Craft v. Wright
| Citation | 426 F.Supp.3d 978 |
| Decision Date | 02 December 2019 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 17-CV-469-NF-KHR |
| Parties | Al-Rashaad R. CRAFT, Plaintiff, v. Chad WRIGHT, in his official and individual capacities; and Ahmad White, in his official and individual capacities, Defendants |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Mexico |
Timothy L. White, Valdez & White Law Firm LLC, Albuquerque, NM, Joseph M. Zebas, Zebas Law Firm LLC, Hobbs, NM, for Plaintiff.
Bryan D. Evans, Carla Neusch Williams, K. Renee Gantert, Barbara Evans, Quincy Jean Perales, Atwood, Malone, Turner & Sabin, P.A., Roswell, NM, for Defendants.
This is a Fourth and First Amendment case regarding the arrest, detention and prosecution of Plaintiff Al-Rashaad R. Craft for alleged felony battery and disorderly conduct occurring in an incident when Mrs. Susan Stone struck him while he was recording his preaching in a public square in Hobbs, New Mexico. Plaintiff does not, however, sue Mrs. Stone in this case. Rather, Plaintiff sues the Hobbs Police Department officer – Detective Ahmad White – who investigated the incident and wrote a sworn Criminal Complaint to obtain a warrant for Plaintiff's arrest. Plaintiff sues White in his individual and official capacities. Plaintiff also sues another officer of the Hobbs Police Department, Captain Chad Wright, in his individual and official capacities for allegedly causing White to "find a reason" to arrest Plaintiff. Defendants move for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. CM/ECF Doc. 90. Plaintiff opposes, arguing summary judgment is inappropriate due to issues of material fact. Doc. 101. For the reasons that follow, the Court concludes Wright is entitled to qualified immunity on the individual capacity claims against him due to a lack of evidence tying him to Plaintiff's arrest, detention or prosecution. White is not entitled to summary judgment on qualified immunity for the Fourth Amendment and First Amendment claims. The official capacity claims against both White and Wright are dismissed based on Plaintiff's concession at the hearing on this motion.
The following facts appear undisputed except where noted.1 Plaintiff Al-Rashaad R. Craft is of African-American descent and Christian in religious belief. His father and grandfather were Southern Baptist preachers, and his father instilled in him the importance of ministering the word of God to all people. He believes projecting the word of God to be his obligation as a Christian.
For parts of 2014 and 2015, Plaintiff lived in Hobbs, New Mexico while working for the U.S. Department of Energy. Doc. 38 ¶¶ 1, 2, 30. On Saturday, April 18, 2015, Plaintiff went to the Shipp Street Plaza in Hobbs, New Mexico, set up his smartphone on a tripod, and began to record himself preaching. Defendants' Ex. 1, Craft Deposition, p. 65:13-20; Plaintiff's Ex. 1 ("Craft's Recording"). Shipp Street Plaza is a public forum or public square. Doc. 101, pp. 1-2, ¶ 1.
Plaintiff had been in Hobbs for approximately eight months, during which time he preached in public almost "every weekend, or every other weekend." Craft Deposition, p. 33:12-24. Plaintiff recorded his preaching and then uploaded the recordings to his YouTube channel, "Hawashinawa Ma Ri." Craft Deposition, pp. 30:9-12; 31:4-20.
Susan Stone's husband owned a store down the block from Shipp Street Plaza. While Plaintiff was preaching on this particular Saturday, Mrs. Stone approached him. Defendants' Ex. 2 (), starting at 8:07; Plaintiff's Ex. 1, Craft Recording.2 Neither party prepared an official transcript of Plaintiff's Video.3 The Court has watched and listened to Plaintiff's Video, and notes it shows the following facts.
• While Plaintiff was preaching, Mrs. Stone approached Plaintiff from off-screen and started speaking loudly as he spoke. When Plaintiff attempted to continue preaching and reading out loud from the Bible he was holding open in his hands, Mrs. Stone repeatedly yelled over Plaintiff's voice, in somewhat slurred speech, "ye goddamn nut," "you goddamn nut," and turned Plaintiff's words against him ("you will be destroyed"), etc., while waving something that looks like a lighter-holder between him and his camera, and moving around him. Mrs. Stone asserted her right to be on public property too. At about one minute and twelve seconds of Mrs. Stone's intervention, the camera captures from Plaintiff's left-forward, Mrs. Stone's hand bringing her lighter-case up under the Bible and pushing it up and back into Plaintiff's face while he was reading out loud from it.
• Plaintiff then turned and took a step off-camera to his forward-left, the direction from which Mrs. Stone's hand had just come. Simultaneous with Plaintiff's movement, he yelled Plaintiff immediately stepped back to where he had been, in front of his camera, looking still to his forward-left off-screen. Plaintiff's Ex. 1, 1:12-17. Later in the recording, Plaintiff tells a police officer that Mrs. Stone pushed him and then he pushed her. A man who later identified himself to police as Israel Loya-Lopez told police that he helped Mrs. Stone to get up from the ground.
• Approximately two seconds later, Mrs. Stone can be heard saying she was "going to get her husband right now." Id. , 1:19-21. Plaintiff turned to his right, seemed to point to onlooking bystanders in that direction, and said, "And I'm glad everyone saw that." Id. , 1:22-26.
• Meanwhile, a man later identified to be Mrs. Stone's husband, Mark Stone, approached from off-screen, confronted Plaintiff about knocking down Mrs. Stone, and although keeping his hands in his pockets, physically and verbally taunted Plaintiff to put his hands on him, also motioning to someone off-camera. Mrs. Stone meanwhile circled closer to Plaintiff in the background, yelling at him "How do you think I fell down?" Id. 1:26 and following. Plaintiff tells Mr. Stone to call the police and do what he has to. Mr. Stone continued to approach closer, and Plaintiff turned the camera to record Mr. and Mrs. Stone, referring to them as demons. In the process, this showed a third man was standing near to Mr. Stone, watching Plaintiff. Plaintiff removed his tunic4 and further responded to Mr. Stone, saying to the effect any woman who puts her hands on him (like Mrs. Stone did) would feel the pain of Yahawa-shirdi-baba-shad.5
• In response to either Mr. Stone or Mr. Loya-Lopez stating that you don't knock down a woman, Plaintiff said "then keep your hands off me." Mr. Stone taunted Plaintiff to knock him down. When Mr. Stone advanced to within inches of his face, Plaintiff asked Mr. Stone to back up, to which he said and did not move away, while Mrs. Stone continued to shake her lighter-case at Plaintiff and yell at him. Finally, Plaintiff put his tunic back on and turned back to his phone camera. Mr. Stone moved close in and then said Plaintiff's Ex. 1, 3:30. At about 3:34, Mrs. Stone in the background touched the back of her head and said "my Ping head is hurting" and told Plaintiff he should "look on your camera and see where I was touching you," i.e. , contending she had not touched Plaintiff.
• At that point, Plaintiff said Mrs. Stone was drunk and would go to jail for public intoxication, to which Mrs. Stone replied that Plaintiff would go to jail, "you mother f*r." Plaintiff resumed reading from his Bible and expounded on these events as examples of the problems with the world he had been discussing before the incident.
Defendants say Plaintiff pushed Mrs. Stone with both hands "to the ground." Doc. 90, p. 4 ¶ 7 (citing Plaintiff's Video, 9:14 to 9:17). Plaintiff says he "pushed the wom[a]n away, and she lost her balance and fell." Doc. 101, p. 3, ¶ 6.
At that point, the Stones retreated a space away. Someone called the Hobbs Police Department, and Officers Brandon Ellis and Michael Thomas responded to the scene. Defendants' Ex. 3, Incident Report by Brandon Ellis ("Incident Report," p. 4; Deposition of Michael Thomas at pp. 14:7-10, 16:8-10). Officer Ellis took the lead and spoke to Mrs. Stone first.
The parties disagree regarding many details of what the witnesses reported to Officer Ellis. Defendants rely largely on Ellis's summary of the conversations in his incident report and White's rendition of that summary in the Criminal Complaint, along with White's summaries of his own conversations with Loya-Lopez and the Stones. Plaintiff instead relies primarily on the officers' audiorecordings, particularly Ellis's Audiorecording. Plaintiff's Ex. 2 ("Ellis's Audiorecording"). That recording reflects Officer Ellis interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Stone together. A man's voice that sounds like Mr. Stone's (from the Plaintiff's Video) answered Ellis initially, saying The same voice reported that he did not see the whole interaction between Plaintiff and Mrs. Stone, but a "close friend" did. The same voice asserts Plaintiff was trying to "instigate" and becoming more "belligerent" all the time. Id. , approximately 1:20. Later, the same male voice can be heard asserting Plaintiff was "preaching down with the white people." Id. , approximately 2:05-20.
Defendants claim Mrs. Stone told Ellis that she was waving her lighter in front of Mr. Craft's camera and telling him she had freedom of speech too when he pushed her with both hands to the ground. Plaintiff asserts no injuries were reported at the time, but in Ellis's Audiorecording Mrs. Stone reported she had pain in her rear, back and head. Mrs. Stone told Ellis she did not want an ambulance.
Ellis then interviewed Plain...
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Price v. Whitten
...arrests.” (Doc. 14-1 at 3.) In that case, the plaintiff (Craft) regularly preached in an area designated as a public forum. Craft, 426 F.Supp.3d at 984. One day preaching, Craft was confronted by another individual, and there was a physical altercation. Id. at 984-85. Craft recorded the inc......