Sanford v. City of Detroit

DAVONTAE SANFORD, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF DETROIT, MICHAEL RUSSELL, and JAMES TOLBERT, Defendants.

Case Number 17-13062

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION

December 4, 2018

Honorable David M. Lawson

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS

Fourteen-year-old Davontae Sanford was convicted of murdering four people upon his plea of guilty in a Detroit, Michigan court in 2008. After another person confessed to the crimes and confirmed that Sanford was not involved, a state police investigation uncovered evidence that Sanford's confession and ensuing guilty plea were the product of Detroit police misconduct. His conviction was set aside and all charges against him were dismissed in 2016, but not before he had spent over eight years in prison. He filed this lawsuit against the City of Detroit and the officers who constructed the case against him to recover damages for the violations of his civil rights that led to his wrongful conviction and confinement. The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on various theories. One has merit: Detroit's intervening bankruptcy bars Sanford's claim against the City in this Court, because the final plan of adjustment discharged prepetition claims and the plaintiff is enjoined from pursuing his claim against the City except as the plan allows. Therefore, the Court will grant the motion to dismiss in part and dismiss the case against the City. The case will proceed, however, against the City's police officers.

I. Facts

The City's motion is based in part on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1); it contends that the Court does not have subject-matter jurisdiction over Sanford's claim against it. The defendant police officers' motion is based on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Because the defendants have challenged the adequacy of the complaint under that rule, the following facts as stated in the complaint are summarized below.

Around 11:25 p.m. on September 17, 2007, two professional hit men, Vincent Smothers and Ernest Davis, executed Michael Robinson, a low level drug dealer, and three other people who were present in Robinson's home on Runyon Street, on Detroit's East Side. The killings were provoked by a drug war. Smothers also found a woman and her young child in the house, hiding in a back bedroom. The woman and her child had been hit when Smothers and Davis first fired their weapons into the house, but they had survived. Smothers told them to hide and then left the house. Once outside, he exchanged gunfire with police chaplain Jesse King, who had happened upon the scene. Smothers and Davis then ran through a vacant lot to their getaway car.

Police soon responded and began to canvas the neighborhood of the crime scene. Among the officers on scene were the defendants, Detroit Police Department (DPD) Sergeant Michael Russell and Homicide Commander James Tolbert, and non-party Investigator Dale Collins. Witnesses at the scene told the police that the shooters were two black men, 30 to 35 years old, with brown skin and slim to medium builds. One was just over six feet tall, and the other just under six feet. Both men were wearing dark clothes and masks, and the taller man (Smothers), was wearing a coat and carrying a rifle.

From their survey of the scene, the police observed that the perpetrators began their shooting rampage outside, firing into the house through the front door and windows. Then theywent inside and continued shooting at the persons they found inside. The four victims all were killed in the living room, and a handgun and assault rifle were used during the attack. A seven-year-old boy was found hiding under a bed in the back room with his mother, Valerie Glover. Glover told police that one of the attackers had spoken to her briefly, then left the house. Several marijuana plants were found growing in the basement, and neighbors told police that they thought Robinson had been selling drugs out of the home. The police also spoke to King, who told them that he had exchanged fire with one of the shooters as the men ran away from the house.

Plaintiff Davontae Sanford was 14 years old at the time and lived nearby on Beland Street. He was blind in one eye, functionally illiterate, and had a learning disability. When the police showed up, Sanford went outside, still in his pajamas, to ask them what was going on. Defendant Russell approached Sanford and asked him some questions about the shooting, which Sanford could not answer, since he did not know anything about the crime. Nearby, a K-9 officer was standing with his dog, who had been searching the scene, but the dog did not react to or show any interest in Sanford. Sanford also had no trace of blood on his clothes or person, despite the abundance of blood at the gory scene where multiple victims had been executed. Russell told Investigator Collins to take Sanford to his home and obtain parental consent to question the boy, and Collins secured a signed consent form from Sanford's grandmother. The defendants then transported Sanford to the police station, where they performed a gunshot residue test on his hands, and then interrogated him. The residue test eventually came back with a negative result.

Over the next two days, Sanford was interrogated twice by Russell and Tolbert. During one of those interrogations (it is unclear which), Sanford told the defendants that he recently had smoked marijuana and was still feeling the effect of it. The defendants also were aware of Sanford's learning disability. Nevertheless, and despite his young age, Russell and Tolbertquestioned Sanford without an attorney or guardian present, contrary to DPD policy. The first interrogation ran for several hours into the morning of September 18th, and at the end of that first session Sanford signed a confession. Sanford's purported written confession, which was composed and typed up by Russell, stated that Sanford was present during the planning of the crime, but not during the shooting, and that the executions were carried out by three persons named as "Tone," "Tone-Tone," and "Carrie." The only accurate details in the statement were inserted by the defendants when it was composed, which were (1) that a handgun and assault rifle were used, (2) that the name of the intended victim was Michael or Mike, and (3) that there was a red car in the driveway of the home.

Sanford was released and went home after he signed the first statement. However, around 8:40 p.m. on September 18th, Russell and Tolbert went to Sanford's home and spoke to Sanford and his mother, Taminko Sanford. The officers did not inform Ms. Sanford that they already had obtained a statement from Davontae in which he implicated himself. But they did obtain another signed parental consent to further question the boy. Sanford was taken to the police station, where Russell began to interrogate him a second time around 9:30 p.m. The defendants lied to Sanford during the interrogation, telling him that he would be free to go afterwards, also falsely telling him that blood from the scene had been found on his shoes. When Sanford asked for an attorney, Russell responded by calling him a "dumbass," and he told Sanford that no attorneys were available at that hour. Russell and Tolbert concocted another written confession, which included additional details police had learned about the crime, including that the shooting had started outside, there were two gunmen involved who used a handgun and a rifle, the specific positions of bodies found at the scene, the survivors found hiding in a back room, and the fact that the shooters had traded shots with a witness after they left the house. The description of the clothing Sanfordwas wearing when he first was encountered by police also differed in the second statement and better matched the description of clothing witnesses had seen the gunmen wearing.

Russell and Tolbert reported, and later testified, that Sanford also had drawn a diagram of the crime scene that was attached to the second written confession. However, Tolbert had drawn that diagram and given it to Sanford, with instructions to sketch in the locations of bodies to match photographs of the scene that were shown to Sanford during the interrogation. During a 2015 investigation, Tolbert confessed to Michigan State Police investigators that he had drawn the sketch and that he falsely had testified that it was drawn by Sanford.

The interrogation facilities had audio and video recording features, but those were not active during most of the interrogation. Instead they only were turned on at the end, when police directed Sanford to "proofread" his confession (which he, however, could neither read nor understand, due to his illiteracy).

In the second statement, the perpetrators of the shooting were identified as "Los, Tone-Tone, PBI Tone, and Carrie," but police later learned that none of those persons were involved. In particular, on September 29, 2007, DPD officers learned that Angelo Gardner, a.k.a. "Los," and Antonio Langston, a.k.a. "PBI Tone," both had solid alibis, and Gardner and Langston never were charged for the Runyon Street shooting. DPD officers later arrested Santo Green, a.k.a. "Tone-Tone," but he never was charged either.

Sanford was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, based solely on the purported written confession and the sketch that he supposedly had drawn. During a psychiatric exam ordered after his arraignment, Sanford insisted he was innocent and that the police had fabricated and coerced his confession. The written statements and sketch were used as evidence at Sanford's preliminary examination, and at a bench trial in March 2008. The defendants also testified that allof the facts in the written statements were volunteered by Sanford with no prompting from his interrogators, and that many of them would have been known only by the shooters.

Sanford entered a...