Figueroa v. Rivera
| Decision Date | 20 July 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. 97-2252,97-2252 |
| Parties | Justina FIGUEROA, A/K/A Justina Figueroa Echevarria, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Miguel RIVERA, A/K/A Miguel Rivera Garcia, et al., Defendants, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Maria H. Sandoval and Judith Berkan on brief for appellants.
Arturo Aponte Pares on brief for appellee Gervacio Rivera Robles.
Carlos Lugo Fiol, Solicitor General, Puerto Rico Dep't of Justice, Edda Serrano Blasini, Deputy Solicitor General, and Sigfredo Rodriguez Isaac, Assistant Solicitor General, on brief for remaining appellees.
Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, ROSENN * and CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judges.
Appellants, the heirs of Jess Ros Quinones (Ros), allege that local plenipotentiaries conspired to convict Ros for a murder that he did not commit and that a different set of public officials failed to provide Ros with adequate medical care during his incarceration (leading to his premature death). The district court dismissed the complaint, and the plaintiffs appeal. We affirm (though our reasoning diverges at times from that of the lower court).
If recited here in full flower, the averments in the complaint would seem to have been lifted from the pages of a John Grisham thriller. Our tale, however, is decidedly less gripping, as many of the more sensational allegations are irrelevant to the issues on appeal. We limit our narrative accordingly. See Garita Hotel Ltd. Partnership v. Ponce Fed. Bank, F.S.B., 958 F.2d 15, 16 (1st Cir.1992).
In 1984, a jury convicted Ros, David Carrin Ramos (Carrin), and Rafael Mendez Kercad (Mendez) of first degree murder in connection with the slaying of Jose Trevino. The Puerto Rico Supreme Court rejected the trio's appeals. The three men subsequently sought a new trial in the nisi prius court, alleging that they had unearthed previously undiscovered evidence which proved their innocence. According to their proffer, this evidence indicated that four other persons murdered Trevino, and that the prosecutor, Miguel Rivera Garca (Rivera), endeavored to frame Ros, Carrin, and Mendez because Rivera's nephew was one of the guilty parties. After a hearing, the presiding judge found the new evidence unpersuasive and denied the defendants' motion. No appeal was taken.
Carrin next sought habeas corpus relief in the federal district court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (1994 & Supp. II 1996), and Ros followed suit. 1 After the cases languished for nearly four years, Carrin and Ros filed amended petitions, representing that they had located a brand-new witness who could provide proof of their innocence. Since the two had not presented this evidence to the trial court, the respondents promptly moved to dismiss the amended habeas petitions on exhaustion grounds. See Adelson v. DiPaola, 131 F.3d 259, 261-62 (1st Cir.1997) (). Before the district court could rule on these motions, Ros died in custody. Upon learning of Ros's death, the district court (Laffitte, J.) dismissed his petition as moot. Some months later, Judge Laffitte dismissed Carrin's petition, without prejudice, for want of exhaustion.
On April 9, 1996, various members of Ros's family brought suit in the district court against Rivera, Rivera's former supervisor, several Puerto Rico police officers, and one of Trevino's "actual" murderers. Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1994), they averred that these defendants had succeeded in framing Ros for Trevino's murder, thereby spawning an unconstitutional conviction and sentence. The plaintiffs added a bevy of pendent tort claims stemming from Ros's conviction and consequent incarceration. These claims sounded in negligence, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Finally, the plaintiffs asserted claims for negligence and deprivation of civil rights against several "John Doe" defendants, never more specifically identified, who allegedly acted carelessly and with deliberate indifference to Ros's need for medical care during his immurement.
The appellees moved to jettison the complaint for failure to state any claim upon which relief could be granted or, in the alternative, for summary judgment. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), 56. The district court (Casellas, J.) determined that Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), barred the action and dismissed the complaint. 2 See Figueroa Echevarria v. Rivera Garcia, 977 F.Supp. 112, 116 (D.P.R.1997). This appeal ensued.
We afford plenary review to a district court's grant of a motion for dismissal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). See McCoy v. Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., 950 F.2d 13, 15 (1st Cir.1991). In the course of this oversight, we accept well-pleaded facts as true and draw all reasonable inferences from those facts in favor of the plaintiff. See Massachusetts Sch. of Law at Andover, Inc. v. American Bar Ass'n, 142 F.3d 26, 40 (1st Cir.1998). Dismissal is appropriate "only if it clearly appears, according to the facts alleged, that the plaintiff cannot recover on any viable theory." Correa-Martinez v. Arrillaga-Belendez, 903 F.2d 49, 52 (1st Cir.1990).
The appellants' main section 1983 claim hinges on the assertion that Rios's conviction and subsequent imprisonment were unconstitutional. In their complaint, they allege that the police officers who investigated Trevino's slaying and the prosecutor who tried the case spun a web of lies to ensure Ros's conviction, and, in the bargain, coerced witnesses to prevaricate and shielded the actual killers. To make matters worse, the complaint alleges, Rivera and his cohorts then undertook a pattern of deceit to conceal their lawlessness.
Assuming, purely for argument's sake, that the appellants could prove these assertions, we nonetheless must uphold the district court's disposition. The Heck Court ruled in no uncertain terms that when a section 1983 claimant seeks "to recover damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment," he "must prove that the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus." 512 U.S. at 486-87, 114 S.Ct. 2364. In the absence of such a showing of impugnment, the claim "is not cognizable under [section] 1983." Id. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364. Here, the appellants do not allege that an authorized tribunal or executive body overturned or otherwise invalidated Ros's conviction. Consequently, Heck bars the unconstitutional conviction and imprisonment claims. See, e.g., White v. Gittens, 121 F.3d 803, 806-07 (1st Cir.1997); Hamilton v. Lyons, 74 F.3d 99, 103 (5th Cir.1996).
The appellants counter that strict application of Heck works a fundamental unfairness in this case. After all, Ros was attempting to impugn his conviction when death intervened. Although this plaint strikes a responsive chord, it runs afoul of Heck 's core holding: that annulment of the underlying conviction is an element of a section 1983 "unconstitutional conviction" claim. See 512 U.S. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364. Creating an equitable exception to this tenet not only would fly in the teeth of Heck, but also would contravene the settled rule that a section 1983 claimant bears the burden of proving all the essential elements of her cause of action. 3 See Ruggiero v. Krzeminski, 928 F.2d 558, 562-63 (2d Cir.1991).
Although the district court reached the correct result with respect to the unconstitutional conviction and imprisonment claims, it dismissed the appellants' action without prejudice, suggesting in dictum that if Carrin ultimately succeeds in reversing his conviction, then the appellants "might be able to ... bring this [section] 1983 action." Figueroa Echevarria, 977 F.Supp. at 116. The appellees denigrate this aspect of the court's ruling, contending that Heck, on its face, requires a section 1983 claimant who seeks damages arising out of an unconstitutional conviction to show reversal of his own--not a codefendant's--conviction, and that, therefore, the district court should have dismissed the appellants' claims with prejudice.
We are skeptical that a section 1983 claimant can satisfy the Heck regimen by arguing a theory of reversal by proxy. That said, however, we decline to grapple with the appellees' argument. A party who neglects to file a cross-appeal may not use his opponent's appeal as a vehicle for attacking a final judgment in an effort to diminish the appealing party's rights thereunder. See Morley Constr. Co. v. Maryland Cas. Co., 300 U.S. 185, 191, 57 S.Ct. 325, 81 L.Ed. 593 (1937); Gonzalez v. Bowie, 123 F.2d 387, 389 (1st Cir.1941). Because the appellees did not prosecute a cross-appeal, the argument that they seek to advance is not properly before us.
In a curious gambit designed to skirt the obstacles that Heck interposes, the appellants asseverate that Judge Laffitte improperly terminated Ros's and Carrin's habeas petitions in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and that this court erroneously dismissed an appeal from the latter order. The short answer to this line of argument is that the appellants did not raise these contentions below, and they are thus foreclosed from unveiling them for the first time on appeal. See Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers Union, Local No. 59 v. Superline Transp. Co., 953 F.2d 17, 21 (1st Cir.1992); McCoy, 950 F.2d at 22.
The slightly longer, but equally dispositive, answer is that the appellants' gambit amounts to an attempt to collapse the habeas proceedings into their section 1983 action, thereby creating a legal chimera through which they seek simultaneously to invalidate Ros's conviction and to recover damages. Heck forecloses this type...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Heinrich v. Sweet
...motion "if it clearly appears according to the facts alleged, that the plaintiff cannot recover on any viable theory." Figueroa v. Rivera, 147 F.3d 77, 80 (1st Cir.1998). Despite this low threshold, the pleading requirement is "not entirely a toothless tiger." Doyle v. Hasbro, Inc., 103 F.3......
-
Lacedra v. Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility
...plaintiff the benefit of all reasonable inferences. See Cooperman v. Individual Inc., 171 F.3d 43, 46 (1st Cir.1999); Figueroa v. Rivera, 147 F.3d 77, 80 (1st Cir.1998); Gross v. Summa Four, Inc., 93 F.3d 987, 991 (1st Cir.1996). Dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) is appropriate only if "it appe......
- McGrath v. City of Somerville
-
Cabot v. Lewis
...settled: the rule of Heck applies even if the plaintiff is not in custody and therefore cannot obtain habeas relief. In Figueroa v. Rivera , 147 F.3d 77 (1st Cir. 1998), the court held that the family of a prisoner who had died in custody while his habeas petition was pending could not brin......