Newton v. City of New York
| Decision Date | 16 July 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 07 Civ. 6211(SAS).,07 Civ. 6211(SAS). |
| Citation | 566 F.Supp.2d 256 |
| Parties | Alan NEWTON, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK, District Attorneys Mario Merola and Robert T. Johnson, Individually, and in Their Official Capacity; Andrea Freund and Various John/Jane Does, Individually and in Their Official Capacities as Employees of the City of New York Who are/Were Assistant District Attorneys Within the Office of the District Attorney, County of Bronx; Detective Joanne Newbert, Detective Phillip Galligan, Detective [John Doe] Hartfield, Detective [John Doe] Ryan, Detective [John Doe] Harris, Pollice Officer Douglas Leho, Police Officer William Sean O'Toole, Lieutenant Michael Sheehan, Sergeant Patrick J. McGuire, Police Officer [John Doe] Haskins, Police Officer [Jane Doe] Kiely, Inspector Jack J. Trabitz and Various John/Jane Does, Individually and in Their Official Capacities as Employees of the City of New York Who are/Were Members of the Police Department of the City of New York, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
John Francis Schutty, III, Esq., Law Office of John F. Schutty, New York, NY, for Plaintiff.
Arthur Gabriel Larkin, III, Assistant Corporation Counsel, The New York City Law Department, New York, NY, for Defendants.
Plaintiff Alan Newton was imprisoned for more than twenty-two years for a crime he did not commit. He filed this action against the City of New York and certain of its officers and employees alleging violations of his civil rights as a result of defendants' investigation, prosecution, and subsequent failure to examine exculpatory evidence. Defendants now move to dismiss each and every claim in the Complaint.1 For the reasons stated herein, this motion is granted in part and denied in part.
On June 22, 1984, the victim of the alleged crime, a twenty-five year-old woman, visited her mother on 158th Street in the Bronx. She consumed approximately eight or nine glasses of "`Old English' beer,"3 fell asleep, and woke around midnight. She then walked to a friend's apartment on 169th Street, where she drank two more glasses of beer, and then proceeded to visit an acquaintance on 180th Street.4
The victim was approximately five feet tall and weighed about one hundred pounds.5 In addition to the inebriating effects of ten to eleven glasses of beer, she had taken thirty milligrams of phenobarbital6 and twenty milligrams of phenytoin,7 two potent anticonvulsants, to control her epilepsy.8 She had been warned not to consume alcohol while taking this medication because the combination can cause extreme drowsiness, motor impairment, lightheadedness, dizziness, and unsteadiness.9
At about 4:00 a.m. on June 23, she entered a bodega at Third Avenue and 180th Street intending to purchase more alcohol. The only person in the store was employee Aurea Gonzalez, who had been on duty for nine hours. Gonzalez observed the victim enter the store followed by a black male, whose face she saw for only a few seconds.10 The man purchased a pack of cigarettes and the victim left shortly after he did.
Gonzalez testified that the man and the victim entered a blue and white two-door Pontiac Grand Prix that was parked outside the bodega with no sign of a struggle, but the victim testified that the man grabbed her from behind, held a razor to her throat, and forced her into the car. He drove her to a nearby park. She could not open the car door because the interior latch was missing.11
The man dragged the victim out of the car, threw her to the grass, sodomized and raped her, took her cigarettes and money, and began to walk away. She followed him, pleading for the return of her money; he returned the money and departed. But shortly after, the man returned, grabbed the victim from behind, dragged her into an abandoned building, raped her again, and cut her face and chest repeatedly with a box cutter.12 While cutting her, he stated, "I'll fix you so you don't identify me, you bitch."13 She was blinded in one eye from the attack.14 She passed out briefly, but regained consciousness and contacted the police from a call box at 176th Street and Marmian Avenue. The entire incident, from when she was forced into the car until when she called the police, took about forty-five minutes.15
Between 5:13 and 5:21 a.m., Officer Douglas Leho arrived at the call box and found the victim hysterical and bleeding profusely. She described the assailant as 16
She was taken to Jacobi Hospital, where a rape kit was performed.17 It was given to the NYPD and assigned to serologist Detective Harris, who for unknown reasons did hot determine the blood type of the assailant or otherwise study the material.18 The victim went into surgery, though Detective Joanne Newbert was first able to speak with her briefly, and the victim told Newbert that the assailant was a man named "Willie."19 The police also secured the victim's clothing, which had sneaker prints from the assailant.20
Newbert then proceeded to the call box and followed a trail of blood to the abandoned building, where she found a piece of a mirror and a pack of cigarettes on the third floor landing. The building was not sealed off and the detectives chose not to search for fingerprints because the walls were judged to be too filthy and because there were likely to be "`a slew'" of fingerprints from various people.21 Plaintiff believes that the NYPD never searched or examined the area of the park where the first attack occurred.22
That afternoon, Detectives Phillip Galligan, Newbert, and Hartfield and Officer William Sean OToole canvassed the area around the park looking for witnesses. They located a woman, Ms. Chamberlain, who knew someone named "Willie" who drove a blue and white Pontiac and lived on the third floor of the abandoned building. The police discounted this information, apparently because Chamberlain was a known drug addict who had provided the NYPD with a bogus name and address.23 Galligan had taken notes during the interview of Chamberlain, but the notes were never produced to plaintiff.24
Detective Galligan returned the next day (June 24) to search for Chamberlain, but was unsuccessful. Galligan ceased searching for Chamberlain after June 25 because by that time Newton had become the "target" of the NYPD investigation.25
The victim described her assailant to Newbert as 5'4", but then said he was 5'9" and was "large," weighing approximately 180 pounds.26 She said she did not know whether he had a light or dark complexion because it was dark out.27
On June 25, 1984, the victim was shown several hundred mug shots, from which she identified plaintiff Newton.28 Her description of the assailant then became consistent: She described him as a black male with short hair, a mustache, 5'7" to 5'8", and weighing 150 to 160 pounds.29
At a police line-up, the victim identified Newton only after each participant repeated the phrase, "I'll fix you so you don't identify me, you bitch." The police then set up a voice identification line-up, but it was performed while the victim could see the participants. After two attempts during which the victim said she could not hear Newton, she identified him as the assailant. He was then arrested.30
Newton's sneakers were seized so that they could be compared with the sneaker prints on the victim's clothing and tested for the victim's blood, but the results of these tests were never disclosed to Newton.31 Newton's home was never searched for the clothing described by the victim or for any other clothing with blood stains on it.32
Newton had spent the night of June 22, 1984, including the early morning of June 23, with his girlfriend and her children. His girlfriend testified that he did not leave the house until the next morning. The children were awake until 2:00 a.m. and testified that Newton did not leave their home. Newton's girlfriend's parents came to the home at about 3:00 a.m. and testified that Newton answered the door. His girlfriend testified that he could not have left the house without her knowledge because he would have awakened her, and he could not have reentered because he had no key.33 Neither the NYPD investigators nor Assistant District Attorney ("ADA") Freund interviewed any of these alibi witnesses.34
Shortly before Newton's trial, the victim informed Freund that she was not "positive" that Newton was the assailant.35 However, after a coaching session with Freund and the Bronx County District Attorney's office, she became convinced again that Newton was the perpetrator.36
Gonzalez also picked Newton out of a photo array and out of a line-up. At a pretrial hearing on the propriety of the photo identifications, Gonzalez was not able to identify Newton in court. However, Freund and the Bronx County District Attorney's Office coached Gonzalez so that she was able to identify Newton at trial.
Newton was acquitted of the rape and sodomy charges that stemmed from the attack in the park, but was convicted of rape in the first degree, assault in the first degree, and robbery in the first degree in connection with the attack in the building.37 On May 31, 1985, he was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of eight and one-third to twenty-five years for the rape and robbery charges, and a consecutive term of five to fifteen years for the assault.38 Throughout his term of imprisonment, Newton insisted on his innocence.
The rape kit was entered into the NYPD Property Clerk's system on June 30, 1984, was assigned to storage bin 84B19041, and was given Precinct Voucher No. B744483.39 On August 16, 1994, Newton filed a pro se request for DNA testing of the kit and of testing of his sneakers and the...
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