Beck v. City of Muskogee Police Dept.

• Decision Date: 29 September 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-7171,98-7171
• Citation: 195 F.3d 553
• Parties: (10th Cir. 1999) RICK PETER BECK, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF MUSKOGEE POLICE DEPARTMENT; COUNTY OF MUSKOGEE SHERIFF'S OFFICE; MUSKOGEE OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 553

195 F.3d 553 (10th Cir. 1999)

RICK PETER BECK, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF MUSKOGEE POLICE DEPARTMENT; COUNTY OF MUSKOGEE SHERIFF'S OFFICE; MUSKOGEE OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 98-7171

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS TENTH CIRCUIT

September 29, 1999

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA. D.C. No. 98-CV-327-S

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Danita G. Engleman, Assistant District Attorney, Muskogee, Oklahoma, for Defendants-Appellees County of Muskogee Sheriff's Office and Muskogee Office of the District Attorney.

Betty Outhier Williams, J. Heath Lofton of Gage & Williams Law Firm, Muskogee, Oklahoma, for Defendant-Appellee City of Muskogee.

Before TACHA, McKAY, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

TACHA, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Rick Peter Beck brought this action asserting federal civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and various state law claims. The district court concluded that his federal claims were premature under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 487 (1994), and that the state law claims were barred by the statute of limitations. It accordingly dismissed the action under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Beck appeals.¹

Beck's claims arise out of his arrest on a rape charge by City of Muskogee police on October 1, 1995. The rape charge was dismissed on June 19, 1996. However, based at least in part on the alleged rape victim's testimony, a state court revoked his probation and accelerated his sentence on a previous, unrelated conviction.² Beck is apparently now serving that sentence. On June 5, 1998, Beck filed this action in state court. Defendant Muskogee Police Department removed the case to federal court, and defendants moved to dismiss on the basis of statutes of limitations and immunity. The district court noted that the rape charges against Beck had been dismissed but that his sentence on the other conviction had been accelerated. Apparently referring to this accelerated sentence, the district court rejected defendants' statute of limitations defense to the federal claims on the basis that, because "plaintiff's conviction or sentence has not been . . . invalidated" as it concluded Heck required, these claims had not yet accrued. See District Court's November 19, 1998 order at 3. The court held that the Governmental Tort Claims Act, Okla. Stat. tit. 51, §§ 151-72, applied to the state law claims against defendants, since they are government entities, and that under the applicable statute of limitations, the claims were time-barred. It then dismissed the action under Rule 12(b)(6).

We review the district court's dismissal of a cause of action under Rule 12(b)(6) de novo. See Chemical Weapons Working Group, Inc. v. United States Dep't of the Army, 111 F.3d 1485, 1490 (10th Cir. 1997). We will uphold a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal "only when it appears that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of the claims that would entitle him to relief, accepting the well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and construing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff." Yoder v. Honeywell, Inc., 104 F.3d 1215, 1224 (10th Cir. 1997) (quotation omitted). We agree with the district court that the state law claims are untimely and that two of the federal claims--malicious prosecution and related Brady claims regarding his probation revocation--are premature under Heck. However, the other federal claims are not premature, although the statute of limitations has expired on most of them. Thus, for the reasons explained below, we affirm in part, reverse in part and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings.

Federal Claims

In Heck, the Supreme Court addressed the question of when a prisoner may bring a § 1983 claim relating to his or her conviction or sentence. The Court held that when a state prisoner seeks damages in a § 1983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint must be dismissed unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or sentence has already been invalidated. But if the district court determines that the plaintiff's action, even if successful, will not demonstrate the invalidity of any outstanding criminal judgment against the plaintiff, the action should be allowed to proceed, in the absence of some other bar to the suit.

512 U.S. at 487 (footnotes omitted). Thus, for § 1983 claims necessarily challenging the validity of a conviction or sentence, Heck delays the rise of the cause of action until the conviction or sentence has been invalidated. Because the cause of action does not accrue until such time, the applicable statute of limitations does not begin to run until the same time. See Heck, 512 U.S. at 489-90.

Heck dealt with the timing of a § 1983 claim seeking monetary damages in light of the plaintiff prisoner's outstanding conviction and sentence. In the present case, we are not dealing with a conviction, but instead are faced with a dismissed charge and a probation revocation or sentence acceleration. This circuit has already extended Heck to situations involving probation revocation. See Crow v. Penry, 102 F.3d 1086, 1087 (10th Cir. 1996) (§ 1983 claims challenging revocation of parole or probation precluded under Heck until revocation invalidated). Other circuits have also applied it to pending and dismissed charges, see Covington v. City of New York, 171 F.3d 117, 122 (2d Cir. 1999); Washington v. Summerville, 127 F.3d 552, 555-56 (7th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 1515 (1998); Smith v. Holtz, 87 F.3d 108, 112-13 (3d Cir. 1996), and we agree that Heck should apply to such situations when the concerns underlying Heck exist. Thus, Heck precludes § 1983 claims relating to pending charges when a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of any conviction or sentence that might result from prosecution of the pending charges. Such claims arise at the time the charges are dismissed. See Covington, 171 F.3d at 124; Uboh v. Reno, 141 F.3d 1000, 1006 (11th Cir. 1998); Smith v. Holtz, 87 F.3d at 113.

We agree with the district court that, depending on their substance, Heck may apply to Beck's claims, making them premature. We disagree, however, with its blanket application of Heck to all of Beck's claims. Heck applies only to those claims that would necessarily imply the invalidity of any conviction that might have resulted from prosecution of the dismissed rape charge or the invalidity of his probation revocation. Not all of them do. Each of Beck's claims must be assessed individually to determine whether it has yet matured, and if so, when it matured for purposes of applying the statute of limitations.

State statutes of limitations applicable to general personal injury claims supply the limitations periods for § 1983 claims, see Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235, 249-50 (1989); Arnold v. Duchesne County, 26 F.3d 982, 985 (10th Cir. 1994), but federal law governs the time of accrual of § 1983 claims, see Smith v. City of Enid ex rel. Enid County Comm'rs, 149 F.3d 1151, 1154 (10th Cir. 1998). In this situation, Oklahoma's two-year statute applies to Beck's claims. See Meade v. Grubbs, 841 F.2d 1512, 1522-24 (10th Cir. 1988). "Since the injury in a § 1983 case is the violation of a constitutional right, such claims accrue when the plaintiff knows or should know that his or her constitutional rights have been violated." Smith v. City of Enid, 149 F.3d at 1154 (quotation and citations omitted).

Reading Beck's pro se complaint liberally, see Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972), we conclude he raises the following claims: illegal arrest and illegal search and seizure of his vehicle in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments; conversion of his vehicle in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; destruction of and/or failure to disclose exculpatory evidence also in violation of due process; and malicious prosecution in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Beck's illegal arrest and illegal search and seizure claims stem from his arrest by Muskogee City police, search of his property, and seizure of his vehicle on the evening and morning of October 1-2, 1995. He contends that the police did not have probable cause to arrest him and that they lacked authority because they arrested him outside their jurisdiction. (He was eventually turned over to the Muskogee County Sheriff's Office.) It is not clear what was allegedly illegal about the search and seizure. Regardless, both of these claims are barred by the statute of limitations.

"Claims arising out of police actions toward a criminal suspect, such as arrest, interrogation, or search and seizure, are presumed to have accrued when the actions actually occur." Johnson v. Johnson County Comm'n Bd., 925 F.2d 1299, 1301 (10th Cir. 1991). Beck has provided no allegation or information indicating that we should not apply this presumption here. Although he contends he did not become aware of what ultimately happened to his vehicle until sometime after it was seized, that is relevant only to his conversion claim and not to his search and seizure claim.

Moreover, Heck does not affect the time these claims arose because ultimate success on them would not necessarily question the validity of a conviction resulting from the rape charge or his probation revocation. See, e.g., Simpson v. Rowan, 73 F.3d 134, 136 (7th Cir. 1995). For claims of unreasonable searches, Heck itself explains why:

[A] suit for damages attributable to an allegedly unreasonable search may lie even if the challenged search produced evidence that was introduced in a state criminal trial resulting in the § 1983 plaintiff's still-outstanding conviction. Because of doctrines like...