Good news, bad news for police misconduct plaintiff

The Second Circuit has ordered a new trial in a malicious prosecution case upon finding the district court improperly excluded recordings that could have undermined the credibility of the plaintiff and his key witness. The court also rejected the police officers’ argument that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law on the plaintiff’s unlawful-search claim

The case is McClarin v. City of New York, issued on July 13, more than a year following oral argument, demonstrating the complexity of this case. The case arose from a 2015 police investigation in Brooklyn, where officers received information that plaintiff was holding Samantha Miranda captive and abusing her. The officers entered plaintiff's apartment without a warrant, believing they were responding to an emergency. But Plaintiff and Miranda claimed the officers forced their way into the apartment and  pressured Miranda into implicating plaintiff. The charges against plaintiff were dismissed, and this lawsuit followed. Following trial, the jury awarded plaintiff $115,000 in compensatory damages and $775,000 in punitive damages.

The officers seek judgment as a matter of law, citing Rule 50, arguing the jury had no factual basis to rule for plaintiff because they responded to an exigent circumstances that dispensed with the need for a warrant. But the Court of Appeals (Kearse, Raggi and Kahn) affirms the verdict and says the jury had a basis to find for plaintiff because it could have found the officers did not treat the situation as an emergency. The officers spent considerable time dealing with unrelated suspects before going to plaintiff's apartment, and some officers acknowledged that they did not regard the situation as an "emergency" or "urgent." That's the good news for plaintiff. 

The bad news for plaintiff is the verdict is gone and there will be a new trial over an evidentiary ruling that the Second Circuit holds was an abuse of discretion. There were recordings of conversations between plaintiff and Miranda; the officers said these records could have impeached the testimony of plaintiff and Miranda because they included statements about Miranda's expected testimony and the possibility that she would receive money in exchange for her testimony. While the trial court excluded these recordings because they were not disclosed prior to trial, Rule 26 does not require pretrial disclosure of evidence that will be used solely for impeachment. What also helps the police on appeal is that the recordings gave defense counsel ammunition for attacking plaintiff's credibility, as plaintiff denied making certain statements to Miranda, who in turn gave testimony that placed an innocent gloss on their conversations. Had the jury heard the recordings, they might have resolved credibility issues against plaintiff, resulting in a verdict for defendants. 

We have an important ruling on malicious prosecution claims. The officers said plaintiff cannot win this claim because they had probable cause on other charges against him. That argument works in false arrest claims, but not malicious prosecution claims, the Court of Appeals holds. Probable cause for one offense does not necessarily defeat a malicious-prosecution claim involving another offense. In Posr v. Doherty, 944 F.2d 91 (2d Cir. 1991), the Court of Appeals held that "the existence of probable cause to support one charge does not necessarily preclude a claim of malicious prosecution on another charge." In Janetka v. Dabe, 892 F.2d 187 (2d Cir. 1989), the Court held that where the defendant was convicted of disorderly conduct but acquitted of resisting arrest, the unfavorable termination on the disorderly-conduct charge did not preclude a finding of liability for malicious prosecution of the resisting-arrest charge.