Quinn v. Young

• Decision Date: 13 March 2015
• Docket Number: No. 13–2074.,13–2074.
• Citation: 780 F.3d 998
• Parties: John Michase QUINN; Lavern Gonzalez, individually and as next friend to Fabian Chavez, a minor child, Plaintiffs–Appellees, v. William Leon YOUNG; Benjamin Melendrez, Defendants–Appellants, Sgt Louis Armijo, a Supervisor; John or Jane Does, No. 1 and 2, Supervisors; John or Jane Doe No. 3, Spokesperson, Albuquerque Police Department ; Nadine Hamby; Ray Schultz, Chief, Albuquerque Police Department ; Albuquerque Police Department ; City of Albuquerque, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

780 F.3d 998

John Michase QUINN; Lavern Gonzalez, individually and as next friend to Fabian Chavez, a minor child, Plaintiffs–Appellees

v.William Leon YOUNG; Benjamin Melendrez, Defendants–Appellants

Sgt Louis Armijo, a Supervisor; John or Jane Does, No. 1 and 2, Supervisors; John or Jane Doe No. 3, Spokesperson, Albuquerque Police Department ; Nadine Hamby; Ray Schultz, Chief, Albuquerque Police Department ; Albuquerque Police Department ; City of Albuquerque, Defendants.

No. 13–2074.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

March 13, 2015.

Paul Cash, Assistant City Attorney, City of Albuquerque Legal Department, Albuquerque, NM, for Defendants–Appellants.

Nicholas Sitterly, Twohig Law Firm, Albuquerque, NM (Ray Twohig, Twohig Law Firm, Albuquerque, NM, with him on the brief), for Plaintiffs–Appellees.

Before HOLMES, MATHESON, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion

HOLMES, Circuit Judge.

On July 30, 2010, Plaintiffs John Quinn and Lavern Gonzalez were arrested in connection with an Albuquerque Police Department (“APD”) larceny sting. They subsequently filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the arresting officers, William Young and Benjamin Melendrez (“the Officers”), bringing claims of (1) warrantless arrest without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment, (2) entrapment, (3) substantive due process, and (4) malicious prosecution.

The Officers moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, but the district court denied their motion. The district court concluded that a reasonable jury could have found that the Officers arrested Mr. Quinn and Ms. Gonzalez without probable cause. Additionally, the court determined that a reasonable law-enforcement official in the Officers' position would have known it was unlawful to make the challenged arrests without probable cause that Mr. Quinn and Ms. Gonzalez possessed the requisite mens rea for the crime of larceny (i.e., specific intent to permanently deprive another of personal property). In this interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity, the Officers contend that the district court erred because they had probable cause to arrest Plaintiffs and, alternatively, because the law did not clearly establish that their actions during the sting violated the Fourth Amendment.

We agree with the Officers that the extant clearly established law would not have put a reasonable, similarly situated officer on notice that his conduct (here, arresting Mr. Quinn and Ms. Gonzalez in this sting operation) was unlawful. Accordingly, exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse the district court's summary-judgment decision denying qualified immunity to the Officers on Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claim and direct the court to enter judgment in favor of the Officers on that claim (i.e., grant the Officers qualified immunity). For the reasons stated below, we also dismiss Plaintiffs' entrapment claim. Lastly, we remand the case to the district court with instructions to explicitly set forth its reasoning as to whether the Officers may avail themselves of qualified immunity on Plaintiffs' malicious-prosecution and substantive due process claims and to rule on those claims anew.

I

In the summer of 2010, Sergeant Louis Armijo was in charge of the APD Valley Area Command, which responded to pressing criminal issues in downtown Albuquerque. Reports of frequent larcenies prompted Sergeant Armijo to develop an undercover tactical operations plan (the “Tact Plan”) for his squad. The Tact Plan involved various stings wherein members of Sergeant Armijo's team would plant different items, such as alcohol and cigarettes, in public locations as enticements for potential thieves.

One such sting took place on July 30, 2010. The Officers, clad in plainclothes, were assigned to that particular operation and were directed to plant a backpack containing cigarettes, beer, and a laptop computer in a “public predetermined location” downtown. Aplt.App. at 11 (Compl., filed Jan. 3, 2012). Consistent with these instructions, the Officers placed the backpack near an automated teller machine (“ATM”) and then watched from a distance to see if anyone absconded with the backpack.

During their surveillance, the Officers noticed a man, a woman, and a school-aged boy (i.e., Plaintiffs) approaching the backpack. The Officers watched as the two adults spoke to the child, later identified as Fabian Chavez, who then picked up the backpack. At that point, apparently without attempting to discover the backpack's true owner, the trio left the vicinity and walked to a local diner. The Officers followed Plaintiffs to the diner, sat down close by, and watched Mr. Quinn place an order for a hamburger. Meanwhile, Officer Young contacted the APD dispatch and verified that no one had recently called police headquarters to report having found an abandoned backpack.

While seated in the diner, the Officers saw Ms. Gonzalez examine the backpack's contents and remove the laptop. Ms. Gonzalez proceeded to open the laptop, which displayed an APD icon on the screen as it entered startup mode. At that point, the Officers confronted Plaintiffs, arrested Mr. Quinn and Ms. Gonzalez (without a warrant) on charges of larceny, and transported them to Albuquerque's Metropolitan Detention Center.¹ Mr. Quinn and Ms. Gonzalez remained in custody for approximately two days. In early August of 2010, the charges against them were dismissed.

On January 3, 2012, Plaintiffs filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, naming as defendants the Officers, Sergeant Armijo, APD Chief Ray Schultz, the APD, four APD “supervisors” and “spokespersons,” and the City of Albuquerque (collectively “Defendants”). Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants' conduct, as well as the Tact Plan itself, violated their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful seizure. Plaintiffs also sought relief on the grounds that Defendants had (1) committed “the constitutional parallel to common law malicious prosecution,” Aplt.App. at 16; (2) entrapped them in the sting;² and (3) violated their substantive due process rights by causing them “public embarrassment and humiliation and damage to their reputation[s],” id. at 15. Defendants then sought summary judgment, arguing that (1) the named individuals (notably, the Officers) were entitled to qualified immunity on all claims brought against them; (2) Plaintiffs had stated no constitutional violation by any municipal employee (and, by extension, no cognizable municipal-liability claim); and (3) Plaintiffs had stated no actionable constitutional claim against Chief Schultz or any APD supervisor.

The district court granted Defendants' motion in part and denied it in part. As relevant here, the court generally purported to deny summary judgment to the Officers on all of Plaintiffs' claims. In so doing, the district court determined that Plaintiffs had established a genuine issue of material fact as to whether there was probable cause to arrest. The court then concluded that because “well-settled constitutional and state-law precedent would have put a reasonable officer on notice that he could not lawfully arrest for larceny unless he had probable cause to believe the suspect intended to permanently deprive the owner of his property,” the Officers were not entitled to qualified immunity on Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claim. Id. at 150 (Mem. Op. & Order, filed Mar. 22, 2013). Finally, though ruling against them, the court did not expressly articulate why the Officers could not avail themselves of the qualified-immunity defense against Plaintiffs' malicious-prosecution and substantive due process claims, nor did the court articulate its basis for ruling on the entrapment claim.

The Officers have timely appealed from the district court's ruling.

II

A

Primarily at issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in denying qualified immunity to the Officers on Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claim. Plaintiffs insist that this denial was proper because, in their view, the Officers effected the challenged, warrantless arrests without probable cause to believe Plaintiffs had committed larceny. We begin our review by setting forth the legal standards applicable to this matter: those governing (1) qualified immunity, (2) probable cause, and (3) larceny under New Mexico law.

“We review the district court's denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds de novo, with our review limited to purely legal issues.” Aldaba v. Pickens, 777 F.3d 1148, 1154 (10th Cir.2015). Because the doctrine of qualified immunity “not only protects public employees from liability, [but] also protects them from the burdens of litigation,” Allstate Sweeping, LLC v. Black, 706 F.3d 1261, 1266 (10th Cir.2013), “we review summary judgment orders deciding qualified immunity questions differently from other summary judgment decisions,” Price–Cornelison v. Brooks, 524 F.3d 1103, 1108 (10th Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 1111 (explaining that our review is of “an interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage of litigation”).

More specifically, when this defense is raised, the onus is on the plaintiff to demonstrate “(1) that the official violated a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) that the right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the challenged conduct.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2080, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011) (emphasis added); accord Stewart v. Beach, 701 F.3d 1322, 1329–30 (10th Cir.2012). The plaintiff must make this demonstration “on the facts alleged.” Riggins v. Goodman, 572 F.3d 1101, 1107 (10th Cir.2009). And, because we are past the pleading phase at summary judgment, the plaintiff's factual recitation must find support in the record. Thomson v. Salt Lake Cnty., 584 F.3d 1304, 1312 (10th Cir.2009) ; see also York v. City of Las Cruces, 523 F.3d 1205,...