Opinion ID: 694580
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Distinct Acts of District Attorney Defendants

Text: 39 Somewhat surprisingly, Pinaud relies almost exclusively on conspiracy notions in seeking to defeat the individual defendants' immunity. He makes no effort, but for one or two purely conclusory statements, to dispute the District Court's determinations that--except for the Bullpen Therapy claim, which Pinaud has stipulated away--all of the defendants' distinct acts are properly regarded as prosecutorial rather than as investigative or administrative. In any event, after reviewing the relevant case law, we conclude that all but one of the distinct acts Pinaud complains about in this appeal are intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process, Imbler, 424 U.S. at 430, 96 S.Ct. at 995, so that absolute prosecutorial immunity applies to them. 40 There are, roughly, seven acts by the defendants that Pinaud alleges wrongly harmed him: (1) improperly seeking to increase Pinaud's bail; (2) making false representations to prompt a plea agreement and then breaching that agreement; (3) manufacturing a bail jumping charge through misrepresentations to the grand jury; (4) making misrepresentations to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons; (5) needlessly transferring Pinaud from federal to state custody; (6) unnecessarily transporting Pinaud from the county jail to the county courthouse; and (7) wrongfully delaying Pinaud's transfer back into federal custody. In addition to these specific acts, Pinaud also makes a claim sounding in malicious prosecution against the individual defendants. 41 Case law from this circuit clearly establishes that the district attorneys' activities with respect to the malicious prosecution claim, as well as all the claims relating to Pinaud's plea agreement and the presentations to the grand jury, are covered by absolute immunity. See, e.g., Hill, 45 F.3d at 661 (prosecutors immune from claims based on malicious prosecution or based on their conduct before a grand jury); Ying Jing Gan, 996 F.2d at 530 (absolute immunity in connection with decision whether to commence a prosecution); Powers, 728 F.2d at 103-04 (plea bargaining covered by prosecutorial immunity); Taylor v. Kavanagh, 640 F.2d 450, 453-54 (2d Cir.1981) (plea negotiations protected by absolute immunity). 42 Similarly, though we have never previously had occasion explicitly to rule on the question, we cannot disagree with the holding of other circuits that actions in connection with a bail application are best understood as components of the initiation and presentation of a prosecution, and therefore are protected by absolute immunity. See Lerwill v. Joslin, 712 F.2d 435, 438 (10th Cir.1983); Burns v. County of King, 883 F.2d 819, 823-24 (9th Cir.1989); see also Myers v. Morris, 810 F.2d 1437, 1446 (8th Cir.) (explaining that advocating a particular level of bail is covered by absolute immunity), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 828, 108 S.Ct. 97, 98 L.Ed.2d 58 (1987). And since we have previously said that conduct in a sentencing proceeding would be protected by absolute prosecutorial immunity, see Taylor, 640 F.2d at 451-52, and also that actors preparing and presenting presentence reports should receive absolute immunity, see Dorman, 821 F.2d at 138-39, we are bound to hold that a prosecutor's communications with other officials directly pertaining to matters of sentencing are entitled to absolute immunity. See Allen v. Thompson, 815 F.2d 1433, 1434 (11th Cir.1987) (allegedly malicious letter written by prosecutor to Bureau of Prisons and Parole Commission covered by absolute immunity); see also Johnson v. Kegans, 870 F.2d 992, 997-98 (5th Cir.) (prosecutor's statements to parole board protected by absolute immunity), cert. denied, 492 U.S. 921, 109 S.Ct. 3250, 106 L.Ed.2d 596 (1989). Cf. Lucien v. Preiner, 967 F.2d 1166, 1167-68 (7th Cir.) (holding that absolute immunity covers prosecutor's statements in clemency proceeding), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 267, 121 L.Ed.2d 196 (1992). 43 Pinaud's transfer from federal to state custody, instead, presents a close issue as to the applicable degree of immunity. 6 As a general matter, coordinating the transfer of a prisoner from one corrections facility to another in the same penal system is an administrative task for which only qualified immunity would be available. But the action of a prosecutor in ordering the transfer of a prisoner from federal into state custody to facilitate a state prosecution is another matter. It is often, as here, an integral component of initiating a prosecution, since without the presence of the prisoner in state custody, a trial cannot begin and the entire prosecution could be halted. See Ehrlich v. Giuliani, 910 F.2d 1220, 1223 (4th Cir.1990) (One of the most important duties of a prosecutor pursuing a criminal proceeding is to ensure that defendants ... are present at trial.). Since it concerns the mechanisms for securing a prisoner's availability for prosecution, the ordering by a prosecutor of a prisoner's transfer from federal to state custody in order to begin a trial entails the performance of functions similar to those involved in arguing for bail or in obtaining an arrest warrant, and these actions are covered by absolute immunity, see Barr v. Abrams, 810 F.2d 358, 362 (2d Cir.1987) (concluding that prosecutors were immune from suit based on their actions in ... procuring [plaintiff's] arrest warrant); Lerwill, 712 F.2d at 437-38. 7 44 The reason for these holdings applies directly to transfers between federal and state systems to begin prosecution. If prosecutors are concerned with possible liability when they take the steps necessary to make a defendant available for prosecution, the decision whether or not to prosecute may be directly affected. And that is precisely the type of concern that absolute immunity seeks to foreclose. See Powers, 728 F.2d at 103-04. It is thus hard to avoid the conclusion that absolute prosecutorial immunity applies to the decision to arrange for the transfer of a prisoner from federal to state custody when that transfer enables the state prosecution of that prisoner. 45 The fact that Pinaud claims that his transfer into state custody was unnecessary and done simply to coerce a guilty plea from him does not alter, and really has no bearing on, this immunity analysis. It only underlines the disconcerting nature of the doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity. Since, as detailed before, the extent of immunity always depends upon the nature of the activity in question, and not upon how wrongly the particular actors may have performed that activity in a specific instance, see, e.g., Dory, 25 F.3d at 83, Pinaud's assertions, though disturbing, do not help him. 46 Pinaud also alleges that defendants Henry and Holownia subjected him to Bullpen Therapy--that is, that they arranged for his needless and repeated transport from the county jail to the county courthouse--and that these acts are not covered by prosecutorial immunity. He is, in this respect, quite right. And, in fact, the defendants apparently never claimed absolute immunity for any acts relating to this allegation. Moreover, the District Court explicitly ruled that such actions were not covered by prosecutorial immunity, and this ruling has not been appealed by the defendants. Unfortunately for Pinaud, though, this claim, since it was among those that were not dismissed by the District Court's opinion, was one of the claims withdrawn by him in his final amendment to his complaint. For that reason, and that reason alone, it does not survive. 47 There is, however, one allegation by Pinaud that the District Court did not consider in detail, but apparently did dismiss (so that it has not been withdrawn by Pinaud's stipulation), which we find may ground a viable claim. Pinaud asserts that the individual district attorney defendants were involved in keeping him in state custody for three weeks after the dismissal of all state charges against him. The District Court seems to have been addressing this allegation when it indicated that the district attorney defendants were immune from suit under Sec. 1983 for Pinaud's alleged injuries because they emanate from the duration and conditions of his imprisonment and therefore arise directly from his prosecution. Pinaud, 798 F.Supp. at 921. We read the District Court's holding as dismissing Pinaud's claim stemming from his allegedly unnecessary continued detention in state custody, and hold that such a dismissal was incorrect. 8 48 Keeping a person in state custody after the termination of all charges against him has nothing to do with conducting a prosecution for the state. Since the handling of a prisoner after the complete conclusion of all criminal charges is not a prosecutorial task but rather an administrative one, the district attorney defendants are entitled only to the protection of qualified immunity for any involvement in Pinaud's seemingly delayed transfer back into federal custody after the final dismissal of the state charges against him. See Allen v. Lowder, 875 F.2d 82, 85-86 (4th Cir.1989) (holding that prosecutor's conduct to continue plaintiff's incarceration after his conviction was reversed involved acting in a purely administrative capacity ... and is, therefore, not entitled to absolute immunity). Consequently, Pinaud should be permitted to go forward with a claim premised on this alleged behavior by the prosecutors 9 --a claim, incidently, that is clearly not barred by the statute of limitations. 10 49