Garcia v. Hudak

• Decision Date: 05 January 2016
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 15 CV 1393
• Citation: 156 F.Supp.3d 907
• Parties: Sergio Garcia, Plaintiff, v. Officer Matthew Hudak et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

156 F.Supp.3d 907

Sergio Garcia, Plaintiff,

v.Officer Matthew Hudak et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 15 CV 1393

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

Signed January 5, 2016

Edward M. Fox, Jonathan R. Ksiazek, Ed Fox & Associates, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.

Eileen Ellen Rosen, Catherine MacNeil Barber, Silvia Mercado Masters, Stacy Ann Benjamin, Rock Fusco & Connelly, LLC, Chicago, IL, James Gus Sotos, John J. Timbo, The Sotos Law Firm, P.C., Itasca, IL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND OPINION

CHARLES R. NORGLE, United States District Court Judge

Plaintiff Sergio Garcia (“Plaintiff”) brings his First Amended Complaint against Officers Matthew Hudak (“Hudak”), Terrance O'Brien (“O'Brien”), Pamon Mir (“Mir”) (collectively the “Individual Defendants”), and the Village of Schaumburg (collectively, “Defendants”), alleging that the Individual Defendants violated Plaintiff's due process rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.¹ Before the Court is Defendants' motion to dismiss Plaintiff's complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)

. For the following reasons, Defendants' motion is granted in part and denied in part.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Allegations Underlying the State Criminal Case

The following facts are taken from Plaintiff's complaint. On November 17, 2011, at approximately 8:15 p.m., Plaintiff was sitting in a car owned by Craddock, a third-party, in a parking lot at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. Around this time, the Individual Defendants approached Plaintiff and arrested him. Plaintiff alleges that when he was arrested, he was not in possession of any controlled substances and had not engaged in any drug transactions. Moreover, Plaintiff alleges that the Individual Defendants did not find any drugs when they searched him; instead, he alleges that they planted cocaine and marijuana on him during his arrest.

Plaintiff alleges that after his arrest, the Individual Defendants furthered this fabrication by falsely stating in the resulting police report that a confidential informant (“CI”) had told them that Plaintiff was going to buy cocaine from Craddock. Plaintiff alleges further that the report also related the following chain of events, which Plaintiff claims are false.

The report said that the CI received a phone call from Craddock, who told the CI that he was in the parking lot at Woodfield Mall. The report went on to say that once the Individual Defendants discovered Plaintiff in Craddock's car, they found a digital scale and cocaine in a bag on his lap, which he subsequently threw on the ground. The report also states that Plaintiff told the Individual Defendants that he had marijuana in his pocket, which they found after a search. In addition, the report states that Plaintiff told the officers that he bought cocaine in Melrose Park to give to Craddock to sell to someone else, and that Plaintiff took a small amount of the cocaine for his personal use. Plaintiff states that he never made these inculpatory remarks to the Individual Defendants.

Plaintiff was eventually charged with possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. At his pretrial hearings, the Individual Defendants testified in a manner consistent with their police report. Plaintiff alleges that the Individual Defendants never disclosed to the state's attorney that they had fabricated the incriminating evidence. With the “knowledge” that the fabricated evidence would not be inadmissible at trial, and lacking evidence of the actual fabrication, Plaintiff alleges that he pleaded guilty to the charged offense on September 24, 2012.

First Am. Compl. ¶ 24. He was sentenced that same day to eleven years in prison.

B. Events Leading to the Vacatur of Plaintiff's Criminal Conviction

On January 13, 2013, in conjunction with a joint investigation between the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) and the DuPage County State's Attorney Office:

Hudak and O'Brien were charged with multiple counts of unlawful delivery of controlled substances, armed violence, unlawful drug conspiracy, official misconduct, theft, and burglary. The charges alleged, among other acts, that Defendants Hudak and O'Brien illegally search and seized individuals' homes, vehicles, and persons to extort narcotics and/or money to operate a drug ring. Hudak and O'Brien used a confidential informant to sell narcotics that the officers confiscated while working and split the proceeds with another officer who was also charged with felony drug crimes.

First Am. Compl. ¶ 27. O'Brien and Hudak pleaded guilty on March 21, 2014 and April 29, 2014, and were sentenced to twenty-four and twenty-six years in prison, respectively. The complaint does not state the name of the other officer, nor discuss whether Mir was charged with a criminal offense.

In light of these convictions, Plaintiff's criminal defense attorney moved the state court to vacate his conviction. Although the state court reinstated criminal proceedings, the prosecutor moved the court to nolle prosequi the case on August 19, 2014. Plaintiff was immediately released from prison.

C. Procedural History

Plaintiff was arrested on November 17, 2011. Subsequently, Plaintiff filed his original complaint on February 13, 2015, alleging violations of his constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983

. Due to the insufficiency of its allegations, the Court dismissed Plaintiff's complaint; Plaintiff subsequently filed his First Amended Complaint on June 26, 2015. On July 17, 2015, Defendants filed the instant motion to dismiss, which has been fully briefed and is now before the Court.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Standard of Decision

In order to survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6)

, a plaintiff's complaint “must actually suggest that the plaintiff has a right to relief, by providing allegations that raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Indep. Trust Corp. v. Stewart Info. Servs. Corp. , 665 F.3d 930, 935 (7th Cir.2012) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly , 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) (stating that a complaint must allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face”). The Court accepts “all well-pleaded allegations of the complaint as true and view[s] them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Indep. Trust Corp. , 665 F.3d at 934 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “A claim for relief must be plausible rather than merely conceivable or speculative. But all that means is that the plaintiff must 'include enough details about the subject matter of the case to present a story that holds together.”' Runnion ex rel. Runnion v. Girl Scouts of Greater Chi. & Nw. Ind. , 786 F.3d 510, 526 (7th Cir.2015) (quoting Carlson v. CSX Transp., Inc. , 758 F.3d 819, 826 (7th Cir.2014) ).

B. The Sufficiency of the Allegations

Plaintiff's First Amended Complaint lists four claims for relief. Count I seeks relief for the Individual Defendants' alleged violation of Plaintiff's due process rights flowing from their evidence fabrication. Count II seeks relief for Defendants' alleged violation of Plaintiff's due process rights for the Individual Defendants' withholding and concealing material exculpatory evidence. Count III is for the Individual Defendants' alleged conspiracy to deprive Plaintiff of his constitutional rights. Count IV is a malicious prosecution claim under Illinois common law.

1. Primary constitutional violations-counts I and II.

Arresting an individual without probable cause—including fabricating evidence that is then used as probable cause to arrest—is a Fourth Amendment violation. See Smith v. City of Chicago , 913 F.2d 469, 473 (7th Cir.1990)

. If proceedings are later initiated against the arrestee, the allegations may state a claim for malicious prosecution, provided the other elements are met, which are discussed in Part II.B.3 of the Opinion, infra. See Wallace v. Kato , 549 U.S. 384, 389, 127 S.Ct. 1091, 166 L.Ed.2d 973 (2007) (“[A] false imprisonment ends once the victim becomes held pursuant to legal process —when, for example, he is bound over by a magistrate or arranged on charges.”). If the proceedings result in the loss of liberty post-conviction, the government's failure to disclose the original fabrication of evidence to the defendant could result in a claim for procedural due process violations. See Whitlock v. Brueggemann , 682 F.3d 567, 580 (7th Cir.2012) ( “We have consistently held that a police officer who manufactures false evidence against a criminal defendant violates due process if that evidence is later used to deprive the defendant of her liberty in some way.”).

While each of these alleged deprivations concern discrete constitutional protections, they usually involve common facts and elements of proof. Further complicating matters is the reality that the presence or absence of a few dispositive factual allegations can foreclose certain claims or reveal different constitutional violations. With these discrete claims delineated, the Court examines the due process rights at issue in Plaintiff's case.

“The purpose of § 1983

is to deter state actors from using the badge of their authority to deprive individuals of their federally guaranteed rights and to provide relief to victims if such deterrence fails.” Wyatt v. Cole , 504 U.S. 158, 162, 112 S.Ct. 1827, 118 L.Ed.2d 504 (1992) (citations omitted). “Section 1983 ‘is not itself a source of substantive rights,’ but merely provides ‘a method of vindicating federal rights elsewhere conferred.” Albright v. Oliver , 510 U.S. 266, 271, 114 S.Ct. 807, 127 L.Ed.2d 114 (1994) (plurality op.) (quoting Baker v. McCollan , 443 U.S. 137, 144 n.3, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979) ). Accordingly, the identification of “the specific constitutional right allegedly infringed” is the “first step” in a Section 1983 analysis. Id....