Coyne v. Boeckmann, Civ. A. No. 80-C-503.
Decision Date | 14 April 1981 |
Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 80-C-503. |
Parties | Thomas Daniel COYNE, Plaintiff, v. Vernon R. BOECKMANN, Sheriff of Sheboygan County, Detective LeRoy Nenning, Captain Thurman, Detective Simonsmeier, and Detective Scholten, Defendants. |
Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Wisconsin |
Thomas D. Kuehl, Milwaukee, Wis., for plaintiff.
Alexander Hopp, Corp. Counsel for Sheboygan Co., Sheboygan, Wis., for defendants.
This is an action for damages, brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, arising out of the arrest and detention of the plaintiff Thomas Daniel Coyne on the night of June 5 through 6, 1977. The defendants are Vernon R. Boeckmann, the sheriff of Sheboygan County; Captain Thurman, captain of detectives in Sheboygan County; and Detective LeRoy Nenning, Detective Simonsmeier, and Detective Scholten, members of the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department. The action is before the court on the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint, which will be denied.
The allegations of the complaint must be accepted as true for purposes of this decision. The plaintiff asserts that on June 5, 1977, he was seventeen years old. He was taken into custody in the early evening by members of the Glendale Police Department, Milwaukee County, taken by them to a local hospital for treatment of a head injury received earlier in the day, and held pending the arrival of two members of the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department.
At approximately nine o'clock p. m., the defendant Nenning arrived in Glendale, recited the Miranda warnings to plaintiff who waived them voluntarily, and began to question plaintiff about an incident involving the burning of a woman in Elkhart Lake earlier in the day. After a short time, the plaintiff stated that he would like to call his father, the questioning ceased, and he was permitted to call. He then said that his father would be arriving with an attorney and that he chose to remain silent until his father arrived. Detective Nenning stated to plaintiff, "We've got fifteen witnesses that said you lit it." He then transported the plaintiff immediately to the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department without advising the plaintiff's parents that plaintiff was being moved.
Once in Sheboygan, the defendant Thurman assigned the defendants Simonsmeier and Scholten to interrogate the plaintiff. They gave plaintiff the Miranda warnings and asked him to sign a waiver form, on which he wrote that he would wait for an attorney before answering any questions. Defendants Simonsmeier and Scholten then made some remark to the plaintiff, and he responded by asking what they had on him. They described the results of their investigation to him, and the plaintiff then made a rambling statement about the burning incident and the defendants then elicited from him responses to specific questions.
The plaintiff alleges that the statements which he made were not voluntary in light of his age, the time of night, his emotional and medical condition, his assertion of his right to counsel, and his removal from Glendale to Sheboygan without notification to his parents. The statements were suppressed at his criminal trial. The plaintiff further alleges that the conduct of the defendants, which resulted in his self-incrimination, deprived him of his rights to be free from unlawful search and seizure, to consult with his attorney, and to receive due process and equal protection of the laws, all as guaranteed to him by the Fourteenth Amendment.
There is no claim stated in the complaint in this case that the plaintiff was taken into custody without probable cause or pursuant to an invalid warrant, compare Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 557, 87 S.Ct. 1213, 1219, 18 L.Ed.2d 288 (1967); nor that his right to obtain and to communicate with counsel once obtained was denied by the defendants, compare Weatherford v. Bursey, 429 U.S. 545, 97 S.Ct. 837, 51 L.Ed.2d 30 (1977); Davis v. Turner, 197 F.2d 847 (5th Cir. 1952); nor that plaintiff was treated in a manner different from others taken into custody, see Durso v. Rowe, 579 F.2d 1365, 1371-1372 (7th Cir. 1978); French v. Heyne, 547 F.2d 994, 997 (7th Cir. 1976). The complaint does, however, state a claim under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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