Opinion ID: 796063
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: False imprisonment—Unreasonable postarrest detention

Text: 12 Where a person is lawfully arrested pursuant to a valid warrant, police officers and jailers have no constitutional duty to investigate whether the arrestee is actually the person named in the warrant. Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 143-44, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979). This is so because the probable cause standard for pretrial detention is the same as that for arrest, therefore, a person arrested pursuant to a warrant issued by a magistrate on a showing of probable-cause is not constitutionally entitled to a separate judicial determination that there is probable cause to detain him pending trial. Id. at 143, 99 S.Ct. 2689. Because Officer Kooistra lawfully arrested Tibbs based on a valid warrant, Baker forecloses any due process claim based on unreasonable postarrest detention. Id.; see also Brown, 823 F.2d at 168-69 (plaintiff who was mistakenly arrested pursuant to a valid warrant and held in custody for forty-eight hours stated no claim for unlawful postarrest detention where his jailers made no attempt to determine whether he was actually the person named in the warrant). In any event, Officer Kooistra had no contact with Tibbs and no responsibility for him after he was taken to the lockup area of the jail some thirty minutes after the arrest, so it is hard to see how he could be held liable based on Tibbs's two-day detention. See Brown, 823 F.2d at 169 (arresting officer was not responsible for plaintiff's detention after turning plaintiff over to jailers at the police station).