Brandy v. Dill

• Decision Date: 06 May 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-2293,98-2293
• Citation: 187 F.3d 104
• Parties: (1st Cir. 1999) WILLIAM BRADY AND THERESA BRADY, Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. MARYANN DILL, ET AL., Defendant, Appellants. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 104

187 F.3d 104 (1st Cir. 1999)

WILLIAM BRADY AND THERESA BRADY, Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. MARYANN DILL, ET AL., Defendant, Appellants.

No. 98-2293.

United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Heard May 6, 1999.

Decided July 22, 1999.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Joseph P. Kittredge, with whom Timothy M. Burke was on brief, for appellants.

Scott Harshbarger, Attorney General, and Michelle A. Kaczynski, Assistant Attorney General, on brief for Commonwealth of Massachusetts, amicus curiae.

Philip A. Tracey, Jr., with whom Paul T. Prew and Dimento & Sullivan were on brief, for appellees.

Before Selya, Circuit Judge, Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge, and Pollak,^* Senior District Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal poses an intriguing question of constitutional law. Suppose that the following scenario exists: (1) the police arrest a person pursuant to a facially valid warrant, supported by probable cause; (2) the person, though named in the warrant, asserts that he is actually innocent; and (3) the police come to believe that claim. In those circumstances, can the officers be held liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for their refusal unilaterally to release the person whom they have arrested? The district court answered this question unconditionally in the affirmative. We reverse.

I. BACKGROUND

This case had its genesis in an arrest that occurred in Middleboro, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1994, when a state trooper stopped David Buckley for driving under the influence of alcohol.¹ Buckley (who had no driver's license or other identification on his person) palmed himself off to the arresting officer as William Brady and supplemented this misidentification with Brady's authentic address, date of birth, and social security number. When the imposter failed to appear in court to respond to the charge, a warrant issued in Brady's name.

That warrant was still outstanding on Saturday evening, March 4, 1995, when the Rockland police department received word of a brawl. The officer who responded to the scene encountered plaintiff-appellee William Brady and detained him because of the outstanding warrant, unaware that he had nabbed the real William Brady, not the poseur whose default had inspired the issuance of process.

Informed that the warrant had borne fruit, a Massachusetts state trooper, Thomas Majenski, made a beeline for the Rockland station house and assisted in transporting Brady to the state police barracks in Bourne. There, other troopers placed him in a holding cell. From the outset, Brady proclaimed his innocence, insisting that he had not been stopped for drunk driving in Middleboro the previous year.

Shortly after Brady's arrival, his new custodians began looking into his protested innocence. An examination of the original arrest report (Report No. 1), transmitted by facsimile from Middleboro, revealed certain discrepancies when compared with the Rockland arrest report (Report No. 2) (e.g., Report No. 1 indicated that Brady had a tattoo and that his mother's maiden name was "Kowalski," whereas Report No. 2 noted no tattoos and listed the detainee's mother's maiden name as "Kozloski"). Moreover, the particulars concerning height, weight, hair and eye color did not correlate precisely. Trooper Steven Vrona proceeded to contact the officer who had cited the allegedly inebriated motorist, and this conversation provided further reason to believe that Brady probably was not the person who had been stopped in Middleboro.

Suspecting that they might have the wrong man (notwithstanding the exact match between the name that appeared on the warrant and the name of the person in custody), the troopers unsuccessfully attempted to glean information from Brady about who might have preempted his identity. They then essayed to arrange his release on bail. At around midnight, a bail commissioner arrived at the barracks in response to the troopers' importuning and offered to turn Brady loose on personal recognizance upon his (Brady's) execution of an agreement to appear voluntarily for arraignment. Brady declined, apparently fearing that he might somehow inculpate himself by signing the paper. On Sunday, March 5, the troopers tried to involve an attorney on Brady's behalf, but their efforts came to naught. The next day, Brady was taken to the first available court session, arraigned, and released. He had spent a day and a half in custody. The charges against him eventually were dismissed.

Brady sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the troopers had violated his right to be free from unreasonable seizures and wrongful detention. See U.S. Const. amends. IV & XIV, § 1. Although he did not challenge either the validity of the default warrant or the propriety of the initial arrest, he contended that the troopers had a constitutional obligation to release him from custody, despite the command of the facially valid warrant, once it had become apparent to them that they were holding the wrong person.²

The defendants moved for summary judgment, asseverating that their handling of the situation had not violated Brady's rights, and that, in all events, the doctrine of qualified immunity shielded them from liability for money damages. The district court granted brevis disposition in favor of Colonel Charles Henderson (the state police superintendent) and Majenski (whose only involvement had been in ferrying Brady from Rockland to Bourne), but it denied similar relief to the four troopers who served as Brady's principal custodians at the Bourne barracks (Vrona, Sergeant Maryann Dill, and Troopers Kenneth J. Hudson, Jr., and Douglas Mendes). See Brady v. Dill, 24 F. Supp.2d 129 (D. Mass. 1998). The quartet of disappointed troopers then prosecuted this interlocutory appeal. See Camilo-Robles v. Zapata, 175 F.3d 41, 45 (1st Cir. 1999) (explaining the basis on which public officials may bring interlocutory appeals from pretrial orders rejecting assertions of qualified immunity).

II. DISCUSSION

When qualified immunity is at issue, an inquiring court first must ask whether the Constitution recognizes the right asserted by the plaintiff. See Conn v. Gabbert, ___ U.S. ___, ___,119 S. Ct. 1292 1295 (1999). In this instance, Brady argues that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures obligates officers who have made a "matched" arrest pursuant to a facially valid warrant (i.e., an arrest in which the suspect's identity matches the stated identity of the person denominated in the warrant) to release the person unilaterally if and when they come to believe that he is innocent. We think that this claim, as it relates to the facts of this case, is foreclosed by Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137 (1979).

Like this case, Baker involved the "matched" arrest, over vigorous protest, of a victim of mistaken identities pursuant to what was, on its face, a valid warrant. The sheriff's office detained McCollan for several days, releasing him only after comparing his visage to a photograph of the wanted man (McCollan's brother, who, as matters turned out, had used McCollan's identification when originally apprehended). See id. at 140-41. McCollan subsequently sued the sheriff under section 1983, seeking damages for the deprivation of his liberty. See id. at 141. The district court directed a verdict in the sheriff's favor, but the court of appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial. See McCollan v. Tate, 575 F.2d 509, 511 (5th Cir. 1978). The Supreme Court then granted the sheriff's certiorari petition. See Baker v. McCollan, 439 U.S. 1114 (1979).

Although McCollan had framed his suit in terms of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court began by considering whether the arrest itself had violated the Fourth Amendment. See Baker, 443 U.S. at 142-43 (noting that the Fourth Amendment has been incorporated into the Fourteenth). The Court concluded that because the warrant naming McCollan was valid on its face, probable cause existed for the arrest and, hence, the Fourth Amendment was not implicated. See id. at 143-44; see also Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989) (observing that, even if the wrong person is arrested, there is no Fourth Amendment violation as long as the arrest is based on probable cause) (citing cases).

Once the Fourth Amendment had dropped out of the equation, the Court considered whether McCollan had been deprived of any of the specific subset of procedural guarantees, incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, that come into play after completion of an arrest (e.g., the prohibition against excessive bail, the guarantee of a speedy trial, and the like). See Baker, 443 U.S. at 144-46 & n.3. Because McCollan had not been deprived of any such rights, the Court concluded that the complainant had failed to prove a constitutional wrong. See id. at 145-47. While conceding that a lengthy detainment in the face of repeated claims of innocence might in extreme circumstances furnish the basis for a constitutional violation, the Court was "quite certain that a detention of three days over a New Year's weekend does not and could not amount to such a deprivation." Id. at 145. In the bargain, the Court also rejected, at least implicitly, any claim that the detainment constituted a substantive due process violation. See id. at 147-49 (Blackmun, J., concurring).

Baker is compelling here. Given that Brady does not challenge the validity of the arrest itself -- he was, after all, the very person named in the outstanding warrant -- the Fourth Amendment (which governs the legitimacy of the arrest and its incidents) is not at issue. See id. at 143-44. The question, then, is whether Brady's post-arrest procedural guarantees were abridged. To prevail on such a battleground, Brady must do more than show that the troopers made a mistake. See id. at 145 (treating the fact that McCollan was innocent of ...