Haley v. City of Boston, Civil Action No. 09-10197-RGS.

• Decision Date: 31 December 2009
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 09-10197-RGS.
• Citation: 677 F. Supp.2d 379
• Parties: James A. HALEY v. CITY OF BOSTON, Joseph Kelley, John B. Harrington, and Unknown Employees of the City of Boston.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

677 F.Supp.2d 379

James A. HALEY v. CITY OF BOSTON, Joseph Kelley, John B. Harrington, and Unknown Employees of the City of Boston.

Civil Action No. 09-10197-RGS.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

December 31, 2009.

Gayle Horn, Jonathan Loevy, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, James L. Sultan, Rankin & Sultan, Boston, MA, for Plaintiff.

Hugh R. Curran, Bletzer and Bletzer, P.C., Brighton, MA, Evan C. Ouellette, City of Boston Law Department, Boston, MA, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS

STEARNS, District Judge.

Plaintiff James A. Haley served thirty-four years in state prison after being convicted of the first-degree murder of David Myers, the boyfriend of his sister-in-law, Gloria Custis. Defendants Joseph Kelley and John Harrington are former Boston Police officers who headed the investigation that led to Haley's arrest. Although Haley was never exonerated of the murder, he was released from custody when the Commonwealth, in response to a public records request, disclosed an exculpatory police report that had not been produced at Haley's trial. The principal claims of the Complaint are framed under the Federal Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, although Haley also pursues common-law theories of liability against the City of Boston and unnamed police superior officers. Defendants have moved to dismiss all counts of the Complaint. A hearing on the motion was held on October 23, 2009.

BACKGROUND

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) summarized the facts developed at Haley's trial in 1972 as follows.

The victim, David Myers, was a man twenty-five years old, five feet seven inches tall, and weighed 230 pounds. He lived in a ground-floor apartment in Dorchester with Gloria Custis and their six months old baby. The defendant, James Haley, was about the same height as the victim, but much slimmer, weighing about 120 pounds. His wife Brenda is Gloria's sister, and the defendant and Brenda lived in the apartment for about a month in March, 1971. On May 3, 1971, the defendant struck Brenda and threatened her, and the same day she went to her parents' home in Delaware. She came back to Boston for about a week in June, but did not see the defendant. She came back again on July 9, and spoke to the defendant on the telephone. On Saturday, July 10, while Brenda and Gloria were on their way to Gloria's apartment, they saw the defendant about thirty-five feet away and he looked at them, but there was no conversation with him. Brenda and Gloria then went to Gloria's apartment, although Brenda was staying with a third sister at a different address.

On the same Saturday Gloria and the victim went to bed in their apartment between 10 and 10:30 P.M. The doors were locked, but a kitchen window was open. In the early morning of July 11, she awoke, heard their dog barking, and saw the victim going toward the kitchen. She said, `What's the matter, David?' He said, `James stabbed me. James stabbed me.' As she was getting up from the bed, she heard a gunshot, and as she was running toward the kitchen, David said, `Why did you stab me, man? Brenda's not here.' Gloria then looked into the bathroom, where the light was on, and saw the defendant and the victim struggling over the tub. The defendant had a small gun and a large knife in his hands, and the victim had his hands over the defendant's hands, trying to get the knife and gun away from him. The telephone in the apartment was disconnected, and Gloria thought that the telephone in the upstairs apartment of a neighbor was also disconnected. She grabbed her clothes, ran out the door and yelled for help. She ran a block and a half or two blocks to her brother's apartment, arriving fifteen or twenty minutes after 5 A.M. The police were called. With her brother and two others, she returned to her apartment, met the police there, and let them in. The victim was lying on the floor. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 5:45 A.M. The cause of death was a bullet wound in the head. He had been stabbed first. A bullet removed from the victim's head and two spent bullets found in the apartment had been fired from the same gun.

The defendant worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Saturday, July 10, until 2:45 P.M. Later he visited his mother at the hospital. Still later, in the evening, he was at a party in Dorchester. He left with others to get sandwiches about 3 A.M. and returned about 4 A.M. The defendant's sister, who was at the party, testified that she saw the defendant about 5 to 6 A.M., when the crime apparently occurred.

Commonwealth v. Haley, 363 Mass. 513, 514-516, 296 N.E.2d 207 (1973). No physical evidence linked Haley to the crime. Rather, the trial pitted the credibility of Gloria Custis and her sister Brenda against that of Haley's sister, Patricia Mason, whose testimony placed Haley at a party when the murder occurred. On March 3, 1972, Haley was convicted of first-degree murder. The jury recommended against the death penalty and Haley was sentenced to life without parole.¹ Haley's direct appeal and his two subsequent motions for a new trial were unsuccessful. See Commonwealth v. Haley, 413 Mass. 770, 604 N.E.2d 682 (1992).

In 2006, Haley filed requests pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Act (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 66, § 10), with the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office (Suffolk D.A.'s Office) and the Boston Police Department for the files relating to his case. The Suffolk D.A.'s Office could not find Haley's file. On February 14, 2006, the Boston Police Department (BPD) produced sixty pages of investigative records from its files.

The documents included transcribed, redacted statements given to police by Gloria and Brenda on the day of Myers's killing, July 11, 1971. In her statement, Brenda told police that the last time she had seen Haley was a month earlier, from a distance, walking down the street. Similarly, Gloria told police that the last time she had seen Haley before July 11 was a month earlier. Neither Gloria nor Brenda told police in their statements that they saw Haley on July 10, as they had testified at trial.

Commonwealth v. Haley, No. SUCR1971-58947, Memorandum on Defendant's Motion to Dismiss Indictment, at 19 (Mass.Super. Aug. 26, 2008) (hereafter "Superior Court Decision"). The import of these statements to Haley's defense was described by the Superior Court as follows: "Gloria and Brenda's police statements were significant in that they could be interpreted to mean that the July 10 encounter with Haley did not occur, thus undermining Gloria's credibility as the critical eyewitness and eliminating the alleged impetus for the July 11 break-in of Myers's apartment." Id. at 24.

Spurred by the new revelation, Haley filed a third motion for a new trial in October of 2007, alleging that the withholding of the statements attributed to Gloria and Brenda violated his right to due process. Haley also sought additional post-conviction discovery. On December 21, 2007, the Commonwealth moved to vacate Haley's conviction and grant him a new trial. The Superior Court allowed the motion that same day. The Commonwealth did not, however, concede Haley's innocence. "The Commonwealth specifically states that it does not now comment on the factual guilt or innocence of the defendant of the crime charged. The Commonwealth's review of the 1971 investigation and prosecution of the defendant does not exonerate him; it does establish that he did not receive a fair trial." Def. Mem. in Supp.-Ex. L, at 3. Haley was released on bail on January 18, 2008, pending a new trial.

On June 13, 2008, the Suffolk D.A.'s Office wrote to Haley stating that all of the trial and appellate documents in his case had been "inadvertently lost or destroyed." On June 27, 2008, Haley filed a motion to dismiss the murder indictment with prejudice. The motion was granted by the Superior Court without prejudice on August 26, 2008.² Haley filed this lawsuit on February 11, 2009.

DISCUSSION

Defendants move to dismiss Haley's complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Under Rule 12(b)(6), a court will dismiss a Complaint if, after accepting all well-pleaded facts as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of a plaintiff, it determines that the Complaint "fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). To survive a motion to dismiss, the factual allegations in a complaint must "possess enough heft" to set forth "a plausible entitlement to relief." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 557, 559, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007); Thomas v. Rhode Island, 542 F.3d 944, 948 (1st Cir.2008). A plaintiff must plead "more than labels and conclusions," and his factual allegations must be sufficient to "raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Morales-Tañon v. P.R. Elec. Power Auth., 524 F.3d 15, 18 (1st Cir.2008). The standard "demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation. A pleading that offers labels and conclusions or a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do. Nor does a complaint suffice if it tenders naked assertions devoid of further factual enhancement." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (citations omitted).

Individual Defendants (Counts I-VII and IX)

In his Complaint, Haley makes the following quasi-factual allegations against the individual defendants, principally Kelley and Harrington (the Defendant Officers).

1. "Defendants deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence, as well as fabricated false reports and other evidence, thereby misleading the criminal prosecution of Plaintiff." Compl. ¶ 45.

2. "Defendant Officers accused Plaintiff of criminal activity knowing those accusations to be without genuine probable cause, and they made statements to prosecutors with the intent of exerting influence to institute and continue the

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