Opinion ID: 2782925
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Element Four: Motivating Factor

Text: Defendants do not contest that Plaintiff has met elements two and three of the Garcetti/Pickering test, so we move on to the fourth element: “whether the protected speech was a motivating factor in the adverse employment action.” Trant, 754 F.3d at 1165 (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiff argues that he has provided sufficient evidence that both his removal from investigations and the revocation of his commission were motivated by his testimony in Bowling. We discuss each in turn.
Plaintiff has presented sufficient circumstantial evidence that his speech was a motivating factor in his removal from investigations. According to him, he was called into Roland’s office on June 11, 2009, and told he could no longer work on investigations. Roland said that he and Sheriff Ash had met with DA Gorman, and Gorman had informed them that because of Plaintiff’s credibility issues, he could not testify in federal court and Gorman’s office would not accept any cases in which Plaintiff’s name appeared. Plaintiff asked why the federal court’s Elam order prevented his testimony in state court, when he had testified in state and municipal court numerous times since Elam’s issuance in 1998. Roland responded that Gorman had just learned, 11 years after the fact, that Elam prevented Plaintiff’s state-court testimony. Roland also 19 stated that he had spoken with AUSA Morehead as well, that she did not consider Plaintiff credible, and that she was going to send Roland a copy of the Elam order. A reasonable factfinder could be dubious of the Giglio explanation. In Giglio the defendant forged money orders and his coconspirator, a bank teller, supplied a signature card and processed the money orders. See 405 U.S. at 151. The teller, obviously the key witness in the case, was promised by a prosecutor that he would not be prosecuted if he testified against Giglio, but the defense was never informed about this arrangement. See id. at 152–53. At trial the teller denied that he had been told he would not be prosecuted. See id. at 151–52. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded for a new trial because the prosecution had not disclosed the promise of immunity. See id. at 153–55. It observed that “[w]hen the reliability of a given witness may well be determinative of guilt or innocence, nondisclosure of evidence affecting credibility” will require a new trial. Id. at 154 (internal quotation marks omitted). It held that this was certainly the case in Giglio’s trial: Here the Government’s case depended almost entirely on [the teller’s] testimony; without it there could have been no indictment and no evidence to carry the case to the jury. [The teller’s] credibility as a witness was therefore an important issue in the case, and evidence of any understanding or agreement as to a future prosecution would be relevant to his credibility and the jury was entitled to know of it. Id. at 154–55. The immunity agreement in Giglio was relevant, admissible evidence because it provided a motive for the witness to lie or embellish. It would be powerful evidence to 20 impeach the government’s chief witness. In contrast, if the prosecution saw fit to disclose to defense counsel the judge’s order in Elam or was ordered to do so by the trial judge (we need not consider the propriety of such an order), the defense could do little with it. At most, the order discloses that Plaintiff had lied in court more than 10 years before he was removed from investigations. A prior lie would suggest that his character trait of veracity was questionable. (Judges, including members of this court, take a very dim view of perjury.) But there are strict limits on using a prior lie to impeach the veracity of a witness.