Miller v. Prince George's County, Md

• Citation: 475 F.3d 621
• Decision Date: 22 January 2007
• Docket Number: No. 05-2250.,05-2250.
• Parties: Daniel Anthony MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND, A Body Corporate and Politic; John L. Dougans, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

475 F.3d 621

Daniel Anthony MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND, A Body Corporate and Politic; John L. Dougans, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 05-2250.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: October 26, 2006.

Decided: January 22, 2007.

ARGUED: Terrell N. Roberts, III, Roberts & Wood, Riverdale, Maryland, for Appellant. Rajeshanand Kumar, Office of Law for Prince George's County, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, for Appellees.

Before MICHAEL, MOTZ, and KING, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed in part and reversed in part by published opinion. Judge MOTZ wrote the opinion, in which Judge MICHAEL and Judge KING joined.

OPINION

DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ, Circuit Judge.

Daniel Anthony Miller, an African-American male, brings this civil rights action against Prince George's County, Maryland and one of its police officers, Detective John L. Dougans. Miller alleges that Det. Dougans violated the Fourth Amendment by deliberately or recklessly making material false statements and omissions on a warrant affidavit, ultimately resulting in Miller's arrest without probable cause and imprisonment for an offense Miller never committed. The district court granted summary judgment to the County and Det. Dougans. For the reasons herein, we affirm in part and reverse in part.

I.

On July 23, 2002, Jeffrey and Jessica Nichols reported the theft of their lawnmower to the Prince George's County Police Department, which assigned Det. Dougans to investigate the case.¹

Two days later, Det. Dougans began his investigation. He interviewed and obtained a statement from the victim, Mrs. Nichols. She told the detective that her neighbor, Michael Moses, reported seeing a green Jeep with light wood paneling in the neighborhood at about 1:30 a.m. in the early morning of July 23, just hours before the theft was discovered. This vehicle contained two individuals — "a skinny white guy and a girl." The Jeep, accompanied by a gold truck, circled the area about fifteen times. During the last lap, one of the vehicles pulled a wooden trailer containing what Moses later surmised was the stolen lawnmower. Based upon this information, Mrs. Nichols suspected that the thief was Daniel Miller, a young white man whom she had heard was on a stealing spree and she knew owned a green Jeep with light wood paneling. Mrs. Nichols believed that her lawnmower might be located at 9004 Woodyard Road in Clinton, Maryland, where Daniel sometimes stayed with his sister, Megan, and her boyfriend, Robert Frederick Owens. Mrs. Nichols told Det. Dougans that she had reported all of this information to the police shortly after the theft. As a result, the police had recovered the stolen lawnmower from the house at 9004 Woodyard Road on the same day as the theft, but had made no arrests.

A week after speaking with Mrs. Nichols, Det. Dougans interviewed Megan Miller and Owens. In a written statement Megan denied all knowledge of the lawnmower. The 17-year-old Megan did tell Det. Dougans that she had a brother, Daniel, who was "a little older" than she. Megan's boyfriend, Owens, similarly denied any involvement in the theft; he maintained that the police had found the lawnmower at his house because he had purchased it from a "crack-head" who delivered it to him. Although Mrs. Nichols had identified a young white Daniel Miller as a suspect in the theft, Det. Dougans did not ask Megan or Owens where Megan's young white brother, Daniel, could be located.

On August 13, Det. Dougans conducted his final interview, obtaining a statement from the Nichols's neighbor, Michael Moses, in which Moses echoed the information about the "skinny white male" he had seen, who was "no older than 25" years old. In his statement, Moses also noted that he "wrote down the [license plate] tag [number]" of the Jeep on the night of the theft.² When asked about this at deposition Moses testified that, in fact, he did not remember writing down a license plate tag number, but if he had, he would have given it to Mr. and Mrs. Nichols when the theft was discovered rather than keeping it for more than two weeks until Det. Dougans came around to investigate.

Det. Dougans also conducted three types of computer searches to investigate the theft. First, he searched the local criminal database using the name "Miller" or "Daniel Miller." This query produced the records for several Daniel Millers, including the Plaintiff. Plaintiff's record correctly set forth his height, weight, his 8/29/67 birthdate (meaning he was almost 35 at the time of the theft), and his driver's license number, M460135067673; the record also incorrectly noted his race as white. Det. Dougans then used Plaintiff's driver's license number, M460135067673, to search the state motor vehicle database. That search again retrieved Plaintiff's height, weight, and 8/29/67 birthdate, but correctly noted his race as black.

The retrieved record additionally stated that Plaintiff had no current license plate tag, but had once owned a Jeep, and three years earlier — in 1999 — had turned in the expired license plate tag (938751M) for the Jeep to the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA). (Plaintiff submitted unrebutted evidence that tags turned in to the MVA are retained in a locked cabinet until destroyed.) Det. Dougans did not initiate any computer search using Plaintiff's expired tag number (938751M), and thus established no link between this tag number and the purported getaway car or the white suspect. Moreover, Det. Dougans searched the state criminal database for a white Daniel Miller with Plaintiff's 8/29/67 date of birth and did not retrieve a match.

Apparently no further investigative activity of any kind took place. Nevertheless, five months later on January 22, 2003, Det. Dougans filed an affidavit in support of an application for charges against a Daniel Anthony Miller, identifying him as a white male with Plaintiff's birthdate, height, weight, and driver's license number; the affidavit also linked the expired vehicle tag (938751M) once belonging to Plaintiff to the white suspect's getaway car. In his affidavit, Det. Dougans set forth the following as the basis for his probable cause to believe that the subject of the warrant stole the lawnmower and thus committed theft and second-degree burglary:

During the victim's [Mrs. Nichols's] inquiry, they [sic] learned from witness Michael MOSES that a green Cherokee, driven by a white male had been observed by the witness MOSES pulling out of the victim's residence with a wooden trailer attached to the mentioned green Cherokee haling [sic] the victim's Griffin Lawnmower away. The witness Moses recorded the tag of the vehicle as Maryland 938751M. The investigation into the mentioned tag³ revealed they [sic] had allegedly been turned into MVA and expired 3/99. The identity of the defendant MILLER was obtained interviewing the victims and witness.... The Co-Defendant Owens is the boy-friend of the Defendant Miller [sic] sister, whom [sic] is a juvenile (17-years old). The jeep [sic] Cherokee is the property of Defendant Miller, witness advised it was the same vehicle seen by him driving out of the driveway of victim Nichols [sic] residence. This Detective has attepted [sic] to make contact with Defendant Miller, but as of this date has been unable, due to Defendant staying at several different addresses throughout the county.

Based on this affidavit, the magistrate issued a warrant on the same day. There is no evidence that Det. Dougans ever attempted to serve the warrant on a Daniel Miller or otherwise attempted to find a Daniel Miller.

On May 29, 2004, Virginia State Trooper Rodney Ward stopped Plaintiff because his vehicle lacked a front tag. During a routine Department of Motor Vehicles check, Trooper Ward discovered the outstanding Maryland warrant for theft and second-degree burglary and took Plaintiff into custody. The warrant issued pursuant to Det. Dougans's affidavit thus caused the trooper to arrest the 37-year-old African-American Plaintiff for a crime Det. Dougans indisputably believed had been committed by a much younger white man.

While the warrant specified that the wanted individual was a white male, Trooper Ward testified that because the date of birth, hair and eye color, weight, height and full name of the individual wanted in Maryland matched the individual he had just stopped, he believed that he had arrested the suspect described in the warrant. The only information that did not match was the suspect's reported race. Plaintiff was held in prison in Virginia for a total of nineteen days on the warrant that Det. Dougans had obtained. On June 17, 2004, police cleared him of the charges and released him.

In February of 2005, Plaintiff initiated this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Maryland law, bringing constitutional and common law claims against Det. Dougans, and common law claims against the County. The district court concluded that Det. Dougans's actions did not violate Plaintiff's federal or state constitutional rights and that, even if they did, Det. Dougans was entitled to qualified immunity with respect to the federal constitutional claims. The court further held that Plaintiff's state law false arrest claims against Det. Dougans and the County failed because Det. Dougans was not the arresting officer, and that his malicious prosecution claims failed because Det. Dougans's affidavit provided probable cause for issuance of the arrest warrant. Accordingly, the court granted summary judgment to Det. Dougans and the County on all counts. Plaintiff timely appealed.

II.

When a law enforcement officer asserts that qualified immunity protects him from liability for a federal constitutional violation, as Det. Dougans does here, a court must consider two questions. First, we must determine, "[t]aken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, do the facts alleged show the officer's conduct violated a constitutional...