Opinion ID: 797053
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Officer DePietro and Detective Borona

Text: 38 Undisputed evidence shows that both DePietro and Borona had responsibility for investigating the Amoco robbery, with Borona accompanying DePietro to the service station on the date of the crime. Similarly, that evidence establishes that DePietro took control of the surveillance tape on the date of the robbery, viewed the tape, prepared photographic stills from the tape, served as the affiant in the warrant for Russo's arrest, obtained that warrant, and retained the original videotape in his desk drawer through a date that was after November 25, 2002. 39 Beyond that, the testimony in the case diverges. But read in the light most favorable to Russo, as it must be, the record evidence shows the following. DePietro and Borona questioned Russo and pursued follow-up discussions in which they learned—not necessarily for the first time, as such attributes were on record in police files—of Russo's distinctive physical characteristics, and specifically of his tattoos. They watched the unenhanced surveillance tape, and they represented to Russo that they could see the perpetrator's arms. Then, while concealing the tape, they falsely insisted that it showed a man with tattoos like his. Rather than following police rules on the storage of evidence and the processing of exculpatory evidence, DePietro put the tape in his drawer, thus impeding the state attorney's access to the footage. As a result, and despite Russo's repeated attempts to focus attention on the tape, it took more than six months for that tape to reach Russo's counsel, and more than seven months before Russo was released from prison. 40 The question of whether such conduct amounted to a deprivation of Russo's constitutional rights is similar to one posed to the Supreme Court in Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979), in which a plaintiff was arrested pursuant to a valid warrant actually intended for his brother. 10 Id. at 143, 99 S.Ct. 2689. The plaintiff remained incarcerated for eight days—despite his protests of innocence and the availability of exculpatory evidence—until the police compared his photograph to that of the wanted man and released the innocent arrestee. Id. at 141, 99 S.Ct. 2689. The plaintiff brought an action pursuant to § 1983 alleging that the sheriff had failed to institute proper identification procedures in violation of the plaintiff's due process rights. As in Russo's case, the plaintiff's claims were based on law enforcement's conduct after the plaintiff was incarcerated pursuant to a valid warrant. 41 In Baker, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiff's situation—which it found was a depriv[ation] of his liberty for a period of days pursuant to a warrant satisfying Fourth Amendment standards— did not, in the circumstances of that case, give rise to a constitutional claim. Id. at 144, 99 S.Ct. 2689. The Court stated, however: Obviously, one in [plaintiff's] position could not be detained indefinitely in the face of repeated protests of innocence even though the warrant under which he was arrested and detained met the standards of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 144, 99 S.Ct. 2689. Such protection derived from his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Id. (citing United States v. Marion, 404 U.S. 307, 92 S.Ct. 455, 30 L.Ed.2d 468 (1971)). But, going beyond this Sixth Amendment right, the Court suggested that such a prolonged detention could also be understood in terms of the Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law: 42 We may even assume, arguendo, that, depending on what procedures the State affords defendants following arrest and prior to actual trial, mere detention pursuant to a valid warrant but in the face of repeated protests of innocence will after the lapse of a certain amount of time deprive the accused of liberty . . . without due process of law. 43 Id. at 145, 99 S.Ct. 2689 (quoting U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1); see also Wright v. Smith, 21 F.3d 496, 499 n. 1 (2d Cir. 1994) (quoting same). The Court made clear, however, that the plaintiff's detention —three days over a New Year's weekend 11 —amounted to no such deprivation. Baker, 443 U.S. at 145, 99 S.Ct. 2689. 44 In a concurring opinion, Justice Blackmun reinforced the Court's due process discussion. He explained that, as he saw it, the majority opinion did not foreclose the possibility that a prisoner in [plaintiff's] predicament might prove a due process violation by a sheriff who deliberately and repeatedly refused to check the identity of a complaining prisoner against readily available mug shots and fingerprints. Id. at 148, 99 S.Ct. 2689 (Blackmun, J., concurring). In other words, the due process clause might well reach conduct more shocking than that of the defendant in Baker. And, Justice Blackmun read the Court's opinion to conclude[] only that `every' claim of innocence need not be investigated independently, and that defendant's intent was relevant to the existence of a constitutional violation. Id. 45 Following Baker, the Eleventh Circuit recognized a Fourteenth Amendment due process right to be free from continued detention after it was or should have been known that the detainee was entitled to release. See Cannon v. Macon County, 1 F.3d 1558, 1563 (11th Cir.1993). In Cannon, a sheriff's deputy arrested an innocent woman whose name was similar to that of a fugitive and ignored the arrestee's protestations of innocence. Id. at 1560-61. The deputy's failure to take any steps to identify the plaintiff as the fugitive, the court held, provided sufficient evidence from which a jury could find that the deputy acted with deliberate indifference towards the plaintiff's due process rights. Id. at 1564. Similarly, the Ninth Circuit applied Baker 's recognition of a due process interest to a twelve-day detention of a plaintiff arrested on valid warrants intended for his twin brother. See Fairley v. Luman, 281 F.3d 913, 918 (9th Cir.2002). The court held that the plaintiff had a liberty interest in being free from a twelve-day incarceration without any procedural safeguard in place to verify the warrant he was detained on was his and in the face of his repeated protests of innocence. Id.; see also Sanders v. English, 950 F.2d 1152, 1162 (5th Cir.1992) (holding that the failure to release a pretrial detainee after police officer knew or should have known that plaintiff had been misidentified gives rise to cause of action under § 1983). 12 46 And our own court has recognized the due process protection suggested in Baker. Thus, in Satchell v. Dilworth, we considered the claims of a plaintiff who, following completion of a criminal sentence, had been illegally rearrested and incarcerated for thirty-one days based on misleading and incomplete, if not deliberately false, information provided by state correctional services. 745 F.2d 781, 782 (2d Cir.1984). The plaintiff, we stated in Satchell, might be able to prevail on his due process claims if he could demonstrate that any of the defendants intentionally 13 concealed or conspired to conceal evidence of the plaintiff's completion of his sentence. Id. at 785. 47 Today, we hold that the right mentioned in Baker and enunciated in the above cited cases protected Russo from a sustained detention stemming directly from the law enforcement officials' refusal to investigate available exculpatory evidence. The Bridgeport police officers retained sole custody of the videotape evidence—and stored it in an improper manner—for a full 68 days after Russo alerted them that examining the pictures of the perpetrator for tattoos could exonerate Russo. They did this after intentionally misstating that the robber had tattoos. Moreover, their failure to perform the simple task of checking the tape resulted in all of Russo's 217-day incarceration. 48 We must clarify the source of this right, however. Although Justice Blackmun in Baker —and several circuits including our own in Satchell —have suggested that the right was rooted in substantive due process, we now conclude, in light of more recent guidance from the Supreme Court, that the right should instead be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment. In Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989), decided almost ten years after Baker, the Supreme Court stated that [w]here a particular Amendment `provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection' against a particular sort of government behavior, `that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, must be the guide for analyzing these claims.' Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 273, 114 S.Ct. 807, 127 L.Ed.2d 114 (1994) (plurality opinion) (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865). And more recently, in County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998), the High Court noted that Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952)—a case on which Justice Blackmun had relied in Baker —was decided long before Graham v. Connor . . . and today would be treated under the Fourth Amendment, albeit with the same result. Sacramento, 523 U.S. at 849 n. 9, 118 S.Ct. 1708. 49 Russo's claim—which he presents as being based on substantive due process—fits comfortably under the coverage of the Fourth Amendment. We have observed that [w]hen the accused is physically detained following arraignment, there can be no question that he has been seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Murphy v. Lynn, 118 F.3d 938, 944 (2d Cir.1997); see also County of Sacramento, 523 U.S. at 844, 118 S.Ct. 1708 ([A] Fourth Amendment seizure [occurs] . . . when there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied. (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)); Oliver, 510 U.S. at 274, 114 S.Ct. 807 (plurality opinion) (The Framers considered the matter of pretrial deprivations of liberty and drafted the Fourth Amendment to address it.). And while we have generally looked to the law of the state in which the arrest occurred in analyzing § 1983 claims based on the Fourth Amendment, Davis, 364 F.3d at 433 (emphasis added), the scope of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizures is, of course, not limited to state law. 50 Thus, since the Fourth Amendment provides a more explicit textual source of constitutional protection, in light of Graham, the Fourth Amendment, rather than substantive due process, should serve as the guide for analyzing these claims. Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865; cf. Fontana v. Haskin, 262 F.3d 871, 881 (9th Cir.2001) (`[C]laims arising before or during arrest are to be analyzed exclusively under the fourth amendment's reasonableness standard rather than the substantive due process standard . . . .') (quoting Reed v. Hoy, 909 F.2d 324, 329 (9th Cir. 1990)). 51 We therefore treat Russo's claim as being based on the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizures. And, doing so, we conclude, in light of (1) the length of time of Russo's wrongful incarceration, (2) the ease with which the evidence exculpating Russo—which was in the officers' possession—could have been checked, and (3) the alleged intentionality of DePietro's and Borona's behavior, that Russo has sufficiently alleged that he was unreasonably seized. In other words, the evidence Russo has proffered suffices to prevent summary judgment on Russo's claim of a Fourth Amendment violation by DePietro and Borona. 52
53 In Baker, the Supreme Court expressly recognized that the lapse of a certain amount of time is an element in assessing the existence of a constitutional encroachment. Baker, 443 U.S. at 145, 99 S.Ct. 2689. Indeed, in one of the precedents relied on in Baker, the Court had stated that [t]he consequences of prolonged detention may be more serious than the interference occasioned by arrest. Pretrial confinement may imperil the suspect's job, interrupt his source of income, and impair his family relationships. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 114, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975); see Baker, 443 U.S. at 143, 99 S.Ct. 2689 (citing Gerstein ). And the Baker Court noted that the short duration of the plaintiff's detention was central to the Court's denial of the plaintiff's claims. See id. at 145, 99 S.Ct. 2689; accord Davis v. Hall, 375 F.3d 703, 718 (8th Cir.2004); Cannon v. Macon County, 1 F.3d 1558, 1562 (11th Cir.1993); Coleman v. Frantz, 754 F.2d 719, 724 (7th Cir.1985). The total 217-day detention here, or even the 68-day detention between Russo's arrest and DePietro's yielding of the tape to the prosecutor, plainly was prolonged rather than short and carried constitutional implications. 54
55 Whether DePietro and Borona watched the tape before (falsely) telling Russo that the robber was tattooed, or failed to follow up on Russo's claims of innocence by refusing to watch the tape at all, their conduct easily fits the hypothetical presented in Justice Blackmun's Baker concurrence: that the standard for liability announced by the Court would reach an officer who refused to check the identity of a complaining prisoner against readily available mug shots and fingerprints. See Baker, 443 U.S. at 148, 99 S.Ct. 2689 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (emphasis added). An officer's duty to investigate specific, readily-verifiable claims of innocence in a reasonable time period clearly covers reviewing a surveillance camera video record of a crime, when, as here, it was an easily available piece of physical evidence. 56
57 We have said that a substantive due process claim requires more: To trigger liability, a police officer's action must shock[] the conscience. 14 County of Sacramento, 523 U.S. at 846, 118 S.Ct. 1708. That is, it must be `arbitrary in the constitutional sense,' O'Connor v. Pierson, 426 F.3d 187, 203 (2d Cir.2005) (quoting Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 128, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992)). And, given our decision—following the Supreme Court's admonition in Graham —to treat Russo's claim under the Fourth Amendment, the shock the conscience requirement must now be understood as a crucial feature going to the unreasonableness of the seizure. 58 The state of mind of a government defendant is an integral aspect of any shock the conscience standard. Thus, we have read County of Sacramento to mean that while a purpose to cause harm might be required in a situation such as a high-speed chase, deliberate indifference—but not negligence—can support a finding of liability in situations where the government owes a special duty of care to those in its charge. O'Connor, 426 F.3d at 203. 59 Here, Russo was in state custody—and hence in the charge of the government— throughout the relevant proceedings. Moreover, a reasonable jury could find that DePietro actively hid the exculpatory evidence. As such, his conduct is of a different order from that of the defendant in Baker, where inadvertent omission, rather than an affirmative wrongdoing, led to the detention. See 443 U.S. at 143, 99 S.Ct. 2689; see also Whitley v. Seibel, 613 F.2d 682, 685-86 (7th Cir. 1980) (distinguishing Baker and finding liability because of defendant police officers' improper behavior). In addition, by falsely describing the content of the videotape, DePietro and Borona attempted to evoke a confession from him by misrepresenting the very evidence of Russo's innocence that was available to them. This act, combined with their failure to investigate the tape to see if the tape was in fact exculpatory, would readily support a jury finding of either intentional violation of, or deliberate indifference to, Russo's constitutional rights. See Cannon, 1 F.3d at 1564 (holding that a defendant's failure to verify that an arrestee was the fugitive sought on the arrest warrant raised a question of fact as to defendant's deliberate indifference toward the plaintiff's due process rights). And, DePietro's failure to follow police procedures with respect to the storage of the exculpatory evidence adds further evidence on the basis of which a jury could find deliberate indifference to Russo's incarceration and to his asserted innocence. 60 The evidence of shocking conduct on the part of DePietro and Borona was sufficient to preclude a grant of summary judgment in their favor on the merits of Russo's unreasonable seizure claim. 61