Rodriguez v. U.S.

• Decision Date: 03 October 1994
• Docket Number: No. 94-1369,94-1369
• Parties: Manuela RODRIGUEZ, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant, Appellee. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 41

54 F.3d 41

Manuela RODRIGUEZ, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 94-1369.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Oct. 3, 1994.

Decided May 15, 1995.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied July 17, 1995.

Juan Rafael Gonzalez-Munoz, with whom Gonzalez Munoz Law Office, Hato Rey, PR, Gerardo Pavia-Cabanillas and Moreda & Moreda, San Juan, PR, were on brief, for appellants.

Peter R. Maier, Atty., Guillermo Gil, U.S. Atty., Frank W. Hunger, Asst. U.S. Atty., Washington, DC, and Robert S. Greenspan, Hull, MA, Atty., were on brief, for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA, ^* Chief Judge, BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge, and CYR, Circuit Judge.

CYR, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs-appellants--Manuela Rodriguez and family members--challenge the summary judgment entered in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico dismissing their Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA") suit for damages resulting from the errant arrest and imprisonment of Manuela Rodriguez by the United States Marshals Service pursuant to a valid warrant. We affirm the district court judgment.

I BACKGROUND ¹

On March 14, 1975, in Mineola, New York, an individual who identified herself as "Manuela Rodriguez" was arrested on drug charges by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration ("DEA"). The arrestee provided DEA with a social security number and the following additional information which the agents recorded on a standard DEA booking form: sex: female; height: 5'; weight: 140 pounds; race: white; place of birth: Maranjito [sic], Puerto Rico; date of birth: December 29, 1942; citizenship: United States; identifying characteristics: scar on stomach, right-handed; eyes: brown; hair: brown; mother: deceased; father: deceased; sister: Martha Rodriques. On April 7, 1975, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an arrest warrant against "Manuela Rodriguez," directed to the DEA for execution. The DEA never located the subject.

In 1989, the United States Marshals Service became responsible for executing DEA arrest warrants, and Deputy Marshal Sandra Rodriguez ("Deputy Rodriguez"), Southern District of New York ("SDNY"), was assigned to locate the subject of the 1975 arrest warrant. Sometime later, a credit bureau check by Deputy Rodriguez yielded a fresh lead: a "Manuela Rodriguez" residing in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, with the identical social security number recorded in the 1975 DEA booking form.

Deputy Rodriguez promptly dispatched an "arrest packet" to the United States Marshals Service, District of Puerto Rico ("DPR"), which included copies of the 1975 DEA booking form and a handwritten information form prepared by the United States Marshals Service, SDNY. Deputy Rodriguez requested the United States Marshals Service, DPR, to "check the following lead." Her cover memorandum summarized most of the identifying information in the accompanying documents and included the following additional information: a/k/a Lopez, Dora Restrepo, a/k/a Restrepo, Dora; weight: 140 (back in 1975); sister: Martha Rodriguez. Even though Deputy Rodriguez, just five days earlier, had shown a photograph of the 1975 arrestee in the New York City neighborhood where "Manuela Rodriguez" was last believed to have resided, her cover memorandum noted: "photo not available." Nor did Deputy Rodriguez request fingerprints for inclusion in the arrest packet.

Shortly after the arrest packet reached Puerto Rico on January 26, 1990, the deputy marshals assigned to the case, Cesar Torres and Eugenio Diaz, requested that the United States Marshals Service, SDNY, forward a photograph of the subject. The record is silent as to whether fingerprints were requested. In any event, Deputies Torres and Diaz once again were advised that no photograph was available and that SDNY could provide no additional information.

On February 8, 1990, after confirming that a Manuela Rodriguez indeed was residing at the Bayamon address listed in the arrest packet, Deputies Torres and Diaz alerted a magistrate judge that an arrest was imminent. Later in the afternoon, Deputies Torres and Diaz proceeded to the Bayamon address to execute the arrest warrant, and identified themselves to plaintiff-appellant Pedro Gonzalez Martinez ("Martinez"), plaintiff Rodriguez's husband. Martinez phoned plaintiff Rodriguez at her place of work, and she arrived home at approximately 4:50 p.m.

At her insistence, the deputies interviewed plaintiff Rodriguez in the presence of her When Deputies Torres and Diaz advised that they had an arrest warrant for "Manuela Rodriguez," plaintiff protested--to no avail--that she could not be the individual named in the warrant since she had never been to New York. Immediately after the arrest, the deputies attempted--likewise to no avail--to contact a magistrate judge, then booked plaintiff and transported her to a pretrial detention facility for incarceration pursuant to the provisional commitment order previously issued by the magistrate judge. The following day, February 9, plaintiff was brought before a magistrate judge and released on personal recognizance pending a removal hearing on February 13, 1990.

                family.  She confirmed most of the information provided in the arrest packet, including her full name, social security number, birthplace, birthdate, abdominal scar, right-handedness, and that both her parents were deceased.  Prior to her arrest, plaintiff also told the deputy marshals that she had a sister named "Marta Rodriguez."   Although the summary judgment record reveals that plaintiff Rodriguez has three siblings, including a sister named "Maria" and/or "Marta," the only grounds asserted in opposition to summary judgment below were the alleged three-inch height difference, a twenty-pound weight difference, an additional scar on plaintiff Rodriguez's forehead, the failure of the United States Marshals Service, SDNY, to forward a photograph and fingerprints to Puerto Rico, and the failure of Deputies Torres and Diaz to request fingerprints
                

In anticipation of the removal hearing, Deputy Diaz again requested a photograph of the 1975 arrestee from the United States Marshals Service, SDNY. Finally, on February 10, a photograph taken at the Mineola Police Department at the time of the 1975 arrest was mailed to Puerto Rico. When the photograph arrived on February 12, it was readily determined that plaintiff Rodriguez was not the "Manuela Rodriguez" arrested in 1975. On February 13, the government moved to dismiss all proceedings against plaintiff Rodriguez.

In due course the United States Marshals Service disallowed the administrative claim filed by plaintiffs-appellants, clearing the way for the present action against the United States for false arrest and false imprisonment based solely on the conduct of its deputy marshals in (1) initiating, through Deputy Rodriguez, the wrongful arrest and detention of plaintiff Rodriguez pursuant to the 1975 arrest warrant without obtaining or forwarding a photograph and fingerprints of the 1975 arrestee to the District of Puerto Rico; (2) executing the arrest warrant, through Deputies Torres and Diaz, without a photograph and fingerprints of the subject and notwithstanding the height and weight differences between plaintiff Rodriguez and the 1975 arrestee; and (3) delaying plaintiff Rodriguez's initial appearance before a magistrate judge. ²

The United States moved for summary judgment on all claims. The district court ruled that plaintiffs had not generated a trialworthy dispute as to whether the arresting deputies had a reasonable basis for believing that plaintiff Rodriguez was the subject named in the 1975 arrest warrant. It concluded that the arresting deputies, with valid warrant in hand, were under no duty to corroborate their reasonable identification by obtaining either fingerprints or a fifteen-year-old photograph and that any failure on the part of Deputy Rodriguez to gather or forward such information was immaterial because the information made available to Deputies Torres and Diaz prior to the arrest was adequate to support a reasonable belief by the arresting deputies that plaintiff Rodriguez was the person named in the 1975 warrant.

Plaintiffs-appellants challenge the district court rulings, on two grounds: (1) that Deputies Torres and Diaz, with neither a photograph nor the fingerprints of the 1975 arrestee, could not have formed a reasonable belief that plaintiff Rodriguez was the subject of the 1975 warrant, particularly in light of the height and weight discrepancies; and (2) that Deputy Rodriguez negligently failed to include a photograph and fingerprints of the 1975 arrestee in the arrest packet transmitted to the United States Marshals Service, DPR.

The United States responds in kind. First, it claims that Deputies Torres and Diaz had reasonable cause to believe that plaintiff Rodriguez was the 1975 arrestee; hence, they were not negligent. Second, even assuming negligent conduct on the part of Deputy Rodriguez in the pre-arrest investigation, federal law enforcement officers owe no duty to exercise reasonable care in conducting pre-arrest investigations and, secondly, FTCA Sec. 2680(h) waives sovereign immunity from suit for certain enumerated intentional torts only--among them false arrest and false imprisonment--and not for mere negligent investigation.

II DISCUSSION

A. Summary Judgment

A grant of summary judgment is subject to plenary review under the same criteria incumbent on the district court. Guzman-Rivera v. Rivera-Cruz, 29 F.3d 3, 4 (1st Cir.1994). Summary judgment is appropriate where the record, viewed in the light most conducive to the party resisting summary judgment, reveals no trialworthy issue of material fact, and the party requesting it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id.

B. Sovereign Immunity

For many years the general waiver of sovereign immunity...