Barrera v. City of Mount Pleasant

• Decision Date: 03 September 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-1863,20-1863
• Citation: 12 F.4th 617
• Parties: Marc Valentino BARRERA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF MOUNT PLEASANT, Michigan; Isabella County, Michigan; Carey Murch; Jeff Thompson; Jacob Eggers; Christopher Cluley, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

12 F.4th 617

Marc Valentino BARRERA, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.CITY OF MOUNT PLEASANT, Michigan; Isabella County, Michigan; Carey Murch; Jeff Thompson; Jacob Eggers; Christopher Cluley, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 20-1863

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: July 29, 2021

Decided and Filed: September 3, 2021

ARGUED: Kierston D. Nunn, FIEGER, FIEGER, KENNEY & HARRINGTON, P.C., Southfield, Michigan, for Appellant. Marcelyn A. Stepanski, ROSATI, SCHULTZ, JOPPICH & AMTSBUECHLER PC, Farmington Hills, Michigan, for Appellees City of Mount Pleasant, Carey Murch, and Jeff Thompson. Douglas J. Curlew, CUMMINGS, MCCLOREY, DAVIS & ACHO, P.L.C., Livonia, Michigan, for Appellees Isabella County, Jacob Eggers, and Christopher Cluley. ON BRIEF: Kierston D. Nunn, FIEGER, FIEGER, KENNEY & HARRINGTON, P.C., Southfield, Michigan, for Appellant. Marcelyn A. Stepanski, ROSATI, SCHULTZ, JOPPICH & AMTSBUECHLER PC, Farmington Hills, Michigan, for Appellees City of Mount Pleasant, Carey Murch, and Jeff Thompson. Douglas J. Curlew, CUMMINGS, MCCLOREY, DAVIS & ACHO, P.L.C., Livonia, Michigan, for Appellees Isabella County, Jacob Eggers, and Christopher Cluley.

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; SUHRHEINRICH and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges.

SUTTON, Chief Judge.

At stake in this § 1983 lawsuit is whether Marc Barrera's refusal to provide his name during an investigatory stop gave law enforcement officers probable cause to arrest him under Michigan law. The district court rejected the claim. We affirm.

I.

While patrolling a known drug house in the early hours of a fall night, Sergeant Carey Murch spotted a black Buick. Affiliated with the Mount Pleasant Police Department in Michigan, Murch recognized the Buick as a car he had stopped twice before, each time culminating in a drug-related arrest. When Officer Murch ran the plates this time, he discovered that the vehicle's owner, a Robert Shehan, lacked a current driver's license.

From his observation spot, Officer Murch saw the Buick pull away from the drug house and start speeding. Officer Murch stopped the car based on two suspected infractions (speeding and driving without a license) and called for backup. Officer Jeff Thompson soon arrived.

The driver identified himself as Joaquin Garcia and admitted that he lacked a driver's license. Because permitting someone without a license to drive a car violates Michigan law, Mich. Comp. Laws § 257.904(2), the officers sought to discover whether Shehan, whom they had never met, was among the vehicle's three remaining passengers.

Two passengers gave names other than Shehan. The third refused to identify himself after repeated requests. A patdown of this last man did not reveal a driver's license or name, but it did uncover eleven empty plastic bags and $1033 in cash. When the unnamed man still would not identify himself, officers took him to the Isabella County Jail for fingerprinting.

But it was not fingerprinting that revealed his name. It was a tattoo, in truth two tattoos. Consistent with standard practice, the jail officials had the man remove his sweater. The removal of the arms-length sweater answered the question the officers had been asking. One arm bore the name "Marc," the other "Barrera." After running the name through a database, officers confirmed that they had detained Marc Barrera, a parole violator with several outstanding arrest warrants. That led to a strip search of Barrera, which revealed marijuana and cocaine.

A Michigan grand jury indicted Barrera on five drug offenses. Barrera moved to suppress the drugs, arguing that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment by taking him to jail without probable cause for an arrest. The Michigan trial court denied the suppression motion. A jury convicted Barrera on two counts.

The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed. It overturned his conviction after concluding that the officers arrested him without probable cause.

After leaving state prison, Barrera entered federal district court. He sued the officers and city under § 1983 and state law.

In granting summary judgment to the defendants with respect to their qualified immunity defense, the district court ruled that the officers had probable cause to take Barrera to jail because his refusal to identify himself under these circumstances violated Michigan law.

II.

Section 1983 claims against Officers Murch and Thompson . As in all qualified immunity cases, this false-arrest claim prompts two questions. Did the officers violate Barrera's constitutional rights? If so, were those rights clearly established at the time? See Pearson v. Callahan , 555 U.S. 223, 232, 236, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009).

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const. amend. IV. The guarantee, all agree, requires probable cause for an arrest. And the officers, all agree, arrested Barrera when they took him to jail for fingerprinting.

An officer has probable cause to arrest a suspect when the "facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge ... are sufficient to warrant a prudent person, or one of reasonable caution, in believing, in the circumstances shown, that the suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit an offense." Michigan v. DeFillippo , 443 U.S. 31, 37, 99 S.Ct. 2627, 61 L.Ed.2d 343 (1979). An objective, not a subjective, standard applies. The question is whether the observable circumstances justify an arrest; the officer's "subjective reason for making the arrest need not be the criminal offense as to which the known facts provide probable cause." Devenpeck v. Alford , 543 U.S. 146, 153, 125 S.Ct. 588, 160 L.Ed.2d 537 (2004). Through it all, this "fluid concept" looks for a "probability" that the suspect violated a criminal statute, Illinois v. Gates , 462 U.S. 213, 232, 244 n.13, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), keeping in mind that probable cause does not establish "a high bar," Kaley v. United States , 571 U.S. 320, 338, 134 S.Ct. 1090, 188 L.Ed.2d 46 (2014).

In a typical probable cause dispute, the parties agree that state law criminalizes certain conduct but dispute whether the facts permit the inference that the defendant engaged in that conduct. The parties might, for example, agree that Michigan makes it unlawful to possess drugs but disagree over whether an officer who has discovered a scale and empty plastic baggies on a person may infer that the person possessed drugs.

But this dispute is not a prototype. The officers directly observed Barrera's refusal to identify himself when ordered to do so. No one doubts what he did. What the parties debate is whether the relevant state law, a Michigan statute, criminalizes this conduct.

That reality introduces an analytical complication, one that requires a brief digression. What part of the qualified immunity inquiry does a dispute over the meaning of a state law implicate? The first question: Did the officers violate the citizen's constitutional right? Or the second one: Did the officers violate a clearly established right? Both are in play, it seems to us, and either one permits a federal court to resolve a qualified-immunity defense without deciding exactly what the state law means.

One possibility is that a constitutional violation never arises in the first place because, even if the officers misread state law, the mistake was a reasonable one. Just as a reasonable mistake of fact does not violate an individual's Fourth Amendment rights, so a reasonable mistake of law does not violate them either.

Heien v. North Carolina illustrates the point.

574 U.S. 54, 66, 135 S.Ct. 530, 190 L.Ed.2d 475 (2014). Officers mistook whether North Carolina law required one brake light or both of them to be in working order. Even so, the Court held that "reasonable suspicion can rest on a mistaken understanding of the scope of a legal prohibition." Id. at 60, 135 S.Ct. 530. "To be reasonable is not to be perfect," the Court explained, "and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them ‘fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community's protection.’ " Id. at 60–61, 135 S.Ct. 530 (quoting Brinegar v. United States , 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949) ). A law may prohibit "vehicles" in the park and the state courts eventually will finally resolve whether it "covers Segways or not," but until then the Fourth Amendment tolerates reasonable mistakes with respect to an officer's "quick decision" about the scope of the law. Id. at 66, 135 S.Ct. 530. In this setting, when an officer reasonably misinterprets the meaning of state law, there is "no violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place." Id. Favorable case law goes a long way to showing that an interpretation is reasonable. United States v. Diaz , 854 F.3d 197, 204–05 (2d Cir. 2017) ; cf. Heien , 574 U.S. at 70, 135 S.Ct. 530 (Kagan, J., concurring) (suggesting that an officer's mistake of statutory interpretation is reasonable when a "reasonable judge could agree with the officer's view").

The other possibility is that the ambiguity in state law shows that the officers did not violate a clearly established right—the second prong of the qualified immunity test. While this inquiry is similar to the reasonable mistake-of-law test, it is not the same. The reasonable mistake-of-law "inquiry is not as forgiving as the one employed in the distinct context of deciding whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity for a constitutional or statutory violation." Heien , 574 U.S. at 67, 135 S.Ct. 530. The more forgiving question asks only whether, at the time of the officer's conduct, the law was "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would [understand] that what he is doing" violates the law—so clear that the invalidity of the officer's actions was "beyond debate." Ashcroft v. al-Kidd , 563 U.S. 731, 741, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d...