McKay v. City of St. Louis

• Decision Date: 04 June 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1912,19-1912
• Citation: 960 F.3d 1094
• Parties: Cornell MCKAY, Plaintiff - Appellant v. CITY OF ST. LOUIS, Defendant - Appellee Jennifer Joyce, Defendant Anthony Boettigheimer, in his individual and official capacities; Christian Stamper, in his individual and official capacities; David Rudolph, in his individual and official capacities; Richard Gray; Thomas Irwin; Bettye Battle-Turner ; Erwin O. Switzer, in their official capacities as members of the St. Louis City Board of Police Commissioners; Francis G. Slay, in his official capacity as an ex-officio member of the St. Louis City Board of Police Commissioners; Joseph Spence, in his individual capacity, Defendants - Appellees Susan Ryan; SC Ryan Consulting, LLC, Defendants
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

960 F.3d 1094

Cornell MCKAY, Plaintiff - Appellant

v. CITY OF ST. LOUIS, Defendant - AppelleeJennifer Joyce, DefendantAnthony Boettigheimer, in his individual and official capacities; Christian Stamper, in his individual and official capacities; David Rudolph, in his individual and official capacities; Richard Gray; Thomas Irwin; Bettye Battle-Turner ; Erwin O. Switzer, in their official capacities as members of the St. Louis City Board of Police Commissioners; Francis G. Slay, in his official capacity as an ex-officio member of the St. Louis City Board of Police Commissioners; Joseph Spence, in his individual capacity, Defendants - AppelleesSusan Ryan; SC Ryan Consulting, LLC, Defendants

No. 19-1912

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: January 15, 2020

Filed: June 4, 2020

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellant was Brandy B. Barth, of Saint Louis, MO.

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellee City of St. Louis was J. Brent Dulle, Associate City Counselor, Saint Louis, MO. Melanie Pennycuff, AAG, of Saint Louis, MO argued on behalf of appellees Boettigheimer, Stamper, Rudolph, Gray, Irwin, Battle-Turner, Switzer and Slay. On the brief of Boettigheimer, et al., was Laura M. Robb, AAG, St. Louis, MO. The following attorney(s) appeared on the appellee brief of Joseph Spence : Deborah Bell Yates, AAG, of Saint Louis, MO.

Before SMITH, Chief Judge, LOKEN and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

Cornell McKay appeals the district court’s¹ grant of summary judgment in favor of police officers Anthony Boettigheimer, Christian Stamper, and David Rudolph ("the Police Defendants"); probation officer Joseph Spence; various members of the St. Louis City Board of Police Commissioners ("the Board Defendants"); and the City of St. Louis ("City"). We affirm.

I.

On August 10, 2012, Jane Doe was leaving her car outside her condominium in St. Louis when a man walked "right up" to her at arm’s distance, pointed a gun at her, and demanded her money. The man took fifty dollars and Doe’s cell phone.

Doe reported the robbery to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department that same night. She described the suspect to the police as a young, black male with a light complexion, sixteen to twenty years of age, six feet and three inches tall, and weighing 150 pounds. After the robbery, Doe left her stolen phone activated for the purpose of developing potential leads. She later provided detectives with a spreadsheet she had constructed of calls made to and from her cell phone from August 10 to August 13, using her account records from Sprint. Police conducted an online search of the telephone numbers on Doe’s spreadsheets. One of the numbers was linked to addresses associated with a man named Lamont Carter.

On August 18, 2012, a man shot and killed Megan Boken during an attempted armed robbery less than three blocks from Doe’s condominium. A day later, homicide unit detectives assigned to the Boken case were alerted to the similar location of the Doe and Boken robberies. The homicide detectives then met with Officer Stamper and asked for information about the Doe robbery. A day after this meeting, Officer Stamper assigned the Doe case to Officer Boettigheimer, whose partner, Officer Rudolph, also assisted in the case. Officer Boettigheimer focused his investigation on Carter, conducting searches on computerized databases of phone numbers and addresses associated with Carter to identify Carter’s potential associates. Through this process, he found fifteen to twenty individuals linked to Carter, but only Cornell McKay matched Doe’s description of her robber.

Officer Boettigheimer generated a photograph lineup using the images of McKay and five others with the same physical characteristics as McKay. He then showed this lineup to Doe, who identified McKay as the man who robbed her. As a result, Officer Boettigheimer issued a "wanted" notice for McKay, who surrendered himself. Officer Boettigheimer then organized a physical lineup consisting of McKay and three others with similar physical characteristics to McKay. Doe again identified McKay as the robber. A grand jury subsequently charged McKay with one count of first-degree armed robbery, see Mo. Rev. Stat. § 570.023, and one count of armed criminal action, see Mo. Rev. Stat. § 571.015.

Meanwhile, detectives from the homicide unit had been running separate computer searches based on Doe’s cell phone spreadsheet. These searches led them to Kaylin Perry, whose number had been called in the days after Doe’s robbery. On August 22 and 23, 2012, they interviewed Perry multiple times and informed Officers Boettigheimer and Rudolph they were doing so. During the homicide detectives’ interviews of Perry, she ultimately told them that her boyfriend, Keith Esters, had come home one night with Doe’s phone and fifty dollars. She stated that she believed Esters robbed someone for the phone and the money.

When Officers Boettigheimer and Rudolph interviewed Perry, however, she told them only that Esters had given her Doe’s cell phone to use sometime during the week of August 13, 2012, after her cell phone had stopped working. She also told the officers that she did not know where or how Esters obtained Doe’s cell phone and that she and Esters had since sold the cell phone at a gas station. Officer Rudolph later testified that he was not told of Perry’s statement to the homicide detectives that she believed Esters committed the Doe robbery. And Officer Boettigheimer also testified that the homicide detectives did not tell him the specific information they received during their interviews with Perry.

Officers Boettigheimer and Rudolph tracked down the person who had purchased the phone at the gas station, and that person confirmed that he had bought the phone from Esters. In February 2013, Doe was shown a photographic lineup that included Esters, but she did not identify him as the robber. Esters later confessed to the Boken murder but repeatedly denied involvement in the Doe robbery.

In December 2013, during McKay’s trial, Doe again identified McKay as the man who robbed her. A jury convicted McKay of both the armed-robbery and armed-criminal-action counts. State v. McKay , 459 S.W.3d 450, 452 (Mo. Ct. App. 2014). The court sentenced him to 12 years’ imprisonment. Id. The Missouri Court of Appeals reversed the convictions on the ground that the trial court erred by granting the prosecution’s motion to exclude any reference to Esters and remanded the case for a new trial. Id. at 459-60. Because Doe did not want to testify at another trial, the State declined to retry the case, and McKay was released in May 2015.

McKay filed suit against the Police Defendants, Spence (his former probation officer), the Board Defendants, and the City (collectively, "the Appellees"), among others. He asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Police Defendants (in their individual and official capacities) for violating his constitutional rights by (1) suppressing and/or destroying evidence; against the Police Defendants (in their individual and official capacities) and Spence² (in his individual capacity) for violating his constitutional rights by (2) fabricating evidence, (3) failing to investigate, and (4) conspiring to deprive him of his constitutional rights; and against the Board Defendants (in their official capacities) and the City for (5) imposing certain policies, customs, or practices in violation of his constitutional rights.

The district court granted summary judgment for the Appellees. McKay appeals the grant of summary judgment on all five claims.

II.

A § 1983 claim requires "(1) that the defendant(s) acted under color of state law[ ] and (2) that the alleged wrongful conduct deprived the plaintiff of a constitutionally protected federal right." Schmidt v. City of Bella Villa , 557 F.3d 564, 571 (8th Cir. 2009). We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment on a § 1983 claim. LaCross v. City of Duluth , 713 F.3d 1155, 1157 (8th Cir. 2013). We also review de novo a grant of summary judgment on a municipal liability claim under § 1983. Moyle v. Anderson , 571 F.3d 814, 817 (8th Cir. 2009). A motion for summary judgment is properly granted when "the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

A.

McKay first argues that the Police Defendants violated his due process rights by suppressing or destroying evidence. Suppression of material exculpatory evidence is a violation of a person’s due process rights. Brady v. Maryland , 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). To demonstrate a Brady violation, a plaintiff must show that (1) the prosecution suppressed evidence (2) that was favorable to the defendant and (3) that the evidence was material. Stewart v. Wagner , 836 F.3d 978, 982 (8th Cir. 2016). To establish a claim under § 1983 for a Brady violation, a plaintiff must allege and demonstrate bad faith or, in other words, that "a law enforcement officer other than the prosecutor intended to deprive [him] of a fair trial." See id. at 982 (emphasis omitted).

McKay asserts that the Police Defendants: (1) failed to preserve Doe’s phone in such a way that evidence could be gathered from it; (2) "suppressed the true nature" of Perry’s statements by making it appear that the Police Defendants did not know that Perry had implicated Esters in the Doe robbery; and (3) lost or destroyed an alleged video of the interview that Officers Boettigheimer and Rudolph conducted with Perry. He implies that the Police Defendants must have been acting in bad faith by suppressing or destroying evidence in order to "cover up their shocking negligence in failing to investigate the Jane Doe robbery before Megan Boken’s murder."

The district court correctly granted summary judgment to the Police Defendants on this § 1983 Brady claim.

First, McKay...