Larry Cooper, et al v. City of Philadelphia, et al

Filing

NOT PRECEDENTIAL OPINION Coram: MCKEE, Chief Judge, AMBRO and SCIRICA, Circuit Judges. Total Pages: 5. Judge: AMBRO Authoring.

Case: 15-1431

Document: 003112182200

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Date Filed: 01/19/2016

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_____________
No. 15-1431
_____________
LARRY COOPER; TYSHA COOPER, H/W
v.
CITY OF PHILADEPHIA; BRIAN CASH, City of Philadelphia Police Officer
(Badge #2912), individually and as a police officer of the City of Philadelphia
Larry Cooper and Tysha Cooper,
Appellants
________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Civil Action No. 2-13-cv-06222)
District Judge: Honorable Ronald L. Buckwalter
________________
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
January 12, 2016
Before: McKEE, Chief Judge, AMBRO, and SCIRICA, Circuit Judges
(Opinion filed: January 19, 2016)
________________
OPINION*
________________

*

This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.

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AMBRO, Circuit Judge
Larry Cooper appeals the grant of summary judgment on his false arrest, malicious
prosecution, and false imprisonment claims against Officer Brian Cash. (Mr. Cooper also
sued the City of Philadelphia, but he later dropped the City from the case. See Cooper v.
City of Philadelphia, No. 2-13-cv-06222, 2015 WL 619619, at *1 n.1 (E.D. Pa. Feb. 12,
2015).) Mr. Cooper alleges that, based on a faulty identification by a robbery victim, he
spent 77 days in jail for a crime he did not commit (and, we note, for his courageous acts
worthy of a Good Samaritan comparison). Although we share Mr. Cooper’s frustration
with the way events unfolded, we have no choice but to agree with the District Court that
Officer Cash had probable cause to arrest him. As a result, we affirm.
I. Background
In April 2012, Mr. Cooper, who was leaving Jefferson University Hospital in
Philadelphia after emergency surgery on his wife, witnessed two men committing a
robbery. He initially chased after the robbers but stopped shortly thereafter. After ending
his pursuit, he went up to the victim and offered his cell phone to call the police. The
victim, who had been robbed from behind and had seen Mr. Cooper near the perpetrators
(likely while he was giving chase), mistakenly believed that he had been involved in the
robbery.
When Officer Cash arrived on the scene, the victim said that Mr. Cooper had
robbed him. Mr. Cooper says he tried to explain to Officer Cash that he was not involved
in the robbery, but he alleges that the officer seemed uninterested in hearing his side of
the story. Officer Cash also spoke with an eyewitness who saw the aftermath of the
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robbery, but not the robbery itself. It is not clear from the record what the eyewitness told
Officer Cash. Instead, the statements in the record from the eyewitness come from a
separate conversation he had with detectives after the events giving rise to this suit. The
eyewitness factored into the case in front of the District Court, but because his statements
to Officer Cash are not in the record, the latter no longer relies on him as a source of
probable cause.
The events at the scene of the robbery concluded with Officer Cash arresting Mr.
Cooper. The charges against Mr. Cooper were eventually dropped, but not before he had
spent two and a half months in jail due to his inability to make bail. In this lawsuit, Mr.
Cooper alleges that Officer Cash acted unreasonably during the encounter and that the
arrest was constitutionally defective.
II. Discussion
The central question is whether Officer Cash had probable cause to arrest Mr.
Cooper for the robbery. If he did, then Mr. Cooper’s claims fail. Groman v. Twp. of
Manalapan, 47 F.3d 628, 636 (3d Cir. 1995). We have held that a victim’s identification,
even without any other evidence, will “usually be sufficient to establish probable cause.”
Wilson v. Russo, 212 F.3d 781, 790 (3d Cir. 2000). This rule, while not absolute, is
subject only to limited exceptions for cases where the officer is aware of “[i]ndependent
exculpatory evidence or substantial evidence of the witness’s own unreliability.” Id. In
such instances, the identification might be “fatally undermined.” Id.
Here, Mr. Cooper has not presented any evidence that Officer Cash knew of
independent exculpatory evidence. Instead, he merely asserts that the Officer was wrong
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to reject his version of events without doing any additional investigation. However, in
light of the identification, Officer Cash was not constitutionally required to “undertake an
exhaustive investigation in order to validate the probable cause that, in his mind, already
existed.” Merkle v. Upper Dublin School Dist., 211 F.3d 782, 790 n.8 (3d Cir. 2000).
Nor has Mr. Cooper presented substantial evidence of the unreliability of the
victim’s identification. He relies heavily on the victim being robbed from behind and thus
not immediately seeing the perpetrators. But the victim’s representation that he saw the
perpetrators, including Mr. Cooper, immediately after the robbery is sufficient to
establish probable cause. The Fourth Amendment does not require that an identification
be perfect in all respects. For instance, in Wilson, which also involved a plaintiff who had
been jailed for a robbery he did not commit, we found probable cause based on a victim’s
identification even though 1) the plaintiff was four to seven inches shorter than the
victims had described, 2) one of the victims did not pick the plaintiff out of a photo array,
and 3) a witness put the plaintiff somewhere else during the time of the robbery. 212 F.3d
at 791–92.
As we made clear in Wilson, the exception for unreliable witnesses is reserved for
fairly unusual circumstances. See, e.g., id. at 790 (“For example, if two identifying
witnesses had told the officer that the robber was 7’, and the officer knew that the person
in the photograph was 5’, the positive identification would not be enough.”). This is not
such a case. None of Mr. Cooper’s allegations have “fatally undermined” the
identification.

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For these reasons, we must affirm.1

Mr. Cooper’s wife, Tysha Cooper, filed a loss of consortium claim in the District Court.
The Court granted summary judgment to Officer Cash. Cooper, 2015 WL 619619, at *6.
Although Mrs. Cooper is listed as an appellant here, the briefing does not attempt to
revive that count. In any event, the parties agree that if Mr. Cooper’s claims fail, Mrs.
Cooper’s claim fails as well. Id.
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