Court Opinion

ID: 9474237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:51:41.429387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:58.647972
License: Public Domain

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur specially in the Court’s decision. This Court does not have occasion to pass upon the simple truth or untruth of the allegations on which Sergeant McKinley was fired. Our duty, as aptly noted in the majority opinion, is to review whether there was sufficient support in the trial court record to justify finding (a) a connection between McKinley’s termination and his assertion of a constitutional right and (b) “actual malice” on the part of the may- or. I agree with the majority’s conclusion as to both of these critical issues. However, I, for one, am convinced that Baden approved the filing of charges against Sergeant McKinley on very flimsy evidence. Three of the four charges against him were essentially abandoned by the city at the Civil Service Commission level as having virtually no support. The most serious and damaging charge found its substantiation only in the statements of an unfortunate young girl characterized by the Greenwell Springs Hospital psychiatrist responsible for her case as smart, self-destructive, manipulative, promiscuous, angry, hostile, and possibly vengeful due to her inability to adjust to adolescence and her overweening desire to be adopted. Mayor Baden conceded that he did not know about her personality problems when he approved the charge that McKinley had lewd and lascivious relations with Zator. Baden did not know that only a few months before the January runaway episode, Zator has been hanging around in Pineville, homeless, and McKinley and his wife had let her spend a day at their house. They became sympathetic with her to the point of inquiring about her background through a relative and social caseworker, with a view toward adoption. They rejected this possibility be*1023cause of various antisocial characteristics Zator displayed even on short association. Zator was at that time delivered back to Greenwell. In January, according to one woman with whom Zator had temporarily stayed upon returning to Pineville. Zator stated that if any of the local police officers arrested her, she would “do anything to get them in trouble.” As she was arrested on January 21, Zator attacked McKinley, yelling at him, “I’ll get you, McKinley.” The mayor knew none of these things when he approved the institution of charges against McKinley, because no thorough investigation had been made.1 Mayor Baden may not have acted with malice against McKinley, but he certainly failed to exhaust the investigative possibilities prior to landing a potent blow to McKinley’s reputation, family life and professional standing in this small community.

. As noted in the majority opinion, the Pineville Civil Service Commission split their votes on the persuasiveness of the charges, and the Louisiana State Court, reviewing the dismissal only four months after it occurred, found that McKinley could not be dismissed solely based on the "questionable, uncorroborated testimony [of Zator] that has been contradicted and impeached in several respects."