Opinion ID: 8414561
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Crutcher’s Malicious Prosecution Claim

Text: Plaintiff Crutcher sued under state law for malicious prosecution. Crutcher testified that Officer Willingham falsely reported that he had confessed to knowing there was a shotgun in the closet of Colbert’s locked bedroom. According to Crutcher, Officer Willingham lied in the arrest report because Crutcher was unable to provide inside information about a gang. Crutcher described a series of exchanges where Willingham asked for gang intelligence, grew angry when Crutcher was unable to give any tips, and then threatened “if you don’t give me the information I want, [you’re] going down for the rest of your life.” This evidence supports an inference of malice, in my view, and the majority does not disagree. The majority rejects Crutcher’s claim, however, on the theory that even if Officer Willingham did lie, the grand jury indictment broke the chain of causation between his lie and Crutcher’s prosecution. Ante at 655. I disagree, at least for purposes of summary judgment.
First, the “broken chain of causation” cases show that an officer who wrongly arrests is not necessarily liable for the later decision to maliciously prosecute. I agree. The bad actor in a false arrest is pot necessarily the same as in a malicious prosecution. See Reed v. City of Chicago, 77 F.3d 1049, 1053 (7th Cir. 1996) (“[T]he State’s Attorney, not the police, prosecutes a criminal action.”). In this case, however, the claim is based not on a wrongful arrest but on Willing-ham’s alleged lie after the arrest in the arrest report. Crutcher’s claim is that after the officers arrested him, Willingham took malicious steps to ensure his prosecution. This claim fits squarely within the rule the majority cites from Reed: “the chain of causation is broken by an indictment, absent an allegation of pressure or influence exerted by the police officers, or knowing misstatements by the officers to the prosecutor.” Ante at 655, citing Reed, 77 F.3d at 1053 (emphasis altered). There is evidence that Willingham acted to influence the prosecution by lying in the report after Crutcher’s arrest. Second, as a practical matter, the majority never confronts the implausibility of its assumption. According to the majority, the prosecutor never told the grand jury about' Crutcher’s alleged admission in the arrest report. That is, the prosecutor seeking the indictment for knowing possession of a firearm that was found in someone else’s locked bedroom never presented the grand jury with information that Crutcher had confessed he knew the gun was in the home. On this record, Officer Willingham’s arrest report was the prosecutor’s only evidence that Crutcher knew about the gun in Colbert’s bedroom closet. I find it difficult to believe that a competent prosecutor would fail to present this evidence to a grand jury. At the very least, we should not make such an improbable assumption in favor of the defense in reviewing summary judgment for the defense.
Since the majority disposes of Crutch-er’s claim based on the grand jury indictment, it does not reach the defendants’ argument that there was probable cause to prosecute Crutcher for knowing possession of the shotgun. This argument also should fail. Crutcher’s evidence would let a jury-find that he was prosecuted without probable cause. The charges against Crutcher required proof that he knew a firearm was in the home. He claims he did not know about the gun in the closet of Colbert’s locked bedroom. Officer Willingham claims that Crutcher confessed to knowing. Crutcher testified he did not confess as much. This conflicting evidence presents a genuine issue of material fact. Defendants also argue that, even without Officer Willingham’s alleged lie, there was probable cause that Crutcher knew about the gun. They argue that a tipster told Willingham that he saw Crutcher holding the two guns in the home. This tip was then corroborated, defendants claim, when the officers found one specific gun (the shotgun) and the holster for the other gun that the tipster had mentioned. The majority seems to take the tip as undisputed fact, but the tip should not defeat summary judgment for three reasons. First, as the district court noted, there are significant problems with Will-ingham’s testimony on the tipster. “Officer Willingham failed to provide any details about the purported reliability of the informant, despite fervent questioning by Plaintiffs counsel.” The district court thus decided to treat the cooperating individual as an anonymous tipster, and to give the statements less weight. Second, there is a credibility issue as to which came first, the search or the supposed tip. We have no record of the tip before the search. Even Willingham’s arrest report did not mention it. The first mention apparently came in Willingham’s deposition. Thus, based on the record before us, Willingham never claimed there was a tip about seeing Crutcher with the guns until after he was sued. Third, as if those problems were not enough, Crutcher’s testimony conflicts with Willingham’s account of the tip about guns. According to Crutcher, when the officers first arrived they were searching not for guns but for drugs. Crutcher testified that when Willingham entered the home, he used slang for drugs to ask first: ‘Where’s the diesel?” Willingham said he had received a tip “that y’all had some drugs,” and he accused Crutcher of flushing them down the toilet. As the officers went through the house, they further indicated that they were looking for drugs, for instance by searching through the sugar in the kitchen. According to Crutcher, the officers did not mention guns until the end of the search. Viewing the evidence through a summary judgment lens favorable to plaintiffs, then, the police and prosecution had no evidence that Crutcher knew about the shotgun and holster found upstairs in Colbert’s locked bedroom. Crutcher should be able to present his claim for malicious prosecution to a jury.