Stevenson v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 12 June 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85 C 4397.,85 C 4397.
• Parties: Donnie STEVENSON, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

638 F. Supp. 136

Donnie STEVENSON, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 85 C 4397.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

June 12, 1986.

Donnie Stevenson, pro se.

Zaldwaynaka Scott, Herbert L. Caplan, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

WILLIAM T. HART, District Judge.

Plaintiff Donnie Stevenson brings this complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking damages for the alleged violation of his Fourth Amendment rights as applied to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Court are the City of Chicago's motion to dismiss, and the summary judgment motion and motion for protective order of James Antonacci and Angelo Rinchiuso, two Chicago Police Department detectives.

Stevenson is a prisoner at the Pontiac Correctional Center serving an eleven year sentence for attempt murder. Police arrested Stevenson on two occasions in connection with the attempt murder charges, on April 6, 1983 and again on May 2, 1983. Stevenson asserts that both arrests were without probable cause.

According to the complaint, Stevenson met with his probation officer on April 6, 1983. He gave the officer a card that police had left with his sister. The probation officer, apparently with Stevenson's consent, called the police to determine if they had a warrant for Stevenson's arrest. The police told the probation officer that they just wanted Stevenson for questioning. Sometime around 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon, four detectives from the Gang Crime Division picked up Stevenson and his common law wife, Annette Howard, and took them back to the police station. The police allegedly charged Stevenson with aggravated battery and placed him in a lockup. One of the arresting officers told Stevenson that the police had nothing on him and would release him after he saw Antonacci. Later that night after Howard had gone home, an assistant state's attorney questioned Stevenson about a shooting incident that took place several weeks earlier. Police kept Stevenson in custody following the interrogation. He talked to the state's attorney again on April 9, 1983. After talking with the prosecutor for the second time, Stevenson was released without charges.

On May 2, 1983, Antonacci and Rinchiuso again arrested Stevenson for his alleged involvement in the same shooting incident that led to his first arrest. The detectives did not have a warrant when they arrested Stevenson. Stevenson was shooting pool in a pool hall at the time of his arrest. The detectives took a statement from Stevenson shortly after his arrest. On May 12, 1983, a grand jury indicted Stevenson.

Before trial, Stevenson's counsel filed a motion to suppress evidence gained as a result of Stevenson's arrest. The motion asserted that both arrests violated Stevenson's rights under the Fourth Amendment. After a full hearing, the trial judge denied the motion finding that police had probable cause to arrest him on May 2, 1983. Found guilty on a bench trial, Stevenson appealed his conviction.

The City of Chicago moves to dismiss the complaint as against it contending the complaint is wholly devoid of any allegations that would support a finding of municipal liability. It is well settled that municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 must be premised on constitutional violations caused by official municipal policies, customs or practices rather than by individual acts of municipal employees. Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 690-91, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 2035-36, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Stevenson does not attribute his allegedly false arrests to any municipal policy or custom. Indeed, as the City of Chicago points out, the amended complaint contains absolutely no allegations against it as a municipal entity. Accordingly, the Court grants the City of Chicago's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

Antonacci and Rinchiuso move for summary judgment on the grounds that the state court's finding of probable cause for the arrests during the pretrial proceedings on Stevenson's motion to suppress estops him from litigating his false arrest claims under Section 1983. In support of their motion, the detectives rely on the transcript of proceedings on the motion to suppress as well as other state court records.

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1738, federal courts must afford full faith and credit to state judicial proceedings. Thus, as the Supreme Court first recognized in Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 101 S.Ct. 411, 66 L.Ed.2d 308 (1980), federal courts entertaining civil rights complaints under Section 1983 must give collateral estoppel or issue preclusive effect to state court judgments. See Brown v. Green, 738 F.2d 202, 205 (7th Cir.1984). In determining whether a prior state court judgment bars litigation of a Section 1983 claim, the federal court must apply the state court's preclusion rules. Haring v. Prosise, 462 U.S. 306, 103 S.Ct. 2368, 76 L.Ed.2d 595 (1983); Mandarino v. Pollard, 718 F.2d 845, 848 (7th Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 830, 105 S.Ct. 116, 83 L.Ed.2d 59 (1984).

Under Illinois law, the doctrine of collateral estoppel, or estoppel by verdict as some Illinois courts refer to it, applies when:

... a party or someone in privity with a party participates in two separate and consecutive cases arising on different causes of action and some controlling fact or question material to the determination of both causes has been adjudicated against the party in the former suit by a court of competent jurisdiction. The adjudication of the fact or question in the first cause will, if properly presented, be conclusive of the same question in the later suit, but the judgment in the first suit operates as an estoppel only as to the point or question actually litigated and determined and not as to other matters which might have been litigated and determined.

Telegram Savings & Loan Association v. Schilling, 105 Ill.2d 166, 178, 85 Ill.Dec. 322, 473 N.E.2d 959, 962 (1984), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 106 S.Ct. 829, 88 L.Ed.2d 801 (1986) (emphasis in original). At least one judge of this Court has applied general rules of collateral estoppel to preclude a civil rights plaintiff from litigating in a civil rights action what had already been decided on a motion to suppress in a prior state criminal proceeding. Lucien v. Roegner, 574 F.Supp. 118 (N.D.Ill.1983). But Lucien, like defendants' brief, failed to analyze the collateral estoppel question in terms of Illinois case law.

In Brown v. Green, supra, the Seventh Circuit recognized that, in Illinois courts, evidence of a felony conviction is not admissible in a civil suit as conclusive evidence of the facts upon which the conviction is based. The limited preclusive effect Illinois accords the fact of conviction is an apparent recognition of the difficulty in some cases of determining exactly what facts were necessary to establish the conviction. See generally Emich Motors Corp. v. General Motors Corp., 340 U.S. 558, 569, 71 S.Ct. 408, 414, 95 L.Ed. 534 (1951). Unlike a conviction, however, a motion to suppress generally turns on a single discrete issue, i.e. whether there was probable cause for the challenged search or arrest. As far as this Court's research discloses, no Illinois court has decided whether collateral estoppel applies in a civil action to bar relitigation of an issue previously decided in a pretrial suppression hearing. This Court must therefore determine how Illinois courts would decide the question. See Bowen v. United States, 570 F.2d 1311, 1320 (7th Cir.1970).

The purpose of the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel, as defined by the Illinois courts, is "to protect litigants from the burden of retrying an identical cause of action or issue with the same party or privy, and to enhance judicial economy by prohibiting repetitive litigation." Spiller v. Continental Tube Co., 95 Ill.2d 423, 432, 69 Ill.Dec. 399, 404, 447 N.E.2d 834, 838 (1983). To effectuate the policy underlying the collateral estoppel doctrine, Illinois courts have permitted use of issue preclusion in criminal proceedings to bar relitigation of issues decided on a motion to suppress. People v. Williams, 59 Ill.2d 557, 562, 322 N.E.2d 461, 463 (1975). As the Illinois Supreme Court noted in People v. Hopkins, 52 Ill.2d 1, 3-4, 284 N.E.2d 283, 284 (1972):

The arrest of the defendant, and the search that produced the knife, either did or did not violate his constitutional rights. Whether those rights were then violated does not depend on the number of cases in which the knife might thereafter be offered in evidence. The fact that the same item of evidence may be relevant in several trials involving a defendant does not, without more, entitle him to repeated hearings as to the validity of the arrest and search which produced the item.

Thus, as a general rule, the Illinois doctrine of collateral estoppel bars relitigation of an order rejecting a pretrial challenge to the constitutional validity of a search or an arrest. The collateral estoppel rule applies whether the suppression issue litigated arises in separate criminal trials, People v. Armstrong, 56 Ill.2d 159, 306 N.E.2d 14 (1973), or in the course of a civil proceeding. See City of Rolling Meadows v. Kohlberg, 83 Ill.App.3d 10, 14-15, 38 Ill.Dec. 586, 589-90, 403 N.E.2d 1040, 1043-44 (1980).

Collateral estoppel, however, is an equitable doctrine subject to limitations where fairness and justice require. Jones v. City of Alton, 757 F.2d 878, 885 (7th Cir.1985). Equitable considerations have led Illinois courts to recognize limited exceptions to the general rule barring relitigation of issues decided in a pretrial suppression hearing. The recognized exceptions fall into essentially two categories — additional evidence and peculiar circumstances. See Armstrong, 56 Ill.2d at 161, 306 N.E.2d at 15.

The peculiar circumstances exception finds its genesis in the discussion in Hopkins...