Rodriguez v. City of N.Y.

• Docket Number: 21-CV-1649 (AMD) (RLM)
• Decision Date: 14 March 2022
• Parties: Felipe RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF NEW YORK, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Rail Road Company, John Beisel, in his individual and official capacities, Thomas Sullivan, in his individual and official capacities, Charles Wendel, in his individual and official capacities; Jerry Fennel, in his individual and official capacities; John Califano, in his individual and official capacities, John Wilde, in his individual and official capacities, George Zaroogian, in his individual and official capacities, and Other As-Yet-Unknown Police Officers & Supervisors John and Jane Does #1-10, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

590 F.Supp.3d 518

Felipe RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff,

v.The CITY OF NEW YORK, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Rail Road Company, John Beisel, in his individual and official capacities, Thomas Sullivan, in his individual and official capacities, Charles Wendel, in his individual and official capacities; Jerry Fennel, in his individual and official capacities; John Califano, in his individual and official capacities, John Wilde, in his individual and official capacities, George Zaroogian, in his individual and official capacities, and Other As-Yet-Unknown Police Officers & Supervisors John and Jane Does #1-10, Defendants.

21-CV-1649 (AMD) (RLM)

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

Signed March 14, 2022

Joel B. Rudin, Law Offices of Joel B. Rudin, New York, NY, Benjamin Notterman, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, ZMO Law PLLC, New York, NY, for Plaintiff.

Mark David Zuckerman, NYC Law Department, New York, NY, for Defendants City of New York, John Beisel, Jerry Fennel, John Califano, John Wilde, George Zaroogian.

Steven Mark Silverberg, Helene R. Hechtkopf, Ira J. Lipton, Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP, New York, NY, for Defendants Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Rail Road Company, Thomas Sullivan, Charles Wendel.

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER

ANN M. DONNELLY, United States District Judge:

The plaintiff brings claims pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983, and also makes state law claims. In 1990, the plaintiff was convicted after a jury trial of murder in the second degree, and was sentenced to an indeterminate prison term of 25 years to life. (ECF No. 33 ¶¶ 329, 331.) After the plaintiff served 27 years in prison, former Governor Andrew Cuomo granted him clemency on December 30, 2016, and the Honorable Joseph Zayas of New York Supreme Court, Queens County, vacated the conviction on December 30, 2019. (Id. ¶¶ 337, 348.) The plaintiff alleges that the police officers who investigated the murder—former detectives of the New York Police Department ("NYPD") and the Long Island Rail Road Police Department ("LIRR PD")—as well as the agencies themselves violated his civil rights.¹ Before the Court are the defendants’ partial motions to dismiss the amended complaint. (ECF Nos. 39, 42.) For the reasons that follow, the motions are denied in part and granted in part.

BACKGROUND²

On the morning of November 26, 1987, Thanksgiving Day, a security guard found the body of 35-year-old Maureen Fernandez in an industrial lot in Glendale, Queens. (ECF No. 33 ¶¶ 39-41.) The LIRR PD assisted the NYPD in investigating the case, because Ms. Fernandez's body was on land belonging to the Long Island Rail Road. (Id. ¶ 51.) The next day, a warehouse security guard told the police that a white man in his 20s with a thin mustache and short dark hair drove a "1980-81 2 [door] white Cadillac" out of the lot between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. on November 26, 1987.³ (Id. ¶¶ 48-49.)

The investigation revealed that Ms. Fernandez spent much of November 25, 1987 at Wyckoff Heights Hospital in Brooklyn, where her daughter was being treated. (Id. ¶ 52.) At around 1:00 a.m. on November 26, 1987, she argued with her husband over the phone, and went to Little Liva Bar in Brooklyn. (Id. ¶¶ 54, 56.) Police officers interviewed people at the bar, including the bartender Joseph Castillo and patrons Robert Thompson and William Perry. (Id. ¶¶ 64-65.) Witnesses told the police that Ms. Fernandez and a man arrived at the bar at about 2:00 a.m., in a black, late-1970s Chevrolet Monte Carlo. (Id. ¶¶ 59-60.) In an initial interview, Thompson told the police that the man with the victim was "bow-legged," was wearing a "multicolored sweater," "beige pants" and a gold ring, and had "reddish brown" hair. (Id. ¶ 68.) In a videotape-recorded interview, he told LIRR PD detectives Thomas Sullivan and Charles Wendel that the man also had the word "LOVE" tattooed across his fingers. (Id. ¶¶ 71-76.) In February of 1988, Perry told Wendel and Sullivan that the man with Ms. Fernandez was Italian or Irish, "not Hispanic," and had "hazel or green" eyes. Although Wendel wrote a note about Perry's description, the detectives did not prepare a DD-5 investigation report form ("DD-5") following the interview.⁴ (Id. ¶¶ 68-69, 312.)

During the investigation that followed, the police pursued a number of leads. Within a month of the murder, the police prepared a composite sketch of the suspect. (Id. ¶ 98.) Following an anonymous tip that "the male in the [police] sketch ... live[d] across the street" from the Wyckoff Hospital and had a Monte Carlo, detectives investigated Jose Perez Rivera, who lived next to the hospital and owned a black 1978 Monte Carlo. (Id. ¶¶ 98-99.) The police identified Rivera as a person of interest in August of 1988 but, according to the plaintiff, "abandoned their investigation of Rivera after encountering difficulty locating him." (Id. ¶ 101.) The police also identified Eddie Ruiz as a suspect; police reports suggested that he might have known Ms. Fernandez and assaulted her female relative. (Id. ¶¶ 101, 103.) In February of 1988, Wendel and Sullivan showed Castillo a photo array that included Ruiz's photograph; Castillo identified Ruiz as the man with Ms. Fernandez at the bar. One of the detectives memorialized the identification in a handwritten note, but did not document the identification in a DD-5. (Id. ¶¶ 104-05, 321.)

In April of 1988, Detective John Beisel from the NYPD 104th Precinct was assigned to lead the investigation. He shifted the focus from the black Monte Carlo patrons saw at the Little Liva Bar to the white Cadillac the warehouse security guard saw leaving the lot. (Id. ¶¶ 114-15.) In August of 1988, the police learned that a Wyckoff Heights Hospital security guard named Pete Sierra owned a white Oldsmobile with a red roof; he allowed the police to voucher the car as evidence. (Id. ¶¶ 116-18, 121.) Sierra purchased the Oldsmobile in early 1988 from Javier Ramos, another hospital security guard. (Id. ¶ 122.)

On September 9, 1988, Ramos went to the 104th Precinct, and asked why detectives were interested in his former car. (Id. ¶ 124.) Beisel took Ramos into a room, and detectives interrogated him for about 13 hours. (Id. ¶¶ 126-27.) The plaintiff alleges that "[d]etectives used coercive tactics to get Ramos to either confess to the murder or lead them to another suspect," and that George Zaroogian, John Califano, John Wilde, Jerry Fennel, Sullivan and Wendel "assisted" Beisel in this interrogation. (Id. ¶¶ 128-29.) He also alleges that "Beisel pushed Ramos, threatened to maim or kill him, called him a ‘spic’ and a ‘Hispanic prick,’ denied him food, water, and the use of a bathroom, and refused his request to leave," and that "[t]he other detectives failed to intervene." (Id. ¶¶ 132-33.) Ramos told the detectives that he had previously loaned his car to two friends, Richard Pereira and the plaintiff. Beisel demanded that Ramos take them to the plaintiff's home, and they got into a police car with Califano and Wilde. (Id. ¶¶ 137-38.) The plaintiff alleges that Beisel, Califano and Wilde stopped at a cemetery in Brooklyn, and "threatened to kill Ramos if he did not either admit to the murder or implicate" the plaintiff. At that point, Ramos told them that he had loaned his car to the plaintiff and Pereira at the time of Ms. Fernandez's murder. (Id. ¶¶ 139-40.) The detectives then took Ramos to the plaintiff's residence, but he was not there. Califano drafted a DD-5 stating that "Mr. Ramos said his friend ... Felipe Rodriguez, may have information regarding this homicide," and that "[the plaintiff] borrowed his car on the night of the incident." (Id. ¶ 143.)

The detectives took Ramos back to the precinct and continued to interrogate him. At about 1:00 a.m. on September 10, 1988, Ramos signed an affidavit implicating Pereira in Ms. Fernandez's murder. (Id. ¶¶ 146-47.) The affidavit included the following statements: Around Thanksgiving of 1987, Ramos loaned his car to Pereira, who was wearing a multi-colored sweater, beige pants and jewelry.⁵ Pereira promised to return the car by midnight, but returned it at 6:00 a.m. on November 26, 1987. Pereira apologized, and explained that "he got into an argument with a low-life bitch that he had met at the hospital." Ramos cleaned the car later that day, after he noticed "a red liquid substance on the front passenger seat, armrest, passenger door and window and floor mat." Pereira threatened Ramos with a gun several months later. (Id. ¶ 149.) Beisel and Zaroogian signed the affidavit as witnesses, and Wendel notarized it. (Id. ¶ 148.) The plaintiff alleges that at some point during the interrogation, Ramos told Zaroogian that the affidavit was false. (Id. ¶ 152.) In a DD-5, Beisel wrote that Pereira also told Ramos, "I'm sorry I took so long with it [the car]. This low life bitch [ ] that I met [at] the hospital—I got into an argument with [her]. I had to do [ ] what I had to do. I had to stab her." (Id. ¶ 154.)

Beisel and other detectives forwarded the affidavit to the Queens County District Attorney's Office (the "QDAO"). (Id. ¶ 156.) The police arrested Pereira later that day, interrogated him and placed him in a lineup. The three witnesses who viewed the lineup did not identify him, and he was released. (Id. ¶¶ 159, 161-62.)

In late September of 1988, Beisel, Fennel and Wendel had Pereira wear a recording device and sent him to record a conversation with Ramos at the Wyckoff Heights Hospital. Ramos told Pereira that on November 26, 1987, "[M]y car was parked in front of my mother-in-law's house, because my battery [ ] was dead ... [.] I told them all of this. And yet they didn't ... want to hear that ... [.] They wanted me to confess to something." (Id. ¶ 167.) Ramos also said that he signed the affidavit implicating Pereira only because the detectives told him to do so, and that he cleaned a "red substance," not blood, from his car. (Id. ¶¶ 168-69.) Pereira and Ramos also...