Brown v. Patterson

• Decision Date: 12 June 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2616,86-2616
• Citation: 823 F.2d 167
• Parties: Anthony A. BROWN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Officer L. PATTERSON, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 167

823 F.2d 167

Anthony A. BROWN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Officer L. PATTERSON, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 86-2616.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 13, 1987.

Decided June 12, 1987.

Alan M. Freedmanand and Bruce H. Bornstein, Freedman & Bornstein, P.C., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Robert Marc Chemers, Pretzel & Stouffer, Chtd., Karne Dimond, Asst. State's Atty., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before BAUER, Chief Judge, POSNER, Circuit Judge, and FAIRCHILD, Senior Circuit Judge.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

Anthony Brown was arrested by a police officer who was executing a warrant for the arrest of Anthony Moseley, alias "Anthony Brown." After spending 48 hours in jail, Brown was released on bail. He brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 against the arresting officer and others, charging that his arrest and incarceration violated the principles of the Fourth Amendment, which have been held applicable to state and local government by virtue of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted (see Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6)). The judge granted the motion, and this appeal followed.

In August 1984 a judicial officer in Cook County, Illinois had issued a warrant for the arrest of Anthony Moseley for attempted burglary and for possession of burglary tools. The warrant listed Moseley's address as 2822 South Burnham, in Chicago, and described him as a black male born on July 30, 1960. The validity of the warrant is not contested. Although not shown on the warrant, Moseley has an alias, "Anthony Brown." The policy of the then Sheriff of Cook County, Richard Elrod, was to place the aliases of persons named in warrants in the Law Enforcement Advisory Data System (LEADS), a computerized data bank accessible by police officers. Three months after the warrant was issued, defendant Patterson, a police officer of Harvey, Illinois, stopped the plaintiff, Anthony Brown, for a traffic violation. The plaintiff's driver's license showed his address as 514 E. 154th Street, Phoenix, Illinois, and his birthdate as July 18, 1960. The Village of Phoenix is an enclave in Harvey, a town just south of Chicago. Anthony Brown is black.

Patterson arrested him, suspecting that he was Anthony Moseley (which Brown denied), and took him to the Harvey police station. He was held there for 24 hours, then transported to the Cook County Jail, where he spent another 24 hours before posting a $7,500 bond and being released. In neither lock-up was he fingerprinted or was any other effort made to determine whether he was really Moseley.

Brown was charged with Moseley's offenses. Two months later he appeared in court to answer the charges, and was discharged with the notation that the wrong defendant was in court. The warrant for Moseley's arrest was reissued. A week later three police officers arrived at Brown's home in Phoenix to arrest him again on the warrant for Moseley. When Brown showed them the court "half-sheet" dismissing the charges against him, they decided not to arrest him; but ever since this incident Brown has been careful to retain the half-sheet on his person, lest he again be threatened with arrest pursuant to the warrant for Moseley.

The whole business is thoroughly unedifying. There ought to be a remedy for a false arrest and incarceration, although the parties seem agreed that, in all likelihood, there is none under state law in the circumstances of this case because of the broad tort immunities that law enforcement officers in Illinois enjoy. See Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 85, paragraphs 2-202 to 2-205; Wilson v. Hunk, 51 Ill.App.3d 1030, 10 Ill.Dec. 90, 367 N.E.2d 478 (1977). Yet jurors and draftees are paid; and one might have thought persons falsely arrested through no fault of their own (for Anthony Brown can hardly be blamed for the fact that a black criminal of his approximate age decided to take "Anthony Brown" as an alias) equally deserving of compensation, for the embarrassment, fear, and loss of time resulting from the arrest. Such liability might induce the authorities to explore the possibility of catching fugitives by means less likely to involve the arrest (and sometimes rearrest, see Johnson v. Miller, 680 F.2d 39, 40 (7th Cir.1982)) of innocent people. The problem illustrated by this case is potentially a serious one. The Chicago telephone book lists 15 Anthony Browns and 4 Tony Browns. No doubt some of them are both young and black and therefore covered, at least loosely, by the description in the warrant. Goodness knows how many of them have been or will be arrested in the quest for Anthony Moseley. However, the only question before us is whether Brown has a remedy under section 1983 against any of the defendants.

He named as defendants (besides Patterson) the City of Harvey, Cook County, and Sheriff Elrod. None is culpable in the sense necessary to create liability under section 1983. We begin with Officer Patterson. If he acted reasonably in executing the warrant, even though the address and birthdate on it did not match the address and birthdate on Anthony Brown's license, then he cannot be held liable for an unreasonable seizure of Brown's person in violation of Fourth Amendment principles and hence of section 1983. This conclusion is established by Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797, 803-05, 91 S.Ct. 1106, 1110-11, 28 L.Ed.2d 484 (1971). The police had probable cause to arrest Hill, but mistakenly arrested Miller instead, thinking he was Hill. He told the officers he was Miller, and he was, but the mistaken arrest was "a reasonable response to the situation facing them at the time," id. at 804, 91 S.Ct. at 1111, so the Fourth Amendment was satisfied. For cases applying this principle in circumstances similar to those here see, e.g., Johnson v. Miller, supra, 680 F.2d at 41-42; Gero v. Henault, 740 F.2d 78, 84-85 (1st Cir.1984); Hill v. Bogans, 735 F.2d 391, 393 (10th Cir.1984); United States v. Glover, 725 F.2d 120, 122-23 (D.C.Cir.1984); United States v. McEachern, 675 F.2d 618, 621 (4th Cir.1982); cf. Arnsberg v. United States, 757 F.2d 971, 981 (9th Cir.1985).

If like many criminals Anthony Moseley has an alias--and there is no suggestion that he does not, in fact, use the alias of "Anthony Brown"--it would not be surprising if he also has a false address and birthdate. The birthdates of Moseley and Brown are only 12 days apart, and they are both black males. Harvey, where Brown was arrested, surrounds Phoenix, where he lives, and is near Chicago, where Moseley lives (or lived when the warrant was issued--he presumably decamped shortly afterward, or he would have been arrested). Patterson would have been imprudent not to take in Brown for further investigation. The fact that Brown denied being Moseley was only to be expected, even if Brown was Moseley. If, as here, an arrest warrant, regular on its face, is duly issued, the officer executing the warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment by arresting the wrong person, unless the officer acts unreasonably, which Patterson did not do. As the warrant did not violate the Fourth Amendment by containing an inaccurate or too general description of the person to be arrested, this case is not like United States v. Doe, 703...