Mellen v. Winn, 17-55116

Citation900 F.3d 1085
Decision Date17 August 2018
Docket NumberNo. 17-55116,17-55116
Parties Susan MELLEN; Julie Carroll ; Jessica Curcio; Donald Besch, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Marcella WINN, Defendant-Appellee.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann (argued), Rick Sawyer, and Nick Brustin, Neufeld Scheck & Brustin LLP, New York, New York; Deirdre Lynn O'Connor, Seamus Law APC, Torrance, California; for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Calvin House (argued), Gutierrez Preciado & House LLP, Pasadena, California; Laura E. Inlow, Collinson Law, Torrance, California; for Defendant-Appellee.

Before: Kim McLane Wardlaw, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, and John B. Owens, Circuit Judges.

WARDLAW, Circuit Judge

Susan Mellen was wrongly imprisoned for seventeen years before securing habeas relief in October 2014. After release from prison, Mellen and her three children, Julie Carroll, Jessica Curcio, and Donald Besch, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Detective Marcella Winn,1 arguing that Detective Winn failed to disclose evidence that would have cast serious doubt on the testimony of June Patti, the star prosecution witness in Mellen's trial. Detective Winn asserted qualified immunity, arguing there was no genuine dispute of material fact as to whether the withheld evidence was material or as to whether Detective Winn acted with deliberate indifference or reckless disregard for Mellen's due process rights, and that the law at the time of the investigation did not clearly establish that police officers were required to disclose material, impeachment evidence. The district court granted summary judgment in Detective Winn's favor.

We conclude, first, that the record demonstrates as a matter of law that Detective Winn withheld material impeachment evidence under Brady v. Maryland , 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and Giglio v. United States , 405 U.S. 150, 92 S.Ct. 763, 31 L.Ed.2d 104 (1972) (extending Brady to impeachment evidence), and raises a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Detective Winn acted with deliberate indifference or reckless disregard for Mellen's due process rights. Second, we conclude that the law at the time of the 1997–98 investigation clearly established that police officers investigating a criminal case were required to disclose material, impeachment evidence to the defense. Finally, we conclude that the district court abused its discretion by striking the declaration of Mellen's police practices expert, Roger Clark. We reverse the grant of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds and the order striking Clark's declaration, and remand to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

Susan Mellen was convicted of first-degree murder in June 1998, based largely on the testimony of June Patti (Patti). Mellen contends that Detective Winn wrongfully withheld a statement that June Patti's sister, Laura Patti (Laura), made to Detective Winn before trial. Laura, who was a Torrance police officer at the time of the investigation, told Detective Winn that her sister, June Patti, was "the biggest liar" that she had "ever met" in her life and that she did not "believe anything [Patti] says."

Laura said that she based this conclusion on her personal experiences with her sister, who, since the age of four or five, "had a habit of not telling the truth." Laura also explained that her sister had filed more than twenty complaints against Laura with the Torrance Police Department, all unsubstantiated, and that Patti "constant[ly]" lied to Laura's colleagues. At her deposition, Laura also said that she believed that Patti had been a "certified informant" with the Torrance Police Department in the early 1990s.

Laura stated that her conversation with Detective Winn was brief, and Detective Winn did not inquire into why Laura believed her sister was a liar. But it turned out that Laura was right about her sister. Patti was deemed an "unreliable informant" by the Torrance Police Department five years before Mellen's trial. And in a fourteen-year span between 1988 and 2002, Patti had more than 800 contacts with law enforcement, where she was known to exaggerate or outright lie to police officers to protect or advance her own interests.

Although the revelations about Patti proved the loose thread that unraveled Mellen's wrongful conviction, Detective Winn contends that no reasonable officer would have understood that Brady / Giglio required the disclosure of Laura's statements.2 Because the Supreme Court has instructed that Brady / Giglio requires a "fact-intensive" inquiry into whether "there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed, the result of the proceeding would have been different," Turner v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S.Ct. 1885, 1888, 1893, 198 L.Ed.2d 443 (2017) (citations omitted), we turn to a close examination of the investigation and the trial that resulted in Mellen's wrongful conviction.

A. The Investigation

Rick Daly's body was found burned near a dumpster in San Pedro, California, on July 21, 1997. After two weeks while police officers struggled to identify the body, calls flooded into the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) South Bureau Homicide Unit, and filtered to Detective Winn, who had taken responsibility for the case. The first tips would later prove the most accurate: a caller told detectives that Daly was killed by three members of "Lawndale 13," a gang that congregated around the "Mellen Patch," a duplex in Torrance, California, owned by members of the Mellen family and frequented by methamphetamine users. Detectives also heard that Daly was killed in the back house of the Mellen Patch, where Susan Mellen had lived before February 1997,3 and that Daly's body was transported in Scott "Skip" Kimball's car to San Pedro where the three men set Daly on fire.

On August 12, 1997, Detective Winn prepared a search warrant for the Mellen Patch and arrest warrants for Lester "Wicked" Monllor, Chad "Ghost" Landrum, and Santo "Payaso" Alvarez, the three men identified in the caller's tip and corroborating reports. The LAPD executed the search warrant at the Mellen Patch early in the morning the next day. The warrant yielded several potential witnesses and residents of the Mellen Patch, including Monllor's mother and sister, Mellen's sister-in-law, niece, and nephew, and two other people from the neighborhood. Detective Winn later learned that Monllor, Landrum, and Alvarez were in custody on unrelated charges. Detective Winn had also earlier spoken with Scott Kimball, who was also in jail on unrelated charges, and who told Detective Winn that he had lent his car to his friends on the night of the murder.

The evening after the LAPD executed the search warrant at the Mellen Patch, June Patti contacted Detective Winn for the first time, leaving a voicemail message that indicated that Patti had information about the Daly murder. The next morning, Patti appeared at Monllor's arraignment, along with Monllor's mother. And two days after Monllor's arraignment, Patti directed Detective Winn's attention to Susan Mellen, Daly's ex-girlfriend, and a long-time Mellen Patch resident.4

Patti gave her first oral statement to Detective Winn on August 15, 1997. At the time, she told Detective Winn that, on the same night that the LAPD executed the arrest warrant at the Mellen Patch, Patti called Mellen and Mellen's boyfriend, Tom Schenkelberg (Tom), to buy "speed." Because Patti was purportedly a paralegal at the courthouse (she was not), and came from a family of police officers, Mellen asked to meet Patti at the motel where Patti was staying to talk about the Daly murder.

It was at the Travelodge motel that Mellen allegedly confessed her involvement in Daly's murder to Patti. Patti said that Mellen told her that she and Tom, with help from Chad Landrum, killed Daly because Daly "kept going in [Mellen's mother's house] and stealing all her things, their speed, their pips [sic]." Patti said that Mellen had told her that Tom and Landrum kicked Daly and taped his mouth shut, that Landrum pulled out a knife and threatened to stab Daly, and that Tom and Landrum set fire to Daly in Mellen's mother's house.5 Mellen allegedly told Patti that she pulled back Daly's head with his bandana, kicked Daly, and got high while Tom and Landrum beat Daly. Patti also said that a fourth, unnamed person came over from next door to tell Mellen, Tom, and Landrum to be quiet, and that this person was already in custody.6 Patti said that Mellen and Landrum put Daly in the back of Mellen's car and "dropped him off" in San Pedro because "Tom didn't want to go."

At the end of the August 15, 1997 recorded oral statement,7 Detective Winn prepared a written statement for Patti's signature. The written statement adds more detail to Patti's oral statement, detail that Detective Winn was aware of from the police investigation thus far. Notably, the written statement mentioned that the fourth, unnamed person acted as a lookout for Mellen, Tom, and Landrum. Patti's written statement also added that Landrum set Daly on fire again in San Pedro, and that Patti and Tom had left Daly's body near a trash can in an alley with a chain link fence because "only Mexicans live there and they won[']t say anything"—details that did not come from Patti's oral statement. The written statement also added that Mellen and Landrum dumped the body in San Pedro around "8:30 or 9:00 P.M.," when Patti previously told Detective Winn only that Landrum and Tom started beating Daly "during the daytime."

Relying on Patti's written statement, Detective Winn presented the case against Mellen to district attorney Steven Schreiner, who, in turn, filed one count of first-degree murder against Mellen.8 Mellen was arrested on August 25, 1997, and in an interview with Detective Winn, insisted that she had nothing to do with Daly's murder. Mellen told Detective Winn that she and ...

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