Goldstein v. City of Long Beach, 06-55537.
| Decision Date | 28 March 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. 06-55537.,06-55537. |
| Citation | 481 F.3d 1170 |
| Parties | Thomas Lee GOLDSTEIN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF LONG BEACH; County of Los Angeles; John Henry Miller; William Collete; Logan Wren; and William MacLyman, Defendants, and John Van De Kamp and Curt Livesay, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Steven J. Renick, Manning & Marder, Kass, Ellrod, Ramirez LLP, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendants-appellants.
Ronald O. Kaye, David S. McLane, Marilyn E. Bednarski, Kaye, McLane & Bednarski, LLP, Pasadena, CA, for the plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; A. Howard Matz, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV 04-09692-AHM.
Before REINHARDT and BEEZER, Circuit Judges, and THELTON E. HENDERSON,* District Judge.
In this case, we are asked to determine whether an elected district attorney and his chief deputy are entitled to absolute immunity from suit based on allegations that they failed to develop policies and procedures, and failed to adequately train and supervise their subordinates, to fulfill their constitutional obligation of ensuring that information regarding jailhouse informants was shared among prosecutors in their office. See Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154, 92 S.Ct. 763, 31 L.Ed.2d 104 (1972). For the reasons discussed in this opinion, we hold that they are not, and we therefore affirm the opinion of the district court.
After serving twenty-four years in prison, Plaintiff-Appellee Thomas Lee Goldstein was released on April 2, 2004, following this Court's affirmance of the district court's order granting Goldstein's petition for habeas relief. Goldstein has now filed a complaint seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 based on his wrongful conviction for murder. Although he has sued several individuals and entities, including the City of Long Beach, the County of Los Angeles, and four officers of the Long Beach Police Department, only his claims against Defendants-Appellants John Van De Kamp and Curt Livesay are at issue in this appeal.1 Van De Kamp was the Los Angeles County District Attorney at the time Goldstein was prosecuted and convicted, and Livesay was his chief deputy.
The claims relevant to this appeal stem from the testimony at Goldstein's 1980 criminal trial of Edward Floyd Fink, a jailhouse informant. Fink testified that Goldstein confessed the murder to him while both were being detained in the Long Beach City Jail. Goldstein alleges that this testimony was false, as was Fink's testimony that he was not receiving any benefits for testifying against Goldstein and had never received any benefits for assisting law enforcement in the past. Fink had, in fact, been acting as an informant for the Long Beach Police Department for several years and had received multiple reduced sentences in return. Although other deputy district attorneys in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office were aware of the benefits provided to Fink in exchange for his testimony against Goldstein, this critical impeachment evidence was never shared with the deputy district attorneys prosecuting Goldstein's case, allegedly because no system of sharing such information existed in the District Attorney's Office at the time and because deputy district attorneys were not adequately trained or supervised to share such information. As a result, evidence that could have been used to impeach Fink was not shared with Goldstein's defense counsel, in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963).
Several years prior to Goldstein's arrest and conviction, the Supreme Court explained that prosecutors' offices have a constitutional obligation to establish "procedures and regulations . . . to insure communication of all relevant information on each case [including promises made to informants in exchange for testimony in that case] to every lawyer who deals with it." Giglio, 405 U.S. at 154, 92 S.Ct. 763. Thus, Goldstein alleges that Van De Kamp and Livesay are liable under § 1983 because, as administrators of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, they violated his constitutional rights by purposefully or with deliberate indifference failing to create a system that would satisfy this obligation. Goldstein further alleges that Van De Kamp and Livesay violated his constitutional rights by failing to adequately train and supervise deputy district attorneys to ensure that they shared information regarding jailhouse informants with their colleagues.
Van De Kamp and Livesay sought dismissal of the claims against them, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), based on an assertion of absolute prosecutorial immunity. The district court denied their motion on March 8, 2006, finding that Van De Kamp and Livesay's alleged conduct was administrative rather than prosecutorial and, therefore, not entitled to the protections of absolute immunity. Van De Kamp and Livesay filed a timely notice of interlocutory appeal on April 5, 2006.
Although we do not generally have jurisdiction over interlocutory appeals of denials of motions to dismiss, we do have jurisdiction over such appeals where the district court denied a claim of absolute immunity. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). Such denials are immediately appealable because "the essence of absolute immunity is its possessor's entitlement not to have to answer for his conduct in a civil damages action," an entitlement that "is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial." Id. at 525-26, 105 S.Ct. 2806.
Whether a public official is entitled to absolute immunity is a question of law that is reviewed de novo. Botello v. Gammick, 413 F.3d 971, 975 (9th Cir.2005), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 1419, 164 L.Ed.2d 116 (2006). Because this appeal stems from a ruling on a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, we assume all factual allegations in the complaint to be true. Id.
In addition, "[t]o decide whether absolute immunity applies, we assume without deciding that [Goldstein] has alleged a deprivation of a constitutional right under § 1983." Genzler v. Longanbach, 410 F.3d 630, 643-44 (9th Cir.2005), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 737, 163 L.Ed.2d 570 (2005) (citing Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 261, 113 S.Ct. 2606, 125 L.Ed.2d 209 (1993)). Whether the alleged conduct is sufficient to state a claim for liability under § 1983 is therefore not before the Court at this time.
Courts have recognized two types of immunity from suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: qualified immunity and absolute immunity. Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 268, 113 S.Ct. 2606, 125 L.Ed.2d 209 (1993). Only absolute immunity is at issue in this appeal, as Van De Kamp and Livesay failed to make an alternative argument in the district court that the claims against them should be dismissed based on qualified immunity.
As its name implies, absolute immunity is an absolute bar to liability. Qualified immunity, on the other hand, shields officials from suits for damages only when their alleged conduct either does not violate a constitutional right or violates a constitutional right that was not "clearly established," meaning that a reasonable person in the official's position would not have known "his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201-02, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001).
"The presumption is that qualified rather than absolute immunity is sufficient to protect government officials in the exercise of their duties." Burns v. Reed, 500 U.S. 478, 486-87, 111 S.Ct. 1934, 114 L.Ed.2d 547 (1991). The official seeking absolute immunity therefore bears the burden of demonstrating that it is warranted, and the Supreme Court has been "quite sparing in its recognition of claims to absolute official immunity." Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 224, 108 S.Ct. 538, 98 L.Ed.2d 555 (1988).
A prosecutor is entitled to absolute immunity under § 1983 for conduct that is "intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process," Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430, 96 S.Ct. 984, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976), and "occur[s] in the course of his [or her] role as an advocate for the State," Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273, 113 S.Ct. 2606. However, conduct is not shielded by absolute immunity simply because it is performed by a prosecutor. Id. To the contrary, a prosecutor is entitled only to qualified immunity "if he or she is performing investigatory or administrative functions, or is essentially functioning as a police officer or detective." Broam v. Bogan, 320 F.3d 1023, 1028 (9th Cir.2003) (citing Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273, 113 S.Ct. 2606). Thus, when determining whether absolute immunity applies, courts must examine "the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it." Forrester, 484 U.S. at 229, 108 S.Ct. 538.
Applying this functional analysis, the Supreme Court has held that prosecutors are absolutely immune from § 1983 liability for decisions to initiate a particular prosecution, to present knowingly false testimony at trial, and to suppress exculpatory evidence. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 431 & n. 34, 96 S.Ct. 984. Prosecutors also enjoy absolute immunity for decisions not to prosecute particular cases, Roe v. City & County of San Francisco, 109 F.3d 578, 583-84 (9th Cir.1997), and for gathering evidence to present to the trier of fact, as opposed to gathering evidence to determine whether probable cause exists to arrest, Broam, 320 F.3d at 1033.
On the other hand, prosecutors do not have absolute immunity "for advising police officers during the investigative phase of a criminal case, performing acts which are generally considered functions of the police,...
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