Knox v. Smith

• Decision Date: 26 August 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-4329.,02-4329.
• Citation: Knox v. Smith, 342 F.3d 651 (7th Cir. 2003)
• Parties: Paul KNOX, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Deborah SMITH, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

342 F.3d 651

Paul KNOX, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Deborah SMITH, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 02-4329.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 6, 2003.

August 26, 2003.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied September 22, 2003.

Nathan P. Eimer, Christine M. Johnson (argued), Eimer, Stahl, Klevorn & Solberg, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Mary E. Welsh (argued), Office of the Atty. General, Civ. App. Div., Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before RIPPLE, KANNE, and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.

KANNE, Circuit Judge.

During the spring of 1999, Paul Knox was arrested twice, once in April and once in May, for violating the terms of his mandatory supervised release (MSR) agreement with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Knox filed this suit against his parole officer, Deborah Smith,¹ under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that both arrests violated his constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizures. Smith moved for summary judgment on both claims on grounds of qualified immunity. The district court granted Smith's summary judgment on the claim arising from the April arrest, but not on the claim arising from the May arrest. Smith appeals the denial of summary judgment on the May claim and we reverse.

I. History

Paul Knox has spent much of the last twenty years in and out of the Illinois prison system for offenses including attempted murder, rape, and armed robbery. In March 1999, he was serving a one-year sentence for drug possession, when arrangements were made to place him on MSR. As part of his MSR, Knox was required to have electronic home monitoring and intensive supervision, so he was placed under the supervision of the Cook County Special Intensive Supervision Unit, which monitors electronic-detention residents.

According to the March arrangements, Knox would be on electronic home detention and would reside at a "host site" with his brother, Milan, who agreed to allow Knox to live on one side of his duplex. Milan also agreed to have a separate phone line installed for electronic home monitoring of Knox by Automated Management Systems (AMS), a service provider that monitors, records, and documents a parolee's activities and pages parole agents about problems with parolees.²

Before he was initially released, Knox signed an MSR agreement with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, which required him, among other things, to comply with the instructions of his parole officer, including any instructions to submit to electronic home monitoring. Knox was also given a copy of the Electronic Home Detention Rules, but, in an apparent attempt to avoid home detention, he refused to sign them. He also received an Illinois Sex Offender Registration Act Notification Form, which stated that based on his earlier rape conviction, he must register as a sex offender. He did not sign this form either. Finally, Knox signed reporting instructions, which required him to go directly to his host site upon release and call AMS when he arrived.

Knox was released on April 2 and problems soon ensued. Deborah Smith, the parole officer assigned to Knox, was paged by AMS on April 2 after Knox had not called to report in and repeated phone calls to Knox's host site had gone unanswered.³ When Smith went to the host site to check the problem, she found Knox and Milan arguing about Knox living there, and she discovered that the portion of the duplex in which Knox would be living did not have a telephone.

Because Knox did not have access to a telephone and Milan would not permit Knox to use his phone, Smith instructed Knox to call AMS every two hours from a nearby pay phone using a toll-free number until something else could be worked out. She also told Knox that, except when making calls to AMS, he was to stay at home until electronic monitoring equipment could be installed. Smith also instructed Knox that he had to register as a sex offender. Smith later called AMS to report the situation at Knox's host site and to document the instructions she had given him.

The next day Knox failed to call in and several verification calls made by AMS went unanswered. AMS paged Smith and informed her of Knox's apparent absence and failure to report. Based on these failures and the fact that Knox had not registered as a sex offender, Smith requested her supervisor to issue a warrant for Knox's arrest.⁴ Within minutes a warrant was issued for Knox as "AWOL" (absent without leave). The warrant was executed on April 9, and Knox was returned to custody. On April 23, a violation report, signed by Smith, was submitted to the Prisoner Review Board. The Prisoner Review Board held a hearing on May 11 and determined that Knox had violated his MSR. Nonetheless, the Board ordered that he be re-released by May 30.

Following the hearing, arrangements were again made to place Knox on MSR under the same terms as before. On May 26, he signed another MSR agreement, and he signed reporting instructions similar to those he had previously received. Also, as before, he was required to submit to electronic home monitoring as a condition of his MSR. He was given a copy of the Electronic Home Monitoring Rules, which he again refused to sign. This time, however, the rules sheet was signed by two witnesses, who certified that Knox was placed on parole with home detention as a condition and that in light of his refusal to sign the instructions, the rules were explained to and, to the best of the witnesses' knowledge, understood by Knox. Deborah Smith was once again assigned to be Knox's parole agent.

Knox was re-released on May 28, and after arriving at his host site, again his brother's duplex, Knox called AMS around 10:45 p.m. to report his arrival. According to Knox's amended complaint, during this call he was told to stay at home until the electronic monitoring equipment had been installed and an ankle bracelet had been placed on him. AMS made several verification calls later that night, again to the phone in Milan's portion of the duplex, all of which went unanswered.

At about 7:00 a.m., May 29, a technician arrived at the duplex to install the electronic monitoring equipment. The technician, however, was turned away by Knox's mother, who informed him that Knox did not live in that part of the duplex and did not have access to the telephone. The technician called AMS to report the problem.

Smith testified in a deposition that she visited Knox's host site on May 29 but Knox was not there. She claims that Milan informed her that Knox was at his girlfriend's house, so Smith drove there, picked Knox up, and returned him to the host site. Once there, Smith claims that she explained to Knox that he would have to be placed on electronic monitoring equipment, and that until the equipment could be installed, or until an alternative host site could be found, he was to remain in his house and call AMS every two hours, just as he had been instructed to do in April. Once again Milan objected to the installation of the monitoring equipment. In his deposition, Knox gave rather confused testimony about whether Smith visited and what she instructed him to do, testifying at one point in accord with Smith's account — that she had visited and had informed him to call AMS every two hours — but at another point testifying that he was instructed by someone to check-in by reporting to the parole office in person once a week. Near the end of his deposition, however, Knox again testified that Smith had indeed visited him on May 29 and given him instructions to call every two hours. The AMS report for May 29 shows no record of Smith's alleged visit or her instructions to call in every two hours. Smith testified at various points in her deposition that it was her practice to report any contact with releasees to AMS.

The AMS records, however, do show that several verification calls were made to the duplex in the morning and early afternoon of May 29. At 8:54 a.m., an AMS verification call was answered by an unidentified man (presumably Knox's brother) who rudely stated that he did not want to be called and that Knox was next door. About an hour later, AMS made another call that was answered by an unidentified man who stated that Knox was at the other side of the house and that AMS had called the wrong number. AMS called the host site again at 11:53 a.m. The man who answered stated that Knox was in another part of the house and that AMS should call back in five minutes. AMS called back a little more than an hour later at 1:00 p.m. This time the man who answered the phone rudely informed AMS that he did not know where Knox was. AMS immediately paged Smith with the information, and at 1:15 p.m. she responded by paging her supervisor with a request for a warrant for AWOL. At 2:08 p.m. Smith's supervisor informed AMS that a warrant would be issued for AWOL.

The next day Smith and her supervisor signed a violation report, which chronicled Smith's version of the events of the last two days: that she had gone to the host site and witnessed Knox and his brother arguing, that she had instructed Knox to stay at home and call in every two hours using the nearby pay phone, that he had failed to call in, and that he had absconded.

The warrant was executed on June 22, 1999, and Knox was returned to custody. Knox had a hearing before the Prisoner Review Board, and on August 3, the Board determined that Knox had not violated his parole and that he should find a residence that would allow him to keep in close contact with his parole agent.

Knox filed this § 1983 suit in August 2000, alleging that Smith had violated his right to be free from unreasonable seizures under the Fourth Amendment, as applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. According to Knox, he had not violated the terms of his MSR agreement in either April or May, and both warrants were based on false information provided knowingly or recklessly by Smith. Smith asserted a qualified immunity...