Opinion ID: 688673
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Absolute Immunity from Section 1983 Damages Claims.

Text: 16 The district court's summary disposition of Dr. Selkin's section 1983 damages claims on grounds of immunity presents legal questions, which we review de novo. Gagan v. Norton, 35 F.3d 1473, 1475 (10th Cir.1994); Pfeiffer v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co., 929 F.2d 1484, 1489 (10th Cir.1991). 17 Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 232 (1991), would require us to address the district court's determination of qualified immunity only after first deciding whether Dr. Selkin has asserted the violation of a constitutional right at all. But we need not similarly begin by analyzing the substance of the claims where prosecutorial immunity is dispositive; prosecutorial immunity turns on an analysis of the functions in which the prosecutor was engaged, see, e.g., Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 113 S.Ct. 2606, 2613 (1993); rather than on a determination of whether the plaintiff's rights existed and were clearly established. 18 Prosecutors are absolutely immune from suit when their conduct is intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process. Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430-31 (1976). We have held that plea bargaining is such an activity. Pfeiffer, 929 F.2d at 1492 (citing Hammond v. Bales, 843 F.2d 1320, 1321-22 (10th Cir.1988), and Taylor v. Kavanagh, 640 F.2d 450, 453 (2d Cir.1981)). 19 Dr. Selkin does not dispute this principle; rather, he seeks to distinguish his situation. His argument has shifted as the case has progressed. In his complaint, he maintained that as part and parcel of this plea bargain, Ms. Easter required Mr. A to stop seeing Dr. Selkin. Plaintiff/Appellant's App. at 2, 1/2 10. In opposition to summary judgment, he argued that Ms. Easter's requirement was not a part of the plea bargain but rather surplusage, extraneous conduct occurring contemporaneously with the plea bargain but unrelated to it and beyond Ms. Easter's responsibilities as a prosecutor. Defendants/Appellees' Supp.App. at 24-26. On appeal he argues that the instruction was a precondition to a plea bargain, and was not part of the plea bargain. Plaintiff/Appellant's Opening Br. at 9. He also calls it a loose exercise of proscribed acts under color of authority. Id. at 17. In his reply brief, he calls it advice preliminary to the plea bargain discussions and not a part of the bargain. Plaintiff/Appellant's Reply Br. at 9. 20 However much Dr. Selkin now wants to separate Ms. Easter's statement from the plea bargain, he still does not dispute that Ms. Easter made the termination of his services a prerequisite to plea negotiations. Whether or not the district court correctly found that the requirement was among the final terms of the plea agreement, it clearly was a part of the plea negotiation process to which prosecutorial immunity applies. 3 21 With respect to the immunity of Ms. Easter's superior, Dr. Selkin errs in characterizing Mr. Mielke's actions as limited to directing responses, through a deputy, to two letters. Plaintiff/Appellant's Opening Br. at 10. As the complaint demonstrates, the action for which Dr. Selkin is suing Mr. Mielke is the latter's refusal, in those written responses, to rescind Ms. Easter's plea bargain precondition. Since Ms. Easter's action is immune as part of the plea bargaining process, Mr. Mielke's deliberate decision not to reverse her is also protected as part of the same process. 22 We therefore AFFIRM the district court's judgment.