Williams v. Jaglowski

Decision Date15 October 2001
Docket NumberNo. 00-2600,00-2600
Citation269 F.3d 778
Parties(7th Cir. 2001) Linda Williams, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Allen Jaglowski and Ronald Kelly, Defendants-Appellees
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 97 C 8850--Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Easterbrook, Manion, and Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judges.

Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge.

On April 30, 1996, Essex Adams died in an apparent suicide. Linda Williams, his girlfriend and a suspended Chicago police officer, arrived at the scene shortly after Adams's death. Police at the scene tried to question Williams about the death, but she was evasive and refused to provide even basic identifying information such as her date of birth. Her uncooperative attitude led the police at the scene to arrest her for obstructing a police officer in his official duties. Williams was taken into custody and detained for approximately ten hours. Several weeks later, the charges against Williams were dropped. She then filed this § 1983 action against the officers responsible for her arrest and detention, arguing that they lacked probable cause to arrest her. The district court found that the officers had at least arguable probable cause for the arrest and so were entitled to qualified immunity. The court granted summary judgment for the defendants on this basis, and we affirm.

I

In the early morning hours of April 30, 1996, Williams was on the telephone with Adams when she heard a sound at the other end like a gun being fired, followed by silence. She promptly called 911 and reported the incident, and police officers were dispatched to Adams's apartment. When the officers arrived, Adams's brother Henry let them into the apartment, where the officers discovered that Adams had been shot in the head and that a gun was lying on the floor near him. The officers realized that suicide was one possible explanation, but the position of the gun and Henry Adams's statement that Essex had not been depressed made them suspect foul play.

Shortly after the police arrived, Williams showed up at the apartment. Detective Allen Jaglowski, one of the officers investigating the death, knew that someone named Williams had made the original 911 call. Henry Adams had also informed Jaglowski that Essex had been dating a Chicago police officer named Linda Williams. Based on this information, Jaglowski began an interview of Williams and asked her for her badge and police ID. Williams replied that she did not have these items, but she refused to elaborate. In fact, Williams did not have a badge and ID because she was on suspension pending her discharge, but she did not share that information with Jaglowski. Jaglowski also asked Williams for her address. Initially, she refused to provide it, but she eventually relented and told him. Jaglowski next asked Williams for her date of birth. He did so because he regarded "Linda Williams" as a very common name, and he thought that the police department might need more information to verify Williams's identity and to confirm that she was a police officer. This request was apparently the last straw for Williams: she refused to give her date of birth, stating that she thought it was irrelevant.

After Williams refused to provide her date of birth, Jaglowski brought over a police sergeant, in uniform, who ordered Williams to answer Jaglowski's questions about her identity. Williams refused. Jaglowski consulted with the other officers at the scene and then warned Williams that she would be arrested if she did not provide the information. Williams continued to stonewall, and Jaglowski arrested her on a charge of obstructing a police officer in the performance of his official duties.

When the officers transported Williams to the police station, Lieutenant Ronald Kelly, the watch commander, spoke with Jaglowski and the other officers involved in the investigation concerning the circumstances of Williams's arrest. Lieutenant Kelly questioned Williams and told her that she had to answer the officers' questions concerning her identity. Williams remained adamant that she would not provide her date of birth, although she did give Kelly her star number, which enabled him to confirm that she was a suspended police officer. After consulting with Jaglowski and the other officers, Kelly approved the charges against Williams.

These charges were eventually dropped, but the fact remained that she had been detained for about ten hours before her release. She brought this § 1983 action against Detective Jaglowski and Lieutenant Kelly alleging that they lacked probable cause to arrest her.

II

Whether police officers had probable cause to arrest a suspect and whether they are entitled to qualified immunity for the arrest are closely related questions, although qualified immunity provides the officers with an "additional layer of protection against civil liability" if a reviewing court finds that they did not have probable cause. Hughes v. Meyer, 880 F.2d 967, 970 (7th Cir. 1989). In an unlawful arrest case in which the defendants raise qualified immunity as a defense, this court will "determine if the officer actually had probable cause or, if there was no probable cause, whether a reasonable officer could have mistakenly believed that probable cause existed." Humphrey v. Staszak, 148 F.3d 719, 725 (7th Cir. 1998). If the officers can establish that they had "arguable probable cause" to arrest the plaintiff, then the officers are entitled to qualified immunity, even if a court later determines that they did not actually have probable cause. Id. Accordingly, we will affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment if we find that "a reasonable police officer in the same circumstances and with the same knowledge . . . as the officer in question could have reasonably believed that probable cause existed in light of well-established law." Id.

A.

The defendants' principal argument is that they had at least arguable probable cause to arrest Williams for obstructing a police officer, and thus qualified immunity bars this suit. "Whether an officer is authorized to make an arrest ordinarily depends, in the first instance, on state law." Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 36 (1979). Federal law asks only whether the officers had probable cause to believe that the predicate offense, as the state has defined it, has been committed. Richardson v. Bonds, 860 F.2d 1427, 1432 n.4 (7th Cir. 1988). Here, the relevant state law is 720 ILCS § 5/31-1(a), which defines the offense of obstructing a police officer. It reads in relevant part as follows: "A person who knowingly resists or obstructs the performance by one known to the person to be a peace officer . . . of any authorized act within his official capacity commits a Class A misdemeanor." In interpreting this statute, the Illinois Supreme Court has held that § 5/31-1 "do[es] not proscribe mere argument with a policeman about the validity of an arrest or other police action, but proscribe[s] only some physical act which imposes an obstacle which may impede, hinder, interrupt, prevent or delay the performance of the officer's duties, such as going limp, forcefully resisting arrest or physically aiding a third party to avoid arrest." People v. Raby, 240 N.E.2d 595, 599 (Ill. 1968). The defendants do not point to any physical act Williams committed that would satisfy the requirement set out in Raby. Moreover, as far as the record reveals, Williams did not engage in any physical act that in any way hindered or impeded Detective Jaglowski. Her only offense was stubbornly to refuse to supply Detective Jaglowski with her date of birth, which would not constitute obstruction as the Illinois Supreme Court defined that offense in Raby. Unless the circumstances of this case somehow bring it outside the Raby rule, the defendants did not have even arguable probable cause to arrest Williams for obstructing a police officer.

The defendants argue that Illinois cases since Raby have called the Raby rule into question. We are not so sure. Our own analysis of the cases the defendants cite along with other recent Illinois decisions indicates that the "physical act" requirement is still very much an element of the crime of obstructing a police officer in Illinois. Since Raby, the Illinois Appellate Court has reaffirmed that a "physical act" is an essential element of obstruction under § 5/31-1, and has further clarified that, under Raby, "mere silence" in the face of requests for identifying information, or even supplying false information, is not enough to constitute obstruction. See People v. Ramirez, 502 N.E.2d 1237, 1239-40 (Ill. App. Ct. 1986) (false information); People v. Weathington, 394 N.E.2d 1059, 1061-62 (Ill. App. Ct. 1979) (mere silence). This court, following those cases, has also recognized that "in Illinois the crime of resisting an officer in the performance of his duty requires physical resistance." Ryan v. County of DuPage, 45 F.3d 1090, 1093 (7th Cir. 1995).

The cases that the defendants claim call the Raby holding into question have been distinguished by the Illinois courts. Two involve a defendant refusing to identify himself or giving false information to officers attempting to serve process on the defendant. People v. Meister, 682 N.E.2d 306, 309 (Ill. App. Ct. 1997); Migliore v. County of Winnebago, 321 N.E.2d 476, 479 (Ill. App. Ct. 1974). The Illinois courts have been clear that these cases involve concerns unique to the service of process context and do not apply to police investigations. See, e.g., Weathington, 394 N.E.2d at 1061 (distinguishing Migliore on this basis). The final case on which the defendants rely, People v. Gibbs, 253 N.E.2d 117, 119-20 (Ill. App. Ct. 1969), involved a defendant who interrupted an encounter between police and third ...

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