Horn v. Stephenson

11 F.4th 163

Vernon HORN, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.James STEPHENSON, Defendant-Appellant,City of New Haven, Leroy Dease, Petisia Adger, Daryle Breland, Defendants.

Marquis Jackson, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.James Stephenson, Defendant-Appellant,City of New Haven, Leroy Dease, Petisia Adger, Daryle Breland, Defendants.

No. 19-2418-cv

August Term 2020

No. 19-2443-cv

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: September 3, 2020

Decided: August 26, 2021

Douglas E. Lieb (Ilann M. Maazel, on the brief), Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, New York, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellee Vernon Horn.

Kenneth Rosenthal, Law Office of Kenneth Rosenthal, New Haven, CT, for Plaintiff-Appellee Marquis Jackson.

Stephen R. Finucane, Assistant Attorney General (Clare Kindall, Solicitor General, on the brief), for William Tong, Attorney General of the State of Connecticut; for Defendant-Appellant.

Before: Livingston, Chief Judge, Walker and Jacobs, Circuit Judges.

John M. Walker, Jr., Circuit Judge:

After each serving more than 17 years in prison for a robbery and murder they did not commit, plaintiffs Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson brought civil rights actions against the City of New Haven and law enforcement officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. As relevant here, plaintiffs alleged that police forensic examiner James Stephenson violated their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by withholding exculpatory ballistics reports in contravention of Brady v. Maryland . Stephenson moved to dismiss both actions, asserting a defense of qualified immunity and, in Horn's case, a defense of absolute immunity. The district court (Jeffrey A. Meyer, J. ) denied both motions. On appeal, Stephenson argues (1) that it was not clearly established by 1999 that police firearms examiners have a duty of disclosure under Brady , and (2) that he generated one of the reports at the prosecutor's direction. For the reasons that follow, we AFFIRM the rulings of the district court.

BACKGROUND

In reviewing a dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), we draw our discussion of the facts from the complaint, which must be taken as true.¹

On January 23, 1999, Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson went out on a Saturday night in downtown New Haven. The two teenagers met up with friends at the Alley Cat nightclub and then stopped by Dixwell Deli (the Deli), a 24-hour convenience store, at around 2:45 a.m. After purchasing a few items, they drove back to Jackson's apartment several blocks away.

Around 3:30 a.m., three masked robbers burst into the Deli and opened fire. The shots hit an employee and a customer, Caprice Hardy, who died shortly thereafter. After stealing a cellphone from a store clerk and trying unsuccessfully to raid the cash register, the robbers fled the scene.

A few minutes after the robbery, Horn walked back to the Deli. This raised the suspicions of the lead detective on the investigation, who believed that perpetrators of homicides tended to return to crime scenes. After interviewing Horn at the Deli and learning that he had spent the night with Jackson, detectives in the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) began building a case against the two teenagers.

Numerous pieces of evidence, however, suggested that a group of drug dealers in Bridgeport, Connecticut, not Horn or Jackson, was responsible for the murder-robbery. Call records for the stolen cellphone showed that four out of five calls made after the incident were to the Bridgeport drug dealers or their associates. Because the records did not support the case against Horn and Jackson, NHPD officers suppressed the records for nearly 20 years, hiding them in the basement of a detective's house.

After identifying the first of the five callers as Steve Brown, one of the Bridgeport drug dealers, NHPD detectives still continued to press the case against Horn and Jackson. The detectives even went so far as to coach Brown to provide a false statement implicating the two teenagers in the robbery. According to the fabricated story, on the night of the robbery, Horn and Jackson met Brown, all three of whom are African-American, for the first time at an all-white Polish social club, drove him to Dixwell Deli, and convinced him to participate in the robbery.

Most relevant to this appeal, Brown claimed that Horn shot Hardy, the Deli customer who died, using a Beretta handgun. Shortly after the robbery, NHPD sent shell casings and bullet fragments from the crime scene to the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory (State Police Laboratory) for analysis. Connecticut law defines the State Police Laboratory's role as providing "technical assistance to law enforcement agencies in the various areas of scientific investigation."² On February 3, 1999, defendant James Stephenson, the assigned firearms examiner, generated a General Rifling Characteristics Report (the 1999 GRC Report) that listed all firearm models that potentially matched the ballistics evidence, using a margin of error of +/- 2 thousandths of an inch. A Beretta handgun was not among the possible matches.

The next day, Stephenson prepared a memo to the NHPD based on the 1999 GRC Report. The memo stated, "The bullets and bullet fragments are consistent with being 9mm caliber. They may have been fired from but not limited to a self loading pistol manufactured by Calico, FEG, Browning, Heckler & Koch, Hungarian, Kassnar, Norinco, or Walther."³ This list matched the firearm models in the 1999 GRC Report and made no mention of a Beretta handgun. The memo—but not the underlying 1999 GRC Report—was provided in a timely manner to the State's Attorney's Office and to counsel for both Horn and Jackson.

In early 2000, while preparing for trial, Assistant State's Attorney Gary Nicholson noticed the inconsistency in the evidence: Brown had identified the murder weapon as a Beretta handgun, but Stephenson's memo did not include a Beretta as a potential match to the ballistics evidence. Nicholson called Stephenson and asked him whether the murder weapon could have been a Beretta. On February 15, 2000, Stephenson generated a second GRC Report (the 2000 GRC Report). This time, using a larger margin of error of +/- 4 thousandths of an inch, the report listed multiple Beretta models as potential matches. At no time prior to or during trial did Stephenson disclose either the 1999 GRC Report or the 2000 GRC Report to the State's Attorney's Office or to counsel for Horn or Jackson.

Horn and Jackson were tried together in 2000. Stephenson testified at trial that the murder weapon could have been a Beretta, based on "new information" that he said was provided by Nicholson. He denied having created any "reports when he had gotten the new information from the State's Attorney's Office."⁴ Horn was convicted on all ten counts and sentenced to 70 years in prison. Jackson was convicted on eight of ten counts and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

In 2018, as part of a re-examination of the case by the Connecticut Federal Public Defender's Office, the NHPD produced the stolen cell phone's call records and both the 1999 GRC Report and the 2000 GRC Report. After reviewing the belatedly disclosed evidence, the State's Attorney's Office successfully moved to vacate the judgments of conviction for both men. In or around April 2018, after serving 17 and 19 years in prison,⁵ respectively, Horn and Jackson were released.

Horn and Jackson then each brought a federal civil rights action separately under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of New Haven and certain law enforcement officials. As regards Stephenson, plaintiffs alleged that he violated their constitutional right to due process under Brady v. Maryland⁶ by withholding the 1999 and 2000 GRC Reports from the State's Attorney's Office. Stephenson filed a motion to dismiss in each case, asserting in both cases that he was entitled to qualified immunity and, in Horn's case, that he was entitled to absolute immunity. The district court denied both motions, and this appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

On appeal, Stephenson argues that: (1) he is entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established by 1999 that "firearms examiners" had an obligation under Brady to turn over exculpatory evidence to the prosecutor; and (2) he is entitled to absolute immunity with respect to the 2000 GRC Report because he prepared it at the prosecutor's direction. We disagree. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that, based on the facts alleged in plaintiffs’ complaints, Stephenson cannot make out a defense of either qualified immunity or absolute immunity.

I. Stephenson Is Not Entitled to Qualified Immunity

A person may bring an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to seek money damages from a government official who violates his or her constitutional rights. "[T]o ensure that fear of liability will not unduly inhibit officials in the discharge of their duties," however, "the officials may claim qualified immunity."⁷ Qualified immunity shields the official from civil liability unless: "[1] the official violated a statutory or constitutional right that [2] was clearly established at the time of the challenged conduct."⁸ The doctrine aims to balance "the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably."⁹

A right is clearly established if, at the time of the challenged conduct, it was "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would [have understood] that what he is doing violates that right."¹⁰ Because "[i]t is sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant legal doctrine ... will apply" in a particular factual situation,¹¹ "clearly established law must be particularized to the facts of the case."¹² The Supreme Court "has repeatedly told courts ... not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality."¹³ This standard "ensure[s] that the official...