Fields v. Wharrie

• Decision Date: 28 February 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–2035.,11–2035.
• Citation: 672 F.3d 505
• Parties: Nathson FIELDS, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Larry WHARRIE and David Kelley, Defendants–Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

672 F.3d 505

Nathson FIELDS, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Larry WHARRIE and David Kelley, Defendants–Appellants.

No. 11–2035.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Dec. 6, 2011.Decided Feb. 28, 2012.

Molly E. Armour, Attorney, Law Office of Molly Armour, Leonard Goodman (argued), H. Candace Gorman, Attorneys, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Stephen L. Garcia (argued), Attorney, Office of the Cook County State's Attorney, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellants.

Before POSNER, FLAUM, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

Nathson Fields was wrongly convicted of two murders. Twenty-five years after his ordeal began, he was exonerated, and he presently seeks money damages from those state officials he holds responsible for his conviction. Among others, he names Cook County, Illinois Assistant States Attorneys (“ASA”) Larry Wharrie and David Kelley, alleging that they induced false testimony during his trial and subsequent retrial, suppressed the compromised nature of this testimony and its acquisition from him, and denied him due process.

Wharrie and Kelley raise an interlocutory appeal, challenging that the district court improperly refused them absolute immunity from Nathson Fields' claims against them under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. They also appeal the district court's determination that it enjoyed supplemental jurisdiction over Fields' state-law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367. They contend that Illinois sovereign immunity law precludes federal jurisdiction, and only the Illinois Court of Claims may hear Fields' state-law claims.

We reverse the district court in part and find (1) that Wharrie is entitled to absolute immunity for his alleged solicitation of false testimony from Earl Hawkins after Fields' original trial, as well as for his alleged suppression of its falsity; and (2) that Fields failed to state a claim against Kelley with respect to his alleged coercing Randy Langston's testimony. We affirm the district court's holding that it has jurisdiction over Fields' state-law claims, but suggest that it consider relinquishing jurisdiction to the state court.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

In 1986, Fields, a member of the El Rukn street gang, was convicted of murdering Talman Hickman and Jerome Smith. He and his co-defendant, Earl Hawkins, were sentenced to death.

Fields alleged that, in preparation for and during his trial, Chicago police officers and ASA Wharrie solicited false testimony against him from a fellow El Rukn gang member, Anthony Sumner, whom they had arrested in connection with separate murders. He maintains that the police coerced Sumner to falsely implicate him in Hickman and Smith's murders, as well as those for which Sumner was arrested. Sumner received a non-prosecution agreement in exchange for his testimony, which, in 1991, he confessed was false.

Fields' appeal was ultimately denied. He then petitioned for post-conviction relief. In 1996, a state-court judge granted him a new trial, but did so on grounds other than Sumner's testimony. The judge ordered the new trial in light of evidence that Fields' co-defendant, Earl Hawkins, bribed the initial trial judge, Thomas Maloney, to assure his own acquittal. Hawkins was convicted and Maloney returned the money when he realized that federal authorities were investigating him; however, the post-conviction state-court judge concluded that Maloney's pervasive corruption denied Fields due process.

In 2009, following his second trial, the jury acquitted Fields. He received a certificate of innocence.

Fields then sued the County of Cook; the City of Chicago and its current and former officials; several Chicago police officers; and ASAs Wharrie and Kelley under Section 1983 and Illinois law. Pursuant to Section 1983, he claimed that the defendants deprived him of due process by engaging in suggestive identification procedures, deliberately suppressing exculpatory evidence, coercing witnesses to provide false evidence, and suborning perjury. He claimed that individual defendants failed to intervene to prevent the violation of his constitutional rights, as well as that individual defendants conspired to frame him for murder. Under Illinois law, he claimed malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, respondeat superior, and indemnification.

According to Fields, Wharrie feared that a retrial would reveal that he coerced Sumner's testimony. Therefore, Fields alleged, in 1987, while his direct appeal was pending, Wharrie solicited false testimony from Earl Hawkins, asking him to identify Fields as the shooter and verify Sumner's account of the murders to conceal his own wrongdoing. In exchange for this revised testimony, as well as testimony against other El Rukn gang members, Wharrie arranged for Hawkins' removal from death row.

The prosecution did not introduce Hawkins' revised account of the murders during Fields' appeal. Indeed, the prosecution did not use Hawkins' testimony until a decade later when, in 1998, ASA Kelley agreed to dismiss untried murder charges against him in exchange for his testimony against Fields at retrial.

Fields raised additional claims against ASA Kelley, claiming that Kelley coerced eyewitness Randy Langston to falsely identify him during his retrial as involved in the murders. During the original trial, Langston testified that Fields was involved, but he later recanted his identifications. He testified during Fields' sentencing that he had been coerced by Chicago police to incriminate Fields. Fields contended that Kelley knew Langston had recanted, but nonetheless proffered his false testimony during retrial.

Fields alleges that at no time did either Wharrie or Kelley disclose to him the tactics they employed to elicit the testimony against him or that the testimony was false.

B. Procedural Background

Wharrie and Kelley moved to dismiss Fields' Third Amended Complaint against them as barred by absolute prosecutorial immunity and by Illinois sovereign immunity law.

The district court denied their motion in part. It rejected absolute prosecutorial immunity for Wharrie from the allegation that he negotiated for Hawkins' false testimony at retrial and suppressed its falsity from Fields. Since Wharrie no longer participated on the team prosecuting Fields during his appeal or at his second trial, nor acted on its behalf when he induced Hawkins' incriminating statements, the court found him entitled only to qualified immunity.

The district court also rejected absolute immunity for Kelley from the allegation that he coerced false statements from Randy Langston at retrial. The court stated that he was entitled to absolute immunity for his use of the statements at trial and for withholding exculpatory evidence on the means by which the statements were obtained, but it concluded that qualified immunity was the proper standard to apply to the act of coercion itself. The court only “assum[ed] that this conduct did not merit the protection of absolute immunity.” It provided no further justification for this assumption.

Finally, the court rejected Wharrie and Kelley's argument that Illinois sovereign immunity law preempted its jurisdiction over Fields' state-law claims against them. The court found that, in this case, the necessary criteria were not satisfied to treat claims against individual officers in their personal capacities as claims against the State. It retained jurisdiction.

Wharrie and Kelley appeal these judgments.

II. Discussion

A district court's denial of a motion to dismiss based on absolute immunity or state sovereign immunity are questions of law that we review de novo. See Richman v. Sheahan, 270 F.3d 430, 434 (7th Cir.2001). We construe the complaint in the light most favorable to Fields, “accepting as true all well-pleaded facts alleged, and drawing all possible inferences in [his] favor.” See Heyde v. Pittenger, 633 F.3d 512, 516 (7th Cir.2011).

A. The Scope of a Prosecutor's Absolute Immunity

A prosecutor is absolutely immune from suit for all actions and decisions undertaken in furtherance of his prosecutorial duties. Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 410, 96 S.Ct. 984, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976). Whether or not an action falls within the scope of his prosecutorial duties depends upon its function. See Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335, 342–43, 129 S.Ct. 855, 172 L.Ed.2d 706 (2009) (citing Burns v. Reed, 500 U.S. 478, 486, 111 S.Ct. 1934, 114 L.Ed.2d 547 (1991)). The analysis hinges on whether the prosecutor is, at the time, acting as an officer of the court, as well as on his action's relatedness to the judicial phase of the criminal process. Imbler, 424 U.S. at 430, 431 n. 33, 96 S.Ct. 984.

Absolute immunity extends beyond an individual prosecutor's decision to indict or try a case. See Van de Kamp, 555 U.S. at 344–48, 129 S.Ct. 855. The protection endeavors to preserve the functioning of the public office, id. at 345, 129 S.Ct. 855 (citing Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118, 125, 118 S.Ct. 502, 139 L.Ed.2d 471 (1997)), and, thus, encompasses any action directly relevant to a prosecutor's ability to conduct a trial. Id. at 344, 129 S.Ct. 855 (distinguishing between administrative actions like training prosecutors on properly disclosing to the defense material evidence, which are shielded as prosecutorial functions, and administrative decisions such as workplace hiring and facilities management, which do not fall within the ambit of absolute immunity).¹

Nevertheless, a prosecutor has job responsibilities that are not prosecutorial in nature. There exists a “difference between [his] advocate's role in evaluating evidence and interviewing witnesses as he prepares for trial ... and [his] detective's role in searching for the clues and corroboration that might give him probable cause to recommend that a suspect be arrested....” Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 273, 113 S.Ct. 2606, 125 L.Ed.2d 209 (1993) (“ Buckley III ”)....