Woodley v. Town of Nantucket

• Decision Date: 17 October 1986
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 81-2766-G.
• Citation: 645 F. Supp. 1365
• Parties: Patrick H. WOODLEY, Plaintiff, v. TOWN OF NANTUCKET et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

645 F. Supp. 1365

Patrick H. WOODLEY, Plaintiff, v. TOWN OF NANTUCKET et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 81-2766-G.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

October 9, 1986.

As Amended October 17, 1986.

Michael C. Donahue, James D. Hanrahan, Seridan, Garrahan and Lander, Framingham, Mass., for plaintiffs.

Robert D. Keefe, Hale & Dorr, Boston, Mass., for defendant Pearson.

Douglas Seaver, Randy Komisar, Gaston Snow & Ely Bartlett, Boston, Mass., for defendant Town of Nantucket.

Douglas Seaver, Gaston Snow & Ely Bartlett, Richard Zisson, Zisson & Veara, Boston, Mass., for defendant Hunter.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDERS ON DEFENDANTS' MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

GARRITY, District Judge.

Plaintiff commenced this action against the Town of Nantucket (the "Town"), its Chief of Police, Paul S. Hunter ("Hunter"), and a member of the Nantucket Police Department, John S. Pearson ("Pearson"), pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983¹ and Massachusetts law, for the arrest of plaintiff, allegedly without probable cause, in connection with a rape occurring in the early morning hours of August 13, 1981. The case comes before the court on the motions for summary judgment submitted by each of the three defendants. After reviewing the briefs and exhibits submitted by the parties, and after hearing oral argument, the court denies the motions.

I. Facts

The apparent victim of the rape, Sheila Saunders, was a summer visitor to Nantucket in 1980 and 1981. During the summer of 1980 she rented a room in plaintiff Woodley's home. He had no further contact with her until the night of August 12, 1981, when he saw her at a cafe in Nantucket. After conversing with her and her friends, Woodley drove them to a local nightspot. Later, Saunders and her friends left the nightclub to walk to another nightspot. While walking with her friends, Saunders was pulled off the road, dragged into the woods and assaulted.

Officer Pearson and Officer Judy Chambers were sent by the Nantucket Police Department dispatcher to the hospital to interview the victim. She described her assailant as "about five feet seven inches, slim build, dark straight hair, dark skin, definitely white but with a good dark tan, medium-sized moustache, between 20 to 25 years old, with a Yankee accent, wearing a baseball cap, blue jeans and a white T-shirt with some kind of logo on it."²

In interviews shortly after the assault, the victim indicated that she may have known her assailant. On August 14, 1981, she assisted County Identification Officer Patterson in making a composite drawing of her assailant. Defendants allege that the drawing bore a striking resemblance to Woodley. At that time Saunders told Pearson that she could not eliminate Woodley as a suspect.

On August 16, Officer Pearson met with the victim and her parents. The parents informed him that Woodley had telephoned Saunders the previous evening. Woodley also had telephoned the Nantucket Police Department twice to inquire about the victim's condition and to offer assistance in the investigation. According to Pearson and Chief Hunter, these inquiries were suspicious because the victim's identity had not yet been released to the public.³

On or about August 15, Captain Rezendes of the Nantucket Police Department received a tip from a local resident named Augie Ramos. Ramos told Rezendes that the victim had rented a room from Woodley the previous summer and had had several disputes with him. Ramos indicated that Woodley was Saunders' assailant. This information was communicated by Rezendes to Officer Pearson and Chief Hunter.

On August 19, nearly a week after the assault, Hunter directed Pearson to question the plaintiff. At that time, the Nantucket Police had no real suspects and, apart from the victim, had not interviewed anyone, including a young black man who was identified specifically by witnesses as having been at the scene of the crime. During the questioning, Woodley stated that he had heard that the victim had been beaten with a brick. According to Pearson, only 3 or 4 officers knew at that time that a brick had been used in the assault. Also during the interview, Woodley provided Pearson with the name and address of an alibi witness, Mary Coughlin. It is undisputed that neither Pearson nor any other member of the Nantucket police ever contacted Mary Coughlin prior to Woodley's arrest.

After conferring with Chief Hunter, Pearson contacted Woodley to ask if he would take a polygraph test and he agreed. The polygraph examiner, Edward McGrath, concluded, based on an evaluation of the polygraph charts obtained from Woodley, that Woodley's responses to the relevant questions were untruthful. The results of the test were communicated to Hunter and Pearson, and the latter disclosed the results of the test to the victim's father. Not surprisingly, the father communicated this information to his daughter.

Chief Hunter and Pearson then met with Barnstable County Assistant District Attorney O'Neill, who advised the officers that an identification procedure was the next step in the investigation, and advised them to seek the assistance of the state police. O'Neill stated in his deposition that he cautioned both Hunter and Pearson not to proceed any further with identification procedures until the state police got involved in the investigation. Hunter, however, denied in his deposition that such a communication ever occurred.

Thereafter, the District Attorney learned that Officers Pearson and Chambers were planning a trip to South Carolina to interview Saunders. O'Neill contacted Lieutenant Arnold of the state police, who strongly advised against the trip and thought that the victim should be brought to Massachusetts. O'Neill contacted Pearson and told him to cancel the trip. O'Neill also called Hunter and reiterated Lt. Arnold's advice and explained that Pearson's lack of experience and competence threatened the critical pretrial identification procedure. Hunter testified in deposition that O'Neill never called him. Pearson, however, testified that Hunter was fully aware of O'Neill's position on the South Carolina trip but directed him and Chambers to proceed with the trip anyway. Furthermore, Pearson maintains that Hunter told him that the purpose of the trip was to obtain an identification and specifically mentioned Woodley. According to Pearson, he had been asked by Chief Hunter to investigate only one individual and he had no suspects other than Woodley in mind when he travelled to South Carolina.

Pearson and Chambers arrived in South Carolina on August 20. They were informed by Mr. Saunders that he had told his daughter that Woodley had failed the polygraph examination. On August 21, Pearson and Chambers interviewed Saunders. When she was unable to identify her assailant conclusively, Pearson told her that she did not have to be one hundred percent sure, but she had to be sure "beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt." Saunders requested time alone to consider the matter further.

That evening, the officers interviewed the victim again. During the interview, she stated that she was "reasonably sure, had a gut feeling" that her assailant was Woodley. Pearson then told Saunders about the polygraph test, and about what the examiner was able to conclude from its results. Pearson also gave Saunders a photograph of Woodley, saying, "This is Woodley, this is our man," and then compared it to the composite, remarking that they looked the same and did it make her "feel better." Saunders conceded that the resemblance made her feel better.

Immediately after this last meeting with the victim, Pearson called Hunter to report a positive identification. Officer Chambers, however, was of the opinion that Saunders could not identify anyone. Chief Hunter testified in deposition that he was unaware of Chambers' doubts about the identification at the time of Woodley's arrest. Woodley, however, contends that Hunter never bothered to question Officer Chambers about the identification or include her in any of the post-identification interviews. Moreover, the town prosecutor, Robert Mooney, testified in his deposition that after learning from Chambers that Saunders' identification was questionable, he confronted Chief Hunter with this information. Hunter suggested that Mooney speak to Pearson. According to Mooney, Pearson told him that Saunders' identification was "one hundred percent positive" and that Pearson did not even have to show Saunders the photographic lineup because she identified Woodley right away.

After conferring further with Hunter and Pearson, Mooney called District Attorney Rollins. Rollins testified that based on both Mooney's and Pearson's representations about the solidity of the identification, he authorized Pearson to seek a warrant for Woodley's arrest.

Woodley was arrested pursuant to that warrant on August 24. Following the arrest, the victim's attorney contacted O'Neill and Mooney to report that she was withdrawing her identification. Additionally, plaintiff's alibi witness, Mary Coughlin, was interviewed for the first time by Mooney, who concluded that her statements fully corroborated Woodley's story. Subsequently, Rollins entered a nolle prosequi in the case, which stated that "no other evidence other than the identification at this time inculpates the defendant." Plaintiff was released.

Following Woodley's release, an investigation revealed that Officer Pearson had falsified his application for employment with the Nantucket Police Department by listing fictitious degrees from Northeastern University and Harvard Business School. According to the brief submitted by the Town in support of its motion, the Board of Selectmen entrusted the verification of prospective employees' qualifications to the Chief of Police, who, at the time Pearson applied for a position on the police force, was acting chief Captain Rezendes. However, two members of the Board of Selectmen interviewed Pearson and...