Serrano v. Guevara

315 F.Supp.3d 1026

Armando SERRANO, Plaintiff,

v.Reynaldo GUEVARA, et al., Defendants.andJose Montanez, Plaintiff,

v.Reynaldo Guevara, et al., Defendants.

Nos. 17 CV 2869

17 CV 4560

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

Signed May 29, 2018

Arthur R. Loevy, Debra Loevy, Jonathan I. Loevy, Ruth Z. Brown, Russell R Ainsworth, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.

James Gus Sotos, Caroline P. Golden, David Andrew Brueggen, Jeffrey Neil Given, Jeffrey Robert Kivetz, Joseph M. Polick, The Sotos Law Firm, P.C., Itasca, IL, Paula Sue Quist, Kristina Katz Cercone, Leigh Ann Krahenbuhl, Morgan Reid Hirst, Jones Day, James E. Hanlon, Jr., Anthony E. Zecchin, Scott A. Golden, Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Eileen Ellen Rosen, Austin Gordon Rahe, Catherine MacNeil Barber, Patrick R. Moran, Stacy Ann Benjamin, Theresa Berousek Carney, Rock Fusco & Connelly, LLC, Chicago, IL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Manish S. Shah, United States District JudgePlaintiffs Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez each spent over two decades in prison for a murder they did not commit. Now, they both bring suit against the City of Chicago—and former police officers Reynaldo Guevara, Ernest Halvorsen, and Edward Mingey—as well as Cook County—and former prosecutors Matthew Coghlan and John Dillion. Their suits include claims for constitutional violations and torts they allege were committed during the investigation and prosecution of the case against them. The City and County defendants now move to dismiss portions of the complaints for the failure to state a claim. For the reasons stated below, defendants' motions are granted in part, denied in part.

I. Legal Standards

A complaint must contain factual allegations that plausibly suggest a right to relief. Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009). I must accept as true all of the facts alleged in the complaint and draw reasonable inferences from those facts in plaintiffs' favor, but I am not required to accept as true the complaint's legal conclusions. Id. at 678–79, 129 S.Ct. 1937. In considering a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), I review the complaint, exhibits attached to the complaint, and, if they are central to the claims, documents referenced by the complaint. Otis v. Demarasse , 886 F.3d 639, 647 n.33 (7th Cir. 2018).

II. Facts¹

Plaintiffs Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez were wrongly convicted for the murder of Rodrigo Vargas.² In 1993, Vargas was shot to death in a van outside his home. Vargas's wife, Wilda, had no idea why anyone would kill her husband. One of Vargas's neighbors heard the gunshots, but she did not see anything. Another neighbor reported seeing an older, light-brown sedan, possibly with two doors, drive away. For four months, the police had no leads and the murder went unsolved. Then Detectives Guevara and Halvorsen took over.

Wilda Vargas told the detectives about a trip that she and her husband took to the gas station the night before he was murdered. Wilda said that her husband had just gone to the bank, so he had a roll of cash on him when he went inside to pay. Cash was found on Vargas's dead body the next day. Wilda also remembered that her husband honked at three Latino men in a tan-colored car that blocked his way at the gas station. With this information, the detectives invented a theory in which Vargas's murder was an armed robbery gone wrong, and they decided to frame three Latino men with histories of armed robberies to close the case. They settled on Serrano, Montanez, and Jorge Pacheco. The detectives showed Wilda photos of the three men, telling her that they were the Latino men she remembered from the tan car. The detectives drove Wilda to Montanez's house to show her his car (which she agreed was similar to the tan one she saw), and the detectives told her lies about the car being linked to her husband's shooting by ballistics evidence and witness statements.

Then the detectives decided to use a resource they had recently stumbled across—Francisco Vicente. Vicente was a heroin addict who was arrested and charged with several armed robberies, suffering in jail from the effects of heroin withdrawal and facing up to 97 or 100 years in prison for his pending charges. The detectives told two prosecutors—Assistant State's Attorneys Coghlan and Dillion—that "the street" was saying plaintiffs and Pacheco were responsible for the Vargas murder, but they needed more evidence to bring them in. So the detectives proposed that they use Vicente to drum up evidence against plaintiffs and Pacheco in addition to suspects in two other murders. The prosecutors agreed and arranged to transport Vicente to their offices. By the time Vicente met with the prosecutors and detectives to discuss the Vargas murder, the detectives had already used violence (including hitting him with a phonebook) to coerce Vicente into giving false testimony against a suspect in a different murder.³

With the prosecutors and Halvorsen present, Guevara handed Vicente crime scene photos and fed him a narrative in which Vicente would say he was an eyewitness to plaintiffs' attempted robbery of Vargas. Everyone in the room knew that narrative was false. Vicente refused to say he was an eyewitness or that the suspects gave him the murder weapon, so Halvorsen suggested that Vicente say Montanez confessed to him and implicated Serrano and Pacheco along the way. The prosecutors promised Vicente they would protect him by getting him moved to special witness quarters at the jail and secure him a lower sentence. Vicente agreed to give the false testimony. After the meeting, the detectives prepared a supplemental police report stating that a confidential informant told them that Montanez confessed to his involvement in the Vargas murder and that Montanez had also implicated Serrano and Pacheco. The detectives used the false report as a basis to arrest Serrano. But after about 24 hours of physical and psychological abuse, Serrano refused to make an inculpatory statement and was released.

So the detectives turned to Timothy Rankins, a 19–year–old facing charges for robbery. Rankins had experience serving as an informant for the detectives' supervisor, Sergeant Edward Mingey. The officers (Mingey, Guevara, and Halvorsen) knew that Rankins did not know anything about the Vargas murder, but they told Rankins that they wanted him to say he was an eyewitness. When Rankins initially refused, Guevara beat him, including by putting a phonebook against his head and striking it. Guevara showed Rankins photos of plaintiffs and Pacheco while feeding him the narrative he wanted Rankins to give. After more abuse, Rankins agreed to say that he saw plaintiffs and Pacheco shoot and kill Vargas and signed a statement saying so. Now armed with (faulty) probable cause, the detectives immediately arrested Serrano and, sometime later, Montanez and Pacheco.

Not long after the officers met with Rankins, the prosecutors brought Vicente back to their offices to sign his false witness statement. The statement, written by Halvorsen, said that Vicente was hanging out on a street corner when plaintiffs and Pacheco drove up in a tan car. The statement went on to say that Montanez told Vicente that he, Serrano, and Pacheco saw a Mexican man at a gas station with a wad of cash, attempted to rob him, and then shot him. Vicente signed the statement in the presence of a different prosecutor (one who was not present for the previous discussions with Vicente).

A grand jury was convened. Both Rankins and Vicente testified consistent with their written statements, and the grand jury returned an indictment against plaintiffs and Pacheco. Nine months later, Rankins recanted his testimony and fled Chicago. Vicente was transferred to the special witness quarters he was promised and received other benefits, like cash, drugs, and conjugal visits. Vicente continued to be shuttled to the prosecutors' offices to be coached by the prosecutors on his testimony for the three murder prosecutions he was a witness in, including plaintiffs' prosecution.

About two years later, in 1995, plaintiffs were convicted in a bench trial. Their co-defendant, Pacheco, was acquitted. Guevara and Halvorsen testified for the prosecution, and so did Vicente, who largely kept to his written statement and grand jury testimony. The prosecutors, who had helped form Vicente's false testimony, knew it was a lie. Before trial, the prosecutors had helped get Vicente additional pre-trial custody credit to reduce his sentence, a fact that was not disclosed to plaintiffs' lawyers. Wilda could not credibly testify that plaintiffs were the men in the tan car at the gas station, so her identification testimony was rejected. Plaintiffs were each sentenced to 55 years in prison.

At post-conviction evidentiary hearings over a decade later, plaintiffs presented an affidavit from Vicente, admitting that his entire testimony was false. Although relief was initially denied, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed those decisions.⁴ The state moved to vacate plaintiffs' convictions and dismiss the murder charges. In 2016, plaintiffs were released from the Illinois Department of Corrections. Both were issued certificates of innocence. Before plaintiffs' exoneration, the City also commissioned an independent investigation into plaintiffs' case (and others), which concluded that plaintiffs were more likely innocent than not.

III. Analysis

A. The Prosecutors

Prosecutors are absolutely immune from federal tort liability for actions they take as prosecutors carrying out their prosecutorial duties. See Imbler v. Pachtman , 424 U.S. 409, 427, 96 S.Ct. 984, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976) ; Fields v. Wharrie , 740 F.3d 1107, 1110 (7th Cir. 2014) (" Fields II "). This includes "acts undertaken by a prosecutor in preparing for the initiation of judicial proceedings or for trial, and which occur in the course of his role as an advocate for the State....