Woods v. Harrell

• Decision Date: 16 October 1979
• Citation: 596 S.W.2d 92
• Parties: John WOODS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jessie HARRELL, John Barnett and Luther J. Mowery, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Appeals

Page 92

596 S.W.2d 92

John WOODS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jessie HARRELL, John Barnett and Luther J. Mowery Defendants-Appellees.

Court of Appeals of Tennessee, Eastern Section.

Oct. 16, 1979.

Permission to Appeal Denied by Supreme Court Feb. 25, 1980.

Walter L. Lusk, Chattanooga, for plaintiff-appellant.

Eugene N. Collins, City Atty., W. Lee Maddux and Randall L. Nelson, Sp. Counsel, Chattanooga, for defendants-appellees.

OPINION

FRANKS, Judge.

This is a suit for damages, by an individual, against three police officers of the City of Chattanooga, based upon alleged false arrest and imprisonment. ¹ The trial was before a jury, who returned a verdict for the defendants. Plaintiff's appeal raises as issues the correctness of the instructions to the jury, the refusal of the trial court to charge certain special requested instructions and the court's failure to direct a verdict on behalf of plaintiff.

On February 18, 1975, plaintiff was involved in a motor vehicle accident which was investigated by defendants, Harrell and Barnett. According to the officers, plaintiff was nervous and reluctant to talk and Officer Harrell, by radio to police headquarters, requested that the data on plaintiff's driver's license be submitted to the National Crime Information Center computer bank. ² The Chattanooga terminal was temporarily inoperable and the officers completed their investigation of the accident and released the parties.

Approximately one hour later, the Chattanooga Police Department received response ³ from NCIC that Barthoomen Woods was wanted in Tucson, Arizona for a robbery committed in 1973. Defendant Harrell requested further information on the Arizona suspect and the response matched the height and weight appearing on plaintiff's driver's license. Based upon this information, the officers proceeded to plaintiff's residence and arrested plaintiff, and transported him to police headquarters.

At police headquarters, defendant Mowery was apprized of the arrest and undertook to obtain additional identification data from Arizona by telephone. While plaintiff was being booked at the police station, his brother and sister-in-law arrived and advised Officer Mowery that plaintiff was employed by the City of Chattanooga and had previously resided in New York and the Virgin Islands and had never been in Arizona. Since the brother had entered through an unauthorized entrance and was, according to the officer, creating a disturbance, the relatives were ordered to leave.

The following morning plaintiff was taken before a committing magistrate; no hearing was conducted other than setting a bond of $10,000.00. Prior to the appearance before the magistrate, Officer Mowery prepared a state fugitive warrant, ⁴ which was executed by the magistrate. The hearing was continued until February 26th, and on February 25th the Chattanooga Police Department received a report that Arizona would not extradite due to the unavailability of witnesses. Officer Mowery then contacted the committing magistrate and was given verbal permission to release plaintiff, who was released on the evening of February 25, 1975.

Plaintiff's complaint charges the officers:

(A)cting together in a common enterprise, did not act in a prudent and reasonable manner and use ordinary care in ascertaining that the right person was being arrested. Said defendants are answerable for any of the injuries done by any of them, including the false arrest and false imprisonment.

Defendants answered and raised as an affirmative defense they acted with probable cause in making the arrest and joined issue on the negligence issue in the following manner:

Defendants . . . would show . . . (they) acted in a prudent and reasonable manner and exercised at least ordinary care, if not more, in ascertaining that the right person was being arrested.

Plaintiff established at trial that Officers Harrell and Barnett were told by him at the time of arrest he was the wrong man and that he worked for the City of Chattanooga; he furnished his social security number, his correct date of birth and his place of employment, the City of Chattanooga. It was also established that the City of Chattanooga had an employment application on file, giving the plaintiff's age, date of birth, social security number, brother's name (where he resided for five years), name of his grammar school, his high school, his last three employers and three personal references.

Defendants testified to suspicious circumstances at the time of arrest, including the statement by an unidentified woman when inquiry was made as to Woods' whereabouts, "Barthy's not here." Defendants concede they made no effort at any time to independently investigate any of the information furnished by defendant but relied entirely upon NCIC information and the circumstances existing at the time of arrest. The evidence fairly presented disputed issues of material fact for submission to the jury.

The first issue raised by plaintiff is that the trial judge made prejudicial and erroneous statements of the law in the presence of the jury on more than one occasion during the trial. To support this contention, plaintiff cites two statements of the trial judge in the course of the trial, in the presence of the jury, to the effect that the only question the court could charge was whether the defendants had probable cause to arrest and plaintiff particularly takes issue with the opening statement in the judge's instructions to the jury:

The only question for your determination is whether the officers had reasonable cause, that is cause that would give an ordinary prudent officer grounds to believe that a felony had been committed or probably had been committed and have reasonable grounds that this Plaintiff may have committed the felony. If they had those grounds, they had a right to make that arrest; if they didn't, they didn't. It's just that simple. That's the issue. (Emphasis supplied.)

The phrase "may have committed the felony" connotes a possibility, as opposed to a probability, that plaintiff committed the felony. The law holds arresting officers to a higher standard than proposed by the stated charge. The standard was established in the early case of Eanes v. State, 25 Tenn. 53 (1845): the Supreme Court on page 54 stated the standard to be:

The liberty of the citizen is so highly regarded that the officer arresting a supposed felon, without warrant, must act in good faith, and upon grounds of probable suspicion that the person to be arrested is the actual felon. ⁵ (Emphasis supplied.)

The standard entitling an officer to make a privileged arrest without a warrant is codified in T.C.A., § 40-803, which states, in part:

An officer may, without a warrant, arrest a person:

(4) On a charge made, upon reasonable cause, of the commission of a felony by the person arrested.

The judge's charge contains this statute as well as T.C.A., § 40-1004, ⁶ and other correct statements on the issue but we conclude the judge's charge on the fundamental issue, as emphasized, was incorrect and couched in language which would mislead the jury. See Rule v. Empire Gas Corp., 563 S.W.2d 551 at 554 (Tenn.1978).

The second issue is that the trial judge refused to charge the jury the applicable law of the case submitted by plaintiff. The denied, requested instructions are:

An officer must act prudently, reasonably, and use ordinary care in making arrests, including the ascertainment that the right person is being arrested.

An officer who arrests the wrong person is liable if he fails to take proper precautions to ascertain the right person, or if he refuses information offered that would have disclosed his mistake, or if he detained the person an undue length of time without taking proper steps to establish his identity.

Defendants contend that special requests were adequately covered in the general charge and point out that the court charged the jury that the officers must have had "reasonable grounds", "reasonable cause", "reasonable information", "probable suspicion", and "a reasonable basis for the belief that the accused plaintiff had committed the felony charged". However, the instructions do not specifically charge the officers' duty under the plaintiff's theory of the case; see Rule, supra.

On the issue of mistaken identity, our most recently reported case, State ex rel. Anderson v. Evatt, 63 Tenn.App. 322, 471 S.W.2d 949 (1971), states (pages 324 and 950):

While there is authority in other states to support appellants' insistence, we think the better principles and greater weight of authority is, as the trial court charged the jury, that an officer must act prudently, reasonably and use ordinary care in making arrests, including the ascertainment that the right person is being arrested. (Citations omitted.)

Where the defense of probable cause is asserted, the standard of care required of an arresting officer is...