release-dismissal agreement. Nor, finally, does Heneks' wish to avoid the cost of further prosecution carry much weight. A desire to avoid the cost of prosecution (and of a related civil suit) may be an acceptable public-interest rationale for some release-dismissal agreements. As Justice O'Connor observed in Rumery: [P]rosecutors may legitimately believe that, though the police properly defused a volatile situation by arresting a minor misdemeanant, the public interest in further litigation is outweighed by the cost of litigation. Sparing the local community the expense of litigation associated with some minor crimes for which there is little or no public interest in prosecution may be a legitimate objective of a releasedismissal agreement. 480 U.S. at 399-400. By definition, in any case in which a release-dismissal agreement has been concluded, the community will have avoided the cost of prosecution; thus, a prosecutor could assert that the public interest in further litigation is outweighed by the cost of litigation in any case. In order to ensure that such assertions do not act as a blanket exception to the public-interest element of Rumery, the courts must subject those assertions to close scrutiny. 2. Marginal or Frivolous Nature of the Livingstones' Civil Rights Claims The record does not indicate that Heneks considered whether the Livingstones' civil rights claims were marginal or frivolous before concluding the agreement. In Cain, we stated that a prosecutor must conduct an individualized analysis of a defendant's civil rights claims before concluding a releasedismissal agreement, 12 F.3d at 383, and that in order for a release-dismissal agreement to be enforceable there must be a case-specific showing that the released civil rights claims appeared to be marginal or frivolous at the time the agreement was made and that the prosecutor was in fact motivated by this reason. Id. The question whether the facts known to Heneks could have supported the conclusion that the Livingstones' civil rights claims were marginal or frivolous was not addressed in the district court. On this record, resolution of that question in the defendants' favor was a necessary predicate for a grant of summary judgment holding that the release-dismissal agreement was in the public interest. We will, therefore, vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment and remand the case so that the parties can address the question whether the Livingstones' civil rights claims were regarded Ä and, if so, whether they were properly regarded Ä by the prosecuting attorney as marginal or frivolous. We think that, on remand, the parties will, at a minimum, wish to take account of the material in this record which suggests that, at the time Heneks agreed to the dismissal of the charges against Mrs. Livingstone, considerable information pointing in the direction of significant police misconduct had come to Heneks' attention. Of course, what is of record here cannot be deemed dispositive of the question whether Heneks could properly have concluded that the Livingstones' civil rights claims were marginal or frivolous, for the reason that the proceedings in the district court have not been focused on that issue. Further evidence may be adduced on remand that casts the relevant events in a very different light. But we think it may be helpful to relate the principally salient matter appearing in our current record in order to provide a point of departure for the proceedings on remand. The most important item of evidence in this respect is the report of Dr. Noche, the emergency-room doctor who examined Mrs. Livingstone on the night of her encounter with the police. That report indicates that Mrs. Livingstone had first or second degree burns in her vaginal area. The substance of Dr. Noche's report was almost certainly known to Assistant District Attorney Heneks. The record does not contain any plausible explanation of how this burn came to appear on Mrs. Livingstone's genitalia Ä other than Mrs. Livingstone's own explanation, which was that it was the result of the police's deliberate misuse of a stun gun. Nor is there any indication in the record that Heneks was aware of other evidence that contradicted the emergency-room report. In short, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Dr. Noche's report significantly corroborates Mrs. Livingstone's claim that the police deliberately applied a stun gun to her genitalia, an act that, if it did occur, would amount to an outrageous instance of police abuse. It is possible that facts not in the present record would undermine some element of the foregoing analysis. On remand, the parties should address (1) whether Heneks made a determination that the Livingstones' civil rights claims were marginal or frivolous, and, if so, on what basis he did so; (2) whether Heneks knew or should have known of the foregoing evidence of police misconduct; and (3) if Heneks did know, or should have known, of that evidence, whether other facts available to Heneks in some way undercut it. We emphasize that it would not suffice for the defendant municipalities and police officers to demonstrate on remand that Heneks was aware of other evidence that merely contradicted the foregoing evidence of police misconduct, as this would only establish that there was substantial evidence on both sides of the misconduct question. Instead, defendants would have to demonstrate that Heneks was aware of other evidence that rendered the foregoing evidence of police misconduct fundamentally untrustworthy. It is conceivable that the district court may conclude that Heneks was not aware, and had no reason to be aware, of some of the foregoing evidence of official misconduct, and that, not being apprised of this evidence, Heneks reasonably determined that the Livingstones' civil rights claims were marginal or frivolous. That would not, however, be the end of the district court's inquiry. The district court would then have to address the further question whether enforcement of a release-dismissal agreement in the face of substantial evidence of police misconduct would be compatible with Rumery and Cain, notwithstanding that the evidence of misconduct was not known, or reasonably knowable, by the prosecutor at the time the prosecutor entered into what might appear, in retrospect, to be an improvident agreement. B. Cain's Subjective Element: Prosecutorial Motivation Cain's subjective element requires that the public-interest reasons cited by a party seeking to enforce a release be those that actually motivated the prosecutor to conclude the release. That is, under Cain, a court may not enforce a release if it finds that the release was concluded for some reason different from that presented as justifying enforcement, even if the court believes that some 'benefit' would be incidentally achieved by enforcement. Cain, 7 F.3d at 381. The Livingstones challenge the district court's determination that there was not a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the prosecutor's stated reasons for concluding the releasedismissal agreement were his actual reasons for doing so. The district court based this determination on the following: (1) the charges against Mrs. Livingstone were filed the day after her encounter with the police; (2) the charges correspond to the relevant conduct of Mrs. Livingstone according to the statement taken from Carrie Livingstone, and the affidavit which supports the complaint; and (3) discussions of settlement were initiated after nearly three days of testimony in the criminal trial. App. at 379-80. We do not quarrel with these three propositions. But they do not, in our judgment, constitute a sufficient predicate for the determination that there is no genuine issue of material fact with respect to whether the prosecutor's stated reasons were his real reasons. As we have noted, on the record before this court it appears not unlikely that the prosecutor was aware of substantial evidence of police misconduct in the present case. This lends credence to the inference that the prosecutor's decision to bring charges against Mrs. Livingstone, the manner in which he conducted the trial, and his decision to propose the conclusion of a releasedismissal agreement to the Livingstones may have been motivated by a desire to protect the relevant police officers and municipalities from liability. Such a motivation would render the agreement unenforceable. See Cain, 7 F.3d at 381. None of the three propositions relied on by the district court eliminates the possibility that the prosecutor acted with an improper motive. As to the fact that the charges against Mrs. Livingstone were filed promptly, it is true that, had the charges against Mrs. Livingstone been brought well after the incident, or after the police learned that she intended to sue, this might have indicated prosecutorial misconduct. See Lynch v. City of Alhambra, 880 F.2d 1122, 1128-29 (9th Cir. 1989). But the fact that the charges against her were brought promptly does not, conversely, demonstrate that no misconduct occurred. As to the fact that the charges against Mrs. Livingstone were supported by independent evidence, charges need not be fabricated in order for a releasedismissal agreement to be the product of an improper prosecutorial motive. The relevant question is instead whether the decision to pursue a prosecution, or the subsequent decision to conclude a release-dismissal agreement, was motivated by a desire to protect public officials from liability. Finally, the fact that the discussions of settlement were initiated after nearly three days of testimony in the criminal trial is subject to many interpretations. One interpretation which is at odds with summary judgment is that a purpose of the trial was to erode the Livingstones' resistance to signing a release. We therefore find that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the prosecutor's stated reasons for concluding the release-dismissal agreement at issue in the present case were his actual reasons. Thus, should the district court find that information known to the prosecutor could have sufficed to establish that there was a legitimate public-interest reason for concluding a release-dismissal agreement, it should then conduct a jury trial to determine whether the prosecutor's stated reasons for concluding an agreement were his actual reasons for doing so.