Bogan v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 06 July 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10–2170.,10–2170.
• Citation: 644 F.3d 563
• Parties: Sharon BOGAN, Plaintiff–Appellant,v.CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

644 F.3d 563

Sharon BOGAN, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 10–2170.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Jan. 20, 2011.Decided July 6, 2011.

Kenneth N. Flaxman (argued), Attorney, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.Sara K. Hornstra (argued), Attorney, City of Chicago Law Department, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.Before RIPPLE and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges, and MURPHY, District Judge.^*RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Sharon Bogan brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in which she claimed that two Chicago police officers, Matthew Breen and William Langley, had violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States when they entered and searched her home without a warrant. The case was tried before a jury, and the jury returned a verdict in the officers' favor. Ms. Bogan now appeals. She maintains that the district court erred in instructing the jury and in rendering certain evidentiary rulings. For the reasons set forth in the following opinion, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

IBACKGROUND

A. Facts

At about 2:30 a.m. on May 9, 2009, Officers Breen and Langley responded to a report of domestic battery at the apartment of Nicole Evans. Evans's eight-year-old son had dialed 911 and stated that his mother was being beaten. Upon arriving at the second floor apartment, the officers knocked on the door and announced their presence; a male voice from inside the apartment yelled, “What the f– – – – do you want?” R.123 at 190. They also heard a woman screaming for help. They followed the sounds of the woman's pleas and located her on the roof of the building.

When they found Evans, she was in a state of partial undress and mentally distraught. She explained that her boyfriend,¹ Antonio Pearson, had been drinking all day with friends. When Evans tried to wake him, Pearson had beaten and choked her. The officers led Evans off the roof into a stairwell; at that point, they observed that she had “[l]acerations, scratch marks around her neck and also bruising and scratch marks on her arms.” R.123 at 239. Evans told the officers that she wanted Pearson arrested. Officers Breen and Langley went back up onto the roof to find a way into the apartment, where they believed Pearson likely had gone and where Evans's children still were.

Through the window, Officer Langley then spotted an African–American male in the bedroom of the apartment. After making eye contact with Officer Langley, the man ran out of the bedroom to the rear of the apartment. The officers entered the apartment through an open window and searched every room in the apartment; while in the apartment, the officers received a flash message informing them that there was a black male on the rear porch of the building.

The officers then proceeded across the hall through an open doorway. Although there was a stairwell to the right, the officers did not believe that Pearson could have escaped down the stairs because other officers had arrived at the scene. Across the hall was a door, which they believed led directly to the porch or a mudroom adjacent to the porch. They tried the handle on the door, but it was locked. Officer Breen then kicked the door once or twice, but it was opened from within by Ms. Bogan.

Ms. Bogan asked the officers for whom they were looking. They responded Evans's boyfriend. Ms. Bogan replied, “That's my son.” R.124 at 18. At the time that Ms. Bogan opened her apartment door, there were between ten and twelve Chicago police officers already in her apartment; they apparently had entered through the back door. Officers Breen and Langley conducted a search of her apartment, but they could not locate Pearson.

B. District Court Proceedings

Ms. Bogan instituted this action; she alleged that Officers Breen and Langley had violated her Fourth Amendment rights by entering and searching her apartment without a warrant.² At trial, Officer Breen answered the following question posed by his counsel:

Q. ... At the time that you're moving through Nicole Evans' apartment, did you believe Antonio Pearson was moving to the rear of the building?

A. Yes.

R.123 at 196. Ms. Bogan's counsel objected to the testimony on the ground that the question whether Ms. Bogan's Fourth Amendment rights were violated is governed by an objective standard; consequently, the officer's subjective beliefs were irrelevant. The district court responded: “It doesn't mean subjective evidence is irrelevant. The objection is overruled.” Id. Following this ruling, Ms. Bogan's counsel did not object to other questions designed to elicit the officers' impressions or understanding of the situation. See id. at 197 (“What did you expect was behind that door?”); id. at 202 (“Was there time to make an effort to secure a warrant at this time? ... Why not?”); R.124 at 8 (“And I believe we left off with the issue of whether you had any reason to believe there was a living quarters behind that door. And what is your memory of that, sir?”). Ms. Bogan's counsel, however, did examine the officers extensively on what they had observed and how reasonable—or unreasonable—their actions might have been on the evening they searched Ms. Bogan's apartment. See R.123 at 210 (“And you didn't have time to get a warrant? ... And you didn't see that person that you were searching for go into the apartment? ... Nobody told you he went into the apartment? ... You just guessed that he's more likely to be in the apartment than down the stairs; is that right?”); id. at 225 (“So you looked through every room in that ... apartment for Antonio; is that right? ... And you did that because you didn't have any reason to believe he had left; isn't that right?”); id. at 234–35 (“You never heard [Pearson] open any doors to get out of the apartment? ... You didn't see any footprints in the hallway between the two apartments? ... Nobody told you that he was in the rear apartment, did they?”).

At the close of evidence, the district court instructed the jury that it was Ms. Bogan's burden to establish that the officers had violated her rights. The court stated:

As a general rule, a police officer must have a search warrant before he may enter a person's home or search a person's home. However, the law establishes certain exceptions to the requirement of a search warrant. One of those exceptions is referred to as the hot pursuit exception.

Under this exception, a police officer may enter a person's home if, under all the circumstances, a reasonable officer would believe that the entry is necessary to prevent the escape of a person who is suspected of a crime and there is insufficient time to obtain a search warrant. The question is what a reasonable officer would believe, not what the particular officers in this case actually believed.

To succeed on their claim in this case as to the particular defendant you're considering, Ms. Bogan must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a reasonable officer in the defendant's position would not have believed that a crime suspect was in Ms. Bogan's home.

R.124 at 90–91.³ After deliberating for just over an hour, the jury returned a verdict for the defendants. The district court later denied Ms. Bogan's motion for judgment as a matter of law and entered judgment for the officers on the jury verdict. Ms. Bogan timely appealed.

IIDISCUSSION

A. Instructional Error

Ms. Bogan first maintains that the district court's instruction on burden of proof constituted reversible error. According to Ms. Bogan, the burden of proof fell on the officers to establish that their actions were justified by exigent circumstances. “We review jury instructions de novo to determine whether, taken as a whole, they correctly and completely informed the jury of the applicable law.” Huff v. Sheahan, 493 F.3d 893, 899 (7th Cir.2007). “We defer to the district court's phrasing of an instruction that accurately states the law; however, we shall reverse when the instructions ‘misstate the law or fail to convey the relevant legal principles in full’ and when those shortcomings confuse or mislead the jury and prejudice the objecting litigant.” Id. (quoting Byrd v. Illinois Dep't of Pub. Health, 423 F.3d 696, 705 (7th Cir.2005)) (additional internal citation omitted).

We have not addressed the precise question raised by this appeal: In a § 1983 warrantless-search action, in which the defendants claim that the search was justified based on exigent circumstances, which party bears the burden of proving the presence or absence of such circumstances? However, we have confronted a related question. In Valance v. Wisel, 110 F.3d 1269 (7th Cir.1997), we addressed the issue of which party in a warrantless-search case bears the burden of establishing the plaintiff's consent—or lack of consent—to the search. In Valance, after recognizing that the circuits were split on the issue of who, in the civil context, bore the burden of proof on this issue, we expressed agreement with the approach taken by the Second Circuit in Ruggiero v. Krzeminski, 928 F.2d 558 (2d Cir.1991). We stated:

In Ruggiero, for example, the Second Circuit observed that although a warrantless search generally is considered presumptively unreasonable, “[t]he operation of this presumption ... cannot serve to place on the defendant the burden of proving that the official action was reasonable.” 928 F.2d at 563. The court concluded that at most, the presumption may require the defendant to produce evidence of consent or of some other recognized exception to the warrant requirement. Id. Yet once the defendant has done so, “the ultimate risk of nonpersuasion must remain squarely on the plaintiff in accordance with established principles governing civil trials.” Id. (citing Fed.R.Evid. 301).

We generally agree with Ruggiero's formulation of the proper allocation of the parties' burdens in a section 1983 action alleging a Fourth Amendment violation.

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