Opinion ID: 3050228
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Reckless Investigation and False Evidence

Text: Plaintiffs claim that Defendants “recklessly investigated the Wilson murder by ignoring exonerating evidence[] and accepting as true uncorroborated and contradictory inculpatory witness statements, as well as statements that were clearly refuted by easily verifiable facts of the murder.” Plaintiffs also claim that Defendants coached witnesses to fabricate the necessary evidence required to support Defendants’ theory of the case. The district court rejected both of these claims, finding “as a matter of law that there is not sufficient evidence to establish that . . . [Plaintiffs’ convictions were] obtained through the knowing use of false evidence or conscience-shocking investigatory activities by the defendants.” We disagree with the district court’s assessment of the evidence. Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, the evidence allows a reasonable 5 The district court found that Plaintiffs raised other claims in their complaints, including claims based on unlawful arrest in violation of the Fourth Amendment, lack of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and coerced confession in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court dismissed those claims as time-barred. Plaintiffs do not challenge this aspect of the district court’s ruling on appeal. -21- inference that Defendants’ investigation crossed the line from gross negligence to recklessness and that Defendants manufactured false evidence to complete their investigation. To establish a constitutional violation based on an inadequate investigation, a plaintiff must show that the defendant officer’s “failure to investigate was intentional or reckless, thereby shocking the conscience.” Cooper v. Martin, 634 F.3d 477, 481 (8th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). “We have held that the following circumstances indicate reckless or intentional failure to investigate that shocks the conscience: (1) evidence that the state actor attempted to coerce or threaten the defendant, (2) evidence that investigators purposefully ignored evidence suggesting the defendant’s innocence, (3) evidence of systematic pressure to implicate the defendant in the face of contrary evidence.” Akins v. Epperly, 588 F.3d 1178, 1184 (8th Cir. 2009). Mere negligent failure to investigate, such as failing to follow up on additional leads, does not violate due process. See Amrine v. Brooks, 522 F.3d 823, 833-34 (8th Cir. 2008); Wilson, 260 F.3d at 955. While a reckless investigation claim may be supported by proof that investigators exerted “systematic pressure to implicate the defendant in the face of contrary evidence,” Akins, 588 F.3d at 1184, a manufactured false evidence claim requires proof that investigators deliberately fabricated evidence in order to frame a criminal defendant. See Whitlock v. Brueggemann, 682 F.3d 567, 585 (7th Cir. 2012) (“Significantly, all courts that have directly confronted the question before us agree that the deliberate manufacture of false evidence contravenes the Due Process Clause.”); Devereaux v. Abbey, 263 F.3d 1070, 1076-77 (9th Cir. 2001) (en banc) (“Failing to follow guidelines or to carry out an investigation in a manner that will ensure an error-free result is one thing; intentionally fabricating false evidence is quite another.”). As in this case, a failure to investigate claim may be inextricably bound with a false evidence claim, where the Plaintiffs’ theory is that investigators recognized deficiencies in a case and manufactured false evidence to fill those gaps. -22- Cf. Moran v. Clarke, 296 F.3d 638, 647-48 (8th Cir. 2002) (en banc) (denying qualified immunity where substantive due process claim was based on evidence that investigators “purposely ignored” exculpatory evidence, placed pressures on witnesses to incriminate a specific person, and manufactured evidence). We find that Plaintiffs have presented sufficient evidence to allow the reasonable inference that Defendants recklessly investigated the Wilson murder and purposefully manufactured false evidence to implicate Plaintiffs. Specifically, there is evidence that suggests Defendants systematically coached witnesses into providing false testimony that was in line with the narrative of the Defendants’ theory as to how the murder had been committed. The circumstances under which Dean and Gonzalez were identified by witnesses provide the best example and raise the most serious concerns. First, Searcey reported Cliff Shelden listed Dean as a possible perpetrator, but there is no mention of Dean in any recorded portion of Shelden’s interrogation. Searcey and Lamkin then interrogated Deb Shelden on successive days, April 13 and 14. In the interview held on April 13, Deb only named Taylor, Winslow, and White as being involved in the murder, and Deb stated that it was her own blood that was found at the scene of Wilson murder. When Deb’s blood failed to be a correct match, Searcey and Lamkin interviewed Deb again on April 14. Deb then stated that Dean was also present during the Wilson murder and that she had been “blocking” her memory of his presence. When Dean was arrested on April 15, 1989, he categorically denied any knowledge of Wilson’s murder. While Dean was held in the county jail, Defendants subjected Dean to a number of interrogations outside the presence of counsel.6 Smith, 6 Defendants argue that some of the evidence that Plaintiffs point to is their own “self-serving” deposition testimony circa 2010, such as Dean’s deposition testimony -23- Searcey, Lamkin, and DeWitt each threatened Dean that he would be executed if he did not cooperate. Additionally, Price pretended to act as Dean’s counselor and told Dean that his polygraph results evidenced Dean repressing his own memory of being involved. After weeks of being told that he was present at the Wilson murder, Dean began to provide statements that he was indeed involved in the murder based on dreams he began to have. These dreams occurred after Defendants gave Dean certain facts, photos, and videos of the crime scene. The evidence suggests that Defendants engaged in weeks of indoctrination, eventually overcoming Dean’s judgment and convincing him that he was indeed present at the scene of the crime. Even after Defendants had arrested Taylor, Winslow, White, Dean, and Deb Shelden, an evidentiary deficiency remained: none of these suspects had type B blood to match the blood found at the scene of the Wilson murder. At this juncture, Searcey and Lamkin returned to one of the more malleable witnesses, Deb Shelden. Although Deb (and no other witness) had ever previously mentioned Gonzalez as a suspect before, Searcey showed a single photograph of Gonzalez to Deb when she recalled seeing someone else at the scene of the crime. The same day that Deb suddenly remembered that Gonzalez was present, Dean had a similar epiphany. A reasonable inference is that Gonzalez’s identification was not a coincidence; instead, that he was interrogated outside the presence of counsel. Defendants point out that there is no such evidence from the records in the late 1980s. Although Plaintiffs’ deposition testimony from 2010 could “perhaps be characterized as self-serving, . . . [it is] plausible, unchallenged and not circumstantially rebutted.” See Thomas v. Runyon, 108 F.3d 957, 961 (8th Cir. 1997). In order to undercut this evidence, Defendants would have to go beyond the possible self-interest of the witness to develop inconsistences with the testimony or establish clear issues of credibility. See id. Defendants have not sufficiently done so. -24- a reasonable factfinder could find that Defendants coached or coerced Deb and Dean to implicate Gonzalez. From this evidence, a factfinder could determine, as did the district court, that this was an aggressive but imperfect investigation where the officers had some basis to believe that Plaintiffs were guilty and, at most, the officers were negligent in putting together the evidence to inculpate Plaintiffs. But a factfinder could also determine that this was a reckless investigation where members of the sheriff’s department forced vulnerable individuals into agreeing that they had a role in the Wilson murder and then coached those individuals into giving false testimony that fit into the sheriff department’s own narrative of events while ignoring evidence contrary, and potentially fatal, to the department’s theory. Defendants may not be held liable merely for aggressively investigating the crime, believing witnesses, following leads, and discounting those pieces of evidence that do not fit with the evidence at the scene of the crime. In investigating a crime, it is unlikely that every witness’s account will align perfectly with the testimony of every other witness. See Brady v. Dill, 187 F.3d 104, 113 (1st Cir. 1999) (“[W]e live in an age . . . where clerical errors in recording, receiving, or transmitting data are commonplace, and where descriptive inaccuracies can occur easily.” (internal citations omitted)). However, Defendants may be held liable if they recklessly ignored evidence suggesting the Plaintiffs’ innocence or systematically pressured witnesses to manufacture false testimony to fill gaps in an investigation. See Akins, 588 F.3d at 1184. In its analysis, the district court found Winslow’s claim to be “particularly weak,” because “[t]he evidence against Winslow was strong and included two especially damning actions by Winslow himself. That is, Winslow admitted that he lied about his whereabouts on the night of the murder and he voluntarily made admissions during a use-immunity interview . . . wherein he implicated himself, -25- White, and Taylor.” We agree with the district court’s assessment that Defendants cannot be held liable for focusing on individuals like Taylor and Winslow as suspects. At the same time, however, there is evidence that suggests Searcey, DeWitt, and Lamkin coached witnesses to supply false evidence about Taylor and Winslow in order to strengthen the legal case against them. Therefore, that Taylor and Winslow admitted to being at the scene of the Wilson murder does not bar them from claiming that after they sought to recant their confessions, Defendants began a campaign to manufacture evidence to implicate them. Cf. Moran, 296 F.3d at 647 (“Instead of simply allowing a weakly supported prosecution to proceed, . . . the evidence can be read to show acts designed to falsely formulate a pretense of probable cause.”); Ricciuti v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 124 F.3d 123, 130 (2d Cir. 1997) (“To hold that police officers, having lawfully arrested a suspect, are then free to fabricate false confessions at will, would make a mockery of the notion that Americans enjoy the protection of due process of the law and fundamental justice.”). We next assess whether the evidence sufficiently shows that Defendants possessed a culpable state of mind during their investigation. The Defendants “conducting the post-arrest investigation certainly had the luxury of unhurried judgments and repeated reflections, which make a reckless standard appropriate” in evaluating the course of investigation. See Wilson, 260 F.3d at 957. As the Supreme Court has recognized, “the term recklessness is not self-defining.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 836 (1994). However, in Wilson, we noted that such a standard “normally contains a subjective component similar to criminal recklessness.” 260 F.3d at 956 n.9. “The criminal law . . . generally permits a finding of recklessness only when a person disregards a risk of harm of which he is aware.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 836-37. There is sufficient evidence to support a finding that Defendants’ actions during at least the latter part of their investigation were reckless. As explained in the foregoing discussion, Defendants had multiple opportunities to see that the evidence -26- they were assembling did not support their theory of the case. Defendants did in fact recognize that certain testimony and details, most prominently the lack of a suspect with matching B-type blood, caused serious problems for their case. But rather than allowing the discrepancies in the evidence to serve as red flags, Defendants instead pressed ahead and continued to exert pressure on vulnerable witnesses to provide testimony that was not within those witnesses’ personal memory.