Torres v. Goddard

• Decision Date: 29 June 2016
• Docket Number: No. CV-06-2482-PHX-SMM,CV-06-2482-PHX-SMM
• Citation: 194 F.Supp.3d 886
• Parties: Javier TORRES, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Terry GODDARD, in his individual capacity, Colin Homes, personal representative of the estate of Cameron Homes, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Arizona

194 F.Supp.3d 886

Javier TORRES, et al., Plaintiffs,

v.Terry GODDARD, in his individual capacity, Colin Homes, personal representative of the estate of Cameron Homes, Defendants.

No. CV-06-2482-PHX-SMM

United States District Court, D. Arizona.

Signed June 29, 2016

Filed July 1, 2016

Joshua Karsh, Juliet V. Berger-White, Karyn L. Bass Ehler, Mary M. Rowland, Matthew J. Piers, Christopher J. Wilmes, Kate Schwartz, Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym Limited, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs.

David Daniel Weinzweig, Michael King Goodwin, Office of the Attorney General, Phoenix, AZ, Michael H. Hinson, Paul Correa, Office of the Attorney General, Tucson, AZ, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

Stephen M. McNamee, Senior United States District Judge

This case is on remand from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. See Torres v. Goddard, 793 F.3d 1046 (9th Cir.2015). The Ninth Circuit remanded the issue of whether Defendants, although not entitled to absolute immunity, are entitled to qualified immunity for the service and execution of seizure for forfeiture warrants authorized by the Maricopa County Superior Court. Id. at 1056–59. The parties have briefed the issue and it is now ready for the Court's review. (Docs. 276, 282-83.)

After due consideration of the parties' submissions, the Court will grant Defendants' Supplemental Motion for Summary Judgment Re: Qualified Immunity. (Doc. 276.)

BACKGROUND

This Court and the Ninth Circuit have previously detailed the extensive factual background of this case. See Torres, 793 F.3d at 1048–50 ; (Doc. 261 at 2-8.) In order to determine the narrow qualified immunity issue remanded to this Court, the Court will set out the following relevant facts.

Between 2001 and 2006, in its effort to combat the proliferation of coyotes bringing in undocumented immigrants, Arizona officials executed over twenty warrants to seize thousands of wire transfers that they claimed were highly likely to be connected to criminal conduct. Torres, 793 F.3d at 1048.

Plaintiffs Javier Torres and Lia Rivadeneyra ("Plaintiffs") were customers of Western Union Financial Services, Inc. ("Western Union") whose money transfers were subject to seizure for forfeiture warrants issued by the Maricopa County Superior Court. At the time the seizure for forfeiture warrants were carried out and at the time this lawsuit was initiated, Defendant Terry Goddard ("Goddard") was Attorney General of Arizona. (Doc. 261.) During the time period from 2000 to 2007, Defendant Cameron Holmes ("Holmes") was an Assistant Attorney General in the Arizona Attorney General's Office.¹ Holmes supervised the Financial Remedies Section within the Criminal Division of the Attorney General's Office. (Doc. 261.) Holmes's caseload consisted, in part, of civil forfeiture lawsuits. (Id.) In connection with the seizure warrants at issue and the subsequent forfeiture proceedings involving the electronic money transfers, Holmes acted as the "attorney for the state." Under Arizona's forfeiture statutes, A.R.S. §§ 13–4301 through 13–4315, "[a]ttorney for the state" means an attorney designated by the attorney general ... to investigate, commence and prosecute an action under this chapter." A.R.S. § 4301(1) (2006).

The warrant program was carried out by the Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force. The Task Force consisted of personnel from several public agencies including the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Cameron Holmes ... worked with the Task Force. Holmes sought court approval for and obtained seizure warrants pursuant to Arizona's civil forfeiture statutes. See[A.R.S.]§ 13–4305(A)(1).

While some of the earlier warrants sought seizure of wire transfers involving specific names listed in the warrants, later warrants, or "sweeps," authorized seizure of all wire transfers that met certain specified criteria. The six "criteria-based" warrants identified in plaintiffs' complaint authorized the seizure of every person-to-person Western Union wire transfer that (1) was sent from certain states to Arizona or, under one warrant, from certain states to Sonora, Mexico; (2) met or exceeded a threshold amount ranging from $500 to $2000; and (3) was made during a certain time period—typically three or four weeks in the spring or fall. Accompanying the warrant applications were factual affidavits sworn to by Task Force detectives. The affidavits claimed that any wire transfer that met the warrants' criteria had a very high likelihood, for some warrants as high as 97 percent, of being "directly involved in illegal drug and/or human smuggling."

The seizures followed the same basic pattern. Holmes supervised the preparation of the seizure warrants and warrant applications. Holmes also reviewed the factual affidavits sworn to by Task Force detectives "in order to satisfy [himself] that the seizure warrant[s] being applied for [were] supported by probable cause." Holmes then sought approval of the warrants before a state court judge. Once the warrants were approved, Holmes served them on Western Union's corporate headquarters. The warrants were "effective upon receipt" by Western Union. They required Western Union to identify all wire transfers that met the listed criteria and "cause the transaction[s] to be ‘force paid’ to a detention account" maintained for the state by Western Union. Western Union seized the funds on the state's behalf by loading the criteria into its computer system. When a wire transfer that met all the criteria listed in a warrant was initiated, Western Union's computer system automatically diverted the transfer to Arizona's detention account. While the seized funds were held by Western Union, they were considered to be in the "constructive custody of the law enforcement agency making the seizure for forfeiture."

Torres, 793 F.3d at 1049. The Ninth Circuit summarized the Plaintiffs' complaint, as follows:

[Plaintiffs'] section 1983 complaint alleges that defendants, "both personally and through agents or representatives," "served and executed" the criteria-based warrants and "have illegally seized more than $9 million in interstate and international money transfers." Plaintiffs allege that the seizures were unconstitutional because they were conducted without "particularized probable cause" to believe that their wire transfers "were involved in," or "were the fruits or instrumentalities of, any of the stated criminal offenses" in the warrants.

Torres, 793 F.3d at 1050 (emphasis added).

In Torres, joining all of the other circuits that had addressed the issue, the Ninth Circuit held that absolute immunity is available to prosecutors in the context of civil forfeiture proceedings. Id. at 1052. In application to the facts of this case, the Ninth Circuit found that as prosecutors, the Defendants' actions were protected by absolute immunity. Id. at 1051–54. However, the Ninth Circuit remanded the Defendants' actions related to service and execution of the seizure warrants. According to the Ninth Circuit's remand instructions, the Court is to determine whether Defendant Holmes's actions in serving and executing the warrants are protected by qualified immunity and whether Defendant Goddard's actions in supervising the service and execution of the warrants are protected by qualified immunity. Id. at 1057, 1059. Further, if any of Holmes's actions or Goddard's actions are not protected by qualified immunity, the Ninth Circuit specified that the Court go on to assess whether those unprotected acts give rise to a cause of action for damages against Holmes and Goddard under section 1983, citing Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 274 n. 5, 113 S.Ct. 2606, 125 L.Ed.2d 209 (1993). See Torres, 793 F.3d at 1057.²

STANDARD OF REVIEW

"The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials ‘from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.’ " Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) ). Before a government official can be subject to liability for civil damages, both prongs of the qualified immunity analysis must be satisfied: (1) whether the official violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights, and if so, (2) whether the right violated was clearly established at the time of the official's conduct. Pearson, 555 U.S. at 232, 129 S.Ct. 808.

Regarding the constitutional violation prong in search and seizure cases, "[w]here the alleged Fourth Amendment violation involves a search or seizure pursuant to a warrant, the fact that a neutral magistrate has issued a warrant is the clearest indication that the officers acted in an objectively reasonable manner or, as we have sometimes put it, in objective good faith" ... unless "it is obvious that no reasonably competent officer would have concluded that a warrant should issue." Messerschmidt v. Millender, 565 U.S. 535, 132 S.Ct. 1235, 1245, 182 L.Ed.2d 47 (2012) (further citation and quotation omitted).

Regarding the clearly established prong, the burden is on the Plaintiffs to show that the law was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation. See Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 197–98, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984). The Supreme Court requires factual correspondence, as follows:

the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been clearly established in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense. The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. That is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.

Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523...