Brennan v. Township of Northville

• Decision Date: 26 March 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-1012,95-1012
• Citation: 78 F.3d 1152
• Parties: Robert P. BRENNAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TOWNSHIP OF NORTHVILLE, Defendant, Lawrence Demeter and Fred Yankee, individually and in their official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 1152

78 F.3d 1152

Robert P. BRENNAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TOWNSHIP OF NORTHVILLE, Defendant Lawrence Demeter and Fred Yankee, individually and in their official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 95-1012.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 20, 1995.

Decided March 26, 1996.

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan; Avern Cohn, Judge.

Gregory J. Stempien (argued and briefed), Livonia, MI, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

G. Gus Morris (argued and briefed), Dise & Gurewitz, Detroit, MI, for Defendants-Appellants.

Before KRUPANSKY, BATCHELDER and MOORE, Circuit Judges.

MOORE, Circuit Judge.

Lawrence Demeter and Fred Yankee appeal the denial of qualified immunity in this action premised on 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Police officers Demeter and Yankee arrested Robert Brennan and held him overnight on charges of domestic assault, without giving him the opportunity to post bail at the police station. In doing so, the officers attempted to follow the requirements imposed by Mich. Comp. Laws § 780.582a, which provides specially for the detention of domestic violence offenders. The district court, however, found that the officers' actions violated the Fourth Amendment and denied qualified immunity to defendants. Because the district court's conclusions were founded on an erroneous factual assumption, we reverse.

I

In March 1993, in the late afternoon, a domestic dispute arose between Robert Brennan and his wife. Patrolman Lawrence Demeter responded to a 911 call by Brennan's stepdaughter Carli, and when he arrived, the dispute appeared to have calmed down considerably. There are slight differences in the stories of the family members: Carli claimed Brennan tried to "choke" her; Brennan claimed he merely "grabbed" her away from the phone by the neck. Brennan's wife stated that he "pushed" her across the kitchen; Brennan stated that he merely "shook her off" and she fell. These differences are immaterial. Brennan does not dispute the existence of probable cause for Demeter to have arrested him for domestic assault and for assault and battery. Indeed, he later pleaded nolo contendere to the same charges.

Brennan's grievance lies rather with his detention for 22 hours without any opportunity for immediate release on an interim bond. He was booked at the police station at about 6:00 p.m., at which point defendant Demeter called Detective Fred Yankee for further instructions. Because the courthouse was closed, Yankee advised Demeter to hold Brennan for 20 hours, pursuant to the 1990 Michigan interim bond statute, Mich. Comp. Laws § 780.582a, Mich. Stat. Ann. § 28.872(2a), and a letter from the Wayne County prosecutor, John O'Hair, notifying the police department of this provision. M.C.L. § 780.582a provides that if a person is arrested for domestic assault:

... [he or she] shall not be released on an interim bond ... but shall be held until he or she can be brought before a magistrate for arraignment ... or, if a magistrate is not available or immediate trial cannot be held within 24 hours, the person shall be held for 20 hours, after which the person may be released on an interim bond ... or on his or her own recognizance....

O'Hair's letter informing the police of this new provision (which became effective March 28, 1991) states:

Recent amendments to the interim bond statute mandate that a domestic violence offender may not be released on any type of bond or personal recognizance unless arraignment or trial may be had within 24 hours. If an arraignment cannot be scheduled within 24 hours, the offender is to be held for 20 hours; and may, thereafter, post bond or be released on his own recognizance.

The morning after Brennan's arrest, Detective Yankee obtained the criminal complaint against Brennan, and Brennan was arraigned shortly after the court's lunch break, at around 2:45 p.m. When Brennan was finally released on his own recognizance, it was almost 4:00 p.m., 22 hours after he had been arrested.

Brennan named Demeter, Yankee, and the Township of Northville as defendants in his § 1983 action, arguing that his overnight detention was clearly unconstitutional. When all three defendants moved for summary judgment, claiming either qualified immunity or the failure to show an unconstitutional policy or custom, Brennan responded with a summary judgment motion of his own. There being no material factual dispute, the district court ruled as a matter of law that Brennan's Fourth Amendment rights had been violated, that such rights were clearly established, and that the police officers' detention of Brennan was conducted pursuant to an unconstitutional policy of the township police department. Defendants' motion for summary judgment was denied, and plaintiff's motion was granted on the issue of liability under § 1983. ¹ We address first the denial of qualified immunity to defendants. We then discuss the partial summary judgment for Brennan in part IV below.

II

A denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds may be reviewed on interlocutory appeal under Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 524-30, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2814-18, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985), and the decision is reviewed de novo. Washington v. Newsom, 977 F.2d 991, 993 (6th Cir.1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 1031, 113 S.Ct. 1848, 123 L.Ed.2d 472 (1993). When analyzing a qualified immunity issue, the first step is to determine whether plaintiff has shown a violation of a constitutionally protected right. Megenity v. Stenger, 27 F.3d 1120, 1124 (6th Cir.1994). If the answer is yes, then the second step is to determine whether the right is so "clearly established" that a "reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); see also Megenity, 27 F.3d at 1124. Our initial inquiry, then, is directed toward whether Brennan's detention from 6:00 p.m. to the following afternoon violated the Fourth Amendment. Because we answer this question in the negative, it will be unnecessary to proceed to the second step.

In County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 47, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 1665, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991), the Supreme Court clarified the standard set down earlier in Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 125, 95 S.Ct. 854, 868-69, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975), regarding what constitutes a "prompt" judicial determination of probable cause, required by the Fourth Amendment, for purposes of holding a pretrial detainee who has been arrested without a warrant. Gerstein had held that suspects arrested without a warrant could not be held pending trial for indefinite periods of time--sometimes for a month or more--without any judicial determination of probable cause. The Riverside Court found that the "flexible" approach of Gerstein should be retained, but that more concrete guidelines would be necessary to guide lower courts in determining whether a police department's procedures complied with the Constitution. Riverside 500 U.S. at 55-56, 111 S.Ct. at 1669-70. The Court observed that "a jurisdiction that provides judicial determinations of probable cause within 48 hours of arrest will, as a general matter, comply with the promptness requirement of Gerstein." Id. at 56, 111 S.Ct. at 1670. It then stated that if a probable cause hearing does occur within this 48-hour period, the burden will be on the plaintiff to show that there was an "unreasonable delay":

Examples of unreasonable delay are delays for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify the arrest, a delay motivated by ill will against the arrested individual, or delay for delay's sake.

Id. If an arrestee is not afforded a hearing in 48 hours, on the other hand, the Court noted that the burden would shift to the government "to demonstrate the existence of a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance." Id. at 57, 111 S.Ct. at 1670. The Court explicitly rejected the dissent's suggestion that 24 hours would be "a more appropriate outer boundary" for providing probable cause hearings. Id. at 57-58, 111 S.Ct. at 1670-71.

The district court attempted to apply this framework to the 22-hour detention of Brennan, finding that although he was arraigned within 48 hours, the police had delayed "for delay's sake"--thus bringing this case into one of Riverside 's forbidden categories of unreasonable delay. The basis for the court's ruling was the court's belief that "Yankee admitted that magistrates are always available somewhere in Wayne County for emergency arraignments, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." Memorandum and Order, No. 93-74561, at 3 (E.D.Mich. Dec. 15, 1994). Therefore, according to the district court, defendant police officers should have taken Brennan to be arraigned right away and should not have held him overnight. The court went on to state that even if a magistrate had not been available on that specific evening, "[t]he Court need not decide whether or not a magistrate was available during the evening of the detainment because it is clear from the record that regardless of the availability of a magistrate, Brennan would still have been detained for the twenty hour period." Memorandum and Order at 10-11.

In reality, there is nothing in the record to support the idea that a magistrate was available for arraignments in Northville in the evenings. Everything in the record supports the idea that the police officers knew that a magistrate was not available then, and that is why they did not attempt to have Brennan arraigned until the next day. Yankee testified at his deposition that an emergency magistrate was available in the evenings for the purpose of obtaining search warrants only. He specifically stated that a magistrate would not be available to do arraignments. Demeter similarly testified that he knew a magistrate would not be available "[b]ecause the court closes at 4:15." Demeter Dep. at 17. Yet,...