Alford v. City of Detroit

Page 847

657 F.Supp.2d 847

Anthony ALFORD, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF DETROIT, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 08-15145.

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division.

August 3, 2009.

Stuart Sandweiss, Southfield, MI, for Plaintiff.

Barrie L. Merkerson, Detroit City Law Department, Karie H. Boylan, Detroit, MI, Erik A. Grill, Michigan Department of Attorney General, Lansing, MI, for Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING THE STATE DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS THE MICHIGAN STATE POLICE, THE 36TH DISTRICT COURT AND THE THIRD JUDICIAL CIRCUIT COURT [11] AND GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART WAYNE COUNTY'S MOTION TO DISMISS [10]

NANCY G. EDMUNDS, District Judge.

This action, alleging violations of Plaintiff's Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, comes before the Court on the State Defendants' (the Michigan State Police, the 36th District Court and the Third Judicial Circuit Court) and Wayne County's motions to dismiss. As discussed more fully below, the State Defendants' motion to dismiss is GRANTED and Wayne County's motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.

I. Facts

Plaintiff's claims arise out of his efforts over the past several years to distinguish himself, in the records of the City of Detroit, the State of Michigan and the County of Wayne, from his brother (Keith), who has repeatedly and successfully, since 1998, used Plaintiff's identity as an alias when arrested. Plaintiff claims, without distinguishing among them, that the defendants violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment¹ rights by using excessive force to arrest him without probable cause, by failing to investigate his claim of innocence (which he asserts was supported by documents that he provided at the time of his incarceration), keeping him incarcerated over the weekend and failing to release him immediately on Monday morning after a circuit court judge verified the mistaken identity and ordered him released.

Plaintiff is a 5'9" black male who weighs 240 lbs. His brother Keith is a 6'0" black male who weighs 150 lbs. Plaintiff has received numerous tickets in the mail for incidents in which Keith used his name and has reported these incidents to the Detroit Police Department, the City of Detroit and members of the Detroit City Council. (Compl. ¶¶ 21-26.) In fact, Plaintiff sued the City of Detroit regarding these incidents in a case that settled in 2002. (Compl. ¶ 27.)

In October 2005 Keith was arrested by Detroit police on drug related charges. In order to ensure that there was no confusion as to Keith's identity, Plaintiff appeared at Keith's plea and sentencing in the Wayne County Circuit Court with his driver's license to see that the conviction was recorded against Keith and not Plaintiff. As a result of Keith's plea, Keith was incarcerated in Wayne County Jail until January 2006. (Pl.'s Resp. 4.) In spite of all of Plaintiff's efforts, The Wayne County Jail, Office of the Sheriff, still wrongly identified Keith as Plaintiff. (Pl.'s Resp. Ex. 6.) At the time of Keith's release, despite the steps that Plaintiff had taken to clear his name and despite the fact that Keith had used his own name for his sentencing and subsequent proceedings in the Wayne County Circuit Court, the Wayne County Circuit Court records still showed that Plaintiff was the defendant in the drug case. (Compl. ¶¶ 40, 47.)

In April 2006 Plaintiff learned that a bench warrant had issued in Plaintiff's name for Keith's failure to report for a court date. Upon learning of the bench warrant, Plaintiff appeared in the 36th District Court before Judge Serra who promptly found that the description of the defendant on the citation (a 6'0" 170 lb. black male) was not Plaintiff (a 5'9" 240 lb. black male). Judge Serra set aside the bench warrant and dismissed the complaint against Plaintiff. Following this incident, Plaintiff returned to the Detroit Police Department and requested that he be fingerprinted and that a record be made of the comparison of his fingerprints with those of his brother Keith. (Compl. ¶ 28.)

In July 2006 Plaintiff learned that Wayne County Circuit Court had issued yet another bench warrant against Plaintiff, this time presumably for Keith's failure to report for probation. (Compl. ¶¶ 41-42.) Plaintiff contacted the probation officer who admitted that she knew that Plaintiff was not Keith. (Pl.'s Resp. 4.) Plaintiff claims that in spite of this knowledge, the probation officer testified in court to obtain the warrant in Plaintiff's name. Plaintiff does not specify the substance of the probation officer's testimony or when the probation officer testified. (Pl.'s Resp. 4, 5, 11.) This time Plaintiff went to the Wayne County Circuit Court to clear his name and simultaneously returned to the Detroit Police Department to obtain fingerprint documentation and a criminal clearance. (Compl. ¶¶ 43-44; Pl.'s Resp. 5.) Plaintiff obtained documentation of the fingerprint comparison and the criminal clearance. (Compl. ¶¶ 43-44; Pl.'s Resp. 5, Exs. 7-9.) He returned to the Wayne County Circuit Court with this documentation and the court clerk promised to correct the LEIN records to show that the conviction was against Keith and not against Plaintiff. (Compl. ¶¶ 45-46; Pl.'s Resp. 5.) While Plaintiff learned that the State of Michigan had corrected their records on the OTIS system, the records in the Wayne County Circuit Court and the LEIN system were never cleared. (Compl. ¶ 47.)

On Friday, December 15, 2006, Plaintiff was driving in Monroe County and was stopped by the Michigan State Police ("Trooper Ron"). Plaintiff was arrested based upon the bench warrant, which Wayne County had never cancelled, issued against Plaintiff for Keith's failure to report for probation. Despite his protestations of innocence, and his presentation to Trooper Ron of his fingerprint and criminal clearance documentation, he was taken to Monroe County Jail and ultimately to the Wayne County Jail. (Compl. ¶¶ 50-51.) At the Wayne County Jail, Plaintiff again showed his fingerprint and criminal clearance documentation and requested that the jail officials compare his fingerprints and photos to those of his brother Keith who was incarcerated in that same jail from October 2005 to January 2006 for this very same case. (Pl.'s Resp. 6.) The sheriff refused to review the certified documentation that Plaintiff attempted to provide confirming his innocence. In spite of his protestations and demands, he remained incarcerated through the morning of Monday, December 18, 2006. (Compl. ¶ 52.)

On Monday morning, December 18, 2006, Plaintiff's wife and his lawyer appeared in Wayne County Circuit Court for Plaintiff's arraignment but were informed that Plaintiff was not scheduled to appear in court that day. (Compl. ¶¶ 53-54.) Plaintiff's lawyer and his wife went to the sheriff's office and demanded that Plaintiff be brought to court. The sheriff agreed to drive to Wayne County Jail to transport Plaintiff to court. (Compl. ¶ 55.) Plaintiff was then fingerprinted and the fingerprints were faxed to the Detroit Police who again confirmed that Plaintiff was not the same person as the defendant named in the warrant (his brother Keith). (Compl. ¶ 56.) The court ordered that Plaintiff be discharged from the custody of the Wayne County Jail. (Pl.'s Resp. Ex. 10.) Plaintiff was not immediately released from the courtroom but was returned to the jail for out-processing and detained for an additional eight or nine hours. (Compl. ¶ 57; Pl.'s Resp. 10.) Plaintiff was released in the early evening on that same day.

II. Standard of Review

The State Defendants and Wayne County move pursuant to Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) to dismiss Plaintiff's Complaint.² The inquiry on a motion to dismiss is whether the complaint sets forth allegations sufficient to make out the elements of a right to relief. Matters outside the pleadings are not to be considered and all well-pleaded facts must be taken as true. Jackson v. Richards Medical Co., 961 F.2d 575, 577-78 (6th Cir.1992). The court construes the complaint in the light most favorable to plaintiff, and must determine whether plaintiff can prove any set of facts that would entitle him to relief. Kottmyer v. Maas, 436 F.3d 684, 688 (6th Cir.2006). While "conclusory allegations or legal conclusions masquerading as factual assertions" are insufficient, all reasonable inferences which might be drawn from the pleadings must be indulged. Id.; Mezibov v. Allen, 411 F.3d 712, 716 (6th Cir.2005). Furthermore, "`[a] case brought under the Civil Rights Act should not be dismissed at the pleading stage unless it appears to a certainty that the plaintiff would be entitled to no relief under any state of facts which could be proved in support of his claim.'" Fitzke v. Shappell, 468 F.2d 1072, 1076, n. 6 (6th Cir.1972) (quoting Lucarell v. McNair, 453 F.2d 836, 838 (6th Cir.1972)).

III. Analysis

A. The State Defendants' Motion to Dismiss

The State Defendants move to dismiss Plaintiff's § 1983 claims against them under the Eleventh Amendment³ which provides: "The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State." U.S. Const. amend. XI. The Amendment applies to suits brought by citizens against their own states and applies not only to the states themselves, but also "to those government entities that act as arm[s] of the State." S.J. v. Hamilton County, Ohio, 374 F.3d 416, 419 (6th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). It also applies to individual employees of such states or state entities sued in their official capacities because they "stand in the shoes of the entity they represent." Id. at 420 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

The Michigan Department of State Police is a principal agency of the ...