Fields v. City of Chi.

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit
• Writing for the Court: Rovner, Circuit Judge.
• Citation: Fields v. City of Chi., 981 F.3d 534 (7th Cir. 2020)
• Decision Date: 20 November 2020
• Docket Number: Nos. 17-3079,17-3125 & 18-1207,s. 17-3079
• Parties: Nathson FIELDS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

981 F.3d 534

Nathson FIELDS, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 17-3079

17-3125 & 18-1207

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued November 8, 2019

Decided November 20, 2020

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied January 25, 2021

Sam Heppell, Attorney, Jon C. Loevy, Attorney, Steven Edwards Art, Attorney, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, H. Candace Gorman, Attorney, Law Office of H. Candace Gorman, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Jonathon D. Byrer, Attorney, Myriam Z. Kasper, Attorney, Office of the Corporation Counsel, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant City of Chicago in 17-3079.

Paul A. Michalik, Attorney, Daniel M. Noland, Attorney, Terrence M. Burns, Attorney, Reiter Burns, LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Joseph Murphy.

Rachel Anne Katz, Attorney, Shelly B. Kulwin, Attorney, Kulwin, Masciopinto & Kulwin, LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant David O'Callaghan in 17-3079.

Myriam Z. Kasper, Attorney, Office of the Corporation Counsel, Rachel Anne Katz, Attorney, Shelly B. Kulwin, Attorney, Kulwin, Masciopinto & Kulwin, LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant David O'Callaghan in 17-3125 and 18-1207.

Before Sykes, Chief Judge, and Ripple and Rovner, Circuit Judges.

Rovner, Circuit Judge.

These appeals stem from an action brought in 2010 by Nathson Fields, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law against the City of Chicago and individuals including several Chicago police officers as well as two former Cook County prosecutors. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants violated Fields's constitutional rights as well as state law in their actions in fabricating evidence and withholding exculpatory evidence in a criminal investigation that resulted in Fields's conviction for murder. After a retrial that resulted in an acquittal, Fields filed this civil suit, and the jury entered an award in his favor on a number of grounds. Two individual defendants, Chicago Police Detectives David O'Callaghan and Joseph Murphy, and the City of Chicago, now appeal.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The § 1983 and state law claims in this case relate to the investigation and prosecution of Fields for the murders of Talman Hickman and Jerome Smith in 1984. Following a bench trial before Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Maloney, Fields and his co-defendant Earl Hawkins were convicted of the murders. During the penalty phase, the prosecutors introduced evidence that Fields and Hawkins had also murdered Dee Eggers Vaughn and Joe White.¹

Fields and Hawkins were sentenced to death for the murders of Hickman and Smith, and the conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal in 1990. Twelve years after the trial, in 1998, those convictions were overturned on post-conviction review based on evidence that Hawkins's attorney had bribed Judge Maloney to secure an acquittal and that Judge Maloney during the trial became concerned that he was being investigated by law enforcement and returned the bribe; that corruption undermined confidence in the outcome. Hawkins, who began to cooperate with federal law enforcement in 1987 following the conviction, provided the evidence of the bribe. He also made a deal to testify for the prosecution in a retrial of Fields for the Hickman and Smith murders, in return for avoidance of the death penalty or life in prison without release. Under the plea agreement, Hawkins pled guilty to two counts of armed violence and received a sentence recommendation of 42 years on each count to be served consecutively. The plea agreement also stated that "[i]t is the intent of both parties that defendant Hawkins remain in custody until he reaches 72 years of age," which would be in 2027. R. 770-2 at 8.

In the criminal retrial of Fields for the Smith and Hickman murders, the prosecutors presented a different factual scenario than in the first, relying on Hawkins's testimony. Whereas Hawkins had been identified as a shooter in the first trial, he was portrayed as the getaway driver in the second trial and Fields and another individual were characterized as the shooters. Fields was acquitted in that retrial in 2009. He then sought a certificate of innocence, which was ultimately denied, and at the same time pursued this lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleged that Chicago Police Detectives David O'Callaghan and Joseph Murphy violated his constitutional rights in connection with his criminal trials by fabricating evidence, engaging in suggestive identification procedures, and withholding exculpatory evidence. Fields alleged that the withholding of evidence was done in accordance with a policy of the City of Chicago to withhold "street" files which were compiled by detectives and contained such exculpatory evidence. See Jones v. City of Chicago , 856 F.2d 985, 995 (7th Cir. 1988) (noting that "street files" are police files withheld from the state's attorney and defense counsel and therefore unavailable as a source of exculpatory information for a prosecutor deciding whether to charge or a defense attorney).

Fields also included state law claims of malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. The case proceeded to trial in March 2014, but after seven days of trial, the court declared a mistrial when the defendants introduced prejudicial testimony that the court had excluded in a pretrial in limine ruling. The second trial commenced in April 2014, and at the close of the month-long trial the jury found in favor of Fields on his due process claim against defendant O'Callaghan, and in favor of the defendants on the remaining claims. The jury awarded Fields $80,000 on his due process claim against O'Callaghan. All parties filed post-trial motions. O'Callaghan sought entry of judgment as a matter of law on the due process claim, and Fields sought an entry of judgment on his claim against the City, both of which the district court denied. Fields also sought a new trial as to the claims that were not decided in his favor as to the individual defendants, a new trial as to damages regarding the due process claim against O'Callaghan upon which he prevailed, and a new trial on his Monell claim against the City. See Monell v. Dept. of Social Services , 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). The district court granted Fields's motion for a new trial as to the claims found in favor of the individual defendants and the City, and for a new trial as to damages with respect to the O'Callaghan claim. O'Callaghan subsequently sought a new trial as to liability, arguing that the damages issue could not be separated from that of liability, and the court granted that motion. After another month-long trial, the jury found in favor of Fields against O'Callaghan and Murphy on one of his § 1983 claims, against the City on Fields's Monell liability claim under § 1983, and against O'Callaghan on a state-law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and found for the defendants on the remaining § 1983 and state law claims. The jury awarded Fields $22 million in compensatory damages, and punitive damages of $30,000 against O'Callaghan and $10,000 against Murphy. O'Callaghan and Murphy (hereinafter the "individual defendants") and the City now appeal that jury determination.

We will not recap the evidence presented below in its entirety because such a comprehensive overview is unnecessary to the resolution of the issues before us and, with challenges before us to decisions made in two separate month-long trials, any such effort to do so for both trials would prove both voluminous and confusing. Instead, we present the relevant evidence in the discussion of each issue raised on appeal. For context, the district court summarized the evidence as follows:

Fields contended, and the evidence supported, that O'Callaghan and Murphy falsified incriminating evidence and concealed favorable evidence, and that he was deprived of his liberty as a result. This includes evidence from which the jury reasonably could infer, among other things, that Murphy pulled a group of suspects, including Fields, more or less out of the air and turned them over to O'Callaghan; O'Callaghan in turn fabricated identifications by witnesses who had no real opportunity to see the perpetrators; Murphy caused the fabrication of a purported admission by Fields to Anthony Sumner; O'Callaghan had responsibility—perhaps along with others—to review a police investigative "street file" and provide it to Cook County prosecutors; Murphy, too, had information placed in the street file (a request for photographs used to purportedly identify the perpetrators); and the street file, which was never turned over, contained information that a reasonably competent defense attorney could have used to show the existence of reasonable doubt.

Corrected Memorandum Opinion and Order 9-11-2017 ("Corrected Op.") at 3-4.

II. CHALLENGES BY INDIVIDUAL DEFENDANTS O'CALLAGHAN AND MURPHY

O'Callaghan and Murphy raise a number of challenges to the court's evidentiary decisions in the last (third) trial, arguing that those errors individually and cumulatively warrant yet another new trial. We review a trial court's evidentiary decisions only for abuse of discretion. Lewis v. City of Chicago Police Dept. , 590 F.3d 427, 440 (7th Cir. 2009) ; Hammel v. Eau Galle Cheese Factory , 407 F.3d 852, 868 (7th Cir. 2005). "A determination made by a trial judge regarding the admissibility of evidence is treated with great deference because of the trial judge's first-hand exposure to the witnesses and the evidence as a whole, and because of his familiarity with the case and ability to gauge the likely impact of the evidence in the context of the entire proceeding."

Doornbos v. City of Chicago , 868 F.3d 572, 579 (7th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted), quoting United States v. Wash , 231 F.3d 366, 371 (7th Cir. 2000). A new trial based on such errors will be granted only if the evidentiary errors had "a...