Anderson v. Caldwell Cnty. Sheriff's Office

• Decision Date: 24 April 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11-2344,11-2344
• Parties: JERRY ANDERSON, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CALDWELL COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE; ALAN C. JONES, Individually and in his Official Capacity as Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; JEFFERY LEE STAFFORD, Individually and in his Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; BRIAN ANTHONY BENNETT, Individually and in his Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; SHELLY HARTLEY, Individually and in her Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; FIDELITY AND DEPOSIT COMPANY OF MARYLAND; THE OHIO CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendants - Appellants, and JOHN DOE, representing Other Unidentified Officers of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office, Individually and in his Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; JANE DOE, representing Other Unidentified Officers of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office, Individually and in her Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; DOE BOND COMPANY; CHRISTOPHER BRACKETT, Individually and in his Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; TRACY PYLE, Individually and in his Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

JERRY ANDERSON, Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.CALDWELL COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE; ALAN C. JONES,

Individually and in his Official Capacity as Sheriff of the

Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; JEFFERY LEE STAFFORD,

Individually and in his Official Capacity as a Deputy

Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; BRIAN

ANTHONY BENNETT, Individually and in his Official Capacity

as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office;

SHELLY HARTLEY, Individually and in her Official Capacity

as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County

Sheriff's Office; FIDELITY AND DEPOSIT COMPANY OF MARYLAND;

THE OHIO CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendants - Appellants,

and JOHN DOE, representing Other Unidentified Officers of the

Caldwell County Sheriff's Office, Individually and in his

Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County

Sheriff's Office; JANE DOE, representing Other Unidentified

Officers of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office,

Individually and in her Official Capacity as a Deputy

Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office; DOE BOND

COMPANY; CHRISTOPHER BRACKETT, Individually and in his

Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County

Sheriff's Office; TRACY PYLE, Individually and in his

Official Capacity as a Deputy Sheriff of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office, Defendants.

No. 11-2344

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

Argued: January 29, 2013

Decided: April 24, 2013

UNPUBLISHED

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at Asheville. Martin K. Reidinger, District Judge. (1:09-cv-00423-MR-DLH)

Before DAVIS and KEENAN, Circuit Judges, and John A. GIBNEY, Jr., United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

Reversed in part, dismissed in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.

James R. Morgan, Jr., WOMBLE CARLYLE SANDRIDGE & RICE, PLLC, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for Appellants. Robert Mauldin Elliot, ELLIOT, PISHKO & MORGAN, PA, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

PER CURIAM:

This case comes before the Court on an interlocutory appeal of the district court's denial of a motion for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity. The central issue is whether law enforcement officers had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff-appellee for the murder of his wife. The Court finds that probable cause existed for the arrest, entitling the arresting officers to qualified immunity on the plaintiff-appellee's claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Because those claims fail, the plaintiff-appellee's derivative federal claims of supervisory and local government liability also fail. The Court also concludes that public officers' and governmental immunity shield the defendants-appellants from most of the plaintiff-appellee's state law claims, but the Court lacks jurisdiction to review the statutory bond claim.

I.

A.

Jerry Anderson ("Anderson") commenced this action by filing a complaint in which he alleged that the defendants had harmed him in various ways. Specifically, under § 1983 he asserted a claim that various Caldwell County Deputy Sheriffs, led by Captain Jeffery Lee Stafford ("Stafford"), violated his Fourth Amendment rights. He sued the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office ("CCSO") and Sheriff Alan C. Jones ("Jones") for failure totrain and supervise the deputy sheriffs. He also asserted state law claims of malicious prosecution, false arrest, and obstruction of justice. Finally, he sued the CCSO's liability insurer and bonding company for any damages caused by the alleged violations of his rights.¹

The defendants-appellants filed motions for summary judgment on a number of bases, including qualified immunity, public officers' immunity, and governmental immunity. The district court denied those motions, leading to this interlocutory appeal.²

B.

In December 2005, the plaintiff-appellee's wife, Emily Anderson ("Emily") went missing from their farm in Caldwell County, North Carolina. Nine days later, Stafford and the CCSO investigative team found her body in the toolbox of her truck, which had been abandoned in South Carolina. After a lengthy investigation, Stafford arrested Anderson for his wife's murder.A grand jury indicted him about two weeks later for first-degree murder. Anderson stood trial for nine weeks in mid-2007, but the jury could not reach a verdict. The judge declared a mistrial, and ultimately the state dismissed the case without prejudice.

The following facts led to Anderson's arrest and prosecution:

On December 29, 2005, the day Emily disappeared, a worker on Anderson's farm heard Emily and Anderson arguing. At 9:30 a.m., not long after the argument, Anderson and Emily drove to a wooded area of their farm — Anderson drove a front-end loader and Emily drove her pickup truck. A neighbor heard the front-end loader driving on Anderson's farm near the wooded area, and then heard two shots. Another neighbor also heard two shots. When the police later found Emily's body, it had dirt and grass on it, as well as two gunshot wounds.

One half-hour after driving out to the wooded area, Anderson returned to the farm buildings in the front-end loader. He told workers on the farm to clean the loader, paying special attention to the bucket. A worker told the officers that this was an unusual request by Anderson. Forensic analysis later showed bloodstains on the bucket of the front-end loader.

Sometime between 10 a.m. and noon, Anderson had a worker drive him to the wooded area, where Anderson got out of thevehicle with a large plastic bag. The next day, he told his employees to search the area for a cell phone.

Although none of the farm workers saw Anderson again until the late afternoon, he instructed them to tell anyone who asked that he had been at the farm all day. To bolster this story, he later changed oil filters on some farm equipment, backdated the documentation of the repair to December 29, 2005, and told a worker to lie about the date they had changed the filters.

The CCSO unearthed additional evidence relating to Emily's death, most of it pointing to Anderson as the culprit. In summary, the evidence is as follows:

• Several people indicated that the Andersons were unhappily married, and that Emily planned to leave Anderson.

• Anderson had found cards to Emily from a man named Bill. He also had found indications that someone had sent her flowers.

• When the deputies told Anderson about Emily's death, he showed no emotion and, in fact, laughed and "told stories."

• Not long before Emily's disappearance, Anderson had applied for and received a new passport, listing his sister as his emergency contact.

• Emily had $4.5 million in life insurance with Anderson and their company as beneficiaries. Anderson's first wife, Teresa Martin, told officers that Anderson had her get life insurance designating him as the beneficiary. Martin stated that at some point during the marriage she woke up disorientated in the trunk of the car. Anderson said he planned to hide her away and collect the insurance money, but eventually he let her out of the trunk.

• Bank of America notified the deputies that there had been no activity on Emily's account since December 23, 2005.

• Alltel, the Andersons' phone company, reported that Emily's phone showed no activity after December 28, 2005. The deputies found her phone attached to her belt. The phone company told the CCSO that the phone had been in South Carolina since December 29, 2005.

• An Alltel representative told the CCSO that he believed that Anderson had turned his cell phone off between the hours of 12:04 p.m. and 4:51 p.m. on December 29, 2005. Turning the phone off would avoid cell site registry during that time. In addition, Anderson had Emily's calls forwarded to his phone.

• Although he told the deputies he owned no guns, Anderson actually owned several firearms.

• Cadaver dogs had indicated that a corpse had been in the wooded area of Anderson's farm.

Based on the foregoing, Stafford and the deputies developed a theory of the crime. They believed that while in the wooded area on the morning of December 29, 2005, Anderson had fatally shot Emily. He then loaded her body into the toolbox on her truck, and drove her to South Carolina, where he abandoned the truck in a motel parking lot.

Not all the evidence, however, indicated Anderson's guilt. The following evidence surfaced casting some doubt on the deputies' theory:

• Anderson passed a polygraph test at the CCSO's request.

• A Waffle House cook in South Carolina told Stafford that he had received a call on the day they discovered the body. The anonymous caller said that the truck of the "missing woman from North Carolina" was in the parking lot of the Quality Inn located next to the Waffle House. The cook said he believed that the truck had been parked there for two weeks.

• The Waffle House cook said that, during that time, he thought he had seen the driver's side door open and a white male approximately 5'8" to 5'9" with blond hair and a crew cut standing next to the door. The manager was not certain, however, that the individual was standing next to Emily's truck.

• A pathologist and a medical examiner offered opinions that Emily had most likely died one to three days before the discovery of her body on January 7, 2006. They could not rule out, however, that she had died up to ten days earlier.

Finally, the deputies received some information, the significance of which is unclear, because they simply did not follow up on the leads:

• The CCSO did not question people who had registered at the Quality Inn during the time Emily's truck was there.

• The cleaning crew at the motel found some eyeglasses in a room after the police found her body. Emily was missing her eyeglasses when the police discovered her body.

• Two Waffle House employees said they had seen a woman, matching Emily's description, wearing an Old Navyshirt; Emily had been wearing a

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