Watkins v. Healy

• Decision Date: 19 December 2019
• Docket Number: Case No. 17-cv-13940
• Citation: 429 F.Supp.3d 420
• Parties: Ledura WATKINS, Plaintiff, v. Robert H. HEALY, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan

429 F.Supp.3d 420

Ledura WATKINS, Plaintiff,

v.Robert H. HEALY, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 17-cv-13940

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division.

Signed December 19, 2019

Wolf Mueller, Mueller Law Firm, Novi, MI, for Plaintiff.

Jacob M. Satin, Jerry L. Ashford, Patrick M. Cunningham, City of Detroit Law Department, Davidde A. Stella, Detroit, MI, for Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER DENYING DEFENDANT ROBERT H. HEALY'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION (ECF NO. 49)

MATTHEW F. LEITMAN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

In 1976, Plaintiff Ledura Watkins was convicted of first-degree murder in state court and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2017, the state trial court vacated Watkins' conviction. Later that year, Watkins filed this civil-rights action against Defendant Robert H. Healy, a former state-court prosecutor, and others. Watkins alleges that Healy violated his (Watkins') rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments by fabricating evidence against him and maliciously prosecuting him. Healy previously moved to dismiss Watkins' claims on the grounds that they are barred by the statute of limitations and by prosecutorial immunity. (See Mot. to Dismiss, ECF No. 34.) The Court denied that motion. (See Op. and Order, ECF No. 47.) Healy now moves the Court to reconsider its rulings on his limitations and immunity defenses. (See Mot. for Reconsid., ECF No. 49.) The motion raises several serious arguments in a thoughtful manner, and the Court has carefully considered Healy's contentions. However, the Court remains convinced that its earlier ruling was correct. Accordingly, for the reasons explained in detail below, Healy's motion for reconsideration is DENIED .

I

The Court's earlier Opinion and Order set forth in great detail the background facts, the allegations in Watkins' Amended Complaint, and the Court's analysis of Healy's limitations and immunity defenses. The Court will not repeat those matters here. For the purposes of this Opinion and Order, the Court assumes that the reader will have already carefully reviewed the Court's prior ruling. For ease of reference, though, the Court will repeat the claims Watkins brings against Healy. Those claims are:

• Fabrication of evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment (Count I);

• Fabrication of Evidence in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Count II);

• Malicious Prosecution in violation of the Fourth Amendment (Count III);

• Civil Conspiracy in violation of the Fourth Amendment (Count VIII);

• Civil Conspiracy in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment (Count IX); and

• Common law Malicious Prosecution (Count XV).

II

Healy first argues that the Court should have dismissed Watkins' constitutional claims as barred by the applicable three-year statute of limitations. The Court held that the claims were not time-barred because (1) they did not accrue until the state trial court vacated Watkins' conviction in 2017 and (2) Watkins filed this action within three years of that event. Healy now counters that "under the legal precedent from the relevant era" – which Healy defines as the caselaw existing in 1975 and 1976 – Watkins' constitutional claims accrued decades before Watkins' conviction was vacated. (See Mot. for Reconsid., ECF No. 49, PageID.10088-10095.) Thus, Healy insists that the three-year statute of limitations expired long before Watkins filed this action. The Court disagrees.

There are two problems with Healy's argument. First, he misidentifies the "relevant era." The accrual of Watkins' constitutional claims must be assessed under Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit precedent from the current era because those decisions apply retroactively to the events that impacted Watkins in 1975-1976. And under current law, it is clear that Watkins' constitutional claims against Healy did not accrue until the state trial court vacated Watkins' conviction in 2017. Second (and in any event), Healy erroneously characterizes the law of accrual during what he defines as the "relevant era." Contrary to Healy's contention, even under the law as it then existed, Watkins' constitutional claims did not accrue until his conviction was vacated.

A

Two Supreme Court decisions – Heck v. Humphrey , 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994) and McDonough v. Smith , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S.Ct. 2149, 204 L.Ed.2d 506 (2019) – compel the conclusion that Watkins' Due Process fabrication of evidence claim did not accrue until his conviction was vacated and that that claim is thus not time-barred. Below, the Court explains how Heck and McDonough require that conclusion and why they apply to Watkins' Due Process fabrication of evidence claim even though they were decided long after the events underlying that claim.

a

In Heck , the Supreme Court adopted a delayed-accrual rule for certain types of claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Under that rule, "a cause of action under § 1983 that would imply the invalidity of a conviction does not accrue until the conviction is reversed or expunged, and therefore the statute of limitations does not begin to run until such an event occurs, if ever." D'Ambrosio v. Marino , 747 F.3d 378, 384 (6th Cir. 2014) (describing holding in Heck ). The delayed-accrual rule from Heck applies to Watkins' Due Process fabrication of evidence claim because that claim implies the invalidity of his conviction.¹ (See , e.g. , Am. Compl. at ¶123, ECF No. 30, PageID.7517 – alleging that fabrication of evidence led to, and invalidated, Watkins' conviction.) And under that rule, the claim did not accrue until the state trial court vacated Watkins' conviction in 2017.²

b

Under the Supreme Court's decision in Harper v. Virginia Dep't of Taxation , 509 U.S. 86, 113 S.Ct. 2510, 125 L.Ed.2d 74 (1993), this Court must apply Heck to Watkins' Due Process fabrication of evidence claim even though Heck was decided nearly twenty years after both Healy's alleged misconduct and Watkins' conviction. In Harper , the Supreme Court held that when it "applies a rule of federal law to the parties before it, that rule is the controlling interpretation of federal law and must be given full retroactive effect in all cases still open on direct review and as to all events, regardless of whether such events predate or postdate our announcement of the rule. " 509 U.S. at 97, 113 S.Ct. 2510 (emphasis added).

Heck satisfies Harper's two requirements for retroactive application. First, Heck's delayed-accrual rule is a rule of federal law. See Collyer v. Darling , 98 F.3d 211, 220 (6th Cir. 1996) (explaining that "federal law determines the accrual of civil rights claims" under § 1983 ). Second, the Supreme Court in Heck applied the rule that it adopted to the parties before it. See Heck , 512 U.S. at 490, 114 S.Ct. 2364 ("Applying these principles to the present action ... we find that dismissal of the action was correct.") Because Heck satisfies the Harper test for retroactive application, Heck applies to "all events," including those that "predate" its "announcement." Harper , 509 U.S. at 97, 113 S.Ct. 2510. Thus, Heck's delayed-accrual rule applies to the events underlying Watkins' Due Process fabrication of evidence claim even though those events occurred long before the Supreme Court decided Heck .

Indeed, the Sixth Circuit has applied Heck's delayed-accrual rule to events that transpired many years before the Supreme Court decided Heck . See Harrison v. State of Michigan , 722 F.3d 768 (6th Cir. 2013). In Harrison , the plaintiff was convicted of two crimes and sentenced to consecutive terms of imprisonment in 1986. The plaintiff was released in 1990 after he had served the statutory maximum term for the offenses of conviction. Following plaintiff's release from prison, he filed a collateral attack on his sentences in state court. After lengthy proceedings, a state appellate court held in 2008 that the plaintiff had been improperly sentenced. In 2010, the plaintiff brought § 1983 claims alleging that a portion of his confinement had been unlawful. The district court held that the claims were time-barred. But the Sixth Circuit held that the claims were subject to Heck's delayed-accrual rule and thus were not time-barred even though the alleged constitutional violation took place many years before Heck :

In this case, Harrison's 1986 sentence has, in fact, been "declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination." That favorable termination occurred when the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed Harrison's sentence in 2008, holding that "[he] was improperly sentenced to consecutive terms for his convictions," and remanded the case for entry of a corrected judgment. People v. Harrison, 2008 WL 4276544, at *1. Harrison then filed the instant § 1983 suit in 2010, within Michigan's three-year statute of limitations. As a result, this federal action is not untimely.

[....]

[T]he district court observed that Harrison knew of his "false imprisonment" while incarcerated on the 1986 conviction and, therefore, that the statute of limitations in his case began to run in 1990, when he was released from imprisonment. But that analysis by the district court mixes apples with oranges and cannot be correct, because we know from Heck that a damages claim for a wrongful criminal conviction or sentence does not accrue until the conviction "has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus." Heck, 512 U.S. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364. Thus, if Harrison had brought a § 1983 suit in 1990 when released from prison on the 1986 conviction, it would necessarily have been dismissed for failure to state a claim, because Harrison's 1986 conviction had not yet been reversed or his sentence corrected. That did not happen until the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered the state trial court to

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