Brown v. Green

Decision Date25 June 1984
Docket NumberNo. 83-2619,83-2619
Parties15 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1629 Ronald A. BROWN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Albert GREEN, Defendant-Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Robert A. Habib, Law Office of Gerald C. Bender, Gerald C. Bender, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.

Cary Schwimmer, Ancel, Glink, Diamond, Murphy & Cope, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellant.

Before BAUER, WOOD and ESCHBACH, Circuit Judges.

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge.

Defendant-appellant Albert Green, an officer of the Village of Maywood Police Department in Maywood, Illinois, appeals from an order of the district court entering judgment on the jury's verdict against him for using excessive force in arresting plaintiff-appellee Ronald Brown in violation of 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The jury awarded Brown $21,500 compensatory damages and $45,000 punitive damages. Green contends that the district court erred (1) in excluding portions of the state court criminal record against Brown arising out of the same incident, and (2) in allowing Brown to amend his complaint to include a request for punitive damages after the close of all the evidence. Because we believe Green's first assignment of error is meritorious, we reverse and remand the case for a new trial. We therefore need not address Green's second assignment of error.

I.

On July 9, 1980, shortly after midnight, three officers from the Maywood Police Department responded to a radio call about a disturbance at Brown's mother's house. The disturbance apparently stemmed from an argument between Brown and his brother about the disappearance of Brown's barbecue dinner following the breakup of a small wedding party (the party had been given by Brown's mother for Brown and his wife following their wedding the previous afternoon). What happened next is disputed. Brown alleged that after Green and the two other officers arrived, they confronted him and beat him without provocation. Green and the other officers denied this allegation. They claimed that Brown had physically resisted arrest and that in the process Brown had struck Green; they asserted that at no time had they used excessive force in executing the arrest or at the station house.

Brown was subsequently charged in state court with criminal battery and resisting arrest. The battery complaint stated that Brown knowingly and without legal justification struck Green with his fist about Green's body, causing Green bodily harm. The resisting arrest complaint asserted that Brown, knowing Green to be a police officer engaged in the performance of his official duties, pushed, shoved, and punched Green after Brown had been placed under arrest. On September 17, 1980, following a bench trial, Brown was convicted of both criminal charges and sentenced to one year of probation. Brown subsequently moved for a new trial. Some time after the motion was filed, Brown's attorney (who also represented Brown in the section 1983 action) made an appearance before the state court and asked that the new trial motion be granted or, in the alternative, that the court change Brown's probation sentence to a disposition of supervision. Following a discussion between the court and Brown's attorney, see infra note 3, the court agreed to alter Brown's probation sentence; the court vacated its previous order and changed the sentence to a disposition of supervision. 1 Brown thereafter satisfactorily completed the supervision and it was terminated on September 16, 1981. Under the Illinois statute governing supervision, the state court was then required to enter a judgment dismissing the charges, which it apparently did.

On March 15, 1982, Brown filed a section 1983 civil rights action in federal district court, alleging that Green and the other two officers violated Brown's fourteenth amendment rights by using excessive force in arresting him on July 9, 1980. Just before trial commenced on June 7, 1983, Brown's counsel brought a motion in limine to bar Green from using during trial the certified record pertaining to the state criminal proceedings. A lengthy discussion followed about the significance of the state court order of February 3, 1981, which vacated the state court's previous order and imposed supervision in place of probation. In the course of that discussion, Brown's counsel, who had argued before the state court judge, told the district court, when asked whether the convictions were vacated because Brown had successfully completed his probation:

No, we asked the Judge to reconsider. The Judge re-weighed all the evidence. The Judge changed over his whole testimony. This man never was convicted for anything, and he said that supervision should be made available to this man.

The district court then asked Brown's counsel whether there was a transcript of this colloquy, to which counsel replied that he could not remember. Although counsel for Green pointed out that Brown was sentenced to a period of supervision after the probation order had been vacated, the district court stated that, in its understanding, this did not necessarily mean that the state court had made a finding of guilt. It then granted Brown's motion in limine.

At the beginning of the second day of trial, counsel for Green again raised the matter about Brown's state court conviction. Green's counsel argued that he was not interested in using the fact of Brown's conviction per se, but wanted to use the record of the state court complaint and proceedings to estop Brown from testifying that he never struck Green. Counsel for Green explained that in order for a court to grant supervision in Illinois, the accused must have pled guilty or stipulated to the facts supporting the charge, or there must have been a finding of guilt. Because of this requirement, Green's counsel argued that the state criminal proceeding conclusively established the facts as set forth in the complaint; he stated, "[w]e are not seeking, as would be the case if we were trying to impeach, to use a record of conviction, and that is a distinction which we think has to be made."

In deciding to stay with its original order, the district court stated that no facts had been presented to it regarding the vacating of the conviction except for the representations made by counsel for Brown:

Mr. Bender [counsel for Brown] made a representation yesterday and correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Bender--to the effect that [the vacation of the original order] was done by virtue of a further factual argument made to the Judge, who then reconsidered his original factual finding and vacated the conviction because he was persuaded that he had originally taken the wrong view of the merits.

MR. BENDER: That is correct, your Honor.

THE COURT: Now, that is what you are representing to the Court--

MR. BENDER: That is right, your Honor.

THE COURT: --as an officer of the Court?

MR. BENDER: Your Honor, I even told the Court that I even followed the Judge around from circuit to circuit.

THE COURT: The answer to my question is yes?

MR. BENDER: Yes, your Honor.

The district court went on to conclude:

[W]hat I have before me is an official certified Court record indicating that that conviction was vacated. On that basis and on the basis of your [Green's counsel's] lack of any evidentiary presentation concerning the circumstances of the vacation and on the basis of Mr. Bender's representation, based upon his own personal knowledge as to how it occurred ... I am going to stand by my original ruling that there shall be no mention of this conviction of September 17, 1980, and there will be no collateral estoppel on account of that conviction.

After Green was found liable pursuant to section 1983 for using excessive force in executing Brown's arrest, he brought a motion for a new trial. In the motion, Green again asserted that because supervision can be given only if the defendant was found guilty, stipulated to the facts underlying the charges, or pled guilty, the district court had erred in "preclud[ing] the introduction of the record of the criminal proceedings against [Brown] which establish [sic], through admission by [Brown] or through collateral estoppel, that [Brown] committed a criminal battery against Officer Green during the incident which was the basis of this lawsuit." This error allegedly resulted in Green being deprived of a fair trial.

The district court rejected Green's motion for a new trial for two reasons. First, the district court stated that it was "not clear that the state court judge believed it was necessary to find plaintiff guilty of the offense in order to place him on supervision," and that there appeared "to be an inconsistency between vacation of the conviction on the one hand and [Green's] theory of what the supervision implies, on the other." (Footnote omitted.) Second, the district court judge observed that "[u]nless I were to have directed the jury as a matter of law that [Brown] had in fact been guilty of a battery, which [Green] does not suggest now and did not suggest during the trial, I am unable to see how the jury would have benefitted from knowing that a state court judge found [Brown] had committed a battery (assuming that it [sic] what the 'supervision' means)."

II.

We think the district court erred in excluding the state court records, although it was correct in not giving them preclusive effect. In Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 101 S.Ct. 411, 66 L.Ed.2d 308 (1980), the Supreme Court outlined the role of collateral estoppel in section 1983 actions. In Allen, it held that "the history of Sec. 1983 does not in any way suggest that Congress intended to repeal or restrict the traditional doctrine of preclusion." Id. at 98, 101 S.Ct. at 417. Although the Court noted that a major purpose behind the enactment of section 1983 was the "grave congressional concern that the state courts had been deficient in protecting federal rights," ...

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