Barnhouse v. City of Muncie

• Decision Date: 04 November 2020
• Docket Number: Case No. 1:19-cv-00958-TWP-DLP
• Citation: 499 F.Supp.3d 578
• Parties: William BARNHOUSE, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF MUNCIE, Fonda King, Steve Stewart, Gordon Watters, Joseph Todd, Steve Blevins, Donald Bailey, Terry Winters, Carl Sobieralski, As-Yet Unidentified Muncie Police Officers, and As-Yet Unidentified Employees of the Indiana State Police Crime Lab, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana

499 F.Supp.3d 578

William BARNHOUSE, Plaintiff,

v.CITY OF MUNCIE, Fonda King, Steve Stewart, Gordon Watters, Joseph Todd, Steve Blevins, Donald Bailey, Terry Winters, Carl Sobieralski, As-Yet Unidentified Muncie Police Officers, and As-Yet Unidentified Employees of the Indiana State Police Crime Lab, Defendants.

Case No. 1:19-cv-00958-TWP-DLP

United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

Signed November 4, 2020

Arthur Loevy, Danielle O. Hamilton, Heather Lewis Donnell, Jonathan I. Loevy, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.

Byron D. Knight, Elizabeth A. Knight, Joseph W. Smith, Katlyn M. Christman, Knight, Hoppe, Kurnik & Knight, Ltd., Merrillville, IN, Matthew Knight, Knight Hoppe Kurnik & Knight Ltd., Rosemont, IL, for Defendants City of Muncie, Fonda King, Steve Stewart, Gordon Watters, Joseph Todd, Steve Blevins, Donald Bailey, Terry Winters.

Bryan Findley, Gustavo Angel Jimenez, J. Derek Atwood, Mollie Ann Slinker, Indiana Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, for Defendant Carl Sobieralski.

As-Yet Unidentified Muncie Police Officers, pro se.

As-Yet Unidentified Employees of the Indiana State Police Crime Lab, pro se.

ORDER ON DEFENDANTS’ PARTIAL MOTION TO DISMISS

Tanya Walton Pratt, Judge

This matter is before the Court on a Partial Motion to Dismiss filed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) by Defendants City of Muncie, Fonda King, Steve Stewart, Gordon Watters, Joseph Todd, Steve Blevins, Donald Bailey, and Terry Winters (collectively, "Muncie Defendants") (Filing No. 78 ). Plaintiff William Barnhouse ("Barnhouse") initiated this action on March 7, 2019 against the Muncie Defendants, as well as state defendant Carl Sobieralski and unidentified employees of the Indiana State Police Crime Lab, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Barnhouse seeks to redress the deprivation of his constitutional rights after he was exonerated through DNA evidence of a wrongful conviction and imprisonment for rape. In his Amended Complaint, he asserts fourteen separate claims for, among other things, due process violations (Filing No. 73 ). The Muncie Defendants ask the Court to dismiss twelve of the claims brought in the Amended Complaint. For the following reasons, the Court grants in part and denies in part the Partial Motion to Dismiss.

I. BACKGROUND

The following facts are not necessarily objectively true, but as required when reviewing a motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true all factual allegations in the complaint and draws all inferences in favor of Barnhouse as the non-moving party. See Bielanski v. County of Kane , 550 F.3d 632, 633 (7th Cir. 2008).

Plaintiff William Barnhouse was wrongly convicted of a 1992 rape of which he was totally innocent. (Filing No. 73 at 1.) He lost twenty-five years of his life unjustly imprisoned before he was exonerated through DNA evidence. Id. When he filed the instant Amended Complaint on July 30, 2019, Barnhouse was 62 years old. Barnhouse has struggled his entire life with cognitive deficiencies and mental illness. His I.Q. is significantly below average, qualifying him for a clinical diagnosis of mental retardation

. His mental illness condition is most often diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. Barnhouse's conditions led to him being repeatedly committed to psychiatric hospitals in the years leading up to 1992. Barnhouse also was born with Klinefelter's Syndrome, a chromosomal condition that results in two or more X chromosomes in males. The primary feature of Klinefelter's Syndrome is the inability to produce sperm. Id. at 7–8.

Defendant City of Muncie is an Indiana municipality. Defendants Fonda King ("Officer King"), Steve Stewart ("Officer Stewart"), Gordon Watters ("Officer Watters"), Joseph Todd ("Officer Todd"), Steve Blevins ("Officer Blevins"), Donald Bailey ("Sergeant Bailey"), and Terry Winters ("Sergeant Winters"), were police officers in the Muncie Police Department. Defendant Carl Sobieralski ("Sobieralski") was a forensic scientist in the Indiana State Police Crime Lab. Id. at 4–5.

On April 21, 1992, P.L. left her Muncie home in the early morning to buy cigarettes at a nearby store. While on her way to the store, a man riding a black bicycle approached her and pulled out a knife. The man threatened to kill P.L. if she did not go with him. He put his arm around her and walked her down an alley to a vacant building. There were no lights in the vacant building. The man again threatened P.L. with a knife and vaginally raped her twice. He then forced her to perform oral sex on him and then vaginally raped her again. P.L. felt the perpetrator ejaculate. P.L. complied when the man told her to get dressed. As she walked away from the scene, the man began circling her with his bicycle. He followed her on his bicycle for a few minutes, and then he rode away back toward the crime scene. Id. at 5–6.

P.L. ran to a store and told a store clerk that she had been raped. A store employee called the police. P.L. did not clean herself while she waited for police to arrive. Officer King arrived, interviewed P.L., and took a description of the attacker. She described her attacker as a white male, slim, possibly shorter than 5’9", with shoulder-length dark brown hair, with an underbite, wearing light-colored jeans and a gray sweatshirt, and riding a black bicycle with handlebars that bent forward. Id. at 6. Officer King issued a "Be On the Lookout" ("BOL") notice over the radio; however, the description of the attacker provided over the radio differed from the description P.L. provided to Officer King. Officer King described the attacker as having a mustache, being 5’9" or 5’10", and the handlebars on the bicycle curving back toward the rider. Id. at 7.

Soon after hearing the BOL, Officers Todd, Stewart, Blevins, and Watters stopped Barnhouse. At least one of the officers had arrested Barnhouse on prior occasions. Barnhouse was known to some of the officers and those officers knew about Barnhouse's cognitive deficiencies and mental illness. Because of their previous familiarity with Barnhouse, they also knew that he could not produce sperm because of his Klinefelter's Syndrome

(Filing No. 73 at 7–8).

When the rape occurred, Barnhouse was miles away and on his way home from a party at Ball State University. Barnhouse had never met P.L. and did not know her. Officers Todd, Stewart, Blevins, and Watters knew that Barnhouse did not match the description of the attacker relayed on the BOL; Barnhouse was wearing a black t-shirt, a blue jacket, and blue jeans, he did not have a mustache, and he was about 6’1" and 200 pounds. Even though they did not observe Barnhouse committing any crimes, and despite their familiarity with Barnhouse's mental and physical conditions, Officers Todd, Stewart, Blevins, and Watters arrested Barnhouse. Id.

Once the officers detained Barnhouse, Officer Stewart radioed Officer King to tell her that he had stopped a person who fit the description of the attacker. Officer King agreed to drive P.L. to the location where Officer Stewart stopped Barnhouse. On the way there, Officer King told P.L. that police had stopped a person who matched her description of the attacker, which was unduly suggestive and primed P.L. to falsely identify Barnhouse. When Officer King and P.L. arrived at the location where Barnhouse had been stopped, Officers Todd, Stewart, Blevins, and Watters placed Barnhouse in the middle of them and in front of three squad cars, and they shined flashlights in Barnhouse's face. Officer King sat in the car with P.L. and indicated to her that Barnhouse was her attacker. P.L. then falsely identified Barnhouse as the man who raped her. No police "line-up" with Barnhouse was ever conducted. Id. at 8–9.

The officers arrested Barnhouse based solely on P.L.’s identification. They transported Barnhouse to the police station to be processed and interrogated, and he was strip searched at the station. While being interrogated by the police (including Sergeants Bailey and Winters), Barnhouse truthfully denied any involvement in the rape. His repeated requests for an attorney were denied. The police officers took advantage of Barnhouse's mental illness and cognitive deficiencies by fabricating that he spontaneously confessed to them. According to the officers, Barnhouse spontaneously offered the following false statements at the police station: "he'd just been partying with a girl named ‘Tric;’ all he did was kiss her; he shouldn't carry a knife; and he didn't pull a knife on anybody." Id. at 9–10. This "confession" was fabricated by the police officers. Barnhouse never confessed or gave any information about the crime to anyone at any time because he knew nothing about the crime and had nothing to do with it. However, the officers memorialized the false and fabricated inculpatory statement in a fabricated police report. Id. at 10.

Barnhouse pleads in the alternative that the police officers took advantage of his mental and intellectual disabilities and continued to interrogate him about his knowledge of and involvement in the rape of P.L. Barnhouse requested an attorney, but the police officers ignored his request and continued to question him. Barnhouse continued to deny any involvement in or knowledge of the rape. But with knowledge of Barnhouse's limited mental and intellectual capacity, the police officers continued to pressure Barnhouse to provide details of the rape. The officers provided Barnhouse with facts about the rape that were known only by them and P.L. They persisted in questioning Barnhouse despite his assertion of his right to counsel and denial of having anything to do with the rape of P.L. Eventually, Barnhouse provided an inculpatory statement that he had only "kissed" and "played around" with P.L., but he did not rape her. The police officers knew that Barnhouse's statement was involuntary and unreliable. Barnhouse did not provide any information about the rape that was not already known to the officers. The officers...