Opinion ID: 2980755
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Function of Specific Actions Taken by Sanders

Text: Although Howell makes generalized statements that Sanders “actively participated in the investigatory stage,” Appellant Br. at 2, the only two specific actions she points to are Sanders’s decision to order the police to execute the arrest warrant and the decision to cancel the polygraph exam, id. at 32.3 We examine each in turn.
Howell claims that Sanders was not acting as an advocate when he commanded the police to arrest her. A prosecutor’s decision to initiate a prosecution, including the decision to file a criminal complaint or seek an arrest warrant, is protected by absolute immunity. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 430-31; Ireland, 113 F.3d at 1446. However, a prosecutor does not act as an advocate if he is merely “advising the police in the investigative phase of a criminal case.” Burns, 500 U.S. at 493; Prince, 198 F.3d at 61415 (rejecting absolute immunity for prosecutor who advised the police on the existence of probable cause before the prosecutor herself made the decision to initiate criminal proceedings). 3 Howell tries to link Sanders to additional conduct by referring to actions by his office. See, e.g., Appellant Br. at 13 (“Detective Frodge’s investigation log also reveals the in-depth corroboration of the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office.”). The Detective’s log, however, never references Rob Sanders, only Stefanie Kaster, an assistant prosecutor. Even assuming that Howell raised supervisory liability as a basis for her § 1983 claim, which she did not, such claims must be based “on more than respondeat superior, or the right to control employees.” Shehee v. Luttrell, 199 F.3d 295, 300 (6th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 530 U.S. 1264 (2000). Aside from Sanders’s name on a contact sheet and some allegations as to what Sanders purportedly “knew,” Howell offers nothing that would demonstrate that Sanders “either encouraged the specific incident of misconduct or in some other way directly participated in it.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). No. 10-5797 Howell v. Sanders Page 7 This court has previously held under very different circumstances that commanding an arrest is investigatory. In Harris v. Bornhorst, 513 F.3d 503, 510-511 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 554 U.S. 903 (2008), we denied absolute immunity for a prosecutor’s instruction to the police to make the arrest of the suspect upon hearing a recording of his confession. At first glance, Harris appears to support Howell’s argument: “[The prosecutor] went beyond merely advising the police; she instructed them to arrest Harris, without soliciting any officer’s opinion.” Id. at 510-511 (emphasis in original).4 But that same language demonstrates a key difference. In Harris, the prosecutor independently decided that probable cause existed upon watching a confession that was blatantly coercive and on that basis alone ordered the suspect’s arrest. See also Manetta v. Macomb Cnty. Enforcement Team, 141 F.3d 270, 274 (6th Cir. 1998) (prosecutor’s participation in arrest of suspects following stake-out not entitled to absolute immunity even though his later action to obtain arrest warrant was). Here, in contrast, a state judge made the determination that probable cause existed upon a complaint and affidavit filed by the investigating officer, and the prosecutor initiated the criminal proceedings by ordering the suspect’s arrest pursuant to the validly issued warrant. We see no reason to hold as a blanket rule that commanding the arrest of a suspect is per se outside the scope of a prosecutor’s role as an advocate, particularly when, as here, the instruction follows the issuance of a valid arrest warrant by a neutral judge and is supported by probable cause. Sanders’s act in this case was no less related to initiating criminal proceedings against Howell than if he had decided to seek and obtain the arrest warrant in the first place. See Ireland, 113 F.3d at 1446 (“A prosecutor’s decision to file a criminal complaint and seek an arrest warrant . . . fall[s] squarely within the aegis of absolute prosecutorial immunity.”). 4 And some cases even describe Harris as “affirming denial of absolute immunity to a prosecutor who instructed police to arrest suspect.” See Adams v. Hanson, 656 F.3d 397, 402-03 (6th Cir. 2011) (affirming absolute prosecutorial immunity in unrelated context). No. 10-5797 Howell v. Sanders Page 8
Howell argues that cancelling her polygraph must be investigatory because the decision “whether to give or not to give someone a polygraph exam . . . cannot rationally be argued to be anything other than ordinary police work.” Appellant Br. at 33. Conducting a polygraph may indeed be investigatory, depending on context. See Brodnicki v. City of Omaha, 75 F.3d 1261, 1267 (8th Cir.) (holding prosecutor’s review of polygraph results provided by defendant not investigative work, even if similar to an act sometimes performed by police), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 867 (1996). But the fact that prosecutors often engage in work that resembles traditional police activities does not remove such acts from the protections of absolute immunity if they were done during the course of preparing for trial. “[I]n determining immunity, we examine the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it.” Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118, 127 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). Prosecutors executing their duties must be given immunity in the “professional evaluation of the evidence assembled by the police and appropriate preparation for its presentation at trial or before a grand jury after a decision to seek an indictment has been made.” Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273. Consistent with this principle, the “[p]reparation of witnesses for trial is protected by absolute immunity.” Spurlock v. Thompson, 330 F.3d 791, 797 (6th Cir. 2003). Thus the same act of interviewing witnesses is protected when done to evaluate evidence and prepare for trial, but not when done at the earlier stage of “searching for the clues and corroboration that might give him probable cause to recommend that a suspect be arrested . . . .” Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273. Sanders does not attempt to explain why his decisions with respect to the polygraph were in relation to trial preparation, despite having the burden to do so. See Burns, 500 U.S. at 486. Nor does it seem likely that the decision with respect to the polygraph related to preparing for trial. However, the decision does seem integrally related to the initiation of the criminal proceedings against Howell in the same way No. 10-5797 Howell v. Sanders Page 9 ordering her arrest was. At most, the facts suggest that Sanders stopped a polygraph5 in order to initiate Howell’s prosecution, which was well within his role as an advocate for the state of Kentucky. See Imbler, 424 U.S. at 431 n. 33; Ireland, 113 F.3d at 1446 (“[T]he integrity of the judicial system depends in large part upon a prosecutor’s ability to exercise independent judgment in deciding whether and against whom to bring criminal charges.”). Thus even if there is some dispute over what happened regarding the polygraph situation, the dispute does not preclude summary judgment on this issue as it does not relate to a material fact.6 Howell attempts to paint Sanders as interfering in the fact-gathering portion of the investigation, essentially asking the court to ignore that the police had already gone to a judge with sufficient facts to obtain an arrest warrant based on probable cause. The record does suggest that the police were still willing to conduct a polygraph at this point, with consultation from Stefanie Kaster. Even under Howell’s version of the facts, however, at most Rob Sanders disagreed with the decision to delay initiating her prosecution to accommodate a polygraph and instructed the officers to proceed with the execution of the arrest warrant. None of these facts alter the conclusion that Rob Sanders was acting in his capacity as an advocate and not engaging in an investigatory function; he is entitled to absolute immunity.