Winn v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 06 January 2022
• Docket Number: 20 C 5246
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
• Parties: RAKEEM WINN, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, THOMAS KEANE, and JOHN RICHTER Defendant.

RAKEEM WINN, Plaintiff,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO, THOMAS KEANE, and JOHN RICHTER Defendant.

No. 20 C 5246

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division

January 6, 2022

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

REBECCA R. PALLMEYER, United States District Judge.

In March 2019, Plaintiff Rakeem Winn was arrested for armed robbery-a crime which, he alleges, he did not commit. The state eventually dropped all charges against him, but not before he spent more than two months at Cook County Jail and four months more in home confinement. Winn now brings suit against Chicago police officers Thomas Keane and John Richter for their role in his arrest and detention, and against the City of Chicago for direct and vicarious liability. Defendants Keane and Richter [23] and the Defendant City [24] move to dismiss all counts with prejudice. For the reasons discussed below, the motions are granted in part and denied in part.

BACKGROUND

The amended complaint alleges the following facts, presumed true for purposes of this analysis. On March 2, 2019, Plaintiff Rakeem Winn, now a twenty-two-year-old resident of Chicago, was arrested by Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) officers. (Am. Compl. [21] ¶¶ 1, 21.) The arrest arose from a shoplifting incident that occurred at a Macy's department store in Chicago several weeks earlier, on January 22, 2019. (Id. ¶ 2.) That evening, Macy's employees confronted an unknown man as he attempted to steal clothing. (Id.) The man announced that he was carrying a gun; in response to this announcement, according to Macy's employee Raceen

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Taylor (“Taylor”), a brief struggle ensued, the man was disarmed, and he fled the scene. (Id.) The complaint does not make clear whether Taylor gave this account to the unnamed CPD officers who arrived at Macy's on January 22, or to the officers who returned to Macy's about five weeks later to investigate (discussed below). (Id.) Nor does the complaint offer any further information about CPD's investigation the night of January 22.

About a week after the incident, on January 30, CPD Detective John Richter (“Richter”) contacted Macy's to request photographs of the offender. (Id. ¶ 3.) A Macy's employee (Tiffany Duncan) responded to Richter on February 6 by e-mailing a screenshot image of the offender taken from Macy's surveillance cameras, which recorded the incident. (Id. at ¶¶ 2-3.) The next day, an unidentified individual created an “Information Bulletin” about the incident and circulated the Bulletin among CPD officers and employees. (Id. ¶ 4.) The Bulletin, a copy of which is attached to the complaint, displayed the screenshot surveillance image of the offender, noted in bold that “[t]here is no probable cause to arrest at this time, ” and requested that any information about the offender's identity be sent to Officer John Richter.^[1] (Ex. 2 to Compl. [1] at 14.)

Two weeks later, on February 21, Lieutenant Thomas Keane claimed to have identified Winn as the Macy's offender based on a black-and-white photo in a CPD Officer Safety Alert. (Am. Compl. ¶ 5.) This Alert contained five photographs, including a photograph (labeled “Winn”) of a man wearing a hat and holding a gun, as well as photographs of two other men, a screenshot of a news program, and a photograph of guns. (Ex. 3 to Compl. at 15-16.) The complaint does not explain the purpose for this Safety Alert, who created it, or how such an Alert is typically used. Keane emailed a copy of the Safety Alert to Richter, along with the following message:

Hi there- In knowing that Detective Richter sometimes needs a helping hand, we were able to put this together for him and identify his offender - again! I know it is

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not EVT^[2] related but we thought that this looks like a bad guy and we would give it a go. Please let us know if it pans out and we can go and grab him! You are welcome John[.]

(Am. Compl. ¶ 5.) The next day, on February 22, an unidentified individual created a photo array containing a photograph of Winn and five other men. (Id. ¶ 6; Ex. 4 to Compl. at 18-19.)

On February 28-a week after Keane's identification of Winn and about five weeks after the initial shoplifting incident-Richter and CPD Officer McCarthy (his first name does not appear in the complaint) went to Macy's. (Am. Compl. ¶ 6.) There, Richter and McCarthy interviewed Raceen Taylor, the Macy's employee who observed the January 22nd incident. (Id.) Taylor told the officers that the offender had selected items of clothing from counters and display racks, entered a fitting room, and left the room “bulked-up” (wearing the clothes brought into the fitting room). (Id.) Richter and McCarthy presented Taylor with the photo array, and Taylor identified Winn as the offender. (Id.) The same day, Richter and McCarthy interviewed Macy's employees Dentae Carter and Tim Buchanan, who also witnessed the shoplifting incident, but did not show them the photo array or ask them to identify the offender. (Id. ¶ 7.) It is not clear whether these employees were interviewed before or after Taylor identified Winn, or why the officers declined to show the photo array to them.

On March 2, Winn was arrested at his home by CPD officers assigned to the 18th District, the District where Keane is assigned. (Id. ¶ 8.) The complaint does not state which officers arrested Winn, nor whether the officers had an arrest warrant. After his arrest, Winn agreed to speak with unidentified CPD officers. (Id. ¶ 9.) When shown the screenshot captured by Macy's surveillance cameras, Winn acknowledged that he “bore a slight resemblance” to the man in the image, but “adamantly denied” he committed the offense. (Id.) He was nonetheless charged with three counts of armed robbery pursuant to 720 ILCS 5/18-2(a)(2) and four counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon pursuant to 720 ILCS 5/24-1.6(a). (Id. ¶ 1.)

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The court set bond at $50, 000. (Id. ¶ 10.) Winn remained in custody at Cook County Jail for approximately two and a half months while his family gathered funds for his release. (Id.) After posting bond on May 18, Winn was confined to his home and subject to electronic home monitoring. (Id.) In July, Winn's counsel for his criminal case (People of Illinois v. Rakeem Winn, Cook County, Case No. 2019 CR 0336401) received copies of the Macy's surveillance footage, which were apparently in color, as opposed to black-and-white. (Id. ¶¶ 1, 11.) These videos, Winn alleges, revealed that he was not the offender. (Id. ¶ 11.) The complaint also alleges that the discovery phase of the criminal case made “abundantly clear” that Winn was innocent, though it does not identify what the discovery phase uncovered, beyond the surveillance footage. In any event, the Cook County State's Attorney voluntarily dismissed all charges on September 6, 2019, more than six months after Winn's arrest. (Id. ¶ 12.)

One year later, on September 4, 2020, Winn brought this lawsuit, asserting federal and state-law claims against CPD officers Thomas Keane and John Richter (the “Defendant Officers”), the City of Chicago (the “City”), and the CPD [1]. In response to motions to dismiss the original complaint [16, 18], Winn filed an amended complaint, in which he voluntarily dismissed the CPD but otherwise asserted the same claims he raised earlier [21]. The Defendant Officers and the City have moved to dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice [23, 24].

DISCUSSION

To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the plaintiff's complaint must contain sufficient factual matter to state a plausible claim to relief.^[3] Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009); Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). The court accepts well-pleaded factual allegations as true and makes all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Flores v. City of S. Bend, 997 F.3d 725, 728 (7th Cir. 2021).

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I. Constitutional Claims

Winn brings two claims pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting that the Defendants deprived him of his constitutional rights to due process (Count I) and subjected him to malicious prosecution (Count II). Winn also points to the Fourth Amendment as the constitutional source of the Defendants' duty “to act prudently and with reasonable care.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 27.) Both § 1983 counts rely on similar factual allegations: the Officers “conducted a reckless investigation, ” “deliberately ignore[ed] Plaintiff's obvious innocence, ” subjected him to judicial proceedings without probable cause, and caused his “unjust incarceration and prosecution.” (Id. ¶¶ 31-32, 37.) This “incarceration” includes Winn's time at Cook County Jail and in home confinement. (Id. ¶ 10.)

Recent caselaw suggests that Winn's allegations support a Fourth Amendment unlawful detention claim, rather than a malicious prosecution or due process claim. Following the Supreme Court's decision in Manuel v. City of Joliet, 137 S.Ct. 911 (2017) (“Manuel I”), the Seventh Circuit explained that “Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution is the wrong characterization, ” because “[t]here is only a Fourth Amendment claim-the absence of probable cause that would justify the detention.” Manuel v. City of Joliet, 903 F.3d 667, 670 (7th Cir. 2018) (“Manuel II”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Then, relying on Manuel I and II, the Seventh Circuit held that “the Fourth Amendment, not the Due Process Clause, governs a [§ 1983] claim for wrongful pretrial detention.” Lewis v. City of Chi., 914 F.3d 472, 475 (7th Cir. 2019). Courts in this district are divided on whether this conclusion was overruled by McDonough v. Smith, 139 S.Ct. 2149, 2155 (2019), where the Supreme Court assumed without deciding that wrongful arrest and prosecution based on falsified evidence can be a deprivation of liberty under the Due Process Clause. See Cusick v. Gualandri, No. 20-CV-06017, 2021 WL 5447041, at *4-5 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 22, 2021). Since McDonough, the Seventh Circuit has reiterated that an...