Brown v. Lambert

478 F.Supp.3d 1006

ESTATE OF BROWN, et al., Plaintiffs,

v.Michael LAMBERT, et al., Defendants.

Case No.: 15-cv-1583-DMS (WVG)

United States District Court, S.D. California.

Signed August 12, 2020

Eugene G. Iredale, Grace S. Jun, Julia Yoo, Iredale & Yoo, APC, San Diego, CA, for Plaintiffs.

Erin Dillon Kilcoyne, Catherine Ann Richardson, City of San Diego City Attorney's office, San Diego, CA, for Defendants.

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR NEW TRIAL AND RENEWED MOTION FOR JUDGMENT AS A MATTER OF LAW

Dana M. Sabraw, United States District Judge

This case arises out of a "cold case" investigation into the 1984 murder of 14-year-old Claire Hough. Claire was brutally beaten, strangled to death, and mutilated with a knife. The initial investigation failed to produce any definitive leads, and the case went cold for nearly three decades. In 2012, the San Diego Police Department ("SDPD") Cold Case Team asked the SDPD Crime Lab to perform further tests in light of advancements in DNA technology. Those tests revealed DNA from a convicted rapist, Ronald Tatro, in blood samples taken from Claire's clothing. In addition, a combined sperm fraction taken from a vaginal swab from Claire's body revealed trace amounts of semen from a second individual, Kevin Brown, a former, longtime employee of the SDPD Crime Lab, who worked at the Lab at the time of Claire's murder. As the investigation progressed and began to focus on Brown, including the execution of a search warrant at his home and retention of property seized with the warrant, Brown committed suicide.

Plaintiffs are the Estate of Kevin Brown and Brown's widow, Rebecca Brown. Defendant Michael Lambert was the lead detective on the cold case investigation, and Defendant Maura Mekenas-Parga assisted with the execution of the search warrant at the Browns’ home. Plaintiffs alleged three claims for relief against Defendants for violation of their Fourth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution: (1) Defendant Lambert obtained a search warrant through judicial deception, (2) Defendant Lambert executed an overly broad search warrant at the Browns’ home, and (3) Defendants Lambert and Mekenas-Parga seized property beyond the scope of the search warrant. Plaintiff Rebecca Brown also brought a claim against Defendant Lambert for violation of her right to familial association with her husband under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Finally, Plaintiffs sought punitive damages against Lambert.

During trial, the Court determined on Plaintiffs’ motion for directed verdict that Plaintiffs established a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights as to the second and third claims (overbroad warrant and seizure beyond the scope of the warrant), thus leaving for the jury to determine only causation and damages, if any, as to those two claims. The judicial deception and familial association claims were left entirely to the jury.

At the conclusion of the two-week trial, the jury awarded compensatory damages to Plaintiffs against Defendant Lambert on the first claim (judicial deception) and third claim (seizure beyond the scope) in the sums of $2.75 million and $250,000 for the Estate of Kevin Brown and Rebecca Brown, respectively, and $3 million to Rebecca Brown on her Fourteenth Amendment claim—for a total compensatory damages award of $6 million. The jury also awarded punitive damages against Lambert in the sum of $40,000 to the Estate and $10,000 to Rebecca Brown. Finally, the jury awarded Plaintiffs $1.00 each in nominal damages against Defendant Mekenas-Parga on the third claim (seizure beyond the scope). The jury found for Defendant Lambert on Plaintiffs’ second claim concerning the overbroad warrant.

Following the verdicts, Defendants filed the present motion for new trial pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(a)(1)(A) and renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b) ("JMOL motion"). Plaintiffs filed oppositions to each motion, and Defendants filed reply briefs. Many of Defendants’ arguments overlap between the two motions, and to that extent, the Court addresses those arguments in its discussion of the new trial motion. See Van Asdale v. Int'l Game Techs. , No. 3:04-CV-00703-RAM, 2011 WL 2118893, at *10 (D. Nev. May 24, 2011) ("Courts apply a lower standard of proof to motions for new trial than they do to motions for judgment as a matter of law.") Defendants’ remaining arguments are addressed in the Court's discussion of the JMOL motion.

I.BACKGROUND¹

As stated, this case stems from a "cold case" investigation into the murder of 14-year-old Claire Hough in 1984. Claire's body was found in the early morning hours at Torrey Pines State Beach in San Diego, California.

The Autopsy. The day after Claire's body was discovered, an autopsy was conducted by a pathologist from the San Diego County Coroner's Office. The pathologist concluded the cause of death was manual strangulation, and noted a deep laceration to Claire's throat, blunt force injuries to her face, and stab wounds to her chest and genitalia. Her entire left breast had been amputated, and her mouth was filled was sand. Numerous pieces of evidence were collected from the scene, many of which were stained with blood. Other items of evidence were swabbed to detect the presence of semen. Vaginal, anal and oral swabs were also taken from the victim, but "[n]o spermatozoa" were found on those smears. (Trial Tr. at 723-24, ECF No. 200.) Based on these findings, the pathologist concluded Claire had been sexually assaulted by virtue of the stab wounds to her genitalia and the amputation of her left breast, but there was no evidence of rape.

The 2012 Investigation. Following the initial investigation in 1984, there were no definitive leads and Claire's case went cold for more than two decades. The SDPD Cold Case Team revisited the case several times without success. In 2012, the Cold Case Team reopened the case again, and submitted a lab request to reexamine the physical evidence with the hope that new DNA technology would yield positive results. The team requested the SDPD Crime Lab reexamine the vaginal swabs, a towel recovered from the scene and Claire's clothing. On November 1, 2012, SDPD Criminalist David Cornacchia conducted the DNA analysis of this evidence, along with other items of evidence from the case. (Id. at 665-66.) Non-sperm fractions of blood stains on Claire's jeans identified Tatro as a match. Tatro was also identified as a possible contributor to non-sperm fraction stains on Claire's underwear. In addition, DNA analysis of a sperm fraction of the combined vaginal swab extracts returned a hit to Kevin Brown, who had retired from the Crime Lab in 2002 after working there for more than 20 years.

Plaintiffs argued at trial that the presence of Brown's DNA was the result of "cross contamination" based on a common practice in the Crime Lab at the time of Claire's murder where Lab employees used their own semen samples or samples from their coworkers to test the reliability of reagents in the Lab used for detecting the presence of acid phosphatase (an enzyme present at high levels in sperm) to identify the presence of sperm on evidence taken from a crime victim. Two former Crime Lab employees, John Simms and Jim Stam, testified to the custom and habit of male analysts using their own semen standards to conduct forensic testing in 1984. (Id. at 246-47 (Stam); 287 (Simms), ECF No. 198.) And Stam and Brown himself informed homicide detectives that Brown maintained his semen standard in the Lab. (Id. at 255.)

Defendant Lambert interviewed current and former Crime Lab employees, including Cornacchia, Simms, Stam, Jennifer Shen and a number of other individuals who had previously worked with Brown in the Lab. Simms had tested some of the evidence from Claire's case shortly after the murder in 1984. (Id. at 296.) He testified that he could not be certain he used his own semen sample because such samples "were generally available in the refrigerator" and available for "general use ... by anybody in the room doing case work." (Id. at 317.) Simms told the jury he informed one of the homicide detectives that he could have used a semen sample that was not his and failed to clean his implements properly during testing, consistent with cleaning protocols required by DNA testing today. (Id. at 300.) He was concerned that he may have caused contamination, resulting in the DNA hit on Brown. (Id. at 298-300.)

Stam, one of Brown's supervisors in the Crime Lab, also testified that he told Defendant Lambert he believed contamination was a more likely explanation as to why Brown's DNA was found on the evidence in Claire's case. He told Lambert, "Kevin didn't do it, it is contamination. And that until you can eliminate the contamination you can't go anywhere further with this." (Id. at 252.) Like Simms, Stam testified that looking into the possibility of contamination was important because the way criminalists handled evidence in the 1980s was not suited for DNA testing in 2012. (Id. at 253-55 (Stam); 281 (Simms).)

It is disputed whether Defendant Lambert had these conversations with Simms and Stam before he obtained the search warrant for the Browns’ home. However, Cornacchia testified that within two to three months after November 1, 2012, when he found Brown's DNA on the vaginal swab, he spoke to Lambert about the practice of male analysts using their own semen samples at the Lab. (Id. at 669, ECF No. 200.) He stated he did not know "when exactly" the conversation took place but he estimated it occurred within two to three months after November 1, 2012, and "certainly" within one year of that date, November 1, 2013, which was well before the search warrant issued. (Id. at 678-79.) Cornacchia's prior deposition testimony was consistent with his trial testimony and it was read to the jury.

The Search Warrant Affidavit. On January 3, 2014, Defendant Lambert...