JONES v. SOMERSET COUNTY et al
Filing
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OPINION. Signed by Judge Joel A. Pisano on 9/21/2011. (gxh)
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
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Plaintiff,
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v.
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SOMERSET COUNTY, et al.,
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Defendants.
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OMAR S. JONES,
Civil Action No. 09-3112 (JAP)
O P I N I O N
APPEARANCES:
Omar S. Jones, Pro Se
#204584E/637565
Northern State Prison
P.O. Box 2300
Newark, NJ 07114
John B. Monahan, Esq.
O’Toole Fernandez Weiner VanLieu
60 Pompton Avenue
Verona, NJ 07044
Attorney for Defendants
PISANO, District Judge
Plaintiff, Omar S. Jones, currently incarcerated at the
Northern State Prison, Newark, New Jersey, filed a complaint
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that defendants violated his
constitutional rights by engaging in racial profiling with
regards to his motor vehicle stop.
The remaining defendants1 have filed a motion to dismiss
(docket entry 17) in lieu of an Answer.
the motion.
Plaintiff has opposed
The Court has reviewed the Defendants’ submission
and decided the motion without oral argument pursuant to Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 78.
motion will be denied.
For the following reasons, the
The remaining Defendants will be ordered
to answer the claims of the complaint.
BACKGROUND
The following facts are taken from Plaintiff’s complaint.
Plaintiff alleges that on August 1, 2008, he was driving a motor
vehicle according to traffic laws, with a passenger in the
vehicle, and was pulled over.
He states that the defendant
police officers, “in their own words [stated] that they were on
Selective Enforcement which is another word used for[,] or is the
same as Racial Profiling.”
He claims that when he was locked up
he met fifteen people who have been arrested by the Warren
Township Police Department.
Thirteen of them were arrested by
the same two officers, all were black, all were driving a car
with another occupant, and all had out-of-state plates.
Plaintiff asks for monetary relief.
1
Defendants Warren Township Police Department and the State
of New Jersey were terminated from this case upon initial
screening. The remaining defendants are Somerset County, Officer
Erik Larsen, Officer Robert Ferrerro, and the Township of Warren.
2
DISCUSSION
A.
Standard of Review
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a court may
grant a motion to dismiss if the complaint fails to state a claim
upon which relief can be granted.
The Supreme Court set forth
the standard for addressing a motion to dismiss under Rule
12(b)(6) in Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007).
The
Twombly Court stated that, “[w]hile a complaint attacked by a
Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual
allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the grounds of
his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and
conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a
cause of action will not do.”
omitted).
Id. at 555 (internal citations
Therefore, for a complaint to withstand a motion to
dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the “[f]actual allegations must be
enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level, on
the assumption that all the allegations in the complaint are true
(even if doubtful in fact).”
Id. (internal citations and
footnote omitted).
More recently, the Supreme Court has emphasized that, when
assessing the sufficiency of a civil complaint, a court must
distinguish factual contentions and “[t]hreadbare recitals of the
elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory
statements.”
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, ––– U.S. ––––, ––––, 129 S. Ct.
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1937, 1949, 173 L. Ed.2d 868 (2009).
A complaint will be
dismissed unless it “contain[s] sufficient factual matter,
accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on
its face.’”
Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).
This
“plausibility” determination will be “a context-specific task
that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial
experience and common sense.”
Fowler v. UPMC Shadyside, 578 F.3d
203, 211 (3d Cir. 2009) (citations omitted).
B.
Analysis
Defendants argue that the complaint should be dismissed in
accordance with Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994).
In a series of cases beginning with Preiser v. Rodriguez,
411 U.S. 475 (1973), the Supreme Court has analyzed the
intersection of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the federal habeas corpus
statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
In Preiser, state prisoners who had
been deprived of good conduct time credits by the New York State
Department of Correctional Services as a result of disciplinary
proceedings brought a § 1983 action seeking injunctive relief to
compel restoration of the credits, which would have resulted in
their immediate release.
See Preiser, 411 U.S. at 476.
The
prisoners did not seek compensatory damages for the loss of their
credits.
See id. at 494.
The Court held that “when a state
prisoner is challenging the very fact or duration of his physical
imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he
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is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that
imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is a writ of habeas
corpus.”
Id. at 500.
In Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the Court
addressed a corollary question to that presented in Preiser;
whether a prisoner could challenge the constitutionality of his
conviction in a suit for damages only under § 1983, a form of
relief not available through a habeas corpus proceeding.
Again,
the Court rejected § 1983 as a vehicle to challenge the
lawfulness of a criminal judgment.
[I]n order to recover damages for allegedly
unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for
other harm caused by actions whose unlawfulness would
render a conviction or sentence invalid, a § 1983
plaintiff must prove that the conviction or sentence
has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by
executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal
authorized to make such determination, or called into
question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of
habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254. A claim for damages
bearing that relationship to a conviction or sentence
that has not been so invalidated is not cognizable
under § 1983.
512 U.S. at 486-87 (footnote omitted).
The Court further
instructed district courts, in determining whether a complaint
states a claim under § 1983, to evaluate whether a favorable
outcome would necessarily imply the invalidity of a criminal
judgment.
Thus, when a state prisoner seeks damages in a § 1983
suit, the district court must consider whether a
judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily
imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if
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it would, the complaint must be dismissed unless the
plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or
sentence has already been invalidated. But if the
district court determines that the plaintiff's action,
even if successful, will not demonstrate the invalidity
of any outstanding criminal judgment against the
plaintiff, the action should be allowed to proceed, in
the absence of some other bar to the suit.
512 U.S. at 487 (footnotes omitted).
The Court further held that
“a § 1983 cause of action for damages attributable to an
unconstitutional conviction or sentence does not accrue until the
conviction or sentence has been invalidated.”
Id. at 489-90.
As explained by the Third Circuit, “[c]onsidering Heck and
summarizing the interplay between habeas and § 1983 claims, the
Supreme Court recently explained that, ‘a state prisoner's § 1983
action is barred (absent prior invalidation)-no matter the relief
sought (damages or equitable relief), no matter the target of the
prisoner's suit (state conduct leading to conviction or internal
prison proceedings)- if success in that action would necessarily
demonstrate the invalidity of the confinement or its duration.’”
Williams v. Consovoy, 453 F.3d 173, 177 (3d Cir. 2006) (quoting
Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U.S. 74, 81-82 (2005)).
Defendants in this motion argue that: “If this case was
allowed to proceed, it would necessarily impugn the validity of
the Plaintiff’s conviction.
In fact, it would be a re-litigation
of the very same issue, namely, whether the officers engaged in
racial profiling as a basis for the stop of Plaintiff’s car.”
(Brief, p. 6).
Thus, Defendants argue that the case should be
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dismissed, because, essentially, it is premature- Plaintiff
cannot file a § 1983 action for selective enforcement until his
conviction has been invalidated.
However, the Third Circuit addressed the application of Heck
to selective enforcement claims and found otherwise.
In Dique v.
New Jersey State Police, 603 F.3d 181 (3d Cir. 2010), the
plaintiff was “the victim of racial profiling” and was convicted
in state court on drug-related charges arising from the stop.
603 F.3d at 183.
The State of New Jersey moved to vacate the
conviction and dismiss the indictment because of profiling, and
the plaintiff was released from prison three days later.
See id.
at 184.
The plaintiff in Dique filed a § 1983 claim in this District
Court, which was dismissed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
12(b)(6) as time barred.
The Third Circuit remanded to the
District Court in light of Gibson v. Superintendent of New Jersey
Department of Law & Public Safety-Division of State Police, 411
F.3d 427 (3d Cir. 2005), where they held, relying on the rule of
Heck, that the statute of limitations for a selective enforcement
claim “did not begin to run until [the] sentence was vacated.”
See id. at 184 (quoting Gibson, 411 F.3d at 441).
Therefore, in
Dique’s case, his § 1983 claims were not time barred because the
statute of limitations did not begin to run until his conviction
was vacated.
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The District Court allowed Dique’s claims to proceed, and in
the interim, the Supreme Court decided Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S.
382 (2007).
In Wallace, the Supreme Court held that “the statute
of limitations upon a § 1983 claim seeking damages for a false
arrest in violation of the Fourth Amendment, where the arrest is
followed by criminal proceedings, begins to run at the time the
claimant becomes detained pursuant to legal process.”
549 U.S. at 397.
Wallace,
The Court also clarified that the Heck bar is
applicable only when, at the time the § 1983 suit would normally
accrue, there is an existing criminal conviction:
[T]he Heck rule for deferred accrual is called into
play only when there exists a conviction or sentence
that has not been ... invalidated, that is to say, an
outstanding criminal judgment. It delays what would
otherwise be the accrual date of a tort action until
the setting aside of an extant conviction which success
in that tort action would impugn.
Id. at 393 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The defendants in Dique’s case filed summary judgment
motions based on Wallace, again arguing that the statute of
limitations had run.
See id.
The District Court granted the
motions, “holding that at no time following Dique’s arrest in
1990 was there a bar to his bringing a civil complaint because
Dique’s claims did not ‘necessarily implicate the conviction.’”
Dique, 603 F.3d at 184.
Dique appealed the District Court’s order granting summary
judgment, holding that his selective enforcement claim was time
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barred.
See id.
The Third Circuit affirmed the District Court’s
grant of summary judgment, holding: “We believe . . . that the
Supreme Court’s decision in Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384 (2007),
which clarified the Heck rule, extends to Fourteenth Amendment
selective-enforcement claims and thus overrides our decision in
Gibson.”
Id. at 183.
Further, the Court held that under
Wallace, “the statute of limitations ‘beg[an] to run at the time
[Dique] bec[ame] detained pursuant to legal process.’” Id. at 188
(quoting Wallace, 549 U.S. at 397).
Thus, the Third Circuit
reasoned, “a Fourteenth Amendment selective-enforcement claim
will accrue at the time that the wrongful act resulting in
damages occurs,” id.; and:
Henceforth, in a case of selective-enforcement we will
no longer require that the complainant have been
convicted and have had that conviction reversed,
expunged or invalidated. If we were to do so, we would
be putting the complainant in the “bizarre extension of
Heck” where the cause of action might never accrue if
there were no prosecution or if there were a dismissal
or an acquittal.
Dique, 603 F.3d at 188 (quoting Wallace, 549 U.S. at 393).
Based on the foregoing, in this case, a selective
enforcement case, Plaintiff’s cause of action accrued at the time
of the wrongful act.
In this case, the wrongful act occurred on
August 1, 2008, Plaintiff’s complaint was received by the Court
on June 26, 2009, and is properly before this Court.
In
accordance with Wallace and Dique, Plaintiff’s case is not barred
by the Heck rule.
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CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Defendants’ motion to dismiss is
denied and Defendants will be ordered to answer the allegations
of the complaint.
An appropriate Order accompanies this Opinion.
s/ Joel A. Pisano
JOEL A. PISANO
United States District Judge
Dated: September 21, 2011
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