Hall v. City of Los Angeles, 10–55770.

• Decision Date: 24 September 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–55770.,10–55770.
• Citation: 697 F.3d 1059
• Parties: Harold C. HALL, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES; Los Angeles Police Department; Daryl F. Gates, individual capacity; Mark Arneson; Kenneth Crocker, Defendants–Appellees, and Lionel Robert, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

697 F.3d 1059

12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 10,999

2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 13,358

Harold C. HALL, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES; Los Angeles Police Department; Daryl F. Gates, individual capacity; Mark Arneson; Kenneth Crocker, Defendants–Appellees,andLionel Robert, Defendant.

No. 10–55770.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Dec. 9, 2011.

Filed Sept. 24, 2012.

John Burton, The Law Offices of John Burton, Pasadena, CA, for the plaintiff-appellant.

William J. Genego, Nasatir, Hirsch, Podberesky & Genego, Santa Monica, CA, for the plaintiff-appellant.

Lisa Berger, Deputy City Attorney, Office of the City Attorney of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendant-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California, Audrey B. Collins, Chief District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 2:05–CV–01977–ABC–AJW.

Before: D.W. NELSON, RONALD M. GOULD, and SANDRA S. IKUTA, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge D.W. NELSON; Dissent by Judge IKUTA.

OPINION

D.W. NELSON, Senior Circuit Judge:

Harold C. Hall appeals the district court's order granting summary judgment to the City of Los Angeles and individual defendants Mark Arneson and Kenneth Crocker (collectively, “Appellees”) in this action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. We conclude that the district court properly granted summary judgment to Appellees on Hall's fabrication-of-evidence claim, and we affirm on that basis. We reverse, how ever, the district court's denial of Hall's motion to amend his complaint and remand to the district court with instructions to allow Hall to plead an explicit Fifth Amendment violation. The exceptional circumstances in this case persuade us that a remand is necessary to avoid manifest injustice.

I. Background

Some might call Hall an unlucky fellow. In October 1984, shortly after he turned 18, Hall witnessed a drive-by shooting (“the 54th Street shooting”). Ten people suffered gunshot wounds, five of whom died. Hall ended up with a broken nose in the ensuing melee.

The police persuaded Hall, who had no gang affiliation, to testify in the 54th Street murder case. The State needed Hall to identify one of the triggermen, “Ace Capone,” an infamous member of the Bloods gang. Hall's cooperation with the police put him in such serious danger that the police protected his home every night for many months. Nevertheless, Hall followed through and testified at the preliminary hearing. Midway through his testimony, an attorney revealed Hall's home address. Hall abruptly left the stand, highly agitated and nervous. He had to be persuaded to finish testifying.

Following the preliminary hearing, the police continued to worry about Hall's safety. Wayne Dufort, a detective on the 54th Street case, wanted to keep Hall safe both for Hall's own sake and to ensure his eyewitness testimony at trial. Dufort urged Hall to move a number of times, to no avail. Dufort always was worried about Hall and thought that “there just didn't seem to be enough protection.”

Between the preliminary hearing and Hall's arrest for robbery nine months later, Dufort visited Hall's home regularly, sometimes daily. Dufort and Hall met in person about 200 times during those months. These visits fostered a symbiotic friendship of sorts between the two unlikely companions. In addition to being concerned for Hall's safety, Dufort grew to care for and like Hall during that time. The detective wanted to see Hall find a job, attain success and remain safe from any harm he risked by testifying in the 54th Street murder case. Dufort even recommended Hall for a job and gave him a character reference. For his part, Hall saw Dufort as a friend, and maybe even as a father figure. Dufort gave Hall money, helped him get a job and treated him with respect.

Meanwhile, someone murdered siblings Nola Duncan and David Rainey in June 1985 (“the Duncan–Rainey murders”). Hall, who lived near the crime scene, gathered with other curious neighbors to try to see what had happened. The close proximity of his home to where the police found Duncan's body appears to be Hall's only connection, if one could call it that, to the crime.

The police had reason to believe that Theadry Art Powell, Jr. committed the murders. Powell had a motive: Duncan sold Powell low-quality or doctored PCP hours before she died. When Powell discovered what Duncan had done, a witness overheard Powell exclaim, “I hate that bitch, go kill her!” before three men left Powell's house. When questioned by police, Powell initially claimed that he had not seen Duncan in three months, but later changed his story twice and admitted he had seen her on the night she died. Powell ultimately implicated two of his associates, Jerry Williams and Lonnie Wardlow, suggesting that maybe one or both of them took part in Duncan's murder. A polygrapher determined that both Powell and Wardlow falsely denied their involvement in Duncan's killing. Despite these leads, the police did not investigate Powell, Williams or Wardlow as suspects in Duncan's murder.

The police arrested Hall for robbery in August 1985, six weeks after the Duncan–Rainey murders. Upon his arrest, Hall reached out to Dufort, seeking protection inside the jail from gang members who sought revenge for Hall's testimony in the 54th Street shooting case. Dufort arranged for Hall to be housed with other informants. While his segregation from the general population may have helped protect Hall from physical attacks, he became a sitting duck for predatory informants. Three experienced jailhouse informants, with cases pending, discussed Duncan's murder with Hall. Those informants then falsely implicated Hall in the Duncan–Rainey murders by concocting a story that Hall had confessed to the murders.

Detectives Arneson and Crocker, Appellees, worked on the Duncan–Rainey case and received information from these jailhouse informants incriminating Hall. The first time Arneson and Crocker interviewed Hall, they asked him what he had heard about the Duncan–Rainey murders. Hall responded that he “just heard some stuff” and that he was “just a witness.” The officers did not read Hall his Miranda rights. The next interview took place four days later and lasted about ten minutes. Two days later, on September 11, 1985, Arneson called Dufort. Arneson said that he planned to interview Hall and insisted that Dufort be there, but would not say why. Dufort tried several times to avoid attending the interview because he was too busy with other work, but ultimately agreed to meet Arneson at the jail. Dufort arrived with his partner, Aaron Martin. They met with Arneson and Crocker, as well as with informant Cornelius Lee. Lee identified Hall as the driver in the 54th Street shooting, suggesting that Hall was not, in fact, an innocent witness as he had testified.

The police then interrogated Hall. First, Dufort and Martin questioned Hall for several hours about the 54th Street shooting. Arneson and Crocker popped into the interview room to ask if they could speak to Hall after Dufort and Martin were finished. The police then moved Hall to a different booth where all four detectives questioned him about the Duncan–Rainey murders. The detectives did not advise Hall of his Miranda rights. The detectives used a “we know more information than you think we know” technique in questioning him.

The police asked Hall whether, before the murder, he was smoking dope at a beauty shop with Duncan, whether he had sex with her and whether he had stabbed her. Hall denied stabbing Duncan or having anything to do with her murder, but the police persisted. Arneson falsely claimed that the police had found Hall's semen in Duncan's mouth and his fingerprints on her body. At this point, Hall became very afraid. He asked for an attorney. Arneson asked Hall why he needed an attorney if he was innocent and said that the only people who need attorneys are guilty and trying to hide something. Arneson then told Hall that the police had found his footprint in the alley near Duncan's body. Hall persisted in his denials.

Arneson then suggested that the police file charges against Hall. Dufort warned Hall that if the police filed murder charges against him and a jury convicted him, he would go to prison with Ace Capone, the Bloods gang member he testified against, and that Capone would kill him. Crocker added that, if Hall ended up in state prison, all the Bloods would be after him for testifying against Capone and that all the Crips, the rival gang, would be after him for driving Capone to the 54th Street shooting. Hall felt tired and hungry, but the detectives kept berating him. The police continued to reject Hall's claims that he had nothing to do with the murders.

Fear took over. Hall worried that if he did not confess, the police would file murder charges. If he was convicted of murder, he would go to prison and be killed. He also worried that if he did not cooperate, the police would remove him from protective housing and put him in the general population, where he would be in danger. Hall broke down and cried, hoping his display of emotion would inspire mercy. It did not.

Hall gave in to desperation, fear and fatigue. The police fed Hall the “facts” about what happened the night of the Duncan–Rainey murder. Hall either acquiesced to each statement or repeated it back to Arneson. Hall both initialed next to mistakes in the statement Crocker had handwritten and signed the statement at the bottom, as the police directed. He did not read the statement. This interrogation lasted somewhere between two and six hours, and the police did not afford Hall any food or bathroom breaks.

After Arneson and Crocker left, Dufort and Martin continued to interrogate Hall about the 54th Street shooting case until the early morning. In all, Hall was questioned between 17 and 19 hours that day. Hall was handcuffed during the interrogations and denied food.

The State charged Hall...