Court Opinion

ID: 9461325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:11:40.695641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:00.316941
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
PER CURIAM:
The City of New York petitions this court for rehearing or in the alternative rehearing en banc of our recent decision in Williams v. City of New York, 362 F.2d 356 (2d Cir. Nov. 1, 1974). The City’s sole contention is that this court erred in its application of New York law. We disagree and therefore deny the petition for rehearing.
In Williams we upheld the district court’s entry of judgment for compensatory damages based on Williams’ malicious prosecution by the City’s agents, *363the police; we reversed, however, the award of punitive damages against the City. In stating the applicable law in New York regarding the effect to be given a conviction ultimately upset, the court quoted Caminito v. City of New York, 25 A.D.2d 848, 849, 269 N.Y.S.2d 826, 829 (2d Dept. 1966), aff’d, 19 N.Y.2d 931, 281 N.Y.S.2d 338, 228 N.E.2d 396 (1967):
[A] conviction establishes prima facie probable cause for the prosecution unless plaintiff [in the malicious prosecution action] can show that the judgment was obtained by fraud, perjury, conspiracy or other undue means.
Williams, supra. Applying this standard to the circumstances in Williams, we concluded that “it was plainly within the jury’s province to find ‘undue means’ in the strong evidence of coercion on the part of the police in obtaining Williams’ confession.” Id. In the petition now before the court, the City argues that this holding is erroneous because Cami-nito v. City of New York, supra, in which the Appellate Division found on summary judgment that probable cause for the prosecution existed, cannot be distinguished on its facts from Williams.
After being taken into custody, Cami-nito was interrogated by five or six officers for five hours, locked in a cell with only a wooden bench on which to recline and, after a seven-hour respite, subjected to continuous questioning anew. In addition, Caminito was confronted with three detectives masquerading as witnesses to the crime. They brought further pressures on him to confess his guilt by identifying him as the driver of the holdup car. Finally, 27 hours after his arrest, Caminito signed a confession.
Despite disclosure at trial of the circumstances surrounding the confession, Caminito was found guilty of first degree murder and the judgment was affirmed. People v. Caminito, 265 App.Div. 960, 38 N.Y.S.2d 1019 (2d Dept. 1942), aff’d sub nom., People v. Bonino, 291 N.Y. 541, 50 N.E.2d 654 (1943). Ultimately, however, under the volun-tariness standards prevailing in 1955, these police practices of 1941 were determined violative of Caminito’s constitutional rights. United States ex rel. Cam-inito v. Murphy, 222 F.2d 698 (2d Cir. 1955). In finding probable cause for Caminito’s prosecution, the court reviewing on appeal Caminito’s malicious prosecution claim refused to correlate this constitutional defect in the prosecution with “undue means.”
The City’s contention that this court was required to do the same in Williams overlooks a critical distinction between the two cases: The allegations of physical brutality to elicit a confession which are abundant in Williams are absent in Caminito. The significance of this distinction rests upon the meaning of “undue means” as that term is used in the context of rebutting a presumption of probable cause to prosecute.
In general, this term addresses not any pressures brought to bear on a criminal defendant to confess his guilt but only those indicative of a belief on the prosecution’s part that the defendant is not guilty. “Undue means” is thus essentially a variety of fraud. More specific support for this construction derives from two sources. One is the principle of construction denominated ejusdem generis: The court in Caminito says that the presumption of probable cause arising from a conviction is rebutted where the conviction is secured by “fraud, perjury, conspiracy or other undue means”; since the three terms preceding “undue means” each involve an intent to perpetrate a fraud upon the court by convicting an innocent person, the final and most generic term of the four would be most sensibly read in a similar vein. Secondly, other courts’ close association of “fraud” and “undue means” in their discussion of possible factors to rebut probable cause counsels this gloss on the Caminito formulation. See, e. g., McElroy v. The Catholic Press Co., 254 Ill. 290, 98 N.E. 527 (1912) ; La Chance v. National Pigments & Chemical Co., 104 S.W.2d 693 *364(St. Louis Ct. of Appeals, Mo.1937); Brooks v. Super Service, Inc., 183 Miss. 833, 185 So. 202 (1938); Moore v. Winfield, 207 N.C. 767, 178 S.E. 605 (1935). This is particularly so in view of the Caminito formulation’s essential duplication of standard hornbook law. See, e. g., 1 T. Cooley, Torts § 118, at 397-98 (4th ed. Haggard ed. 1932); 3'Re-statement of the Law of Torts § 667 (1938).
Under this view of “undue means,” Caminito and Williams manifest crucial differences. The facts before the Appellate Division in Caminito revealed police practices not demonstrative in the court’s view of an intent to frame an innocent man. Thus, the persistent interrogation and mock identifications may be seen as practices not deviant from the prevailing prosecutorial norms and as consistent with an intent to prove a guilty man’s guilt. As the Caminito court stated:
A determination, 14 years after judgment, that plaintiff’s constitutional rights were violated, is insufficient to expose defendant to an action for malicious prosecution for a proceeding which was properly conducted with probable cause under then-existing State law.
25 A.D.2d 848 at 849, 269 N.Y.S.2d 826 at 829 (emphasis added). In Williams, on the other hand, the physical brutality alleged and apparently believed by the jury in the malicious prosecution case was a marked departure from accepted practices and a probable manifestation of fraudulent intent. Not to allow a finding of “undue means” based on these facts would amount to reading all content out of that term. Our concluding statement on this issue in our opinion bears repetition here:
Indeed, if the dubious police practices which secured the present plaintiff’s conviction in 1948 do not qualify as “undue means,” then it is difficult to imagine what might.

Williams, supra.

The petition for rehearing is denied.