Opinion ID: 6346763
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Qualified Immunity: Franks and Conspiracy

Text: Under the doctrine of qualified immunity, “government officials are not subject to damages liability for the performance of their discretionary functions when their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Brown v. Montoya, 662 F.3d 1152, 1164 (10th Cir. 2011) (quoting Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 268 (1993)). “In resolving a motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity, a court must consider whether the facts that a plaintiff has alleged make out a violation of a constitutional right, and whether the right at issue was clearly established at the time of defendant’s alleged misconduct.” Id. (citation omitted). “We review the district court’s denial of a motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity de novo.” Id. at 1162 (citation omitted). In reviewing a motion to dismiss, “all well-pleaded factual allegations in the . . . complaint are accepted as true and viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.” Id. (alteration in original) (citation omitted). “[I]n a § 1983 action it is ‘particularly important’ that ‘the complaint make clear exactly who is alleged to have done what to whom, to provide each individual with fair notice as to the basis of the claims against him or her, as distinguished from collective allegations against the state.’” Id. at 1163 (citation omitted). 8 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 9
“In Franks, the Supreme Court held that affiants seeking arrest warrants violate the constitution when they knowingly, or with reckless disregard for the truth, include false statements in a supporting affidavit or omit information which, if included, would prevent the warrant from lawfully issuing.” Kapinski v. City of Albuquerque, 964 F.3d 900, 905 (10th Cir. 2020) (citing Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 171 (1978)). Thus, “a Fourth Amendment violation occurs if (1) an officer’s affidavit supporting [an arrest] warrant application contains a reckless misstatement or omission that (2) is material because, but for it, the warrant could not have lawfully issued.” United States v. Herrera, 782 F.3d 571, 573 (10th Cir. 2015) (citing Franks, 438 U.S. at 155-56). Mr. Montoya generally alleges Officers Vigil, Martinez, and Priest coerced him into giving a false confession and Detective Schneider included this materially false information in the arrest-warrant affidavit. Mr. Montoya further claims all four defendants acted knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly in making these statements in the affidavit. The district court concluded these allegations were sufficient to make out a clearly established Franks violation. We agree. Defendants advance two independent arguments on appeal to support their assertion that the district court erred. First, Defendants Vigil, Martinez, and Priest contend the complaint fails to establish their personal participation in the Franks violation because they did not prepare the warrant affidavit. Second, Defendants all argue it was not clearly established in January 2000 that a constitutional violation 9 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 10 occurs where, notwithstanding a Franks violation, an affidavit supports probable cause for another crime not specifically identified in the affidavit—here, accessory. We consider each argument, and as we explain, neither is availing. 1. All Defendants personally participated in the Franks violation. “Personal participation is an essential allegation in a § 1983 claim.” Bennett v. Passic, 545 F.2d 1260, 1262-63 (10th Cir. 1976) (citations omitted). According to defendants, “it is undisputed Defendant Schneider prepared the arrest affidavit and not Defendants Vigil, Martinez, and Priest.” Aplts. Opening Br. at 22. Thus, they maintain they did not personally participate in the Franks violation and are entitled to qualified immunity. The district court rejected this argument, finding “Mr. Montoya alleges Officers Vigil, Martinez, and Priest knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly coerced a false confession from him with the intent that it be used to obtain a warrant for his arrest. . . . These allegations indicate that Defendant Officers personally participated in the procurement of the warrant.” Aplts. App. vol. 5 at 1327. We agree with the district court. Contrary to the officers’ contentions, it is well established “Franks is not limited to false representations made by the affiant himself.” Marin v. King, 720 F. App’x 923, 936 (10th Cir. 2018). As Mr. Montoya maintains on appeal, Franks itself recognized “police could not insulate one officer’s deliberate misstatement merely by relaying it through an officer-affiant personally ignorant of its falsity.” 438 U.S. at 163 n.6. Thus, we “hold the government accountable for statements made not only by the affiant but also for statements made by other government employees which 10 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 11 were deliberately or recklessly false or misleading insofar as such statements were relied upon by the affiant in making the affidavit.” United States v. Kennedy, 131 F.3d 1371, 1376 (10th Cir. 1997) (citations omitted). The notion that the officers who allegedly manufactured the false evidence somehow did not participate in the Franks violation is meritless. Defendants acknowledge the complaint alleges they “coerced a false confession intending its use to obtain an arrest warrant.” Aplts. Reply Br. at 4. But they contend the claim fails because it does not allege they “personally participated in drafting the Affidavit.” Id. In support, Defendants rely on Melton v. Phillips, 875 F.3d 256, 263-64 (5th Cir. 2017), but that case does not advance their cause. Melton recognized that an officer is subject to liability on a Franks claim “if he helped prepare the complaint by providing information for use in it.” Id. (emphasis added) (citation omitted). That is just what Mr. Montoya alleges here. This is not a case where the plaintiff has indiscriminately lodged “collective allegations against the state.” Brown, 662 F.3d at 1163 (citation omitted). Mr. Montoya specifically alleges three detectives coerced a false confession for use in an arrest-warrant affidavit. That readily satisfies Mr. Montoya’s burden to allege their personal participation in the Franks violation.4 4 In their reply, Defendants argue for the first time on appeal that Mr. Montoya’s Franks claim necessarily fails because this Court and the district court held that use of the alleged coerced confession throughout his criminal proceedings did not violate Mr. Montoya’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Aplts. Reply Br. at 5-9. That argument is waived. Burke v. Regaldo, 935 F.3d 960, 1018 n.44 (10th Cir. 2019) (“[A]n appellant generally waives an argument by waiting 11 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 12 2. Defendants’ clearly-established argument is waived. In the district court, Defendants asserted there was no clearly established constitutional violation because “even without Mr. Montoya’s confession there still would have been probable cause to arrest him for acting as an accomplice or accessory.” Aplts. App. vol. 5 at 1329. The district court rejected this argument for two reasons. First, “the well-pleaded allegations contradict that any witness placed Mr. Montoya at Ms. Johnson’s home, and there is no other information in the affidavit that implicates him in any way.” Id. at 1329-30. “Moreover, I am not inclined, under these circumstances, to apply the ‘any-crime-rule’ and consider whether probable cause existed for some other crime not specified in the affidavit.” Id. On appeal, Defendants concede, at least for the sake of argument, that the socalled “any-crime rule” does not apply to this context based on current precedent. That is, when a Franks violation occurs, whether the affidavit establishes probable cause for some other crime is irrelevant—the warrant is invalid and the Fourth Amendment is violated. However, Defendants contend the inapplicability of the anycrime rule was not clearly established in January 2000. Thus, according to Defendants, because the affidavit established probable cause to arrest Mr. Montoya for accessory, the constitutional violation was not clearly established. to make it in a reply brief.”) (citation omitted). It is also meritless. For purposes of a Fourth Amendment Franks violation, it is enough that a false statement was included in the warrant affidavit. Whether use of that same information in other contexts violated the Fifth Amendment is beside the point. 12 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 13 The any-crime rule derives from Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146 (2004). There, the Supreme Court held that a warrantless arrest is lawful even where “the criminal offense for which there is probable cause to arrest is not ‘closely related’ to the offense stated by the arresting officer at the time of arrest.” Id. at 148. In other words, a warrantless arrest is valid so long as the arresting officer had probable cause to arrest the suspect for any crime. Defendants argue that at the time of the alleged Franks violation, whether the any-crime rule extended to warrant-based arrests was not clear. In that hypothetical warrant-based scenario, the any-crime rule would provide that no Fourth Amendment violation occurs if the warrant affidavit, when purged of its recklessly false statements, establishes probable cause for any crime, whether or not it was specified in the affidavit. As applied here, Defendants contend the any-crime rule would negate the alleged Franks violation because, when the allegedly false statements are omitted, the affidavit still established probable cause to arrest Mr. Montoya for the offense of accessory. Whatever the merits of this argument may be, we need not reach them. As Mr. Montoya points out, the district court expressly found that the affidavit did not establish probable cause for accessory, and Defendants fail to challenge this factual finding on appeal. Accordingly, they waived review of this issue.5 5 Mr. Montoya also contends Defendants forfeited the issue by failing to raise it in the district court. Aplee. Br. at 7-9, 16-17; see Hayes v. SkyWest Airlines Inc., 12 F.4th 1186, 1201 (10th Cir. 2021) (“Forfeiture occurs when a party fails to raise a theory, argument, or issue before the district court. . . . We will reverse a district court based on a forfeited theory only under our rigorous plain-error standard . . . .”). In their reply, Defendants maintain they did raise it, and in any event, the issue is 13 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 14 Defendants’ opening brief addresses the district court’s finding only in a twosentence preface to their main argument: “The District Court erred in concluding the facts outlined in the Affidavit did not support arguable probable cause for Plaintiff’s arrest for ‘any crime.’ Below Schneider contended arguable probable cause existed for accessory to a felony due to facts suggestive of Plaintiff’s participation in disposing of the victim’s blood-stained vehicle.” Aplts. Opening Br. at 23. Defendants do not further develop this conclusory assertion or explain why the district court’s probable-cause finding was erroneous. Mr. Montoya argues Defendants “point[] to no evidence within the four corners of the affidavit—or even to information outside the affidavit—that would have established probable cause for murder or any other crime.” Aplee. Br. at 14. Nor do Defendants address “the District Court’s conclusion that ‘the well-pleaded allegations contradict that any witness placed Mr. Montoya at [the victim’s] home, and there is no other information in the affidavit that implicates him in any way.’” Aplee. Br. at 15 (alteration in original) (quoting Aplts. App. vol. 5 at 1329-30). Defendants’ “primary argument depends on [their] assertion that, after the false and misleading statements are removed, the affidavit contains facts that demonstrated preserved because the district court ruled on it—forfeiture “does not apply when the district court explicitly considers and resolves an issue of law on the merits.” Aplts. Reply Br. at 10 (quoting Tesone v. Empire Mktg. Strategies, 942 F.3d 979, 991 (10th Cir. 2019)). We easily reject Defendants’ latter contention because the district court did not address whether the any-crime rule was clearly established at the time, only that it did not apply currently. Whether Defendants sufficiently raised the issue below is a much closer call on which we need not definitively opine because, as we explain, Defendants waived review on appeal for a different reason. 14 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 15 probable cause to arrest [Mr.] Montoya for accessory.” Aplee. Br. at 33. Yet Defendants do “not direct this Court to any place in the affidavit where such information allegedly appears.” Aplee. Br. at 34. Defendants failed to respond to this argument in their reply brief, again focusing solely on whether the inapplicability of the any-crime rule was clearly established in 2000. Failing to engage with this issue is fatal to their claim. As Mr. Montoya correctly points out, that the affidavit established probable cause for some other crime—i.e., accessory—is a foundational premise of Defendants’ any-crime rule argument. The district court specifically found that the valid portions of the affidavit did not implicate Mr. Montoya “in any way.” Aplts. App. vol. 5 at 1329-30 (“[T]he well-pleaded allegations contradict that any witness placed Mr. Montoya at Ms. Johnson’s home, and there is no other information in the affidavit that implicates him in any way.”). Defendants do not meaningfully challenge this finding on appeal and thus have waived the issue. Burke, 935 F.3d at 1014 (“[A]n appellant may waive an issue by inadequately briefing it. . . . ‘Cursory statements, without support analysis and case law’ are inadequate to preserve an issue.” (citation omitted)).6 6 At oral argument, when asked to point out where in the briefing Defendants challenged this finding, counsel said only that it appeared within the “clearly established” analysis. Oral Arg. at 4:32-50. Apart from what we have discussed above, it does not. Indeed, counsel agreed any challenge was not “separately articulated” and that the Defendants’ briefing on appeal merely “assumes it.” Id. at 4:50-55. 15 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 16 In light of the district court’s unchallenged finding that the valid portions of the affidavit do not establish probable cause for accessory, whether the inapplicability of the any-crime rule was clearly established in January 2000 is irrelevant. We need not decide the issue in this appeal.
Defendants further contend, for two reasons, the district court erred by denying their motion to dismiss as to Mr. Montoya’s conspiracy claim: (1) the allegations as to the existence of an agreement are conclusory; and (2) the district court failed to address qualified immunity. Mr. Montoya maintains that his conspiracy allegations are sufficient under Rule 12(b)(6) and that the district court did not err by relying on its previous qualified immunity analysis of the underlying Franks violation.
“To prove a conspiracy under § 1983, a plaintiff must show ‘at least a combination of two or more persons acting in concert and an allegation of a meeting of the minds, an agreement among the defendants, or a general conspiratorial objective.’” Frasier v. Evans, 992 F.3d 1003, 1024 (10th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted). “[A] plaintiff must allege specific facts showing an agreement and concerted action amongst the defendants. ‘Conclusory allegations of conspiracy are insufficient to state a valid § 1983 claim.’” Id. (citation omitted). As we have explained: A plaintiff seeking redress need not prove that each participant in a conspiracy knew the “exact limits of the illegal plan or the identity of all the participants therein.” An express agreement among all the 16 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 17 conspirators is not a necessary element of a civil conspiracy. The participants in the conspiracy must share the general conspiratorial objective, but they need not know all the details of the plan designed to achieve the objective or possess the same motives for desiring the intended conspiratorial result. To demonstrate the existence of a conspiratorial agreement it simply must be shown that there was “a single plan, the essential nature and general scope of which [was] know[n] to each person who is to be held responsible for its consequences.” Id. at 1024-25 (alterations in original) (citation omitted). The essence of Defendants’ argument is that Mr. Montoya’s complaint “does nothing more than use the catchwords of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘conspire,’” and that all the allegations of conspiracy are conclusory. Aplts. Opening Br. at 38. This, according to Defendants, is insufficient. This district court found otherwise. It recognized that “[w]hile cooperating does not necessarily equate to conspiring, Mr. Montoya alleges Defendant Officers did not just jointly interrogate him, they used improper tactics to coerce him and then falsified an affidavit in support of the warrant for his arrest.” Aplts. App. vol. 5 at 1337. Thus, the district court concluded the “allegations—that Defendant Officers ignored the obvious falsity of his statements and that each advanced the clear common goal—nudge Mr. Montoya’s claim ‘across the line from conceivable to plausible.’” Id. (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). We agree with the district court. Mr. Montoya’s allegations of conspiracy are not impressively detailed, and some of the boilerplate language he uses might not hold up in every case. But under 17 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 18 the circumstances here, and in the context of this complaint viewed as a whole, nothing more is needed to allege conspiracy under § 1983. The factual allegations underlying the Franks violation are clear—Defendants Vigil, Martinez, and Priest elicited a false confession for use in an affidavit prepared by Defendant Schneider in violation of Franks. From this, it is reasonable to infer all four DPD Defendants implicitly agreed to use false information supporting a warrant to arrest Mr. Montoya. Again, this is not a case where a plaintiff indiscriminately alleged “collective allegations against the state.” Brown, 662 F.3d at 1163 (citation omitted). Nor was it a rapidly evolving situation that might make a conspiracy claim implausible. See Shimomura v. Carlson, 811 F.3d 349, 360 (10th Cir. 2015) (“[T]he alleged agreement could not plausibly have preceded [the] arrest. The video reflects the incident, which unfolded only a few seconds before [the arrest].”). Thus, we agree with the district court that Mr. Montoya plausibly alleged a common conspiratorial objective. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. 2. Defendants’ qualified-immunity argument is waived. Defendants fault the district court for failing to engage in separate qualified immunity analyses for conspiracy and the underlying Franks violation. However, as Mr. Montoya observes, Defendants made no conspiracy-specific qualified immunity arguments in their briefing below—they made only a general assertion that their qualified immunity defense applied to all claims. And on appeal, they fail to explain how the qualified immunity analysis should be any different for conspiracy than it is for the underlying Franks violation. They do not explain how the district court’s 18 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 19 analysis was erroneous. We therefore reject their unsupported assertion. See Burke, 935 F.3d at 1014. II. We decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction over Defendants’ Heck claim. “In Heck, 512 U.S. at 480-87, the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff could not bring a civil-rights claim for damages under § 1983 based on actions whose unlawfulness would render an existing criminal conviction invalid.” Havens v. Johnson, 783 F.3d 776, 782 (10th Cir. 2015). Defendants contend Mr. Montoya’s claims are barred by Heck because his accessory conviction has not been dismissed and his claims are an impermissible collateral attack on that conviction. As threshold matter, Defendants acknowledge the Heck issue is not independently appealable—they ask this Court to exercise pendent jurisdiction. Mr. Montoya asserts that pendent jurisdiction is inappropriate because the Heck issue is not inextricably intertwined with the qualified immunity issues. We agree and decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction. This Court has “discretion to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction ‘where the otherwise nonappealable decision is “inextricably intertwined” with the appealable decision, or where review of the nonappealable decision is “necessary to ensure meaningful review” of the appealable one.’” Estate of Ceballos v. Husk, 919 F.3d 1204, 1220-21 (10th Cir. 2019) (citation omitted). “[A] pendent appellate claim can be regarded as inextricably intertwined with a properly reviewable claim on collateral appeal only if the pendent claim is coterminous with, or subsumed in, the claim before the court on interlocutory appeal—that is, when the appellate resolution of the 19 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 20 collateral appeal necessarily resolves the pendent claim as well.” Id. (alterations in original) (citation omitted). Because “the exercise of pendent appellate jurisdiction is generally disfavored[,] . . . [w]e exercise this discretionary authority sparingly.” Id. (alterations in original) (citation omitted). First, Defendants argue the Heck issue is inextricably intertwined with qualified immunity. If we agreed that Heck barred Mr. Montoya’s claims, Defendants insist, then it would obviate the need to resolve the qualified immunity issues. However, that an alternative ground for dismissal is potentially dispositive does not mean that, for purposes of pendent appellate jurisdiction, it is inextricably intertwined with the appealable decision. The pendent claim is inextricably intertwined when “appellate resolution of the collateral appeal necessarily resolves the pendent claim as well,” id. (citation omitted)—not the other way around. Alternatively, Defendants argue the qualified immunity issue and the Heck issue are coterminous because both require an inquiry into whether there was probable cause. According to Defendants, probable cause is relevant to the constitutional violation prong of qualified immunity, and in the Heck analysis, the alleged lack of probable cause is “evidence that Plaintiff is directly challenging the validity of the conviction.” Aplts. Opening Br. at 42. At most, the common probablecause inquiry just shows there is some potential overlap in the analysis. That is not enough. We have previously recognized the distinctions between qualified immunity and the Heck doctrine: 20 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 21 Qualified immunity and Heck are analytically distinct doctrines: qualified immunity asks whether a defendant violated a constitutional or statutory right that was clearly established; Heck evaluates whether a favorable judgment on a prisoner’s § 1983 claim “would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” The Heck analysis does not bear on the qualified immunity inquiry, and because Heck issues are effectively reviewable on appeal while the denial of qualified immunity is not, courts generally decline to exercise jurisdiction over Heck issues raised on interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity. Sayed v. Virginia, 744 F. App’x 542, 547-49 (10th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted) (quoting Heck, 512 U.S. at 487 (1994)) (citing Cunningham v. Gates, 229 F.3d 1271, 1285 (9th Cir. 2000) (“The Heck issue is not ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the qualified immunity issues properly before us on interlocutory appeal, nor is it necessary to decide the issue to ensure meaningful review of the defendants’ qualified immunity claims.”)). Sayed is not binding precedent, but we find its reasoning persuasive here.7 Defendants have cited no contrary authority where a court found qualified immunity and Heck to be inextricably intertwined. As in Sayed, “we need not consider the Heck issue to determine whether the allegations in the [second] amended complaint state a violation of [the plaintiff’s] clearly established rights.” Id. at 548 (citation omitted). Simply put, “nothing about the Heck inquiry is necessary to resolve qualified immunity.” Id. We decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction over Defendants’ Heck claim. 7 See 10th Cir. R. 32.1 (“Unpublished decisions are not precedential, but may be cited for their persuasive value.”); see also Fed. R. App. P. 32.1. 21 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 22