Harris v. City of Chi.
| Decision Date | 11 May 2018 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 14 C 4391 |
| Parties | NICOLE HARRIS, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
AMY J. ST. EVE, District Court Judge:
After a three-week jury trial, at which over 20 witnesses testified, including seven experts, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Chicago Police Department ("CPD") Officer Defendants Anthony Noradin, Demosthenes Balodimas, Robert Bartik, Michael Landando, Randall Wo, John Day, John Kelly, and Robert Cordero and against Plaintiff Nicole Harris on all counts.1 Before the Court is Harris' motion for a new trial brought pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(a). For the following reasons, the Court denies Harris' Rule 59(a) motion.
In her Complaint, Harris alleged that on October 26, 2005, a jury in the Circuit Court of Cook County convicted her of murdering her four-year-old son, Jaquari Dancy, based in part on a false and fabricated confession elicited during hours of intermittent interrogation by Chicago Police Officers, including a videotaped confession played to the jury. After the jury convicted her of murder, the Circuit Court of Cook County judge sentenced Harris to 30 years in prison. On March 13, 2009, the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed Harris' conviction, and thereafter, the Supreme Court of Illinois denied her petition for leave to appeal on September 30, 2009.
After exhausting her state court post-conviction remedies under the Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act, 725 ILCS 5/122-1, et seq., Harris brought a habeas petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. After the district court denied her petition for a writ of habeas corpus, on October 18, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the district court's denial with instructions to grant the writ unless the State elected to retry Harris within 120 days after issuance of the mandate. See Harris v. Thompson, 698 F.3d 609, 613 (7th Cir. 2012). The mandate issued on December 3, 2012, and on February 25, 2013, the State released Harris from prison on bond. On June 17, 2013, the Cook County's State's Attorney dismissed all charges against Harris, and on January 25, 2014, the Circuit Court of Cook County granted Harris a Certificate of Innocence pursuant to 735 ILCS 5/2-702. Harris filed the present lawsuit on June 12, 2014.
Once the Executive Committee reassigned this matter on February 17, 2017, and prior to the jury trial, the Court ruled on over 30 written motions in limine, most of which involved detailed analyses that the Court issued via written orders. The Court also issued written orders concerning numerous expert motions brought pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), and conducted an evidentiary hearing in relation to Harris' false confession expert, Dr. Richard Leo. In addition, the Court considered oral evidentiary motions before and during trial.2 The Court also conducted pre-trial and jury instruction conferences on September 12, 2017 and October 11, 2017, during which the Court carefully considered the parties' proposed jury instructions and made rulings on many of the instructions. The Court held the final jury instruction conferences during the last days of trial after the parties had proffered the majority of the trial testimony and documentary evidence. The jury instruction process was an ongoing, collaborative effort starting at the end of June 2017 and ending in mid-November 2017 when the Court instructed the jury. The Court instructed the jury on the following claims: (1) a Fourteenth Amendment due process fabricated evidence claim; (2) a Fourteenth Amendment due process coerced confession claim; (3) a constitutional failure to intervene claim; (4) a constitutional conspiracy claim; (5) a state law malicious prosecution claim; (6) a state law intentional infliction of emotional distress claim; and (7) a state law conspiracy claim. The jury found for Defendants on each of these claims.
Under Rule 59(a), a "new trial should be granted 'only when the record shows that the jury's verdict resulted in a miscarriage of justice or where the verdict, on the record, cries out to be overturned or shocks our conscience." Estate of Burford v. Accounting Practice Sales, Inc., 851 F.3d 641, 646 (7th Cir. 2017) (citation omitted); see also Prime Choice Servs., Inc. v. Schneider Logistics Transloading & Distrib., Inc., 861 F.3d 633, 635 (7th Cir. 2017). "The district court has the discretion to 'grant a new trial on all or some of the issues - and to any party,' and a new trial should be granted if a prejudicial error occurred[.]" Hillmann v. City of Chicago, 834 F.3d 787, 793 (7th Cir. 2016) (internal citation omitted). The Seventh Circuit reviews the denial of Rule 59(a) motions for an abuse of discretion. Haze v. Kubicek, 880 F.3d 946, 950 (7th Cir. 2018). In general, a district court abuses its discretion when no reasonable person would agree with its rulings. Dunn v. Menard, Inc., 880 F.3d 899, 905 (7th Cir. 2018).
The Seventh Circuit considers "a district court's jury instructions with deference, analyzing them as a whole to determine if they accurately state the law and do not confuse the jury." Doornbos v. City of Chicago, 868 F.3d 572, 580 (7th Cir. 2017); see also Sanchez v. City of Chicago, 880 F.3d 349, 355 (7th Cir. 2018) () (citation omitted). "If an instruction is legally deficient, a new trial is required only if the flawed instruction could have confused or misled the jury causing prejudice to the complaining party." Doornbos, 868 F.3d at 589; see also Armstrong v. BNSF Ry. Co., 880 F.3d 377, 381 (7th Cir. 2018).
Courts consider evidence unfairly prejudicial if it induces jurors to decide a case on an improper basis, such as an emotional one. Thorncreek Apartments III, LLC v. Mick, 886 F.3d 626, 634 (7th Cir. 2018). To obtain a new trial, where a party "is complaining that the district court committed an evidentiary error, he must establish not only that the court's decision was unreasonable but that the error in admitting or excluding the evidence in question affected his substantial rights." United States v. Whiteagle, 759 F.3d 734, 756 (7th Cir. 2014). Put differently, "to warrant a new trial, an evidentiary error must affect the losing party's substantial rights - that is, there must be a significant chance that the flawed ruling affected the outcome of the trial." Thorncreek Apartments III, 886 F.3d at 634.
In her Rule 59(a) motion for a new trial, Harris makes the following arguments: (1) a confluence of errors resulted in negating her Certificate of Innocence and rendered her trial unfair; (2) the Court erred in its rulings in relation to her son Diante Dancy's competency hearing and deposition testimony; (3) the Court erred in its Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) ruling in relation to Defendant Bartik; and (4) the Court erred in restricting the testimony of three of Harris' expert witnesses. The Court addresses each argument in turn.
In her motion for a new trial, Harris first argues that the Court's rulings concerning her Certificate of Innocence ("COI"), along with other related rulings, rendered her trial unfair. To give context, in January 2014, the Chief Criminal Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court granted Harris a COI pursuant to 735 ILCS 5/2-702. Specifically, in September 2008, the Illinois legislature enacted 735 ILCS 5/2-702, which "permits a person who served time in prison on a conviction that is later set aside to seek a 'certificate of innocence' from the court that had convicted him." Rodriguez v. Cook Cnty., Ill., 664 F.3d 627, 629 (7th Cir. 2011). To obtain a Certificate of Innocence under Section 2-702, the petitioner must prove by a preponderance of evidence that:
735 ILCS 5/2-702(g); People v. Fields, 959 N.E.2d 1162, 1165 (1st Dist. 2011). In Fields, the Illinois Appellate Court stated "that the plain language of section 2-702 shows the legislature's intent to distinguish between a finding of not guilty at retrial and actual innocence of the charged offenses." Fields, 959 N.E.2d at 1166; see also Rudy v. People, 984 N.E.2d 540, 543 (1st Dist. 2013). The Fields decision further instructed "that in determining whether defendant showed by a preponderance of evidence that he is innocent of the murders, the court was required to consider the materials attached to defendant's petition in support of his innocence claim ... in relation to the evidence presented against him at both trials." Fields, 959 N.E.2d at 1166.
Harris' COI is a boilerplate form citing the language in Section 2-702(g) on which the Chief Criminal Judge checked the following boxes:
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