Miranda v. Clark County, Nevada

• Decision Date: 03 February 2003
• Docket Number: No. 00-15734.,00-15734.
• Parties: Roberto Hernandez MIRANDA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CLARK COUNTY, NEVADA; Morgan Harris; Thomas Rigsby, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 465

319 F.3d 465

Roberto Hernandez MIRANDA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CLARK COUNTY, NEVADA; Morgan Harris; Thomas Rigsby, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 00-15734.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted September 19, 2002.

Filed February 3, 2003.

Roy A. Jacobson, Jr., Jackson, WY, for the plaintiff-appellant.

J. Douglas McCalla, Spence, Moriarity & Schuster, Jackson, WY, for the plaintiff-appellant.

Thomas D. Beatty, Law Offices of Thomas D. Beatty, Las Vegas, NV, for the defendants-appellees.

Gloria J. Sturman, Edwards, Hale, Sturman, Atkin & Cushing, Ltd., Las Vegas, NV, for the defendants-appellees.

Janson F. Stewart, Chief Deputy District Attorney, Las Vegas, NV, for the defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada; Lloyd D. George, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-98-01121-LDG.

Before: SCHROEDER, Chief Judge, SNEED, PREGERSON, REINHARDT, T.G. NELSON, KLEINFELD, HAWKINS, THOMAS, SILVERMAN, WARDLAW and BERZON, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Chief Judge SCHROEDER; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge KLEINFELD; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge SILVERMAN.

SCHROEDER, Chief Judge.

We took this case en banc to consider whether the head of a county public defender's office, as the administrative head of an organization formed to represent criminal defendants, may be held accountable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for a policy that leads to a denial of an individual's right to effective representation of counsel. We take principal guidance from the leading Supreme Court decisions on state and municipal liability, Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978) and City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989), as well as the leading decision considering § 1983 liability of a public defender, Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U.S. 312, 102 S.Ct. 445, 70 L.Ed.2d 509 (1981).

Polk County held that when an assistant public defender is performing the traditional role of an attorney for a client, the lawyer is not a state actor. Id. at 318-19, 102 S.Ct. 445. The case left open the possibility, however, that there may be liability for "administrative and possibly investigative functions." Id. at 324-25, 102 S.Ct. 445.

The plaintiff in this case is Roberto Hernandez Miranda. He was convicted of capital murder and served fourteen years in prison until a Nevada state court overturned his conviction in collateral-review proceedings. The Nevada court held that he was not provided effective assistance of counsel because the assistant public defender failed to investigate the case. The state declined to reprosecute.

Miranda then filed this action in federal district court against the individual assistant public defender who had represented him, Thomas Rigsby; the head of the Clark County Public Defender's Office, Morgan Harris; and Clark County, Nevada. The district court dismissed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

According to the complaint, Miranda truthfully maintained his innocence, and he provided Rigsby with a list of forty witnesses who could provide information on who actually committed the crime. Rigsby, fresh out of law school and an assistant public defender for a little over a year, had never tried a murder case, much less a capital case. He interviewed only three of the witnesses Miranda had listed and subpoenaed none for trial. Miranda alleges conduct that fell far short of the minimal requirements of effective representation.

In addition, the complaint alleges Rigsby's representation of Miranda was doomed to failure because of two policies promulgated by Harris as the head of the Office of Public Defender. The first was a policy of administering a lie detector test to all defendants and allocating minimal resources for preparation of defense to those clients who appear guilty because they failed the polygraph. The plaintiff claims that this policy violates the basic dictates of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), to provide all defendants with effective counsel regardless of guilt or innocence. Id. at 344-45, 83 S.Ct. 792. The second policy was to assign the least-experienced lawyers on the staff to capital cases without training or experience in the special demands of such cases. Plaintiff maintains that such a policy constitutes a lack of training so severe as to establish a "deliberate indifference" to a defendant's constitutional rights. City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 388-89, 109 S.Ct. 1197. Plaintiff alleges that Harris, as a policymaker for the county, made a deliberate choice to follow this course of action rather than to implement an alternative policy, and that the county thus violated Miranda's constitutional rights. Id.

Thus, contrary to the suggestions of my dissenting colleagues, the complaint effectively alleges that Harris made no particularized decisions through the exercise of independent professional judgment in the defense of a client. The complaint expressly states that "Harris, as a policy maker[] for the Clark County Public Defender's Office and Clark County, Nevada,... allocate[d] investigative and defense resources based upon a defendant's performance on a polygraph examination" [Complaint ¶ 121] and "assign[ed] inexperienced and untrained attorneys to capital and other felony cases [Complaint ¶ 138]," which policy, custom or practice "was ... deliberately indifferent to, ... and in callous disregard for, Mr. Miranda's federal constitutional rights, including, but not limited to, his rights to the effective assistance of counsel." Complaint ¶ 138; see also id. ¶ 121.

The district court dismissed the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) as failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted against any of the defendants. A three-judge panel of this court affirmed. Miranda v. Clark County, 279 F.3d 1102, 1112 (9th Cir.2002). We affirm as to Rigsby and reverse as to Harris and Clark County.

Key to our review is the stricture that when reviewing a dismissal of a complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), all allegations are to be considered in a light most favorable to the plaintiff. Gone is any heightened pleading requirement that may have influenced the district court's disposition of the case. Leatherman v. Tarrant County NICU, 507 U.S. 163, 168, 113 S.Ct. 1160, 122 L.Ed.2d 517 (1993); Galbraith v. County of Santa Clara, 307 F.3d 1119, 1121(9th Cir.2002). We therefore consider the allegations of the complaint as they relate first to the conduct of the individual assistant public defender representing Miranda, and then as they relate to the Public Defender, Harris, alleged to be the policy-maker for Clark County in the allocation of public resources for criminal defense.

The Claim Against the Assistant Public Defender

According to the allegations of the complaint, the conduct of Rigsby was well below the accepted standard of representation of a capital defendant. Given a client who had pled innocent and provided the names of dozens of witnesses who could provide information about the client's innocence and the guilt of the actual perpetrator, the lawyer did essentially nothing. He subpoenaed no witnesses and mounted no defense. We assume, for purposes of this case, his conduct was deficient and to the detriment of his client.

The issue before us, however, is whether in providing inadequate representation to this defendant, Rigsby was acting on behalf of the Clark County government, so as to become a state actor within the meaning of § 1983. He was, no doubt, paid by government funds and hired by a government agency. Nevertheless, his function was to represent his client, not the interests of the state or county. The result reached by both the district court and the three-judge panel in this case, in holding he was not a state actor, is required by the Supreme Court's decision in Polk County. Rigsby had assumed his role as counsel and thus had begun to perform a "lawyer's traditional functions." Polk County, 454 U.S. at 325, 102 S.Ct. 445. The Court in Polk County found that a public defender representing a client in the lawyer's traditional adversarial role was not a state actor. Id. The Court did not predicate its holding on whether the lawyer was in fact exercising "independent judgment." Id. at 324-25, 102 S.Ct. 445. Rather, it emphasized that it is the traditional lawyer role that controls. Id. at 322 n. 13, 324 n. 17, 325, 102 S.Ct. 445; Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 54, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992) (holding that it is the "nature and context of the function" that is determinative).

It does not matter that Rigsby was employed by a public agency. "Except for the source of payment, ... the duties and obligations are the same whether [Rigsby was] privately retained, appointed, or serving in a legal aid or defender program." Polk County, 454 U.S. at 318, 102 S.Ct. 445(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In that traditional role, Rigsby was acting under the ethical standards of a lawyer-client relationship. He was "[h]eld to the same standards of competence and integrity as a private lawyer." Id. at 321, 102 S.Ct. 445. We therefore affirm the district court's dismissal of the complaint against the Assistant Public Defender, Rigsby, on the ground that, as a matter of law, he was not a state actor.

The Claim Against Harris, the County Public Defender

The situation with respect to Harris, the administrative head of the County Public Defender's Office, is different. Insofar as this case is concerned, he was not acting under any of the ethical standards of the lawyer-client relationship to which Rigsby was bound. The nature and context of Harris's function was administrative. He was, according to the complaint, acting solely as the administrative...