Court Opinion

ID: 9404564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-23 15:01:01.350802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:15.195221
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-13015      Document: 25-1         Date Filed: 06/23/2023   Page: 1 of 9

                                                        [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                         In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                           For the Eleventh Circuit

                            ____________________

                                   No. 22-13015
                             Non-Argument Calendar
                            ____________________

       TYE HILMO,
                                                           Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       ERICA JACKSON,
       COURTNEY VINSON,
       in their individual capacities,

                                                       Defendants-Appellees.

                            ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Georgia
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                22-13015

                      D.C. Docket No. 2:20-cv-00292-RWS
                           ____________________

       Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               The terms of Tye Hilmo’s probation required him to
       comply with the law. After he was caught driving under the
       influence, his probation officer, Erica Jackson, obtained a warrant
       for his arrest to revoke his probation. But Jackson missed one key
       detail: Hilmo’s probation had already expired. Rather than
       reviewing the underlying sentencing documents and confirming
       that Hilmo was still on probation, she instead relied on a
       (miscalculated) end date in the Department of Community
       Supervision’s computer system. So Hilmo spent over a month in
       jail for a probation violation even though he was no longer on
       probation.
             Hilmo now sues Jackson for violating 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by
       depriving him of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from
       malicious prosecution.    Jackson, in turn, asserts qualified
       immunity. The district court granted summary judgment for
       Jackson.
              An officer violates the Fourth Amendment when she
       intentionally or recklessly misrepresents a fact necessary to support
       an arrest warrant. Negligent misrepresentation is not enough—
       even if it leads to unlawful detention like it did here. Jackson’s
       claim for qualified immunity turns on whether the line between
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       22-13015               Opinion of the Court                        3

       recklessness and negligence is clearly established. We conclude
       that it is not. All parties—and this Court—agree that Jackson
       violated the Department’s policies and acted carelessly in obtaining
       the warrant for Hilmo’s arrest. But despite this inexcusable
       mistake, Jackson did not violate a clearly established constitutional
       right, so we affirm the grant of summary judgment.
                                        I.
              In 2015, Hilmo pleaded guilty to several misdemeanors—
       including driving under the influence—and received a sentence of
       eight months of incarceration followed by about four years of
       probation. With credit for time served between his arrest and
       sentencing, his probation expired on December 20, 2018. Over six
       months later, Hilmo was arrested again for driving under the
       influence. He quickly posted a bond and was released.
              The day after his second arrest, the Department of
       Community Supervision—which managed Hilmo’s probation—
       received the county jail logs reflecting that Hilmo was arrested.
       Had Hilmo still been on probation, his second arrest would have
       violated the condition that he comply with all criminal laws. The
       community supervision officer assigned to his case was Erica
       Jackson. She had only been assigned to Hilmo’s case for about a
       week at that point and had never met or spoken with him. When
       she saw that Hilmo had been arrested, she checked the
       Department’s electronic “portal” listing each probationer’s
       probation end date, which incorrectly reflected that Hilmo was still
       on probation. So she prepared and signed a probation violation
       arrest warrant application. The Department’s assistant chief
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       4                     Opinion of the Court               22-13015

       reviewed and approved the application—without independent
       investigation—and a judge issued the warrant.
               A week later, Hilmo was arrested on the warrant. He sat in
       jail for over a month until his hearing. When his hearing finally
       came, the Department realized its mistake and released Hilmo.
               How did this happen? When Jackson prepared the warrant
       application, she says she relied only on the probation expiration
       date listed in the Department’s computer system. When Hilmo’s
       probation began, an unknown officer incorrectly calculated his end
       date by not including the required credit for time served. So when
       Jackson attempted to verify that Hilmo was still on probation, she
       saw that his probation expired in January 2020, which would have
       meant that he was still subject to his probation conditions.
              The Department’s policies mandated that Jackson verify
       that the date was correct by reviewing the underlying sentencing
       documents. Despite this, she says that no one informed her she
       needed to independently verify the date. Jackson gives three
       reasons for not checking the sentencing documents. First, she
       believed that the dates were accurate because the state had just
       completed a statewide verification process. Second, she trusted
       that this specific date was accurate because she received the case
       from an officer that had just been promoted. And third, the case
       notes showed that Hilmo’s previous officer had been trying to
       change his status to “unsupervised,” which she understood to
       require a verification of his end date.
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       22-13015                 Opinion of the Court                              5

              The Department’s computer system prompted Jackson to
       confirm that she had verified the computation before she sought
       the warrant. And after submitting the application she wrote in the
       case notes: “Warrant submitted for approval. End date verified.
       Defendant had no credit for time to be put in.” Jackson testified
       that in that statement she was referring to her review of the
       “portal” and prior case notes, not communicating that she
       reviewed the underlying sentencing documents.
             Hilmo sued Jackson for violating 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by
       depriving him of his Fourth Amendment rights. 1 At the close of
       discovery, the district court granted Jackson’s motion for summary
       judgment. Hilmo now appeals, and we affirm.
                                        II.
              We review the district court’s order granting summary
       judgment de novo. Hardigree v. Lofton, 992 F.3d 1216, 1223 (11th
       Cir. 2021). “Summary judgment is appropriate when ‘there is no
       genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled
       to judgment as a matter of law.’” Id. (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)).
       We view the evidence in the light most favorable to Hilmo, the
       nonmoving party. Id.

       1 Hilmo also brought an illegal seizure claim against Community Supervision
       Officer Courtney Vinson and claims for unlawful extension of probation
       against Jackson and Vinson. Hilmo’s appeal is limited to the district court’s
       order granting summary judgment for Jackson on the illegal seizure claim.
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       6                       Opinion of the Court                   22-13015

                                         III.
               Qualified immunity “protects government officials who are
       sued under § 1983 for money damages in their individual
       capacities.” Id. Jackson is entitled to qualified immunity in the
       exercise of her discretionary authority “unless (1) she violated one
       or more constitutional rights and (2) it was clearly established at
       the time that her specific actions did so.” Harris-Billups ex rel. Harris
       v. Anderson, 61 F.4th 1298, 1302 (11th Cir. 2023) (quotations
       omitted and alteration adopted). Hilmo does not dispute that
       Jackson acted within her discretionary authority, so the burden
       shifts to Hilmo to show that qualified immunity is not appropriate.
       Powell v. Snook, 25 F.4th 912, 920 (11th Cir. 2022).
               Jackson can show that a constitutional right was clearly
       established by showing that it is “sufficiently clear that a reasonable
       official would understand that what [she] is doing violates that
       right.” Washington v. Rivera, 939 F.3d 1239, 1245 (11th Cir. 2019)
       (quotation omitted). It is not enough to show that an abstract right
       is clearly established—the inquiry focuses on whether the
       defendant’s particular conduct infringes that right. Id. “If case law,
       in factual terms, has not staked out a bright line, qualified
       immunity almost always protects the defendant.” Powell, 25 F.4th
       at 921. (quotation omitted). The “salient question is whether the
       state of the law at the time of the incident gave the officer fair
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       22-13015                   Opinion of the Court                                7

       warning that [her] conduct was unlawful.” Id. (quotations omitted
       and alteration adopted). 2
              Hilmo’s § 1983 claim is based on malicious prosecution,
       which is “shorthand for a claim of deprivation of liberty pursuant
       to legal process.” Luke v. Gulley, 975 F.3d 1140, 1143 (11th Cir. 2020)
       (quotation omitted). Under this Circuit’s simplified malicious
       prosecution standard, Hilmo “must prove (1) that the defendant
       violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from seizures
       pursuant to legal process and (2) that the criminal proceedings
       against him terminated in his favor.” Id. at 1144. The first element
       requires Hilmo to establish “that the legal process justifying his
       seizure was constitutionally infirm and that his seizure would not
       otherwise be justified without legal process.” Id. (quotations
       omitted).
              Hilmo can prove that the arrest warrant was constitutionally
       infirm if he establishes either that Jackson “should have known that
       [the] application failed to establish probable cause” or that she
       “intentionally or recklessly made misstatements or omissions

       2 Generally, there are three methods to establish that the law was clearly
       established: “(1) by pointing to a materially similar decision of the Supreme
       Court, of this Court, or of the supreme court of the state in which the case
       arose; (2) by establishing that a broader, clearly established principle should
       control the novel facts of the case; or (3) by convincing us that the case is one
       of those rare ones that fits within the exception of conduct which so obviously
       violates the constitution that prior case law is unnecessary.” Powell, 25 F.4th
       at 920 (quotations omitted and alteration adopted). Hilmo’s brief does not
       explain under which method the law is clearly established.
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       8                      Opinion of the Court                22-13015

       necessary to support the warrant.” Williams v. Aguirre, 965 F.3d
       1147, 1165 (11th Cir. 2020). Because the warrant application on its
       face establishes probable cause—even if falsely—Hilmo’s claim
       falls into the latter category, which are known as Franks violations.
       See Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 171 (1978). Franks violations
       are “explicitly limited” to “cases of perjurious or recklessly false
       statements” and “does not apply to negligent misrepresentations.”
       Kelly v. Curtis, 21 F.3d 1544, 1554 (11th Cir. 1994).
              Hilmo has not presented evidence that Jackson intentionally
       misrepresented his probation status. Jackson had only been
       assigned to Hilmo’s case for a week and had never met or spoken
       with him. She has consistently testified that she did not review the
       underlying sentencing documents and opted instead to rely only
       on the date listed in the Department’s computer system, which she
       claims she had reason to trust. To the extent that she
       contemporaneously implied that she did verify the probation end
       date, she has testified that she was referring to her review of the
       date listed in the computer system and the case notes, not the
       underlying sentencing documents. Hilmo has not presented
       evidence contradicting this testimony sufficient to create a genuine
       issue of material fact. Moreover, Jackson testified that this was her
       consistent practice.
             With no intentional misrepresentation, Hilmo needs to
       show that Jackson acted recklessly rather than negligently to
       succeed. But on that front, Jackson is entitled to qualified
       immunity. Almost three decades ago, we noted that “the
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       22-13015                 Opinion of the Court                              9

       difference between ‘reckless’ and merely ‘negligent’ disregard for
       the truth is not crystal clear” because “we have not staked out a
       bright line” rule. Id. That remains true today. Hilmo does not
       point to a subsequent decision of this Court or the Supreme Court
       that clearly establishes that the sort of conduct involved here is
       recklessness rather than negligence. Nor is this a case of obvious
       clarity. If anything, our subsequent case law cuts against a finding
       of recklessness here. See Washington, 939 F.3d at 1246–1249.
       Therefore, a reasonable probation officer might not have known
       that she was acting recklessly, rather than negligently, by not
       verifying Hilmo’s probation end date under these circumstances.
       See Kelly, 21 F.3d at 1554. Jackson is thus entitled to qualified
       immunity. 3
                                     *      *       *
             The district court’s order granting summary judgment for
       Jackson is AFFIRMED.

       3 We do not address the district court’s alternative holding that a probation
       revocation proceeding is not a criminal proceeding for the purposes of a
       malicious prosecution claim.