Johnson v. City of Cheyenne

99 F.4th 1206

Andrew J. JOHNSON, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. CITY OF CHEYENNE, a municipal corporation; Lance Cooper Overstreet,administrator of the estate of George W. Stanford, deceased;Alan W. Spencer, an individual, and Does 2 through 20, inclusive, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 22-8015

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit

FILED April 26, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming (D.C. No. 2:17-CV-00074-SWS)

Robert P. Schuster, Robert P. Schuster, P.C., Jackson, Wyoming (Bradley L. Booke of Robert P. Schuster, P.C., Jackson, Wyoming; Thomas N. Long and Aaron J. Lyttle of Long Reimer Winegar Beppler LLP, Cheyenne, Wyoming; Elliot H. Scherker and Bethany J.M. Pandher of Greenberg Traurig, P.A., Miami, Florida; and Laurence O. Masson, Law Office of Laurence O. Masson, Berkeley, California, with him on the briefs), for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Samuel L. Williams, Senior Assistant Attorney General (Timothy W. Miller, Senior Assistant Attorney General, with him on the brief), Office of the Attorney General, Cheyenne, Wyoming for Defendants-Appellees Alan W. Spencer and the estate of George Stanford.

Norman Ray Giles, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, LLP, Houston, Texas (William S. Helfand of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, LLP, Houston, Texas and J. Mark Stewart of Davis & Cannon, LLP, Cheyenne, Wyoming, with him on the brief), for Defendant-Appellee the City of Cheyenne.

Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, TYMKOVICH, and CARSON, Circuit Judges.

HOLMES, Chief Judge.

Plaintiff-Appellant Andrew Johnson was convicted of aggravated burglary and sexual assault in 1989. In 2013, a Wyoming state court declared Mr. Johnson innocent based on DNA evidence and vacated his convictions. Mr. Johnson then filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Officer Alan Spencer, the Estate of Detective George Stanford ("Detective Stanford"),¹ and the City of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Mr. Johnson alleged that (1) Officer Spencer fabricated evidence, (2) Officer Spencer and Detective Stanford violated his constitutional rights by failing to produce exculpatory evidence, and (3) the City of Cheyenne failed to maintain adequate policing policies. The district court granted Officer Spencer's motion to dismiss the fabrication-of-evidence claim. The district court also granted summary judgment to Officer Spencer and Detective Stanford on the constitutional claims, finding that both were entitled to qualified immunity because Mr. Johnson failed to show that his constitutional rights had been violated. The district court dismissed the claims against the City of Cheyenne and entered final judgment against Mr. Johnson.

Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. We conclude that Mr. Johnson failed to plausibly allege a fabrication-of-evidence claim against Officer Spencer. Furthermore, as to his claim based on the alleged failure to produce exculpatory evidence, we determine that Mr. Johnson has failed to show that his constitutional rights were violated; consequently, Officer Spencer and Detective Stanford are entitled to qualified immunity. And, relatedly, because Mr. Johnson has not demonstrated that any City of Cheyenne law enforcement officer—including Officer Spencer and Detective Stanford—violated his constitutional rights, we conclude that the district court properly dismissed the claims against the City of Cheyenne.

I

A

At approximately 10:00 p.m. on June 10, 1989, Mr. Johnson ran into his acquaintance, Laurie Slagle, at Jesse's Cowboy Bar in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Mr. Johnson told Ms. Slagle, who had been drinking alcohol with her friends for several hours, about his recent breakup with his girlfriend. Ms. Slagle then invited Mr. Johnson to "go have a drink and talk about [the breakup]" at other local bars. Aplt.'s App., Vol. 1, at 48 ¶ 38 (Compl., filed Apr. 17, 2017).

Before heading to the other bars, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Slagle detoured to Ms. Slagle's apartment, which she shared with her boyfriend, whom she believed to be out of town at the time. Mr. Johnson and Ms. Slagle drank wine and smoked marijuana in her living room together. After noticing that the marijuana was "stemmy," Mr. Johnson used a plastic sleeve containing his driver's license and photo identification card to cull the stems from the leaves. Aplt.'s App., Vol. VI, at 72 (Dep. of Mr. Johnson, dated Oct. 21, 2021).

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Slagle then left Ms. Slagle's apartment in her car. Mr. Johnson, however, forgot his license and photo identification card on the coffee table in Ms. Slagle's living room. Because she "was pretty well legally intoxicated," Ms. Slagle asked Mr. Johnson to drive them to the Cheyenne Club, where they stayed only briefly before going to the Mayflower Bar. Aplt.'s App., Vol. I, at 49 ¶ 41.

After leaving the Mayflower Bar, Ms. Slagle vomited in her car. Mr. Johnson, still driving Ms. Slagle's car, stopped at another establishment to get materials to clean the car and instructed Ms. Slagle to wait there. Instead, Ms. Slagle drove herself home and left Mr. Johnson behind. Mr. Johnson then walked thirty-five minutes to his home and went to sleep.

At approximately 3:00 a.m. the next morning, Ms. Slagle's downstairs neighbor, Julie Prodis, was awakened by loud knocking on the door to the staircase leading to Ms. Slagle's apartment (which was in the attic of the building), the sound of a windowpane breaking, and footsteps walking across the broken glass and up the stairs. Ms. Prodis then heard a woman screaming "no, no." Id. at 39 ¶ 18. Ms. Prodis immediately called the police. While on the phone with the police dispatcher, Ms. Prodis heard footsteps walking down the stairs and the intruder exiting the apartment building.

Minutes after the intruder left, Officer Phillip E. Raybuck Sr. arrived at the scene and, soon thereafter, Officer Spencer arrived as well. The officers proceeded up the stairs and heard a woman sobbing and repeating "is he gone, is he gone?" Id. at 40 ¶ 20. The officers found Ms. Slagle inside her bathroom, where she repeatedly said "[h]e hurt me." Id. at 41 ¶ 23. When Ms. Slagle emerged from the bathroom, she was dressed in an untied robe, and her hair was tussled. When Officer Spencer asked Ms. Slagle who hurt her, she responded "A.J." Id. at 42 ¶ 24.

At Mr. Johnson's criminal trial, Officer Spencer testified that he pressed Ms. Slagle for more details about "A.J.," before noticing a driver's license at his feet near the bathroom. Id. Officer Spencer noticed that the driver's license belonged to "Andrew J. Johnson." Id. He then showed Ms. Slagle the driver's license and asked "[i]s this the A.J. that you're talking about?" Id. Ms. Slagle initially did not respond, then grew "hysteric[al]," and eventually said, "[y]es, that's A.J." Id. At that time, the officers believed that she had been sexually assaulted.

Officer Spencer took Ms. Slagle to Memorial Hospital in Cheyenne, where she was medically examined and had a sexual-assault kit performed. Officer Raybuck remained at the crime scene and took photographs, as was standard practice. After "load[ing] a cassette of unexposed color negative film into a 35mm camera with flash," Officer Raybuck photographed a case-identifier card and his badge number to ensure that the subsequent photographs that he took, and also the printed photographs, could be easily linked to the correct case. Id. at 45 ¶ 28. Officer Raybuck took photographs of the door and stairs leading to Ms. Slagle's apartment, and he also took photographs of Ms. Slagle's arm and inner thigh when he later arrived at the hospital. Six of Officer Raybuck's photographs were provided to Mr. Johnson's trial counsel, but others were not.

At approximately 5:00 a.m. on June 11, 1989, Mr. Johnson was arrested. Two days later, Ms. Slagle found a pair of eyeglasses in her bedroom, which she believed were Mr. Johnson's. She informed Detective Stanford, who personally retrieved the eyeglasses from her apartment and interviewed her three times.

Mr. Johnson was charged with aggravated burglary and first-degree sexual assault. A jury convicted him on both counts, and his conviction was affirmed on direct appeal. See Johnson v. State, 806 P.2d 1282, 1283-84 (Wyo. 1991). Twenty-four years later, DNA evidence exonerated Mr. Johnson. The evidence revealed that the seminal fluid collected during Ms. Slagle's medical examination matched the DNA of her then-boyfriend—not Mr. Johnson.

B

In 2017, Mr. Johnson filed a civil-rights action, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, against the City of Cheyenne, Officer Spencer, Detective Stanford, and various other unnamed individuals in the Cheyenne Police Department. Mr. Johnson claimed that Officer Spencer and Detective Stanford fabricated evidence by prompting Ms. Slagle to identify him as the intruder who broke into her apartment. Specifically, Mr. Johnson alleged that Officer Spencer—contrary to his testimony at trial—found the driver's license on the coffee table in Ms. Slagle's living room and not outside her bathroom. Additionally, Mr. Johnson alleged that Ms. Slagle and/or Officer Stanford deliberately falsified evidence by presenting the eyeglasses during trial.

Mr. Johnson also claimed that the defendants suppressed the photographs of the crime scene—which he argued would have exonerated him—and/or failed to preserve those photographs. In particular, he alleged that Officer Raybuck took more photographs than were given to his trial counsel and that "[i]t is presently unknown whether the missing negative film and/or missing photographic prints therefrom have been misplaced, purposely or inadvertently destroyed, purposely or carelessly sequestered, lost, or something else improperly done with this forensic evidence." Aplt.'s App., Vol. I, at 36 ¶ 6; see also id. at 46-47 ¶¶ 32-36. Lastly, Mr. Johnson claimed that the City of Cheyenne failed to maintain adequate policies and training for its officers.

In May 2017, Defendants separately moved to dismiss the complaint. The district...