Monson v. Detroit, City of et al
Filing
297
OPINION and ORDER on Plaintiff's Post-Oral-Argument Supplemental Brief in Response to Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment 291 . Signed by District Judge Laurie J. Michelson. (EPar)
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
LAMARR MONSON,
Plaintiff,
Case No. 18-10638
Honorable Laurie J. Michelson
v.
JOAN GHOUGOIAN, et al.,
Defendants.
OPINION AND ORDER ON PLAINTIFF’S POST-ORAL-ARGUMENT
SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF IN RESPONSE TO DEFENDANTS’ MOTION
FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT [291]
In 1996, Christina Brown was killed in the bathroom of an apartment that she
sometimes shared with plaintiff Lamarr Monson. Monson “confessed” and was
convicted of her murder. But years later —with the discovery of exculpatory evidence
and the help of the Michigan Innocence Clinic—a state judge granted Monson a new
trial. The prosecutor’s office declined to retry Monson, and the state judge then
dismissed the case. Monson was released in 2017 after serving more than 20 years in
prison.
In 2018, Monson filed this lawsuit, alleging that various Detroit Police Officers
(and others) violated his constitutional rights during the murder investigation and
trial. After years of motion practice and extensive discovery, the Court ruled on the
parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment at a hearing on October 28, 2022. (ECF
Nos. 292–293.) Many of Monson’s claims survived. Defendants appealed. (ECF No.
294.)
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But one loose end still needs to be tied up by this Court. At the October 2022
hearing, the Court invited Monson to submit citations to the record to connect a 1996
witness statement from Brown’s childhood friend, Cynthia Stewart, to the outcome
of Monson’s 1997 criminal trial. (ECF No. 292, PageID.22316.) For the reasons
explained below, these citations are necessary to sustain Monson’s fabrication-ofevidence and coerced-testimony claims against certain Defendants. Monson accepted
the Court’s invitation and submitted a supplemental brief, and the Defendants
responded. (ECF Nos. 291, 296.) (Because the Defendants did not appeal these claims,
the Court believes it still has jurisdiction to decide them. See Krycinski v. Packowski,
556 F. Supp. 2d 740, 741 (W.D. Mich. 2008) (citing Yates v. Cleveland, 941 F.2d 444,
447 (6th Cir. 1991)).
Though the Court has already provided an extensive factual summary of the
case (see ECF No. 293), a brief summary of the facts related to Cynthia Stewart is in
order here.
On January 20, 1996, the day of Brown’s murder, the police interrogated and
took a statement from Brown’s childhood friend, Cynthia Stewart (also known as
Paris Thompson). (ECF No. 293, PageID.22349–22350.) Specifically, two of the
Defendants in this case, Detroit Police Officers Barbara Simon and Vincent Crockett,
were involved in taking her statement, among other unknown officers. (Id.) Stewart’s
statement said that Monson had threatened Brown’s life about one month prior to
her death, that the two were “boyfriend and girlfriend,” and that Monson routinely
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carried a knife. (Id.) (At the time, the police believed that Brown had been stabbed to
death. (See id. at PageID.22346.))
About a year later, in March 1997, Stewart was the prosecution’s first witness
at Monson’s criminal trial. (ECF No. 241-4, PageID.12853, 12879.) She testified that
she had introduced Monson and Brown three or four months prior to Brown’s death.
(Id. at PageID.12880–12881.) And she said that Monson and Brown lived together,
though she denied having ever been to the semi-abandoned apartment building
where they allegedly lived. (Id. at PageID.12882–12883.) And she said that she had
not seen Brown at all during the last month of her life. (Id. at PageID.12884.)
Later in the day, Stewart was recalled to the stand. (Id. at PageID.12994.) The
prosecutor then inquired about Monson’s alleged threat to kill Brown. (ECF No. 2414, PageID.12998.) She asked, “Had Brown been threatened as a result of [a] robbery?”
(Id.) Stewart replied, “Not that I know of.” (Id.) At that point, the prosecutor showed
Stewart her 1996 statement, which mentioned the robbery and Monson’s alleged
threat. (Id. at PageID.12999.) Only after reading the statement did Stewart testify
that Brown “did tell [her] that [Monson] had threatened her after the robbery.” (ECF
No. 241-4, PageID.12999.) After the court overruled Monson’s hearsay objection,
Stewart clarified that Monson had threatened to “kill [Brown] if she didn’t get out of
his face.” (Id. at PageID.13003.)
At her deposition in this case, Stewart told an entirely different story. As
explained in the Court’s prior order, Stewart said that she was picked up by the police
on the day of Brown’s murder, handcuffed, and taken to the police station. (ECF No.
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293, PageID.22349.) When she arrived there, the officers told her that Brown had
been murdered, showed her a clear bag of Brown’s blood-stained clothes, and kept
asking her “if [she] wanted to go to jail maybe or end up like that, like [her] friend.”
(Id. at PageID.22350.) Brown understood that to mean that the police would be “mad”
at her and that Monson might hurt her if she did not cooperate. (Id.) She continued,
“they told me [Brown] was with . . . Lamarr Monson selling drugs somewhere. I did
not even know [Brown and Monson] were together . . . this was all told to me by the[
police]. I did not know that stuff. We had not seen each other for so long. . . . I didn’t
really know nothing about nothing.” (Id.) And she denied that the signature on the
statement was hers. (Id.)
Monson relies on these facts to suggest that his fabrication-of-evidence claims
against Simon and Crockett should survive summary judgment. (See ECF No. 291.)
The Court agrees.
As the Court already discussed, “[i]t is well established that a person’s
constitutional rights are violated when evidence is knowingly fabricated and a
reasonable likelihood exists that the false evidence would have affected the decision
of the jury.” (ECF No. 292, PageID.22313–22314 (citing Gregory v. City of Louisville,
444 F.3d 725, 737 (6th Cir. 2006)).)
There are genuine disputes of material fact as to whether Simon and Crockett
knowingly fabricated Stewart’s statement. As explained, Stewart testified in this case
that the police implicitly threatened her and then fed her the information contained
in her statement. (ECF No. 293, PageID.22349–22350.) For his part, Crockett
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acknowledged that he participated in Stewart’s interrogation at Monson’s criminal
trial, but he said he merely relayed the information that Stewart gave him. (Id.; ECF
No. 241-13, PageID.14298.) And despite the fact that Simon’s signature is on the
statement, Stewart did not recall speaking to a female officer that day. (ECF No. 293,
PageID.22350.) So a reasonable jury could conclude that Simon and Crockett
knowingly fabricated Stewart’s statement.
And there is a reasonable likelihood that the fabricated statement affected the
decision of the jury. “[T]he relevant question is not whether the fabricated evidence
was shown to the jury; it is whether the statement affected the decision of the jury.”
See Jackson v. City of Cleveland, 925 F.3d 793, 816 (6th Cir. 2019). In Jackson, the
Sixth Circuit found that a reasonable jury could conclude that a falsified statement
affected the decision of the jury “because the statement coerced [a key witness] to
testify in conformance with it.” Id. at 817. The court also noted that the witness
“would have faced a real threat of prosecution for perjury had his testimony conflicted
with his earlier signed statement.” Id. The same is true here. Stewart testified at trial
that she did not know of Monson ever threatening Brown. But once she was shown
her witness statement, she altered her testimony to conform with it. And her belief
that the police might be “mad” at her if she did not cooperate in the investigation
suggests that she had reason to fear a perjury charge. So, as in Jackson, a reasonable
jury could conclude that the fabricated statement—which recounted Monson
explicitly threatening Brown’s life a few weeks before her murder—affected the
decision of the jury.
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Defendants’ cursory arguments to the contrary do not alter this conclusion.
Defendants argue that “Jackson illustrates that a fabrication of evidence claim must
be based upon ‘evidence’ introduced at trial.” (ECF No. 296, PageID.22378.) As
explained, Jackson says just the opposite. See 925 F.3d at 816 (noting that the
falsified witness statement was introduced in only one of the three plaintiffs’ criminal
trials and concluding that the statement could still form the basis of a fabrication-ofevidence claim for all three plaintiffs). And Defendants’ argument that the
prosecutor’s habit of interviewing witnesses prior to trial is not relevant here. (ECF
No. 296, PageID.22379.) Indeed, that portion of Jackson related to a separate way
that the statement affected the decision of the jury in that case: the statement
affected the prosecutor’s decision to bring charges in the first instance. See Jackson,
925 F.3d at 816–17 (“If [the officers] had not fabricated [the witness]
statement . . . charges would not have been brought, and, of course, a jury that is
never empaneled is a jury that does not return a guilty verdict.”). But Monson does
not make a similar argument here. He only relies on the portion of Jackson addressed
above, which found that “the falsified statement caused the criminal verdicts because
the statement coerced [the witness] to testify in conformance with it.” Id. at 817. So
Defendants’ argument on this front is misplaced.
In conclusion, the Court finds that genuine issues of material fact exist with
respect to Monson’s claim that Simon and Crockett fabricated Cynthia Stewart’s
witness statement and that the statement affected the jury’s decision to convict
Monson. And the Court finds that neither Simon nor Crockett are entitled to qualified
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immunity. See Jackson v. City of Cleveland, 925 F.3d 793, 826 (6th Cir. 2019) (holding
that the defendant “was on notice in 1975 that it was unlawful for him to fabricate
evidence” in the same manner alleged here). So the motion for summary judgment on
these fabrication-of-evidence claims is DENIED.
But despite the Court’s invitation (ECF No. 292, PageID.22317), Monson made
no arguments about his coerced-testimony claims based on these facts (see generally
ECF No. 291). So the Court sees no reason to revisit its prior decision dismissing
those claims. (ECF No. 292, PageID.22317.)
So, with the limitations already noted on the record (see ECF Nos. 292–293),
the following claims survive: (1) a federal malicious-prosecution claim and a
fabrication-of-evidence claim against Crockett; (2) a federal malicious-prosecution
claim, a claim for violations of Brady v. Maryland, and a fabrication-of-evidence claim
against Simon; (3) a federal malicious-prosecution claim, a coerced-confession claim,
and a fabrication-of-evidence claim against Ghougoian; and (4) a federal maliciousprosecution claim and a fabrication-of-evidence claim against Braxton.
SO ORDERED.
Dated: December 6, 2022
s/Laurie J. Michelson
LAURIE J. MICHELSON
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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