Pro se inmate victory at the Court of Appeals

Pro se inmates are more successful in the Court of Appeals than you might think. They don't win all the time, but the win frequently enough to suggest that maybe they are not always getting a fair shake in the district courts. This guy wins his appeal arising from his prosecution for harassment.

The case is Poulos v. County of Warren, a summary order issued on June 15. Here are the facts:

On January 20, 2014, Poulos was arrested on drug related charges.  He was detained at the Warren County Jail, where he claims the officers harassed him. Poulos protested by flooding his cell which, followed by a contested series of events, led to him being charged and convicted for aggravated harassment by an incarcerated individual under New York Penal Law § 240.32.  Poulos’s harassment conviction was overturned on appeal, and Poulos was acquitted at the retrial on January 29, 2018.  By that point, he had been convicted of the drug charges and received a 33-year sentence.

Poulos argues that the harassment arrest was bogus, and that argument predicates his claim for malicious prosecution and falsification of evidence. The district court dismissed that claim because Poulos did not suffer any deprivation of liberty, a necessary element of these constitutional claims brought under the Fourteenth Amendment. The lower court reasoned that there was no liberty deprivation because plaintiff was already incarcerated for an unrelated crime before the harassment charges were brought against him. 

Not quite, says the Court of Appeals (Pooler, Wesley and Park), which notes that plaintiff  claims that between his release on the drug charges in 2014 and his conviction on those charges in 2016, "he was detained solely on the harassment counts." If that is true, and we assume it is true under Rule 12(b)(6), then plaintiff does assert he was denied a liberty interest. The case will proceed to discovery on this claim.