Corley v. Jackson Police Dept.
| Decision Date | 30 January 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 75-3932,75-3932 |
| Citation | 566 F.2d 994 |
| Parties | 16 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 693, 15 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 8060 Charlie CORLEY and Levaughn Carter, Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. JACKSON POLICE DEPARTMENT, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellees. Charlie CORLEY and Levaughn Carter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Russell C. DAVIS, Mayor and Commissioner of the City of Jackson, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Frank R. Parker, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Jackson, Miss., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Michael Farrell, E. Grady Jolly, John E. Stone, City Atty., Jackson, Miss., for defendants-appellees.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Before COLEMAN, SIMPSON and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.
In this Title VII employment discrimination case, 1 Charlie Corley and Levaughn Carter, former officers of the Jackson, Mississippi, Police Department, allege that their discharge from the force was based on their race and their opposition to the Department's discriminatory employment practices. The Jackson Police Department contends that Corley and Carter were discharged solely because they accepted a bribe from a known bootlegger. In response, Corley and Carter deny the payoff charge and maintain that it was merely a pretext for discrimination, noting that other officers similarly accused were neither investigated nor discharged. The district court accepted the Police Department's version and held for the defendants. Because the district court failed to apply the correct substantive law in deciding this case, we reverse and remand for a new trial.
Corley and Carter, two black officers of the Jackson Police Department, were discharged on December 4, 1972, on the charge that two nights earlier they each received a payoff of $5.00 from a known bootlegger. They filed their first complaint as a class action on January 11, 1973, seeking reinstatement for themselves and relief on behalf of a class of present and future black employees alleging denial of due process and retaliation in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982, and 1983. Subsequently, Corley and Carter sought and obtained "right-to-sue" letters 2 on their charges pending before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and timely filed their second complaint on September 3, 1974, as an individual action alleging that they were discharged in violation of Title VII because of race, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a), and in retaliation for opposing practices made unlawful by Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a). Named as defendants in each case were the Mayor and City Commissioners of Jackson, the City of Jackson, the Jackson Police Department, the Chief of Police and two investigating officers, and the Jackson Civil Service Commission. The class issues in the first complaint were resolved by a Consent Decree filed on March 25, 1974. The remaining issues of the two complaints relating to the discharge of Corley and Carter were consolidated for trial, which was held without a jury before U. S. District Judge Harold Cox on July 8-11, 1975. On September 25, 1975, Judge Cox entered his unpublished memorandum opinion finding against the plaintiffs; a final judgment for the defendants was entered on October 7, 1975. Corley and Carter filed timely notice of appeal.
All facts relevant to the alleged payoff and the subsequent discharge are hotly disputed by the parties. Furthermore, as will be explained below, the credibility choices made by the district court must be set aside as infected by application of an erroneous legal standard. The basic areas of dispute are as follows:
1. Prior History of Racial Discrimination:
The parties concede that before Corley and Carter were hired in 1963, the Jackson Police Department had employed no black persons from its formation in 1885. From 1963 until 1970, according to Corley and Carter, the few black officers on the force were openly discriminated against; they were forced to use racially segregated rest rooms and to sit at the back of the room in training academy classes, deprived of many benefits offered to whites, prohibited from arresting whites, and often addressed as "nigger" by their superior officers. When Lavell Tullos became Chief of Police in 1970, he issued a broad policy statement against discrimination, the effects of which are in dispute. The defendants contend that after 1970 there was no discrimination against blacks within the Jackson Police Department; Corley and Carter testified that they continued to be discriminated against, although in a less open manner. By the Consent Decree filed on March 25, 1974, the defendants stipulated to facts demonstrating that their hiring and testing practices continued to have a discriminatory impact after 1970. The Consent Decree also provided "the entry of this Consent Decree . . . shall not constitute an adjudication or an admission of the defendants of any violation of the law".
2. Plaintiffs' Challenges to Police Discrimination:
In May 1972, Corley and Carter joined several other officers, including another black officer who soon withdrew from the case, in filing a lawsuit against the Police Department challenging changes in the promotion procedure, rank structure, and salary scale instituted under Chief Tullos. The Taylor case, as we will refer to it, was filed in the district court for the Southern District of Mississippi and included several allegations of racial discrimination. In response to the Taylor complaint, approximately 160 Jackson police officers, including the two investigating officers sued in this case, Lieutenant Orr and Captain Bennett, and six black officers, successfully moved to intervene as defendants-intervenors. The Answer of Chief Tullos denied the material allegations of the complaint. 3 Additionally, in June, September, November, and December 1972, Corley and Carter filed charges with the EEOC alleging that they had been denied promotions, transfers, and better job assignments because of their race, and that they had been retaliated against for opposing employment discrimination. In the instant case, Corley and Carter contend that the defendants, particularly Chief Tullos, Police Lieutenant Willie C. Orr, and City Attorney John Stone, knew about their participation in the Taylor case and their filing of charges with the EEOC and wished to retaliate against them for engaging in such activity. The defendants deny having had actual knowledge or retaliatory motives.
3. The Investigation of Corley and Carter:
On October 31, 1972, an informer told Lt. Orr that 10 to 12 months earlier he had witnessed a payoff to Corley and Carter from "a Negro bootlegger on Henry Street" and that this practice was "probably still" going on. A. 1178. Three days later, United States Treasury Agents arrested several bootleggers in the Jackson area, including two black persons, James Henry Johnson and his girlfriend Johnnie Strahan. Johnson told Agent Alan Krohn and Lt. Orr that for two years he had made payments of $2.00 to $5.00 to Corley and Carter in return for protection for his bootlegging operation. According to Johnson, this practice ended in November 1971 when Corley and Carter "were moved away from the downtown area". A. 1179. At the time of these payoffs, Johnson had been doing business at Strahan's apartment on Hamilton Street. In 1972, however, Strahan moved to an apartment at 333 North Roach Street, also in the downtown area. Johnson and Strahan described payoffs in cash and whiskey to other officers, four black and two white, at the Roach Street address.
Two weeks after the police received these allegations from Johnson and Strahan, Corley and Carter were transferred from their normal patrol to a walking beat on Farrish Street in the downtown area. At the same time, the police told Johnson and Strahan to contact them as soon as any officers returned for a payoff. The police planned to use a radio transmitter and marked bills to gather conclusive evidence against officers taking payoffs.
Corley and Carter allege that their transfer to Farrish Street was an attempt by the Police Department to set them up, noting that no other officer named by Johnson and Strahan was similarly transferred or investigated. 4 The defendants deny any discriminatory effort to entrap Corley and Carter and maintain that the transfer was motivated by considerations unrelated to the investigation of payoffs. They assert that Farrish Street, a predominantly black business and residential section, requires a walking patrol during the Christmas shopping season because of the increase in robberies, burglaries, and purse snatchings.
4. The Alleged Payoff:
On November 27, 1972, Johnson called Lt. Orr to report that Corley and Carter had returned to Strahan's apartment the night before for a payoff. On December 1, Lt. Orr and Captain William E. Bennett went to Strahan's apartment and gave Johnson and Strahan a radio transmitter and ten one dollar bills dusted with a powder which appears orange under fluorescent light. They instructed Johnson and Strahan to call them as soon as Corley and Carter returned for another payoff, and to stall Corley and Carter by asking them to come back later for their money, thus giving the police an opportunity to initiate a stakeout outside the apartment.
According to Strahan, Corley and Carter returned to her apartment at 7:00 p. m. on December 2, 1972. She told them that Johnson was not there, asked them to return at 9:00 p. m., and then called Captain Bennett at police headquarters. After a conference with Captain Bennett and two other officers, Lt. Orr called Johnson and told him to turn the radio transmitter on, and then drove in an unmarked car to a position about 90 yards away from Strahan's apartment from which he could...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Womack v. Shell Chemical Co.
...Title VII. See Jefferies v. Harris Cty. Community Action Association, 615 F.2d 1025, 1036 (5th Cir. 1980); Corley v. Jackson Police Dept., 566 F.2d 994, 1003 (5th Cir. 1978); Turner v. Texas Instruments, Inc., 555 F.2d 1251 (5th Cir. 1977). 16. Absent direct or circumstantial evidence of di......
-
Miller v. Poretsky
...50 Here again, no case in which other-acts evidence was rejected on this premise has been uncovered. Quite to the contrary, in Corley v. Jackson Police Department 51 the Fifth Circuit held flatly that such evidence properly directed does not pose the hazard of collateral It is apparent . . ......
-
First Alabama Bank of Montgomery, N.A. v. First State Ins. Co., Inc.
...legal standard, the findings resulting from that misapplication "lose the insulation of [Rule] 52(a)." Corley v. Jackson Police Dep't, 566 F.2d 994, 1001-02 (5th Cir.1978); see also Peterson Indus. v. Lake View Trust & Sav. Bank, 584 F.2d 166, 168 (7th Cir.1978); 9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Fe......
-
Oaks v. City of Fairhope, Ala.
...1256 (5th Cir. 1977); Jefferies v. Harris Cty. Community Action Ass'n, 615 F.2d 1025, 1036 (5th Cir. 1980); Corley v. Jackson Police Dept., 566 F.2d 994, 1003 n.14 (5th Cir. 1978). The undisputed facts, however, support the Library Board's conclusion. Whereas before and after the Oaks' cont......
-
Title Vii Disparate Treatment Claims
...Ct. 2742, 73 NEB. L. REV. 953 (1994). 27. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 804 (1973); Corley v. Jack-son Police Dep't, 566 F.2d 994, 999 (5th Cir. 1978). 28. See Amirmokri v. Baltimore Gas and Elec. Co., 60 F.3d 1126 (4th Cir. 1995); Lin-dahl v. Air Fr., 930 F.2d 1434, 1......