Hernandez-Cuevas v. Taylor
| Decision Date | 09 September 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 14–2247,14–2247 |
| Parties | Carlos D. Hernandez–Cuevas, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. William Taylor; Steven W. Martz, Defendants, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Pedro R. Vázquez, III , with whom Jose F. Quetglas Jordan and Quetglas Law Offices , Santurce, PR, were on brief, for appellant.
Leah Brownlee Taylor , Trial Attorney, with whom Benjamin C. Mizer , Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Rosa Emilia Rodríguez–Vélez , United States Attorney, Rupa Bhattacharyya , Director, Torts Branch, Civil Division, and Lisa Bhatia , Assistant United States Attorney, were on brief, for appellees.
Before Torruella, Lipez, and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
LIPEZ
, Circuit Judge.
We revisit here appellant Carlos Hernandez–Cuevas's (“Hernandez”) Fourth Amendment claim of malicious prosecution, actionable under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971)
.1 We first encountered Hernandez's case when defendants William Taylor and Steven Martz—both FBI special agents (“SAs”)—brought an interlocutory appeal challenging the district court's denial of qualified immunity. See Hernandez I, 723 F.3d at 96. We affirmed, concluding that the facts alleged in Hernandez's complaint, viewed in the light most favorable to him, stated a plausible claim that Taylor and Martz violated Hernandez's “Fourth Amendment right to be free from seizure but upon probable cause.” Id. at 102, 105
. The case returned to the district court for trial. After Hernandez presented his evidence, the court granted Taylor and Martz's motion for judgment as a matter of law and dismissed the case with prejudice. We agree that a reasonable jury would not have a legally sufficient evidentiary basis to find for Hernandez, and we detect no other legal error in the district court's decision. We therefore affirm.
I—a challenge to the district court's denial of qualified immunity—we recounted the facts as presented in Hernandez's complaint and the documents it incorporated. 723 F.3d at 94. Here, on appeal from the district court's judgment as a matter of law, we recount the facts based on “the evidence and reasonable inferences drawn from the evidence,” in the light most favorable to Hernandez, the nonmoving party.2
Malone v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 610 F.3d 16, 20 (1st Cir. 2010) (quoting Espada v. Lugo, 312 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 2002) ); see also J.R. v. Gloria, 593 F.3d 73, 76 (1st Cir. 2010).
In 2003, the FBI began a multi-year investigation into an international drug and money laundering scheme that spanned New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. Agents from FBI San Juan and FBI Newark—including SAs Taylor and Martz—participated in the investigation, known as “Para Cash.” Through the course of the investigation, SAs Taylor and Martz, along with SA Luis Rodriguez, worked with a confidential informant (“informant”) to infiltrate the drug ring. SAs Taylor, Martz, and Rodriguez met in person and spoke on the phone with the informant multiple times.
In July 2004, Rodriguez, Martz, and the informant traveled to Puerto Rico for an arranged pick-up of approximately $322,000 from an unknown courier. Taylor was not in Puerto Rico at the time of the scheduled exchange. On July 20, 2004, the informant met the courier at a supermarket parking lot in Isla Verde, Carolina. Throughout the transaction, Rodriguez and Martz were hidden from view, and SA Regino Chavez observed the transaction from a distance of “fifty or more meters away ... without the aid of lenses, glasses or binoculars.”
The unidentified courier arrived alone at the meeting, driving a gray Mitsubishi Montero. The courier and the informant, who was wearing a body wire, then had a conversation about the transaction but did not exchange the money. The courier drove away, and Rodriguez and Martz debriefed the informant, who informed the SAs that the courier said he would return in a half hour. About a half hour later, the courier returned, but this time he was the passenger in a white Jeep Cherokee,3 driven by another unidentified individual (“the driver”). The Cherokee pulled up alongside the informant's car so that the passenger window of the Cherokee was next to the driver's side of the informant's car. After the courier and the informant spoke from their cars, the courier and the driver of the Cherokee got out of their vehicle and at least one of them placed two bags of money in the trunk of the informant's car. The driver and courier then returned to their vehicle and drove away.
FBI surveillance agents followed the Jeep Cherokee and saw the courier exit the car at 1655 Santa Ana Street and walk into the porch area of the residence. The courier was not arrested at that time. The Cherokee then continued onto a highway, after which a marked unit of the Puerto Rico Police Department conducted a traffic stop of the Cherokee, but the officers did not arrest the driver.
Martz testified that he debriefed the informant following the transaction and took handwritten notes of the exchange on July 20, 2004—the day of the transaction. The informant described the courier as “thirty-nine to forty-one (39–41) [years old], black, ... [with a] big stomach, fat, wearing a blue shirt,” and “Puerto Rican.” In Martz's typed FBI report, which was transcribed on August 10, the courier is described as “a fat, dark skin, Puerto Rican male with a big stomach, approximately 39–41 years of age, 5'10? tall wearing a light blue shirt.” Based on his surveillance of the transaction, SA Chavez also filed an FBI report that was dictated on July 30—ten days after the transaction—and transcribed on August 1. SA Chavez's surveillance report described the courier as “[m]ale,” “[b]lack,” “5'7?,” “[h]eavy,” in his “[l]ate [f]ifties,” and wearing a “[b]lue shirt and brown pants.”
Nearly six months later, at the request of FBI Newark, FBI San Juan conducted “spot check” surveillance of 1655 Santa Ana Street—the residence where the driver dropped off the courier—to identify residents of the address. According to the FBI report completed by SA Madeline Albrecht on February 22, 2005, vehicle registration information and/or utilities checks linked five individuals to the address.4 Hernandez, whose gray Infiniti was parked in front of the residence and registered to its address, was the only male identified in SA Albrecht's report. Hernandez's car was not connected to the July 20 transaction.
On March 2, 2005, FBI Newark requested that FBI San Juan obtain a photograph of Hernandez and additional information about him. The Department of Motor Vehicles (“DMV”) provided a photo of Hernandez from the shoulders up and a description of him as male, 5'11?, 40 years of age, 185 pounds, and a “medio marrón” complexion. For reader ease, the multiple FBI-recorded descriptions of the courier and the DMV description of Hernandez are provided in the chart below.
informant
debrief, July
transcribed
dictated July
30, 2004, transcribed August 1, 2004
provided
description
of
Blue shirt
Wearing a light blue shirt
Wearing a blue shirt and brown pants
After receiving the photograph and DMV description of Hernandez, SA Martz gave the photo to FBI Newark's photo lab specialists to assemble a photographic array. Martz testified that he emailed the photo array to the informant, who was in Colombia at the time, on May 25, 2005—nearly ten months after the transaction took place. Martz and Taylor spoke with the informant over the phone the day after emailing him the photo array. When asked at trial who was physically with the informant during the identification, both Taylor and Martz testified that they believed him to be alone.
Over the phone, the informant identified the photo of Hernandez as the courier. Martz recalled asking the informant “if he was sure, and he said he was positive.” Martz asked the informant “why he was positive and he said because he had met the individual twice” on the day of the transaction—once when the courier came in the Mitsubishi Montero and the second time when he came in the Jeep Cherokee. In his handwritten notes detailing the call, Martz wrote that the informant was “very sure[,] positive[,] ... saw 2x.”
On the day the informant identified Hernandez as the courier, Taylor ran a background check on Hernandez that “showed there was no prior criminal record” linked to him. That same day, Taylor drafted an FBI report, which named Carlos D. Hernandez Cuevas as a courier in the Para Cash transaction.
Subsequently, Taylor assembled the materials relating to the investigation, including recordings and transcripts, and sent the information to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark, New Jersey.5 Assistant U.S. Attorney (“AUSA”) Robert Frazer was assigned to prosecute cases arising out of the Para Cash investigation. The parties stipulated that “the decision to charge Hern [a]ndez with criminal activity was made exclusively by the Newark, New Jersey U.S. Attorney's Office.”
In support of the criminal complaint filed against Hernandez, AUSA Frazer drafted an affidavit, which SA Taylor then signed. In the affidavit, Taylor attested that “[o]n or about July 20, 2004, in Puerto Rico, defendant CARLOS HERNANDEZ CUEVAS ... delivered approximately $321,956 in United States currency, which was the proceeds of narcotics trafficking, to [the informant].” To corroborate his identification of Hernandez as the courier, Taylor testified that he considered SA Chavez's surveillance report, as well as the...
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