James Mcinnis Sr. v. State

• Citation: 638 F.3d 18
• Decision Date: 07 March 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10–1437.,10–1437.
• Parties: James McINNIS Sr., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants,v.State of MAINE, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

638 F.3d 18

James McINNIS Sr., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.State of MAINE, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 10–1437.

United States Court of Appeals,First Circuit.

Heard Jan. 4, 2011.Decided March 7, 2011.

Robert C. Andrews, for appellants.William R. Fisher, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Janet T. Mills, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellees William Deetjen, Craig Andersen, Philip Alexander, Scott Rochefort and Stephen Borst.Cassandra S. Shaffer, with whom Peter T. Marchesi, and Wheeler & Arey, P.A., were on brief, for appellees York County, Kenneth Hatch and Maurice Ouellette.Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, SOUTER, Associate Justice,^* and STAHL, Circuit Judge.SOUTER, Associate Justice.

Plaintiff James McInnis was convicted of both federal and state offenses, and sentenced to a period of probation on the state charge, set to begin at the conclusion of the term of his state incarceration. On January 5, 2007, during what McInnis's probation officer believed to be the probation period, he authorized McInnis's warrantless arrest for violating probation and a warrantless search for drugs suspected to be in his possession. Actually, the probation period had expired before the search and arrest, apparently because the original sentence had been reduced unbeknownst to the state probation department.

This is an appeal from summary judgment in ensuing actions brought by McInnis and the other plaintiffs under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state tort law against the State of Maine, York County and a series of state and county officers and their superiors, who made the warrantless search and arrest. McInnis argues that findings of qualified immunity erroneously deprived him of his right to press his claims of false arrest and illegal search, and he says that the trial court failed to recognize the adequacy of a negative records claim, as well as a genuine fact issue said to affect the application of a statutory limitation on tort liability of a state officer. We affirm.

In 2006, after McInnis was released from his earlier custody on completion of his sentence, he spoke by phone with a state probation officer, Lew Randall, who told McInnis to report to him in accordance with the probation terms. McInnis responded (correctly as it turns out) that he was not on probation at that point and said that he would have his lawyer explain his status to Randall. This was not done, though for his part Randall took no immediate action against McInnis until he got a call from the defendant Kenneth Hatch, a Lincoln County deputy sheriff, who is McInnis's half-brother (and is said to have been the victim of McInnis's state criminal offense).

Hatch said that he had spoken with an informant who had previously given information that had never been subject to question and who was known to be acquainted with McInnis. According to the informant, McInnis and his son had “ripped off” someone of twenty-five pounds of marijuana, which was then in McInnis's possession at the dwelling of the plaintiff Dee McInnis. Randall confirmed (as he believed) that McInnis was on probation. Hatch had his supervisor's approval to pass the information along to other law enforcement officials as was customary, Randall being the first he called. Hatch also called defendant William Deetjen, an officer of the Maine Drug Enforcement Administration. Deetjen contacted Randall, who gave him authority both to arrest McInnis for violating probation and to search for the drugs, in each instance without a warrant, which the standard probation conditions made unnecessary. Deetjen himself knew that a federal judge had recently revoked an order authorizing McInnis's supervised release because he had lied to a federal probation officer, failed to report to him, and possessed marijuana.

When Deetjen and several other defendant state officers went to the McInnis house, McInnis claimed that he was not on probation. Deetjen called Randall, who repeated that he was. The officers then arrested him for violating probation and searched the premises for the stolen marijuana, though finding only some marijuana seeds and drug paraphernalia.¹

It was only after the arrest on January 5, 2007, while McInnis was in custody at the York County jail, that his lawyer spoke with Randall and explained a sentence reduction resulting in a correspondingly earlier conclusion to the probation term. The sentence change had never been entered in the probation department's records (for whatever reason), and once Randall learned the new facts he concluded that McInnis was not on probation and withdrew the “hold” (or arrest and custody) authorization he had earlier given to the law enforcement officers.²

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of McInnis. Cox v. Hainey, 391 F.3d 25, 28–29 (1st Cir.2004) The judgments in favor of the government officers on the ground of qualified immunity rest on the rule that an official is not subject to civil damages under § 1983 if the action complained of did not violate a clearly established right to which a reasonable officer would have understood that the plaintiff was entitled. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 129 S.Ct. 808, 815, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). The issue in this case has nothing to do with the law component of that rule; the general standards of reasonable search and seizure are not in contention, nor is the rule that violating a condition of probation is cause for arrest, or the rule that a condition of probation may dispense with the need for a warrant to arrest or search a probationer.³ See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 356–357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); United States v. Cardona, 903 F.2d 60, 60, 64 (1st Cir.1990); Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873–875, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987).

Thus, liability for McInnis's arrest turns entirely on the fact element of the qualified immunity standard, on whether the arresting officer could reasonably have believed that McInnis was violating probation. As to this, the probation officer's representation was surely sufficient in and of itself, though in this case there was more. Randall confirmed the probation status when Deetjen prudently called him after McInnis denied it, and Deetjen had dealt with Randall for thirty years without any indication of shoddiness that might have...