Atkins v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 25 January 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–2998.,09–2998.
• Citation: 631 F.3d 823
• Parties: Brandie ATKINS, as administrator of the estate of William O. Atkins, deceased, Plaintiff–Appellant,v.CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

631 F.3d 823

Brandie ATKINS, as administrator of the estate of William O. Atkins, deceased, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 09–2998.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 8, 2010.Decided Jan. 25, 2011.

Joseph A. Longo (argued), Attorney, Longo & Associates, Mt. Prospect, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.Benna R. Solomon, Attorney, City of Chicago Law Department, Mary Ellen Welsh (argued), Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, Ruth F. Masters (argued), Attorney, Oak Park, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.Before POSNER, MANION, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

This is the second appeal from the dismissal of a federal civil rights suit. 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court initially dismissed it under Rule 25(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on the ground that the motion to substitute the plaintiff's widow for the (original) plaintiff, who died while the suit was pending, was untimely. We reversed, 547 F.3d 869 (7th Cir.2008), instructing the district judge to allow the substitution. That kept the case alive, but the judge has again dismissed it, this time on the merits—he ruled that the complaint failed to state a claim. Hence this second appeal.

In October 2003 Chicago police stopped a car in which William O. Atkins, the plaintiff's decedent, was a passenger, and arrested him on the strength of a parole-violation warrant bearing the name “William Atkins.” He was held at the police station overnight and then transferred to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, which placed him in Stateville prison. From the moment of his arrest he steadfastly denied that he was the William Atkins named in the warrant, but alternatively and inconsistently claimed that he was indeed the same Atkins but that his parole had expired, so that he could not have violated it—which seems in fact to be the case.

Released from the Department's custody after 37 days, when the parole board acknowledged that he was being detained in error, Atkins sued the arresting officers, who are employees of the City of Chicago, plus the City itself, prison guards at Stateville, and other employees of the Department of Corrections. The state defendants are accused of having unjustifiably protracted a mistaken detention and imposed impermissible hardships during it, all in violation of rights conferred by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The charge against the City defendants is that the arrest was unconstitutional because it was not based on probable cause; and we'll start there.

When arrested, Atkins denied that he was the William Atkins named in the warrant and noted discrepancies between his identifying characteristics and the description in the warrant. Although both Atkinses were of the same race and sex and had the same first and last names, our William Atkins was slightly taller and somewhat heavier than the person described in the warrant and had a middle initial, which the name on the warrant lacked. But oddly—if they were different people—the month and day of their birth (though not the year) were the same and the first three digits of their social security numbers were also the same.

The police did not have probable cause to stop the vehicle in which our William Atkins was riding, but clearly if he was the William Atkins named in the warrant the illegality of the stop did not invalidate the arrest. United States v. Johnson, 383 F.3d 538, 544–45 (7th Cir.2004); United States v. Green, 111 F.3d 515, 521 (7th Cir.1997); contra, United States v. Lopez, 443 F.3d 1280, 1285–86 (10th Cir.2006). In Green we said the question was whether “the causal chain has been sufficiently attenuated to dissipate the taint of the illegal conduct,” 111 F.3d at 521, and in like vein in Johnson we considered whether “a lawful arrest based on any outstanding warrant for a passenger in the vehicle constituted an intervening circumstance that dissipated any taint caused by an initial traffic stop that had lacked reasonable suspicion,” 383 F.3d at 544, and concluded that it did. But a simpler way to justify the result in those cases (and this one), without talking about “taints” and “dissipation” and “intervening circumstances” (and what do those terms mean, really?), is to note simply that the arrest was based on a valid warrant rather than on anything turned up in the illegal search. If police stopped cars randomly, looking for persons against whom there were outstanding warrants, the drivers and passengers not named in warrants would have good Fourth Amendment claims. But a person named in a valid warrant has no right to be at large, and so suffers no infringement of his rights when he is apprehended unless some other right of his is infringed, as would be the case had the police roughed up Atkins gratuitously in the course of trying to determine whether he was the person named in the warrant. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396–97, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989); Catlin v. City of Wheaton, 574 F.3d 361, 366 (7th Cir.2009); Cortez v. McCauley, 478 F.3d 1108, 1127 (10th Cir.2007) (en banc). But that is not the plaintiff's complaint.

Yet in the course of making an arrest on the basis of an outstanding warrant the police may learn something that shows that the warrant does not actually create probable cause to arrest the person they're arresting—suppose the warrant in this case had identified the person to be arrested as a woman, named Wanda Atkinson. The police would know at a glance that the William Atkins they were about to arrest was not the person named in the warrant and if they arrested him anyway it would be an illegal arrest because the mistake would not be “understandable” or “the arrest a reasonable response to the situation facing them at the time.” Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797, 804, 91 S.Ct. 1106, 28 L.Ed.2d 484 (1971). As nearly as we can determine, the police who made the arrest made no mistake, as distinct from whoever failed to notice that Atkins's parole had expired before his alleged violation of it. And if the police did make a mistake, it was a reasonable one.

Anyway the plaintiff's real complaint is not about the initial error but about the time it took to correct it—the state defendants are thus the main target. Atkins was transferred from the Cook County jail to Stateville within a day of his arrest, but it was another 36 days before the prison released him, having finally satisfied itself that he was not a parole violator. The complaint alleges that he protested continuously against his detention.

Due process requires government to follow reasonable procedures for minimizing mistaken deprivations of liberty. In determining what is reasonable “the court must consider the weight of the interest at stake, the risk of error, and the costs of additional process.” Hernandez v. Sheahan, 455 F.3d 772, 777 (7th Cir.2006); see Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 334–35, 96 S.Ct. 893, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976); cf. Sutton v. City of Milwaukee, 672 F.2d 644, 645–47 (7th Cir.1982). The interest in liberty increases in weight the longer a person is detained, and the accuracy of the procedures for avoiding mistaken detentions that is constitutionally required increases concomitantly. In the case of persons arrested for violating parole, a preliminary hearing to determine probable cause must be conducted “as promptly as convenient after arrest while information is fresh and sources are available,” and a plenary hearing must be held within a “reasonable time after the parolee is taken into custody”—normally two months. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 484–88, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972). Parole proceedings are traditionally administrative rather than judicial, so the hearing need not be held before a judicial officer. Id. at 486, 92 S.Ct. 2593. Illinois's procedures, codified at 20 Ill. Admin. Code § 1610.140, comply with the standard set forth in the Morrissey case. Faheem–El v. Klincar, 841 F.2d 712, 722–23 (7th Cir.1988) (en banc).

Atkins had a preliminary hearing on the seventh day after his arrest but failed to persuade the hearing officer that it was a case of misidentification. He muddied the waters by arguing that he should be released because his parole had expired. Probably it had expired, but to offer contradictory grounds was bound to arouse the hearing officer's suspicion. Alternative pleading is permissible but a person who says both that I am not the X named in the parole-violation warrant and I am that X but my parole expired is calling himself a liar. The hearing officer's failure to find misidentification thus was reasonable.

The full hearing took place 29 days later, and Atkins was released on that day. The delay was well within the two-month deadline set by the Brewer case. The plaintiff contends that guards and miscellaneous prison staff have a continuing constitutional duty, even when there are constitutionally adequate formal administrative remedies against unjustified imprisonment, to conduct an exhaustive investigation of a prisoner's claim of misidentification. Prisons would be unmanageable if the contention were accepted. “Given the requirements that arrest be made only on probable cause and that one detained be accorded a speedy trial, we do not think a sheriff executing an arrest warrant is required by the Constitution to investigate independently every claim of innocence, whether the claim is based on mistaken identity or a defense such as lack of requisite intent. Nor is the official charged with maintaining custody of the accused named in the warrant required by the Constitution to perform an error-free investigation of such a claim. The ultimate determination of such claims of innocence is placed in the hands of the judge and the jury.” Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 145–46, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979). We have...