Chatman v. Roberts et al
Filing
399
MEMORANDUM Opinion and Order Signed by the Honorable John Z. Lee on 9/12/16.Mailed notice(ca, ).
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
CARL CHATMAN,
Plaintiff,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO
POLICE DETECTIVES JOHN
ROBERTS, THOMAS MCGREAL,
MARIA PENA, JACK BOOCK, RITA
MISCHKA, BARBARA MIDONA,
and KRISTON KATO, et al.
Defendants.
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14 C 2945
Judge John Z. Lee
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiff Carl Chatman filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit against the City of
Chicago and various individual defendants alleging constitutional violations arising
from his false conviction. Defendants Millicent Willis, Tisa Morris, Lori Lightfoot,
and Karen Wojtczak, who worked for the Office of Professional Standards (OPS
Defendants), filed a motion to dismiss [343]. For the reasons discussed below, the
Court grants the motion in part and dismisses Counts IV, V, VI, and VII against the
OPS Defendants.
Factual and Procedural Background 1
Plaintiff Carl Chatman was convicted of rape even though he was innocent.
Following his arrest, Chatman was interrogated by Chicago Police Detective
When reviewing a motion to dismiss, the Court assumes the alleged facts in
the complaint are true and draws all possible inferences in Chatman’s favor. See
Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1081 (7th Cir. 2008).
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Kriston Kato who used force to coerce Chatman into confessing. See 2d Am. Compl.
¶¶ 54–56, ECF No. 324. Two days later, a detective submitted an anonymous
memorandum describing Kato’s misconduct and the resulting false confession. See
id. ¶¶ 120–21. The memo was sent through inter-departmental mail to Millicent
Willis, who at the time was the acting Chief Administrator for the Office of
Professional Standards (OPS)—an agency in charge of investigating police
misconduct. See id. ¶ 122.
Initially, the memo did not prompt any form of investigation from OPS. See
id. ¶ 123. Based on the false confession, Chatman was convicted of rape. While his
case was on direct appeal, the anonymous detective once again submitted the
memo. This time, OPS began an investigation into the alleged misconduct. See id.
¶¶ 128–33. The OPS investigation, which included interviewing Chatman himself,
was closed a few months later when the anonymous memo was determined to be
unfounded. See id. ¶ 133. The memo was never turned over to the prosecutors or
Chatman’s criminal attorney. See id. ¶ 134.
After spending eleven years in prison, Chatman was exonerated by the State
of Illinois. See id. ¶¶ 1, 6. He then filed this civil rights lawsuit against various
defendants asserting constitutional violations based on the investigation and
prosecution of his criminal case. In his Second Amended Complaint, Chatman
included claims against Millicent Willis, Tisa Morris, Lori Lightfoot, and Karen
Wojtczak—who were all employees of OPS—based on the failure to disclose the
anonymous memo to the prosecution or Chatman’s defense counsel.
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Legal Standard
To survive a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint must
“state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550
U.S. 544, 570 (2007). “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads
factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the
defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678
(2009). The Court must accept “all well-pleaded factual allegations as true and view
them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Lavalais v. Vill. of Melrose Park,
734 F.3d 629, 632 (7th Cir. 2013) (citing Luevano v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 722 F.3d
1014, 1027 (7th Cir. 2013)). Mere legal conclusions, however, “are insufficient to
survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.” McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., 694 F.3d
873, 885 (7th Cir. 2012) (citing Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678).
Analysis
Chatman’s core claim against the OPS Defendants stems from their failure to
turn over the anonymous memo to the prosecution or Chatman’s attorney during
his criminal proceeding. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). The OPS
Defendants contend they do not have a duty to disclose under Brady because they
are not part of the prosecution team. Alternatively, they argue that, even if such a
duty were to exist, they are entitled to qualified immunity because, at the time,
there was no clearly established law creating such a duty.
“The qualified immunity defense requires us to consider only two limited
questions at this stage: first, whether plaintiff has alleged a violation of his
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constitutional rights, and second, whether the violation was clearly established in
the law at the time of the defendant’s conduct.” Armstrong v. Daily, 786 F.3d 529,
537 (7th Cir. 2015). The Court has discretion to decide a case under the second step
without resolving whether the purported duty exists. See Dibble v. Quinn, 793 F.3d
803, 807 (7th Cir. 2015) (citing Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 227 (2009)). The
Court takes that approach here.
The OPS Defendants argue, that even if they had a duty to disclose
exculpatory material, such an extension of Brady was not clearly established at the
time of Chatman’s criminal proceedings. “To determine whether a right is clearly
established we look to controlling precedent from both the Supreme Court and this
circuit, and if there is no such precedent we cast a wider net and examine all
relevant case law to determine whether there was such a clear trend in the case law
that we can say with fair assurance that the recognition of the right by a controlling
precedent was merely a question of time.” Abbott v. Sangamon Cty., Ill., 705 F.3d
706, 731 (7th Cir. 2013). Although the right must be clearly established in a
particularized sense, there need not be a case directly on point. See id. “[O]fficials
can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel
factual circumstances.” Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002).
Initially, only the members of the prosecution bore the obligation to disclose
material, exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. See Brady, 373 U.S. at 87.
Subsequently, Brady was extended so that the prosecutor’s duty to disclose reached
evidence in the hands of police officers, even if the information was not known to
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the prosecutor. See Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 437 (1995). Although the rule
was articulated in terms of a duty by the prosecutor to learn of information held by
the police, it has also been understood to establish an independent duty on the part
of police officers to disclose such information. See Steidl v. Fermon, 494 F.3d 623,
630–33 (7th Cir. 2007) (holding that the duty of police officers to disclose
exculpatory information—which is enforceable under § 1983—has been clearly
established since Kyles).
That said, neither the Seventh Circuit nor the Supreme Court has addressed
whether governmental agencies that are in charge of investigating the police
officers themselves—as opposed to the criminal defendant—are also subject to the
duty to disclose under Brady. The closest the Seventh Circuit has come to this
question is United States v. Morris, 80 F.3d 1151 (7th Cir. 1996).
In Morris, the court held that federal prosecutors did not have the
responsibility to search for and disclose exculpatory evidence held by the United
States Office of Thrift Supervision, the Securities Exchange Commission, or the
Internal Revenue Service. See id. at 1169. Although these agencies had acquired
evidence relevant to the prosecution, they had done so solely as part of their own
separate investigations. See id. at 1169 & n.14. The court concluded, “[N]either
Kyles nor [United States ex rel. Smith v. Fairman, 769 F.2d 386 (7th Cir. 1985)] can
be read as imposing a duty on the prosecutor’s office to learn of information
possessed by other government agencies that have no involvement in the
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investigation or prosecution at issue.” Id. at 1169. 2 The Seventh Circuit went on to
distinguish the agencies in question with “the prosecution team, which included
investigating officers and agents [who] had no knowledge of the specific documents”
that were the basis of the Brady challenge. Id. at 1170.
“Exactly who constitutes a member of the prosecution team is determined
using a ‘case-by-case analysis of the extent of interaction and cooperation between’ a
potential member of the team and the prosecutor.” United States v. Linder, Case
No. 12-CR-22, 2013 WL 812382, at *34 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 5, 2013) (citation omitted).
However, “[a]t its core, member of the team perform investigative duties and make
strategic decisions about the prosecution of the case.” Id. “Among many others,
these circumstances include whether the individual actively investigates the case,
acts under the direction of the prosecutor, or aids the prosecution in crafting trial
strategy.” Id.
In this case, the second amended complaint is bereft of any allegations that
the OPS Defendants actively investigated the case against Chatman, acted under
the Assistant State’s Attorney’s supervision, or were involved in crafting trial
strategy. In short, there is no indication in the second amended complaint that the
OPS Defendants were part of the prosecution team against Chatman. The inquiry
that was sparked by the anonymous memo focused on uncovering misconduct by
Officer Kato rather than investigating the allegations of rape against Chatman. In
It is worth noting that, in Morris, the court’s focus was on the prosecutor’s
duty to search out information in the hands of agencies outside the prosecution
team; the court did not consider whether the agencies themselves had an
affirmative duty to disclose under Brady.
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contrast, the instances in which the Seventh Circuit has entertained a Brady claim
under § 1983 against individuals other than prosecutors all evince a close relation
between the defendant and the underlying investigation and prosecution. See, e.g.,
Steidl, 494 F.3d at 630–32 (holding that the investigating police officers can be
liable under § 1983 for a Brady violation); Carvajal v. Dominguez, 542 F.3d 561,
566–67 (7th Cir. 2008) (DEA agent); Bielanski v. Cty. of Kane, 550 F.3d 632, 634
(7th Cir. 2008) (DCFS investigators working with police to investigate child sexual
abuse); Manning v. Miller, 355 F.3d 1028, 1034 (7th Cir. 2004) (FBI agent part of
investigators subject to Brady’s disclosure requirement). Because the OPS
Defendants were not part of the prosecution team behind Chatman’s arrest and
conviction (at least, as they are portrayed in the second amended complaint), there
was no clearly established law in this circuit tasking them with a duty to disclose
the anonymous memo to the defense. 3
Chatman relies heavily on the fact that OPS was formally part of the Chicago
Police Department. As a result, argues Chatman, the OPS Defendants’ duty to
disclose under Brady is coextensive with that of the police—which has been clearly
established since Kyles. See Pl.’s Resp. at 18, ECF No. 356. But Chatman’s reliance
upon the organizational relationship between the OPS and the Chicago Police
Chatman’s reliance on Jones v. City of Chicago, 856 F.2d 985 (7th Cir. 1988),
is misplaced. The Seventh Circuit in that case upheld a verdict against the city
because of the practice of keeping and failing to disclose “street files”—records that
were kept separate from the police department’s regular files. Id. at 989, 995.
Unlike the OPS Defendants, the officers that had been keeping the clandestine files
were the police officers directly investigating the underlying crime. Nothing in
Jones suggests that the duty to disclose extends to an agency in charge of
investigating the police itself.
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Department ignores the functional inquiry utilized in cases like Morris that asks
whether the individual in question participated in the investigation and prosecution
of the underlying crime. 4 In fact, OPS has since been replaced by the Independent
Police Review Authority, which is an entity separate from the Chicago Police
Department.
See
City
of
Chicago,
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/
ipra.html (last visited Aug. 15, 2016). To rely entirely on CPD’s internal
organizational structure to determine the bounds of Brady, as Chatman urges here,
would invite the type of formalistic departmental compartmentalization denounced
in Morris. See Morris, 80 F.3d at 1169 (noting it would be improper for a
prosecutor’s office to remain ignorant about evidence by compartmentalizing
information).
With no Supreme Court or Seventh Circuit cases on point, Chatman turns to
out-of-circuit cases to argue that the OPS Defendants clearly had a duty to disclose.
The cases he relies on, however, all turn on the prosecutor’s duty to search for
information held by other government agencies as opposed to the agencies’
independent duty to disclose. See United States v. Brooks, 966 F.2d 1500, 1500–04
(D.C. Cir. 1992); United States v. Perdomo, 929 F.2d 967, 971 (3d Cir. 1991); United
States v. Auten, 632 F.2d 478, 481 (5th Cir. 1980); Martinez v. Wainwright, 621 F.2d
The functional test for determining the prosecution team is similar to what is
used to determine whether a prosecutor is protected by absolute prosecutorial
immunity or qualified immunity for investigative work. See Fields v. Wharrie, 740
F.3d 1107, 1113–15 (7th Cir. 2014).
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184, 186–87 (5th Cir. 1980). 5 Take, for example, the Fifth Circuit’s decision in
Auten. In that case, the prosecutor had not run a search on the National Crime
Information Center and had thus failed to disclose prior convictions of one of its
witnesses. See Auten, 632 F.2d at 480–81. The court imputed knowledge of the
exculpatory evidence on the prosecutor and held that the he had violated his duty
under Brady. See id.
Here, Chatman seeks to extend the holding of these cases to impose a
constitutional duty to disclose on government employees who were responsible for
investigating police officers, but had no part in investigating or prosecuting the
criminal defendant. None of the cited cases go so far. To establish the type of duty
Chatman seeks to impose on the OPS Defendants, a case like Auten would have to
say that the employees of the National Crime Information Center had a duty to
disclose the impeachment material to the prosecutor or Auten’s attorney. It does not
do so.
For these reasons, the Court holds that the duty at issue in this case
(assuming that one exists) was not clearly established at the relevant time period.
The Court takes no position as to the appropriateness of imposing a duty to disclose
on the OPS Defendants under these circumstances, particularly given that they
plainly were aware of the ongoing criminal proceedings against Chatman. What is
In his brief, Chatman describes the holding from Brooks as: “Brady applies to
internal affairs investigators.” This broad construction is incorrect. The D.C. Circuit
in Brooks held that the prosecutor had a duty to search the police department’s
homicide and Internal Affairs Division files. See Brooks, 966 F.2d at 1503.
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clear, however, is that such a duty was not clearly established at the time the
proceedings were taking place.
Lastly, Chatman contends that the Court should refrain from deciding the
question of qualified immunity until the OPS Defendants have been deposed. Until
then, Chatman argues, he will not be able to know whether they withheld the memo
because they believed in good faith that they were immune. See Pl.’s Resp. at 18 n.9.
Although qualified immunity is often a fact-intensive inquiry, it does not depend on
the defendant’s subjective, good-faith belief that they were immune. See Anderson v.
Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 641 (1987). In any event, at the motion to dismiss stage,
the Court’s inquiry is bounded by the allegations in the second amended complaint.
Accordingly, the Court grants the OPS Defendants’ motion to dismiss the
Brady claim against them. Because the remaining constitutional claims against
them are derivative of the Brady violation, Counts V, VI, and VII against the OPS
Defendants also are dismissed. See Cefalu v. Vill. of Elk Grove, 211 F.3d 416, 423
(7th Cir. 2000) (holding that a § 1983 conspiracy claim requires an underlying
constitutional violation); Harper v. Albert, 400 F.3d 1052, 1064 (7th Cir. 2005)
(failure to intervene); Estate of Phillips v. City of Milwaukee, 123 F.3d 586, 597 (7th
Cir. 1997) (supervisor liability). 6
The state law claims are a different matter. Chatman’s complaint includes a
claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) and a state law
conspiracy claim. See 2d Am. Compl. ¶¶ 219–26. Initially, the OPS Defendants
Chatman does not argue in his brief that any of these § 1983 claims are based
on constitutional deprivations other than the Brady claim.
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contend that these state law claims are untimely. But “a motion to dismiss based on
failure to comply with the statute of limitations should be granted only where the
allegations of the complaint itself set forth everything necessary to satisfy the
affirmative defense.” See Chi. Bldg. Design, P.C. v. Mongolian House, Inc., 770 F.3d
610, 613–14 (7th Cir. 2014). As demonstrated by his response brief, Chatman plans
to rely on the discovery rule to show that his state law claims against the OPS
Defendants were timely. See Pl.’s Resp. at 19. In response, the OPS Defendants cite
to a passage from Bridewell v. Eberle, 730 F.3d 672, 678 (7th Cir. 2013), where the
Seventh Circuit noted that a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress
“accrues on the date of the arrest.” But, in that case, the plaintiff alleged that the
defendants committed the tort at the time that they arrested her and recommended
her prosecution. Here, Chatman alleges that the OPS Defendants committed the
tort when they failed to disclose the anonymous memo during the proceedings
against him. Because the “standard rule” is that an IIED claim accrues “when the
victim first suffers injury and knows its cause,” Bridewell, 730 F.3d at 678
(emphasis added), and Chatman asserts that he only became aware of the memo’s
existence in 2015, the Court declines to dismiss the claim based upon the statute-oflimitations defense at this time.
The OPS Defendants further argue that the IIED claim should be dismissed
because it is predicated upon a finding that they violated Brady, which—they
argue—Chatman’s allegations do not establish. To state an IIED claim, a plaintiff
must show that “1) the defendant’s conduct was extreme and outrageous; 2) the
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defendant intended to inflict severe emotional distress, or knew there was a high
probability its conduct would do so; and 3) the defendant’s conduct caused severe
emotional distress.” See Franciski v. Univ. of Chi. Hosps., 338 F.3d 765, 769 (7th
Cir. 2003). Accordingly, it is not necessary for Chatman to prove a Brady violation
(or even the existence of a constitutional duty to disclose under Brady) in order to
meet the elements of his IIED claim, so long as he can show that the OPS
Defendants acted in an extreme and outrageous manner by knowingly withholding
exculpatory information, even though they were aware that there was a high
likelihood that disclosure of the information would impact Chatman’s trial and
appeal. See Garrison v. Burke, No. 91 C 20150, 1993 WL 29909, at *4 (N.D. Ill.
1993) (“[T]his court reads Count IX to be a state law claim for intentional infliction
of emotional distress, for which no constitutional violation is needed.”). For these
reasons, the OPS Defendants’ motion to dismiss the state law claims is denied.
Conclusion
For the reasons stated herein, the Court grants the OPS Defendants’ motion
to dismiss [343] Counts IV, V, VI, and VII. The remainder of the motion is denied.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
ENTERED
9/12/16
__________________________________
John Z. Lee
United States District Judge
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