Guilloty Perez v. Pierluisi

• Decision Date: 07 August 2003
• Docket Number: No. 00-1857.,00-1857.
• Citation: 339 F.3d 43
• Parties: Amilcar GUILLOTY PEREZ, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Pedro PIERLUISI, Lydia Morales; Domingo Alvarez and Armando Sanchez, Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

339 F.3d 43

Amilcar GUILLOTY PEREZ, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Pedro PIERLUISI, Lydia Morales; Domingo Alvarez and Armando Sanchez, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 00-1857.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 4, 2003.

Decided August 7, 2003.

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Irma R. Valldejuli for appellant.

Roberto Márquez-Sanchez, with whom Law Offices of Benjamin Acosta, Jr., was on brief, for appellees Pierluisi and Morales.

Leticia Casulduc Rabell, Assistant Solicitor General, with whom Roberto J. Sanchez Ramos, Solicitor General, and Vanessa Lugo Flores, Deputy Solicitor General, were on brief, for appellees Alvarez and Sanchez.

Before TORRUELLA, SELYA and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Amilcar Guilloty Perez ("Guilloty"), an agent in the Special Investigation Bureau of the Puerto Rico Department of Justice, brought suit against four higher-ranking officials in the Department of Justice alleging that they retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. After an eight-day jury trial the district court granted the defendants' motions for judgment as a matter of law under Fed. R.Civ.P. 50. Guilloty now appeals, arguing that he presented sufficient evidence for the case to go to the jury. We agree with the district court that no reasonable jury could have rejected the defense of the government officials that they would have given Guilloty negative evaluations and extended his probationary period even in the absence of his protected conduct.

I.

Guilloty brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2002), arguing that certain Department of Justice officials retaliated against him after he reported instances of alleged corruption and improper handling of investigations within the Special Investigation Bureau ("SIB"). Before we reach the question of whether Guilloty adduced sufficient evidence of protected activity and subsequent retaliation, we will summarize the relevant evidence produced during the eight-day trial.

A. The Parties

Guilloty has been an agent with the Department of Justice since February 1994. After completing his training in May 1994, Guilloty was assigned to the Organized Crime Investigation Division of the Special Investigation Bureau, working out of the Department's Ponce district office. Defendant-appellee Armando Sanchez was Guilloty's immediate supervisor in the Ponce office from May 1994 until Guilloty was transferred to a different office in October 1996. Defendant-appellee Domingo Alvarez was the director of the Organized Crime Investigation Division from July 1994 until December 1996, and was Sanchez's supervisor during that time. Defendant-appellee Lydia Morales was the Director of the Special Investigation Bureau from July 1994 through December 1996, and served as Alvarez's supervisor. Pedro Pierluisi was the Secretary of Justice during the relevant time period until December 1995. Among his numerous other duties, he served as Morales's supervisor.¹

B. Guilloty's Charges

Guilloty complained about three incidents involving the conduct of his supervisor Sanchez and other agents in the Ponce district office. The first incident and complaint related to a botched drug importation investigation. In May 1995, Guilloty went to see Director Alvarez to report that he had received information from an informant in August 1994 that a corrupt police officer (not one of the defendants) was providing protection for drug shipments.² Guilloty told Alvarez that he had passed this information on to his supervisor Sanchez, and had also told Sanchez that United States Customs agents were investigating the same importation and cover-up and were interested in collaborating with the Puerto Rican agents on this investigation. Guilloty told Alvarez that while he made a number of reports between August 1994 and May 1995 and repeatedly asked Sanchez if he could share his information with the federal agents working on the case, Sanchez refused to act on the reports or make a final decision regarding agency cooperation. Eventually, Guilloty passed on the results of his investigation to the federal officers, and they arrested the corrupt police officer and seized a shipment of drugs in May 1995. Guilloty went to Alvarez in May 1995 to complain about Sanchez's failure to fully authorize investigation of this drug shipment and cover-up after Guilloty read in the newspaper about the arrests by the federal officers.

In August 1995, a few months after his meeting with Alvarez and after seeing no signs of an investigation, Guilloty met with SIB Director Morales and made the same charges against his supervisor, Sanchez. Morales told him she would order an internal investigation of the incident, but Guilloty was never interviewed as part of such an investigation, and Morales was never asked at trial whether any such investigation occurred.

At this August 1995 meeting with SIB director Morales, Guilloty informed her of his suspicions that Ponce district office agents (including Sanchez) were receiving illegal gifts from the owner of a local stable that Guilloty also suspected of being involved in illegal drug importation. Guilloty had accompanied two agents to the stable where they received what he believed to be gifts of hay. During this visit, his fellow agents told him that he could obtain a horse from the owner of the stable, and that there was a horse waiting there for Sanchez as well. Director Morales did not act on his information. Morales testified at trial that Guilloty never told her about his suspicions regarding bribes.

Finally, Guilloty blew the whistle on a fellow agent who allegedly made a false statement in an affidavit to support the seizure of an automobile. In January 1995, a small group of Ponce district agents, including Guilloty, executed an arrest warrant for a suspect. One of the other agents involved in the arrest, Maximino Rivera Laporte, filed a sworn statement to support the seizure of the suspect's car. In that statement, he swore that the suspect was observed smoking marijuana in his car before his arrest. Four months later, Guilloty became aware of the contents of this sworn statement, and informed the agent in charge of the case, Una Sepulveda, that the contents of the sworn statement were false — the suspect was not smoking marijuana in his car before his arrest. At this same time, Sepulveda and Guilloty also informed Sanchez of the false statements. Sanchez tried to convince Guilloty to keep this incident quiet, offering him a transfer he had asked for previously and other benefits. Instead, Guilloty reported the incident to Director Alvarez when he met with him in May 1995. Guilloty then reported the situation to Director Morales at the August 1995 meeting.

These incidents of alleged corruption and questionable police conduct — the botched drug investigation, the gifts from the stable, and the false statement and the bribe to keep it quiet — occurred over an eleven-month period between June 1994 and April 1995, but Guilloty first went to Director Alvarez in May 1995, and then to Director Morales in August 1995 to report his suspicions. Guilloty never met personally with Secretary Pierluisi. In November 1996, the local newspaper El Vocero published a series of articles discussing alleged corruption within the SIB, citing an inside source. The parties do not dispute that Guilloty was the inside source for these articles.

C. Guilloty's Evaluations

At trial, the defendants and their witnesses testified that Guilloty was under-performing as an agent with the SIB. In September 1994, only three months after Guilloty began working with the SIB, Sanchez, the supervisor of the SIB in the Ponce district office, sent a memorandum to Director Alvarez detailing a number of complaints raised by Guilloty's fellow agents. These agents described Guilloty's inappropriate questioning of confidential informants and otherwise questionable conduct while in the community. Sanchez stated that he believed Guilloty could be endangering his fellow agents by his conduct. Director Alvarez forwarded this memo to Director Morales, who instructed Alvarez to acquire "data" on Guilloty, including information on his history of conduct with the SIB. Alvarez and Morales met to discuss the problems with Guilloty.

In March 1995, Sanchez sent another memorandum to Director Alvarez describing more recent problems Guilloty was experiencing on the job. Specifically, Sanchez explained that Guilloty had recently disrupted a nighttime surveillance of suspected criminal behavior when he brought, and used, a flash camera to photograph the individuals under surveillance. According to Sanchez's memo, the subjects of the surveillance quickly dispersed after seeing the flash, and the investigation was scrapped. By the end of May, Sanchez had sent Alvarez three additional memos outlining problems he was having with Guilloty. Sometime before May 1995, Sanchez's memos were given to Juan Reyes, an SIB agent from a different district office, so that he could conduct an independent investigation of the charges listed therein. In August 1995, Reyes reported that the incidents described in the memos could be substantiated, and he recommended that the charges against Guilloty be referred to the Justice Department's Inspector General.

During this time, Guilloty was still in his probationary period as an agent and subject to regular evaluations.³ His first evaluation, covering April 1994 to June 1994, was generally negative, but his next three evaluations, covering three quarters from July 1994 to March 1995, were generally positive. Guilloty's final two evaluations, delivered to him in November 1995 and January 1996, were highly critical, revealing negative conclusions in nearly all categories listed.⁴

Guilloty lodged a formal complaint about these negative evaluations by writing a letter to Alvarez, Morales, and Secretary Pierluisi.⁵ In this letter, along with...