Opinion ID: 1186828
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Arrest Reasonable Good Faith Belief.

Text: Late in the presentation of this appeal, the City advanced a previously unargued point which it argues is dispositive of this issue. [18] The City contends that the entire case has to this point been decided on an erroneous theory of law. It maintains that even if police officers make an arrest when they are without probable cause to do so, they are not civilly liable for the torts of false arrest and false imprisonment so long as they had a reasonable good faith belief in the legality of their conduct. Further, the City asserts that its objections at trial and in its briefs to the probable cause instructions were sufficient to avoid the bar against assigning as error the failure to give a jury instruction which has not been proposed to the trial court. [19] In addition, the City contends that in any case, the plain error doctrine necessitates consideration of this issue. We will not ordinarily pass upon an assertion that the failure to give an instruction was error where the matter has not been properly brought to the attention of the trial court. [20] We will consider plain errors, even though not objected to below, which are so substantial as to result in injustice. [21] However, only where an erroneous instruction creates a high likelihood that the jury followed an erroneous theory resulting in a miscarriage of justice will this court apply the plain error rule in a civil case. [22] Jury instructions which set forth an entirely erroneous standard of liability would normally be considered to create such a high likelihood. On the facts of the case at bar, however, application of the instruction sought by appellant would not have altered the result. Accordingly, we need not apply the plain error rule. [23] Some courts have held that police officers who arrest a citizen without probable cause are not civilly liable for false arrest so long as, at the time of arrest, they had a reasonable good faith belief that their conduct was proper. [24] However, even those courts have required that the police officers' belief be supported by objective evidence. [25] We need not decide in this case whether a reasonable good faith belief in the legality of an arrest is a defense to a tort action against a police officer for false arrest or false imprisonment, because we do not believe that there was objective evidence sufficient to support such a belief in this case. The officers who were responding to a report of an alleged rape, did observe a distraught woman standing near the alleged rapist. However, by the time the officers decided to arrest Ailak, they had also seen the woman flee from the police officers; they had spoken with the residents of the house in which the alleged murder victim was reported to be, only to find that there was no murder victim there; and they had spoken with the person who reported the alleged crimes and discovered that he did not know the woman who had told him that Ailak raped her. Under such circumstances, we do not believe that reasonable police officers would have believed that they had probable cause to arrest appellee Ailak. In this regard, we agree with a statement made by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit: The law does not expect police officers to be sophisticated constitutional or criminal lawyers, but because they are charged with the responsibility of enforcing the law, it is not unreasonable to expect them to have some knowledge of it. We cannot permit a police officer to avoid liability for damages by pleading ignorance of the law when he unreasonably .. . oversteps the bounds of his authority and invades the constitutional rights of others. [26] Based on the foregoing, we conclude that any erroneous statements of law which may have been made by the trial court concerning probable cause, or the standard of liability imposed on a police officer for false arrest, did not prejudice the City. Ailak was arrested without probable cause by officers who had insufficient objective evidence to support a belief that arrest was proper. [27]