Taylor v. Hughes

• Citation: 26 F.4th 419
• Decision Date: 16 February 2022
• Docket Number: No. 20-2377,20-2377
• Parties: Robert A. TAYLOR, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Ricky A. HUGHES, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

26 F.4th 419

Robert A. TAYLOR, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.Ricky A. HUGHES, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 20-2377

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued November 1, 2021

Decided February 16, 2022

Irene K. Dymkar, Attorney, Law Office of Irene K. Dymkar, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Suzanne M. Loose, Attorney, City of Chicago Law Department, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before Hamilton, Scudder, and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.

Scudder, Circuit Judge.

Police officers owe judges candor when seeking search warrants. This case presents a troubling example of an officer violating that duty. Acting on the tip of a John Doe informant, Chicago police officer Ricky Hughes secured a warrant to search Robert Taylor's apartment for a gun. The informant knew where Taylor lived, but not his address. And Hughes did not take steps to learn it. He instead took a guess, and that guess was wrong. A months-long ordeal followed, which included Taylor spending 128 days in jail. He eventually sued Hughes and other CPD officers for violating his constitutional rights. The district court granted summary judgment for all defendants, but we see some aspects of this case differently, especially those relating to Officer Hughes's misconduct in obtaining the search warrant. So we affirm parts of the district court's ruling and reverse others.

I

A

In June 2011, the Chicago Police Department was wrapping up an investigation—codename Uptown Girl—into drug activity on the city's north side. Detective Joshua Weitzman led the investigation. Officer Ricky Hughes was on the narcotics team assisting with the case. On June 21, Weitzman told Hughes that he had learned from a John Doe informant that Robert Taylor, an alleged member of a north-side drug gang, had a gun in an apartment on the south side.

Later that same day, Officer Hughes met with John Doe at the precinct. At the time of the meeting, Hughes says he knew Doe's real name and reviewed his criminal record. But today, so far as the record reveals, John Doe is a complete unknown: no one knows John Doe's real name, how to contact him, or, for that matter, why he came forward with information concerning Robert Taylor during the Uptown Girl investigation. Nor is there paperwork to help, as Hughes shredded any notes he took while meeting with Doe.

As Officer Hughes remembers things, John Doe told him that two days earlier, on June 19, he was visiting Taylor's apartment when Taylor showed him a black .38 revolver. Hughes found Doe's account credible. Doe told Hughes that he did not know Taylor's address, but he did know how to get there. So the two drove down to the south side, and Doe directed Hughes to an apartment building. The building Doe identified was 643–645 W. 62nd Street, an L-shaped apartment complex on the south side of the street. The numbers "643–45" appeared under a window on the building's street-facing side. Doe told Officer Hughes that the unit immediately above those numbers was Taylor's.

The building itself has two entrances along its right-hand side (one to 643 and one to 645), and according to Doe, Taylor's unit could be accessed through the door closest to the street. Doe also told Hughes how to get to Taylor's unit once inside the building—up the stairs one flight, then down the hall to the first door on the left.

B

Armed with this information, Officer Hughes prepared an application requesting permission to search Taylor's apartment. Hughes's accompanying affidavit identified Taylor's apartment as "645 W. 62nd Street #1S." When asked how he determined this was Taylor's address, Hughes testified: "I decided that it was 645 1S." But how he decided he could not explain. Hughes also testified that he used building number 645 (rather than 643) because the window Doe pointed out was closer to the "45" on the front of the building. And as for the unit number, Hughes testified that the "S" might have stood for "South," or "Side," or perhaps just the letter "S" in an alphabetical list—he was unable to say for sure. Nor did Hughes take any step to corroborate Taylor's address. Hughes testified that he "didn't have no time" to do so. In the end, then, Hughes took a guess, listing the address as 645 W. 62nd Street #1S in the search warrant application.

The application stated that Robert Taylor had showed John Doe a black .38 revolver inside apartment #1S at 645 W. 62nd Street, that John Doe had seen the gun before, and that Robert Taylor was a felon. The proposed warrant, in turn, sought permission to search "645 W. 62nd Street #1S, a multi-unit building," and to seize evidence of the offense of Unlawful Use of Weapon under Illinois law, 720 ILCS 5/24-1, specifically:

Unlawful use of weapon and any documents showing residency, any paraphernalia used in the weighing, cutting or mixing of illegal drugs. Any money, any records detailing illegal drug transactions.

The warrant's references to illegal drugs were not based on anything Doe told Officer Hughes. Instead, Hughes later acknowledged that the drug reference was stock language he left in place because "[u]sing drugs and guns go hand [in] hand."

Officer Hughes presented the warrant application to a Cook County Judge on the evening of June 21. Because the meeting took place after business hours, Hughes arranged for the judge to meet him inside his covert vehicle in a predetermined location. From what we can tell Officer Hughes took with him the warrant paperwork, a copy of John Doe's criminal history, and Doe himself. Officer Hughes later testified that he did not give the judge any explanation for the warrant's reference to drug paraphernalia, did not tell the judge that he did not know if the address listed on the warrant was accurate, and did not explain that Doe had provided directions that the officers could follow to Taylor's apartment. The judge found Officer Hughes's showing sufficient and signed the warrant, authorizing a search of apartment #1S at 645 W. 62nd Street.

C

Early the next morning, Officer Hughes met with the search team and told his colleagues to "follow [him]" to the target apartment. Hughes intended to use the directions John Doe had given him to lead the team to Taylor's unit. And that is what happened. At around 6:00 a.m. on June 22, 2011, Hughes used a battering ram to break down the door of the apartment Doe identified. The apartment the officers entered was in fact Robert Taylor's apartment. But it was not the apartment listed on the warrant: it was not #1S at 645 W. 62nd Street, but instead was #1N at 643 W. 62nd Street.

The police did not find Robert Taylor there. But in one of the unit's two bedrooms they did find proof that they were indeed inside Taylor's apartment—an employee ID and mail addressed in his name. It was from this mail that the officers learned the actual address of Taylor's unit. This first bedroom contained little else of note, however.

The second bedroom was a different story. There the officers found two adults—a man named Mario Barnes and a woman, Barbara Taylor, who would turn out to be Robert Taylor's niece—and three kids. Also inside this room was an open safe with a loaded blue steel semiautomatic pistol—a different gun than the black .38 described by John Doe. Officer Hughes testified that Barnes insisted "it wasn't his gun," but could not recall if Barnes said that it was Taylor's. But Barnes reportedly did tell Hughes that Taylor was known to carry guns.

The officers found no evidence directly connecting Robert Taylor to this second bedroom. According to Officer Hughes, however, Barnes's statement, along with the fact that "the reason why I was there [was] for a search warrant for a gun," allowed him to determine that the blue gun found inside the open safe belonged to Taylor.

D

Based on this determination, Officer Hughes requested what CPD calls an investigative alert for Taylor's arrest on probable cause that he was a felon in possession of a firearm. CPD's Investigative Alert Application System, memorialized in CPD Special Order S04-16, is like a more permanent police bulletin, allowing officers to create two types of alerts: "Probable Cause to Arrest" and "No Probable Cause to Arrest." As its name suggests, an alert with probable cause authorizes any officer who encounters that individual to make an arrest. Investigative alerts do not expire within the system. Police policy instead instructs officers to regularly check and update the database "to ensure investigative alert requests on file are canceled when the subject of the alert has been apprehended or the investigative alert is no longer needed."

Detective Weitzman processed Officer Hughes's alert request. As Weitzman later explained, Robert Taylor was "a convicted felon, he was named in a search warrant, and they recovered a gun," and that added to probable cause. So he issued the alert.

After learning of the search, Taylor turned himself in at the police station on June 28. After police took Taylor into custody, Officer Hughes prepared a criminal complaint charging him with unlawful possession of the blue gun recovered from his apartment, in violation of 720 ILCS 5/24-1.

Taylor then spent over four months in the Cook County Jail awaiting trial. No trial ever ensued, though. In November 2011, the Circuit Court of Cook County found the search warrant invalid based on the address error, quashed his arrest, suppressed evidence of the weapon, and expressly acquitted Taylor of the gun charge.

E

But that was not the end of the matter. Despite Taylor's acquittal, the alert for his arrest remained active within CPD's system. A month later, on December 23, 2011, a CPD officer pulled over a car in which Taylor was riding. When the officer ran Taylor's name, the alert appeared, leading to Taylor once again being arrested—on the exact same charge on which he had been acquitted a month prior. The arresting officer contacted Detective Weitzman, who realized the mistake and quickly saw to it that Taylor be released. Even...