Sanders v. English

Citation950 F.2d 1152
Decision Date21 January 1992
Docket NumberNo. 91-4293,91-4293
PartiesFloyd SANDERS, III, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Don ENGLISH, Curtis McCoy, Ed Perry, and the City of Mansfield, Defendants-Appellees.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Nelson W. Cameron, Shreveport, La., for plaintiff-appellant.

A.M. Stroud, III, Blanchard, Walker, O'Ouin, Shreveport, La., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before GOLDBERG, JOLLY, and WIENER, Circuit Judges.

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

This is the case of the bicycle bandit.

INTRODUCTION

On February 15, 1989, Curtis McCoy, a police lieutenant with the City of Mansfield, arrested Floyd Sanders pursuant to a warrant. Sanders had been identified as the assailant in an armed robbery which had occurred several weeks before. Too poor to post a $50,000 bond, Sanders remained incarcerated pending trial. Within two days of the arrest, information came to Lt. McCoy's attention indicating that he had arrested the wrong man: Sanders had an alibi corroborated by three credible witnesses, and another witness who had seen the assailant flee the scene of the robbery stated that Sanders was not the assailant. Lt. McCoy neither acted on the information, nor brought it to the attention of the police chief or the prosecuting attorney who, in the interim, filed an information charging Sanders with the armed robbery. Sanders' attorney, on the strength of the alibi defense, eventually persuaded the prosecuting attorney and the trial judge to reduce the bond to an amount which Sanders' family could post, but by then, Sanders had already been incarcerated for fifty days. A grand jury later declined to indict Sanders, and the prosecuting attorney dismissed the case.

Sanders responded by filing this lawsuit in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the arresting police officers, the police chief, and the City of Mansfield had violated his federal and state constitutional rights by arresting, detaining, and prosecuting him for the armed robbery. The district court dismissed Sanders' complaint on motion by the defendants for summary judgment, and this appeal followed.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

Because this case comes to us on appeal from a summary judgment, we are obliged to review the record and construe the facts in the light most favorable to Sanders, the nonmoving party in the court below. All reasonable inferences which can be drawn from the facts must be construed to support Sanders' theory of the case, and any genuine dispute of fact must With this standard of review in mind, we set forth the facts in the light most favorable to Sanders.

                be resolved, for purposes of the summary judgment motion, in Sanders' favor.   See International Shortstop, Inc. v. Rally's, 939 F.2d 1257, 1263 (5th Cir.1991).   We may not weigh the evidence or make credibility determinations.   We merely review the record to determine whether there is evidence, which if submitted to and credited by a jury, could support a verdict for Sanders.   If there is, he is entitled to a trial.   See id
                
FACTS

In the early morning hours of January 23, 1989, a man on a bicycle robbed Herman Sandifer at gunpoint. Mr. Sandifer, a seventy-year old resident of Mansfield, Louisiana, could not identify the assailant as someone known to him, but he did give police a physical and facial description of the assailant. A school crossing guard and a service station attendant who were both nearby also gave a description of the assailant and assisted police in composing a sketch of the assailant, which was then circulated in the local newspaper.

Defendant Curtis McCoy, a police lieutenant with the City of Mansfield, undertook the investigation of what police dubbed the case of the "bicycle bandit." Because other elderly residents of Mansfield had been assaulted and robbed in recent weeks in similar fashion, the case received considerable media attention in Mansfield, pressuring police to make an arrest. Unfortunately, the police made little immediate progress in identifying and arresting the assailant.

During the next several weeks, Lt. McCoy received a number of telephone calls from persons suggesting that Floyd Sanders matched the description of the bicycle bandit. Lt. McCoy knew Sanders, and noticed that there indeed was a resemblance between Sanders and the police sketch. Other suspects, however, were still under consideration, and Lt. McCoy made no effort to investigate Sanders' possible connection to the robberies.

On February 15, 1989, more than three weeks after the Sandifer robbery, Lt. McCoy was in court on an unrelated matter and noticed that Sanders was there. Rather than arrange for a formal line-up, he instructed another police officer to call Mr. Sandifer and have him come down to the courthouse so that he might "identify any particular one in the courtroom because all the so-called criminals [were] there at the time." 1 Mr. Sandifer proceeded to the courtroom where Lt. McCoy was waiting for him. Sanders, who was in the courtroom, was seated next to a young man who Mr. Sandifer knew very well. 2 During a recess, Lt. McCoy asked Mr. Sandifer whether he recognized anyone in the packed courtroom as the bicycle bandit. Mr. Sandifer identified Sanders by name. With that information, Lt. McCoy sought and obtained an arrest warrant for Sanders. Before arresting Sanders, however, Lt. McCoy telephoned a reporter for the local newspaper, the "Mansfield Enterprise," and told her to meet him in five minutes at the courthouse so that she could photograph the arrest of the bicycle bandit. 3

Armed with an arrest warrant and assisted by the other police officer, 4 Lt. McCoy Within two days after the arrest, critical information surfaced casting considerable doubt on whether Sanders was in fact the bicycle bandit:

                arrested Sanders in the courthouse.   Handcuffed and escorted by the two policemen, Sanders was photographed on the steps of the courthouse by the Mansfield Enterprise reporter.   The photograph of Sanders and Lt. McCoy appeared on the front page of the newspaper the following day in connection with the headline, " 'Bicycle Bandit' Suspect Arrested Here Wednesday."   The newspaper credited Lt. McCoy with the capture of the bandit and identified him as the officer in the photograph making the arrest.   Sanders' bond was set at $50,000, and because he could not raise the necessary funds, Sanders remained incarcerated
                

First, Lt. McCoy was informed on the day of the arrest that Sanders and Mr. Sandifer were related, explaining how Mr. Sandifer was able to identify Sanders by name in the packed courtroom. Lt. McCoy deposed that he found no peculiarity in the fact that Mr. Sandifer was related to, and knew, Sanders, yet could not name him as the assailant until the identification Lt. McCoy arranged at the courthouse more than three weeks following the armed robbery. According to Lt. McCoy:

[Mr. Sandifer] told me that he did not know then, but that once he seen Mr. Sanders, that's when it all came back to him that Mr. Sanders was the guy who did, in fact, rob him.... From the way that Mr. Sandifer talked [on the day of the robbery] you could pretty well tell that that particular morning he was shook up, and he seen the person as they was walking or running away from him, and at that time he told me if he seen that person again, he would know him. He said it was no doubt in his mind that if he seen that person he would know him, and it proved to be so.

Lt. McCoy did not inform Chief of Police Don English or the prosecuting attorney of the relation between Sanders and Mr. Sandifer. 5

Second, the service station attendant who had assisted in composing the sketch of the bandit told Lt. McCoy, on the day after Sanders' arrest, that Sanders was not the bandit. Lt. McCoy deposed that he "had every reason to believe" the service station attendant, whom he described as a "nice guy," but was not persuaded that the statement cast sufficient doubt on Mr. Sandifer's positive, though belated, identification. Accordingly, Lt. McCoy deliberately declined to take any further investigative steps in reaction to the service station attendant's statement; Lt. McCoy did not even attempt to speak with the school crossing guard, who had also assisted in developing the composite sketch of the bicycle bandit, to determine whether he could confirm Mr. Sandifer's identification.

Third, Lt. McCoy presented a photograph array to the other elderly victims of the bandit-style armed robberies because of a perceived connection between those incidents and the Sandifer robbery. None of the other victims identified Sanders as the assailant.

Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, Lt. McCoy learned, one or two days after the arrest, that Sanders had an alibi corroborated by three credible witnesses, all of whom were acquaintances of Lt. McCoy. The three men visited Lt. McCoy at his home and explained that they were with Sanders on the morning of January 23, 1989, during the time of the armed robbery, doing some work out of town. Although Lt. McCoy felt "comfortable" with their credibility, he nevertheless took no action because he felt that "they would have to give [him] more to go on than that." Instead, he told the three alibi witnesses that they would have to tell their story to the court.

A few days later, one of the three alibi witnesses, Reginold Elam, went to see Lt. McCoy again, this time at the police station. Elam was a reserve police officer and [Lt. McCoy] just said that we had to go down to the DA's office--I mean I would have to go down to the DA's office or either to the mayor to get the charges dropped. He said he wasn't going to do anything to get the charges dropped. He said he was sure he had the right man, and I asked him did he have any physical evidence.

                personal friend of Lt. McCoy's for twelve years;  in fact, it was Lt. McCoy who had recruited Elam for
...

To continue reading

Request your trial
216 cases
  • Novak v. Cobb County-Kennestone Hosp. Authority
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia
    • 28 Febrero 1994
    ...Cir.1992) (continued detention where sheriff knew it was wrongful states claim under § 1983 for due process violation); Sanders v. English, 950 F.2d 1152 (5th Cir.1992) (failure to release after officer knew or should have known that plaintiff had been misidentified gives rise to cause of a......
  • Beshere v. Peralta
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Western District of Texas
    • 10 Mayo 2016
    ...in their official capacities are claims against the State); Ganther v. Ingle, 75 F.3d 207, 209 (5th Cir. 1996); Sanders v. English, 950 F.2d 1152, 1159 n.13 (5th Cir. 1992). The Eleventh Amendment generally provides immunity to a state against suits in federal court by a citizen of the stat......
  • Brown v. City of Greenwood, Civil Action No. 4:97cv87-D-B (N.D. Miss. 4/__/2001)
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Mississippi
    • 1 Abril 2001
    ...Albright did not require deviation from prior circuit authority finding claims actionable under Fourth Amendment); Sanders v. English, 950 F.2d 1152, 1159 (5th Cir.1992). The plaintiffs have already stated Fourth Amendment claims, and those claims are not the subject of the defendants' moti......
  • Rodriguez v. Bexar Cnty. Hosp. Dist.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Western District of Texas
    • 30 Noviembre 2015
    ...against the City); Bennett v. Pippin, 74 F.3d 578, 584-85 (5th Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1022 (1996); Sanders v. English, 950 F.2d 1152, 1159 n.13 (5th Cir. 1992). Thus, insofar as plaintiff's pro se pleadings can be liberally construed as asserting claims against of the individual......
  • Request a trial to view additional results
1 books & journal articles

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT