Opinion ID: 2769632
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Beaman’s Civil Suit

Text: In January 2010, Beaman filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint against five NPD police officers, two McLean County prosecutors, and two municipalities. He alleged three federal claims: (1) that the defendants, acting individually, jointly, and in conspiracy, deprived Beaman of a fair trial by withholding material exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady (individual liability); (2) that the defendants conspired to deprive Beaman of material exculpatory evidence (conspiracy liability); and (3) that the defendants failed to intervene in preventing the violation of his rights (failure to intervene liability). The complaint also included state law claims for malicious prosecution, civil conspiracy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and respondeat superior and indemnification claims against the municipalities. The evidence he claimed was Brady material included not only the Murray evidence, but also the report of Gates’s polygraph test, another suspect’s criminal history, the unsolved nature of the case, and the results of the different time trials. The district court dismissed Beaman’s due process claim against Souk and Reynard on the ground of absolute immunity. Later, Souk and Reynard were voluntarily dismissed from the suit because discovery revealed that all claims against them would be barred by absolute or qualified immunity. The complaint was also dismissed against detectives Hospelhorn and Brown because discovery revealed that they were not involved in the alleged suppresNo. 14-1195 9 sion of evidence. The remaining defendants are detectives Freesmeyer, Warner, and Zayas, and their employer, the Town of Normal. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of these remaining defendants because it found that the federal counts in the complaint failed for a variety of reasons: (1) most of the Brady material was given to the prosecutor, thus discharging the defendants’ individual liability under Brady; (2) Beaman had not provided sufficient evidence of a conspiracy or of failure to intervene liability; (3) some of the undisclosed evidence, including the report on Gates’s polygraph test, was not Brady material; and (4) the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity for their failure to turn over the Murray polygraph test to the prosecution. After dismissing the federal claims against the individual defendants, the district court also dismissed the state law claims against the Town of Normal due to lack of jurisdiction. Beaman now appeals certain aspects of the district court’s decision.