Richards v. Cnty. of San Bernardino

• Citation: 39 F.4th 562
• Decision Date: 24 June 2022
• Docket Number: 19-56205
• Parties: William J. RICHARDS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COUNTY OF SAN BERNARDINO; Mark Nourse; Norman Parent ; Tom Bradford; John Navarro; Daniel Gregonis; Norman Sperber; Does, 1 through 20, inclusive, Defendants-Appellees, and San Bernardino County District Attorney Office; San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office; Ramos Michael; Michael Risley ; Craig Ogino, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

39 F.4th 562

William J. RICHARDS, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.COUNTY OF SAN BERNARDINO; Mark Nourse; Norman Parent ; Tom Bradford; John Navarro; Daniel Gregonis; Norman Sperber; Does, 1 through 20, inclusive, Defendants-Appellees,andSan Bernardino County District Attorney Office; San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office; Ramos Michael; Michael Risley ; Craig Ogino, Defendants.

No. 19-56205

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted February 7, 2022 Pasadena, California

Filed June 24, 2022

Caitlin S. Weisberg (argued), Marilyn E. Bednarski, David S. McLane, and Ben Shaw, McLane, Bednarski & Litt LLP, Pasadena, California, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Susan E. Coleman (argued), Burke, Williams & Sorensen, LLP, Los Angeles, California, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: Kermit V. Lipez,^* Richard C. Tallman, and Kenneth K. Lee, Circuit Judges.

TALLMAN, Circuit Judge:

In 1997, after four trials and two hung juries, Plaintiff-Appellant William Richards was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife, Pamela. In 2016, the California Supreme Court vacated Richards's conviction, finding that it was based on "false evidence" as characterized in subsequently enacted legislation defining the term, Cal. Penal Code § 1473(e)(1), and Richards has since been exonerated of Pamela's murder, see Memorandum Decision, People v. Richards , No. FVI00826 (San Bernardino Super. Ct. June 18, 2021).

Richards now brings this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against Defendants-Appellees—various sheriff's officers and the County of San Bernardino—alleging that Defendants violated his constitutional rights during the 1993 murder investigation and prosecution, resulting in his erroneous conviction. The district court granted summary judgment for Defendants, finding that Richards did not "carry his burden to show that the investigating officers committed any [federal] constitutional errors in their investigation of Pamela's murder." We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we reverse the district court's judgment regarding the claims discussed herein and remand for further proceedings solely as to them.¹

I

At 11:58 p.m. on the night of August 10, 1993, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department (SBSD) received a call that a dead body had been discovered at a remote residential location in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California.² The victim, Pamela Richards, had been brutally beaten and suffered two fatal injuries—strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head

.³

An SBSD deputy was first to arrive at the rural property at approximately 12:38 a.m., where he was met by Pamela's husband, William Richards. Richards told the deputy he had discovered Pamela's body lying face-down on the ground outside their home shortly after he returned from work. According to Richards, Pamela was "stone cold" and likely had been dead for hours.

The deputy conducted a visual and physical inspection of Pamela's body. Pamela's head had been crushed and there was a large pool of blood beside her. There were numerous bloodstains and spatter on Pamela's body and the surrounding area, and a bloody cinder block and steppingstone were lying nearby. The deputy felt for a pulse at Pamela's neck and wrist and, after determining that Pamela was deceased, called for homicide investigators to respond.

In the early morning hours of August 11, several homicide investigators arrived at the scene. Richards argues that the investigators fabricated evidence against him and otherwise performed a recklessly biased and unreliable investigation.⁴ One such investigator was Criminalist Daniel Gregonis, who was employed in the SBSD Crime Lab. As a criminalist, Gregonis worked with homicide investigators to process the crime scene, to collect physical evidence, and to package and preserve that evidence so that it could be transported to the crime lab for further analysis. Gregonis was also responsible for later examining the forensic evidence at the lab.

Richards alleges that while forensic evidence was being examined at the crime lab, Gregonis deliberately fabricated inculpatory evidence against him. Specifically, Richards claims that Gregonis planted blue fibers from a cotton work shirt that Richards was wearing on the night of the murder, fibers which Gregonis says he found under one of Pamela's fingernails.

At the autopsy, the medical examiner had scraped Pamela's fingernails in search of "any type of trace evidence, anything that might be adhered to the nails," and then the examiner severed two of Pamela's fingers for further processing. On September 13, 1993, Gregonis checked out of evidence Pamela's two severed fingers for further examination. On September 14, Gregonis checked out Richards's clothing, including the blue cotton work shirt that Richards was wearing on the night of Pamela's murder. At that point in time, aside from Gregonis, no one else had examined either Richards's clothing or the severed fingers since the time they were first logged into evidence at SBSD's secure property section.

Gregonis claimed that, on September 13, he found a tuft of blue cotton fibers wedged in a crack of a broken fingernail on one of the severed fingers. Gregonis videorecorded his removal of the blue fibers on September 14—the same date that he had custody of both the severed fingers and Richards's clothing. The tuft of fibers was 1/2 centimeter long and contained 15 individual fibers, grouped together. Gregonis subsequently compared the blue fibers to a sample from Richards's shirt and concluded that "[t]he fibers recovered from the broken fingernail ... from [Pamela] are consistent with originating from the light blue shirt ... from [Richards]."⁵

The blue fibers were visible to the naked eye, yet they had not been observed by any other investigator prior to Gregonis's discovery. The blue fibers were not located during the autopsy, nor were they detected by the medical examiner during the finger-scraping, fingerprinting, or finger-severing process in which the examiner was in close contact with Pamela's hands. Moreover, the fibers are clearly visible in photographs taken from Gregonis's removal video, but are noticeably absent from photographs taken of Pamela's hands during the prior autopsy.

On September 3, 1993, Richards was ultimately arrested and booked for his wife's murder. The evidence against him was circumstantial, and three attempts to prosecute Richards failed to result in a conviction. The first two trials ended in a hung jury, and the third trial ended in a mistrial during jury selection.

Before the prosecution's fourth and successful attempt to convict Richards, the County retained a forensic odontologist to present bitemark evidence on behalf of the prosecution. This bitemark evidence was based on a crescent-shaped bruise found on Pamela's right hand. During the autopsy, the medical examiner determined that the bruise was "most certainly" not a bitemark because "[b]asically it ha[d] none of the features of a bitemark." Therefore, standard bitemark procedure was not followed, and only a single, distorted photograph of the bruise was taken. Nevertheless, the County's expert forensic odontologist used the distorted photograph along with dental impressions of Richards's teeth to conclude that the bruise might be a bitemark, and that "[Richards's] remaining lower teeth are consistent with the bitemark." After the trial that included the bitemark evidence, Richards was finally convicted in 1997 for his wife's murder.

In 2007, Richards brought a habeas corpus petition in San Bernardino County Superior Court claiming that his 1997 murder conviction was based on false bitemark evidence, and that new evidence unerringly established his innocence.⁶ In support of the false evidence claim, Richards submitted with his petition a declaration by the County's expert forensic odontologist recanting his earlier opinion based, in part, on subsequently performed computer enhancement of the bitemark photograph. Based on this recantation and new evidence, the trial court granted Richards's habeas petition. The California Supreme Court, however, overturned this decision, finding that Richards "failed to establish that any of the evidence offered at his 1997 trial was false" and the "newly discovered evidence does not point unerringly to innocence or reduced culpability." In re Richards , 55 Cal.4th 948, 150 Cal.Rptr.3d 84, 289 P.3d 860, 876 (2012) (simplified).

The California Legislature subsequently enacted a new law that amended the California habeas statute to define "false evidence" as including the "opinions of experts that have either been repudiated by the expert who originally provided the opinion at a hearing or trial or that have been undermined by later scientific research or technological advances." Cal. Penal Code § 1473(e)(1). Richards then brought a second habeas proceeding on the basis of this legislative amendment to false evidence jurisprudence. Ultimately, the California Supreme Court granted Richards's second habeas petition and vacated his conviction. In re Richards , 63 Cal.4th 291, 202 Cal.Rptr.3d 678, 371 P.3d 195, 211 (2016). After nearly twenty years in custody, Richards was released from prison.

After his conviction was vacated, Richards commenced the instant lawsuit in the Central District of California. Richards brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against various sheriff's officers and the County of San Bernardino for constitutional violations allegedly committed during the murder investigation and prosecution. Relevant to this opinion, Richards brought a claim against Gregonis for deliberate fabrication of the blue fiber evidence, and claims for municipal liability pursuant to Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. , 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), against the County, arguing that the County's customs and policies, and the absence of better customs and policies, resulted in the alleged constitutional violations that he suffered.

The...