Karamanoglu v. Town of Yarmouth

15 F.4th 82

Selcuk KARAMANOGLU, Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.TOWN OF YARMOUTH; Brian Andreasen, individually; Daniel Gallant, in his capacity as Chief of Police of the Yarmouth Police Department, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 20-2015

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

September 30, 2021

Tyler J. Smith, with whom Gene R. Libby was on brief, for appellant.

Kasia S. Park, with whom Edward R. Benjamin, Jr. was on brief, for appellees.

Before Thompson and Kayatta, Circuit Judges, and Woodlock,^* District Judge.

WOODLOCK, District Judge.

What has become this federal case originated in a domestic relations dispute scenario more familiar to local police and state courts. A jealous girlfriend entered the house of her boyfriend while he was sleeping to look for evidence of infidelity. After she woke him and they engaged in a heated discussion, the boyfriend told her to leave. She refused and began hitting him; he responded by violently pushing her out of the house.

She reported the incident to the police. The officer assigned that evening interviewed her and then interviewed the boyfriend, whom he thereupon arrested for domestic abuse assault.

When the charges were dropped and the boyfriend no longer faced the potential for an adverse criminal judgment, he sued the assigned police officer, the police chief, and the town in federal court for violating his federal and state civil rights by arresting him without probable cause. He contended that he had used justifiable force under state law to defend himself and his property during his encounter with the girlfriend.

On the Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, the district court dismissed the case, finding that the officer had probable cause to arrest the boyfriend. As we will explain, on de novo review, we agree.

I.

A. Factual Background

On the evening of Saturday, June 15, 2018, Rose Heikkinen — a girlfriend and sexual partner of Plaintiff Selcuk Karamanoglu, who had been staying with him every weekend — used a garage door opener in her possession to enter Mr. Karamanoglu's Yarmouth, Maine home. She searched unsuccessfully for his phone while he slept, woke him to demand the phone, and ultimately confronted him about a message he had received from an ex-girlfriend. As a result of that questioning, she hit Mr. Karamanoglu with the garage door opener and the phone, causing physical injuries to him. After she then smashed the garage door opener on the floor and lifted the phone into the air, Mr. Karamanoglu grabbed her wrists to stop her from hitting him and told her to leave his house.

Ms. Heikkinen continued to try to hit Mr. Karamanoglu as he pushed her toward the doorway, and at one point she pushed him to the ground. According to Ms. Heikkinen, Mr. Karamanoglu grabbed her neck while pushing her out of the house and eventually pushed her down "two or three" stairs onto the garage floor.

Ms. Heikkinen went to the Yarmouth police station, where she presented her account of the incident orally to Officer Brian Andreasen, who was called into the station that evening to investigate the complaint. In addition to eliciting oral statements from Ms. Heikkinen, Officer Andreasen also obtained a written statement from her. In relaying her account to Officer Andreasen orally, Ms. Heikkinen characterized herself as "more aggressive" than Mr. Karamanoglu throughout the interaction. Officer Andreasen observed blood on her clothing, marks on her neck, and that she was holding her ribcage while complaining of pain there.

Officer Andreasen next went to Mr. Karamanoglu's house to hear his account, bringing along Joshua Robinson, another officer on duty that night. Mr. Karamanoglu told the officers that Ms. Heikkinen attacked him and that he was pushing her to try to remove her from his home. Mr. Karamanoglu says he showed Officer Andreasen wounds on his arm, hand, and chest.¹

Officer Andreasen then arrested Mr. Karamanoglu for domestic violence assault.

In his deposition, Officer Andreasen testified that all of Mr. Karamanoglu's use of force could be justified except for the grab of Ms. Heikkinen's neck.

The case against Mr. Karamanoglu was dropped in state court on June 21, 2018 — less than a week after the arrest. An assistant district attorney gave the following oral explanation to the court:

By victim's, Rose['s], own admission, she went to Selcuk's home at night while he was sleeping, entered without his permission, woke him up. She was angry because she thought he had been seeing someone else. He told her repeatedly to leave. She refused repeatedly. She was committing a criminal trespass and he was justified in using reasonable force to remove her from his home. The force he used was reasonable and she used force against him in return including grabbing him by his testicles,^{[2 ]} thereby escalating the violence. No likelihood of successful prosecution.

B. Procedural History

Some six months after the case against him was dismissed, Mr. Karamanoglu sued the Town of Yarmouth, Officer Andreasen and the Chief of the Yarmouth Police Department, on January 14, 2019 in the United States District Court for the District of Maine. Karamanoglu claimed that he was arrested without probable cause and sought relief under both 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Maine Civil Rights Act, Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 5, § 4681, et seq. The parties thereafter agreed that, for summary judgment purposes, resolution of the federal claim would control the outcome of the state law claim. The case proceeded upon consent before Magistrate Judge Rich, who granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment concluding that (i) Officer Andreasen had probable cause for his arrest of Mr. Karamanoglu, (ii) even if he did not, he was entitled to qualified immunity in his decision to make the arrest, (iii) without a constitutional violation by Officer Andreasen, any municipal and supervisory liability claims against the Town of Yarmouth and its Chief of Police failed, and (iv) even if there were an underlying constitutional violation by Officer Andreasen, Mr. Karamanoglu did not adequately allege that the Town of Yarmouth acted with deliberate indifference.

Mr. Karamanoglu has appealed the grant of summary judgment, arguing that Officer Andreasen lacked probable cause to arrest him.

II.

As explained, Mr. Karamanoglu brings a federal cause of action alleging that his arrest was unlawful because Officer Andreasen lacked probable cause to arrest Mr. Karamanoglu for domestic violence assault. To evaluate this claim, we first consider the elements of domestic violence assault under Maine law. We then look to federal law to determine whether Officer Andreasen had probable cause to believe Mr. Karamanoglu had committed the state-law offense.

A.

We set the stage by describing the relevant elements of the crime for which Mr. Karamanoglu was arrested. In Maine, a person has committed the crime of domestic violence assault if he or she has intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly caused bodily injury or offensive physical contact to a family or household member. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, §§ 207, 207-A. Family or household members in this context include individuals "who are or were sexual partners." Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 19-A, § 4002(4). Under Maine law, "a law enforcement officer may arrest without a warrant ... [a]ny person who the officer has probable cause to believe has committed ... [d]omestic violence assault." Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, § 15(1)(A)(5-B).

Maine criminal law recognizes "three broad categories of criminal defenses," including justifications for what would otherwise be an assault. State v. Ouellette, 37 A.3d 921, 925 (Me. 2012).³ Two such justifications are relevant here.

Maine law provides that a "reasonable degree of nondeadly force" used during a domestic violence assault may be justified if it was deployed in self-defense — i.e., to defend against the imminent use of unlawful, nondeadly force by another — as long as the person using defensive force did not provoke the use of force by the other person and was not "the initial aggressor." Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, § 108.1.B.⁴ A person defending against domestic violence assault may, however, only use the degree of force that the person "reasonably believes to be necessary" for purposes of self-defense. Id.

On a parallel track, Maine law provides that a person in control of premises is justified in using nondeadly force on another person if he "reasonably believes it necessary to prevent or terminate the commission of a criminal trespass" by that person. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, § 104.1.⁵ A person commits a criminal trespass if she enters a dwelling place knowing that she is not licensed or privileged to do so or remains in that place after a lawful order to leave. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, § 402.1(A), (D).

To prevail at trial, the government must disprove any justification presented beyond a reasonable doubt if evidence of record raises the issue. See generally State v. Cardilli, 254 A.3d 415, 421–24 (Me. 2021) (discussing deadly force justifications); State v. Asante, 236 A.3d 464, 469 (Me. 2020) (discussing deadly force and self-defense); State v. Villacci, 187 A.3d 576, 580–81 (Me. 2018) (discussing justifications for domestic violence assault); Ouellette, 37 A.3d at 925–30 (discussing categories of criminal defenses). However, as we will explain, an officer in the field need not disprove a potential justification beyond a reasonable doubt before making an arrest.

B.

Having examined the state-law offense for which Mr. Karamanoglu was arrested, we turn to the question of whether that arrest was unreasonable under federal law.

The elements of a § 1983 unlawful arrest claim are analogous to the common-law tort of false arrest. See Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388, 127 S.Ct. 1091, 166 L.Ed.2d 973 (2007). A federal constitutional tort of false arrest — and thus an unlawful arrest under § 1983 — occurs when there is detention without probable cause and without legal...