Chapman v. Musich, 83-1088
| Decision Date | 01 February 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 83-1088,83-1088 |
| Citation | 726 F.2d 405 |
| Parties | Giles Edward CHAPMAN, Appellant, v. Michael H. MUSICH, Lorri Shurtleff, Joseph W. Downey, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Giles E. Chapman, pro se.
Gunn & Lane, P.C., Cornelius T. Lane, Jr., St. Louis, Mo., for appellees.
Before LAY, Chief Judge, and ROSS and McMILLIAN, Circuit Judges.
Giles Edward Chapman is an inmate in the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, Missouri. Though the record on appeal does not state the date, Chapman was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment sometime prior to 1982. On February 9, 1982, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the conviction and remanded the case for a new trial. State v. Chapman, 627 S.W.2d 597 (Mo.1982). Assistant Public Defender Michael Musich was appointed to represent Chapman in his second trial.
Soon after Musich's assignment to the case, Chapman sought to have him removed. Chapman listed a number of complaints regarding the quality of Musich's efforts on his behalf. Particularly, Chapman alleged that Musich failed to adequately prepare for trial, and that Musich also advised him to plead guilty to a lesser offense. Chapman claims that Musich told Chapman's father that Chapman should plea bargain and that this caused his father emotional distress and led to several arguments. In his effort to have Musich removed from his case, Chapman wrote letters to the state bar association, the trial judge, and Joseph Downey, the Public Defender for St. Louis, requesting an investigation and hearing. Chapman received a letter from Lorri Shurtleff stating that she would investigate his claim and contact him when her investigation was complete. Ms. Shurtleff never contacted Chapman. He was subsequently convicted again.
Chapman brought suit against Musich, Shurtleff and Downey in United States District Court 1 pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1979), alleging that Shurtleff and Downey deprived him of his right to effective assistance of counsel under the sixth amendment by failing to investigate his claim and failing to remove Musich from his case. The district court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, finding that the defendants did not act under color of state law and that the allegations against them did not appear to amount to a deprivation of constitutional rights.
42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 provides in relevant part:
Sec. 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.
Several elements must be established to state a cause of action under section 1983: 1) the defendants must act under color of state law; 2 2) the defendants' actions must be intentional; 3 and 3) the defendants' actions must cause the deprivation of plaintiff's rights. 4
In granting the defendants' motion to dismiss, the district court relied on Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U.S. 312, 102 S.Ct. 445, 70 L.Ed.2d 509 (1981). In that case, Dodson, an indigent Iowa prison inmate, alleged that a Polk County Public Defender had failed to represent him adequately in an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. The public defender had been assigned to represent Dodson in his appeal from a conviction for robbery. After investigating the case, she moved for permission to withdraw as counsel on the ground that Dodson's claims were totally frivolous. The public defender accompanied her motion with an affidavit and filed a memorandum summarizing Dodson's claims and supporting legal arguments. The Iowa Supreme Court granted the motion to withdraw and dismissed Dodson's appeal. Dodson filed a suit in United States District Court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, contending that the public defender's actions, especially her motion to withdraw, had deprived him of his sixth amendment right to counsel, subjected him to cruel and unusual punishment, and denied him due process of law. Dodson relied on the public defender's employment by the county to satisfy the "under color of state law" element.
The United States Supreme Court ultimately decided the question, holding that a public defender does not act under color of state law when performing traditional functions as counsel. 454 U.S. at 324-25, 102 S.Ct. at 452-53. The Court used a functional analysis, reasoning that the fact that public defenders are employed by the county or the state, although certainly a relevant factor, is insufficient to establish that they act under color of state law within the meaning of section 1983:
it is the function of the public defender to enter "not guilty" pleas, move to suppress state's evidence, object to evidence at trial, cross-examine state's witnesses, and make closing arguments in behalf of defendants. All of these are adversarial functions. We find it peculiarly difficult to detect any color of state law in such activities.
In the instant case, the district court was correct in dismissing Chapman's section 1983 claim against Musich. In fact, Chapman has abandoned that claim on appeal. Chapman concedes that none of the defendants act under color of state law in the performance of their traditional adversarial functions. He maintains, however, that both remaining defendants either failed to perform, or negligently performed certain administrative and investigative functions. This question was left unresolved in Polk County v. Dodson.
In concluding that [the public defender] did not act under color of state law in exercising her independent professional judgment in a criminal proceeding, we do not suggest that a public defender never acts in that role. In Brandi v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507, 100 S.Ct. 1287, 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980), for example, we found that a public defender so acted when making hiring and firing decisions on behalf of the State. It may be--although the...
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