Hill v. Murphy, 13–2709.
| Citation | 785 F.3d 242 |
| Decision Date | 04 May 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 13–2709.,13–2709. |
| Parties | Walter D. HILL, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Joseph R. MURPHY, Special Agent, individually, et al., Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) |
Walter D. Hill, Cahokia, IL, pro se.
Jennifer Hudson, Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Fairview Heights, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.
Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and TINDER, Circuit Judges.
In Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), the Supreme Court held (so far as relates to this case) that a person who has been convicted of a crime cannot seek damages or other relief under federal law (as in a suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971) ) for violation of his rights by officers who participated in the investigation or prosecution of the criminal charge, if “a judgment in favor of the plaintiff [in the civil suit] would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” The district judge held that a judgment in Hill's favor would, and so dismissed Hill's suit (a Bivens action), precipitating this appeal.
Hill had pleaded guilty in the criminal case to attempted extortion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951, and to making a false statement to federal investigators concerning his extortionate activities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). (He was the Deputy Liquor Commissioner of East St. Louis, Illinois, and was alleged to have extorted bribes from liquor licensees.) He was sentenced to 60 months in prison. We affirmed the judgment in United States v. Hill, 645 F.3d 900 (7th Cir.2011).
The two defendants in this civil suit, an FBI agent and an IRS agent, had interviewed the plaintiff at his home before he was indicted and had gotten him to make damaging admissions. In this civil suit for damages he claims that the defendants forced their way into his house with drawn weapons, searched the house, seized and kept his lawfully owned handgun, and twirled a loaded gun in “John Wayne” fashion, making Hill “so scared” that he was “in tears.” He felt “like a hopeless prisoner” in his own home when he tried to answer his phone and was “placed at gunpoi[n]t.” While being questioned he felt disoriented, was crying from the pain in his head, and blacked out, but the agents did not call for medical assistance—he later learned that he had suffered a stroke. He was “under the gun, literally,” he says, and “felt pressured and under duress” to answer the defendants' questions. We accept these allegations as true for purposes of this appeal.
He argues that by detaining him against his will, searching his home, and seizing his gun, all without his consent, plus using excessive force, ignoring his medical needs, and coercing him to answer their questions, the defendants violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure and his Fifth Amendment right to due process of law.
His specific Fourth Amendment claims are illegal entry, unlawful detention, unlawful seizure of a gun of which he was the lawful owner, deliberate indifference to his medical needs, and use of excessive force. These claims were properly brought under the Fourth Amendment because the injuries complained of were inflicted before there had been a judicial determination of probable cause. Currie v. Chhabra, 728 F.3d 626, 629–30 (7th Cir.2013) ; Lopez v. City of Chicago, 464 F.3d 711, 719 (7th Cir.2006).
His Fifth Amendment claim concerns three statements that he made to the officers—statements that he alleges were extracted from him by the tactics of intimidation described above. The statements are his denial to the officers that he had sent a bagman to collect bribes for him (this lie was the basis of the false-statement charge against him); his admission minutes later that the denial was indeed a lie; and his acknowledging that the mayor, who doubled as the Liquor Commissioner of East St. Louis (the plaintiff was as we noted the Deputy Liquor Commissioner), had failed to exercise proper supervision over him, a failure that facilitated his bribe taking.
The Fourth Amendment claims that we have listed are not barred by the principle of Heck v. Humphrey (). If the police roughed up Hill, seized his gun without justification, waved a loaded gun in his face, and so on, these outrages, constituting violations of his Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected to an unreasonable search and seizure, would entitle him to damages for physical and psychological injury resulting from the search and seizure and for the expropriation of his gun. That would be true even if he'd never been prosecuted. But such violations of his rights would not exonerate him from the false statement and attempted-extortion charges that were the only grounds of his convictions.
One of Hill's due process claims, in contrast, challenges his false-statement conviction head on. That is the claim that he was coerced to answer the officers' question whether he used a bagman. Coerced to speak, he lied, and the lie was the basis of his conviction for making a false statement to the officers. The point was not that he was coerced to lie; doubtless the officers would have preferred a truthful answer, which would have nailed down his guilt of extortion but left no room for his also being convicted of making a false statement to the government. But had he not been coerced to speak, and as a result had remained silent, or (perhaps in response to noncoercive questioning, told the truth), he could not have been convicted of making a false statement. Therefore proof in this civil case that the conviction was based on a violation of his constitutional rights would be inconsistent with the conviction and so is barred by Heck.
This sounds not like a due process claim, but rather like a self-incrimination claim. Hill was forced to speak, and in speaking he incriminated himself by making a false statement. He doesn't mention self-incrimination, but since we are vacating much of the judgment and remanding, he may on remand decide to add a self-incrimination claim and the judge might let him do so. Furthermore, as we'll note at the end of this opinion, he might argue that his false statement was the product of the excessive-force violation of the Fourth Amendment that he alleges. In an effort to stave off a further appeal, we shall consider whether such an addition to the plaintiff's suit would be barred by Heck v. Humphrey.
A Fourth Amendment claim based on violence or threats used to extract the statement (conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures”)—a claim unrelated to the truth or falsity of the statement—is very different from a Fifth Amendment self-incrimination claim based on the use of the statement to convict him of making a false statement. The first claim, a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim that the plaintiff could press in this civil case even if his lie about the bagman had not been used in the criminal case, is unproblematic; a self-incrimination claim, in contrast, would be deeply problematic, as we're about to see.
But the fact that Hill admitted the lie—the admission being his second statement—along with the further fact that he admitted that the mayor hadn't supervised him effectively (the third statement), were not grounds for the false-statement charge: neither telling the truth nor committing extortion is making a false statement. The lie was the false-statement crime of which he was convicted; the admission was merely evidence of the lie, and as explained in Heck Heck v. Humphrey, supra, 512 U.S. at 487 n. 7, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (emphasis in original and citations omitted); see also Apampa v. Layng, 157 F.3d 1103, 1105 (7th Cir.1998).
These observations are pertinent because we know from the presentence report that the government had ample evidence, even without Hill's confession, to prove that he had lied—it had video and audio surveillance of his bagman collecting payments on his behalf. The use against Hill of his admission of having lied (the use consisting of including the statement in the stipulation of facts as a factual basis for the plea—had Hill's statements never been “used” against him he wouldn't have a Fifth Amendment claim, Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 767, 123 S.Ct. 1994, 155 L.Ed.2d 984 (2003) ) was thus a harmless error.
The same is true of Hill's statement about the absence of mayoral oversight, which earned him an increase in his sentence for being a “public official in a high-level decision-making or sensitive position.” U.S.S.G. § 2C1.1(b)(3). The absence of oversight amounted to a de facto delegation of mayoral authority to him; his statement that “the [m]ayor does not really know what he is doing in reference to liquor licenses” revealed that Hill occupied a high-level decisionmaking position. Other evidence pointed in the same...
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...in favor of the plaintiff [in the civil suit] would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence." Hill v. Murphy, 785 F.3d 242, 244 (7th Cir. 2015) (quoting Heck, 512 U.S. at 487) (second alteration in original). The complaint does not disclose what kind of charges Miller......
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