Second Circuit revives wrongful conviction claims against NYPD Detective and City of Nesw York

 

The Second Circuit has reinstated a wrongful conviction lawsuit, holding the plaintiff – arrested in connection with a June 1989 murder at a movie theater – plausibly alleges that a NYC detective fabricated evidence against him and that the district court should reconsider its holding that plaintiff has not plausibly asserted a Monell claim against the City.

The case is Jiminez v. City of NewYork, issued on September 4. Plaintiff was convicted in 2007 of murdering Sean Worrell outside a Bronx movie theater. In 2022, a Southern District judge granted plaintiff’s  habeas petition and vacated the conviction upon finding that prosecutors suppressed important impeachment evidence concerning a key government witness. The criminal charges were eventually dismissed in 2023. Hence this lawsuit against the detectives and the Bronx District Attorney. While the district court dismissed plaintiff's claims, the Court of Appeals brings some of them back.

Without physical evidence tying plaintiff to the murder, the prosecution relied on three witnesses: eyewitness Esco Blaylock, cooperating witness Andrew O'Brien, and jailhouse informant Kevin Morrissey. Blaylock originally identified the shooter as someone he knew as “Leon.” But that is not Jimenez’s first name, and the complaint alleges that plaintiff did not look like the shooter. The complaint also alleges that police showed Blaylock multiple photo arrays in which Jimenez's photograph repeatedly appeared. The Second Circuit said such a procedure creates an increased danger of misidentification.

Another witness, O'Brien, was a prisoner seeking a reduced sentence. While the prosecutor obtained records showing his history of cooperation, his efforts to obtain leniency, and communications concerning his potential cooperation in Jimenez's case, those materials were never disclosed to Jimenez's lawyer. After Jimenez was convicted, the prosecutor wrote to the federal prosecutor praising O'Brien's cooperation and asking that he receive favorable consideration. O'Brien subsequently received another five-year reduction in his sentence. The habeas court found the suppressed impeachment evidence was prejudicial and vacated Jimenez's conviction. The court emphasized the weakness of the prosecution's case, including the questionable eyewitness identifications and the jailhouse informant. Morrissey was also a jailhouse informant, but the Court of Appeals holds he was unreliable and delusional, and the prosecution withheld impeachment evidence relating to this witness.

While the Second Circuit (Calabresi, Lee and Nathan) holds that plaintiff’s malicious prosecution fails because a grand jury had indicted him, creating a presumption of probable cause, it revives the fabrication of evidence claim, which is not defeated by probable cause. Plaintiff asserts such a claim against Detective Stradford.

The complaint incorporated an FBI memorandum suggesting that Stradford had already decided that O'Brien would identify Jimenez as the killer before Stradford's initial meeting with O'Brien. Combined with O'Brien's efforts to obtain a sentence reduction, the nondisclosure of those circumstances, and the allegation that Jimenez did not resemble the shooter, the Court found enough to plausibly infer that Stradford intentionally induced O'Brien to give false testimony.

The allegations concerning Blaylock are also revived because, the Second Circuit holds,  repeatedly showing a witness photo arrays containing the same suspect could support an inference that the witness was improperly induced to identify that suspect. At the pleading stage, Jimenez did not have to prove precisely what Stradford said to Blaylock behind closed doors.

As for the Monell claim, which allows you to sue the City and not just the individual officers, remember how difficult it is to prove the municipality had a policy and practice that led to the plaintiff’s civil rights violations. Many police misconduct claims are not amenable to a Monell claim because these cases stem from an individual police officer or detective’s misconduct. In this case, plaintiff alleged the City maintained a policy or custom of failing to discipline Bronx prosecutors for ethical violations. While the district court rejected the Monell claim, reasoning that Jimenez could not establish the necessary constitutional violation without showing that the prosecutor's Brady violation was intentional, the Court of Appeals sees it differently, noting that its prior decisions had not decided whether a civil Brady claim necessarily requires intentional nondisclosure. And Monell liability focuses on whether the municipality's policy or custom caused the constitutional violation, including whether the municipality acted with deliberate indifference.

Here, the complaint also plausibly alleged intentional conduct by the prosecutor. Plaintiff alleges she knew about O'Brien's efforts to obtain leniency, received documents from the federal prosecutor, but failed to disclose them to the defense. The Court of Appeals remands the case to the district court to consider whether Jimenez adequately alleged a municipal policy or custom and whether that policy caused his constitutional injury.