Thomas v. City of Phila.

290 F.Supp.3d 371

Shaurn THOMAS, Plaintiff,

v.CITY OF PHILADELPHIA et al., Defendants.

CIVIL ACTION No. 17–4196

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

Signed February 2, 2018

James Figorski, Stefanie Tubbs, Stephen D. Brown, Tiffany Ellen Engsell, Dechert LLP, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff.

Michael R. Miller, City of Philadelphia Law Dept., Patrice Marguerite Turenne, Joseph J. Santarone, Jr., Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin, Philadelphia, PA, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM

Pratter, United States District Judge

INTRODUCTION

In 1994, Shaurn Thomas was convicted of a murder he did not commit. Last year, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office successfully initiated the process that led to his conviction being vacated because the Office no longer had faith in the evidence that presumably led to the jury's verdict.

Mr. Thomas has sued the City of Philadelphia, two former police detectives, and one former police officer. He alleges that they ignored exculpatory evidence, manufactured incriminating evidence, and coerced confessions from his alleged co-conspirators.

The defendants have filed two partial motions to dismiss that center on questions of qualified immunity. The Court (1) grants the detectives' partial motion to dismiss to the extent the motion is based on qualified immunity grounds, (2) grants the City's motion to dismiss a portion of the Monell claim, but (3) denies Officer Gist's motion to dismiss, which was based on non–qualified immunity grounds.

FACTS

The factual background is intricate and best understood by beginning narrowly and then taking a progressively wider view.

First, the Court restates the story of the murder that prosecutors told at Mr. Thomas's trial, followed by a summary of the evidence that investigators marshalled to tell their story—a rumor, a phony getaway car, and three coerced confessions. A wider lens reveals evidence that the investigators ignored—evidence that, if taken seriously at the time, very likely would have kept Mr. Thomas from ever being charged. Reference is also made to similar conduct in other criminal investigations by the Philadelphia Police Department during the early 1990s.

Finally, the Court summarizes the recent history of this case, namely, Mr. Thomas's exoneration in light of recanted witness statements.

I. Murder and Trial

On the morning of November 13, 1990, Domingo Martinez was murdered after making a large cash withdrawal from a North Philadelphia bank. As the 78–year–old was driving from the bank to his payday-lending business, he was side-swiped by another car. At least one man emerged from the car, shot Mr. Martinez, pulled him from his car, and left him to die in the street. The killer drove away in Mr. Martinez's car, followed by the assailing car.

The case was investigated by Philadelphia police detectives Martin Devlin and Paul Worrell, with assistance from Officer James Gist. Four years later, two pairs of brothers were convicted for the murder: Shaurn Thomas, Mustafa Thomas, John Stallworth, and William Stallworth. Shaurn Thomas was 16 years old at the time of the murder of Mr. Martinez.

At trial in 1994, both Stallworth brothers testified that the four conspirators planned the murder while living in the Abbotsford Homes housing project. They testified that six men in two separate cars coordinated the attack on Mr. Martinez. Prosecutors showed the jury Polaroid pictures of a stripped blue Chevrolet in the Abbotsford courtyard, which the Stallworth brothers identified as one of the cars used in the murder.

II. Evidence Used to Convict Mr. Thomas

Three pieces of evidence pointed to Mr. Shaurn Thomas's guilt at trial: a rumor that he had participated in the murder, evidence of the blue car that detectives said he drove, and the centerpiece of the detectives' case—coerced confessions from two of his alleged co-conspirators.

A. Rumor at Abbotsford Homes

While patrolling the Abbotsford Homes housing project, Officer Gist heard a rumor that eventually became the story told at trial. An informant told him that "the Thompson [sic] brothers set [the Martinez murder] up and the Stallworths killed the guy." Officer Gist knew that the Thomas brothers and the Stallworth brothers had all been Abbotsford residents.

B. Blue Car

The rumor did not specify the color of the car used in the murder, but Officer Gist knew that Shaurn Thomas drove a blue car. He relayed the rumor to Detectives Devlin and Worrell, along with his knowledge that Mr. Thomas drove a blue car.

Even though Mr. Thomas drove a blue Mercury—which had broken down months before the murder—the investigators developed a story in which the murderers used a different blue car. They confiscated a blue Chevrolet Caprice, whose owner and origins were unknown. Initially, the detectives told the prosecutor that the blue Caprice was the murder vehicle.

During the trial in 1994, however, a forensics specialist compared evidence from the confiscated Caprice to evidence collected at the crime scene and concluded that the Caprice was not the murder car. Given this newfound doubt, the prosecutor asked the detectives if they had any other evidence linking a blue car to the Thomas and Stallworth brothers.

They did. Officer Gist had taken Polaroid photos of a different blue car—a stripped blue Chevrolet sitting in the Abbotsford courtyard. The detectives showed the prosecutor the Polaroid photos. The photos were shown to the jury and the Stallworth brothers testified that the stripped blue Chevrolet was the car used in the murder.

C. The Stallworths' Coerced Confessions

The testimony of John and William Stallworth was the lynchpin of the prosecution's case. But, it later turned out, their confessions were coerced by the detectives to fit the prosecution's plot line.

Detectives Devlin and Worrell first arrested John Stallworth on October 27, 1992, nearly two years after the murder. During the interrogation, they physically abused him and threatened him with the death penalty, leading him to provide a false confession. He confessed that six men committed the murder: John and William Stallworth, Shaurn and Mustafa Thomas, Steven D. "Nasir" Johnson, and Louis Gay. John Stallworth told detectives that Mr. Gay had watched Mr. Martinez withdraw money at the bank. He also told them that the six attackers were divided into two cars, a leading blue car and a trailing gray car.

But, as it happens, there was a problem with the confession that the detectives had John Stallworth sign: Louis Gay was in prison on the day of the murder. So, on July 6, 1993, under the aegis of the detectives, John Stallworth changed his story to replace Louis Gay with an "unknown man" who had watched Mr. Martinez in the bank.

Still, an eyewitness was needed to place Shaurn Thomas at the scene of the murder. In John Stallworth's confession, he and Shaurn Thomas were in different cars. So, in early 1994, the detectives oversaw William Stallworth's signing of a confession that matched his brother's. In this iteration, William testified that he and Shaurn Thomas were together in the trailing gray car.

III. Exculpatory Evidence Ignored by Detectives Devlin and Worrell

Detectives Devlin and Worrell ignored six categories of evidence in pursuit of the "six-man, two-car" story implicating Mr. Thomas. In brief, the detectives ignored: (1) Mr. Thomas's alibi, (2) eyewitness accounts, (3) paint traces on Mr. Martinez's car, (4) fingerprints on Mr. Martinez's car, (5) another group of suspects arrested shortly after the murder, and (6) the potential motive of the victim's own daughter.

A. Shaurn Thomas's Alibi

At the time that Mr. Martinez was murdered, Shaurn Thomas was being interviewed by a juvenile probation officer.

Mr. Martinez was murdered at roughly 9:45 a.m. on November 13, 1990. The night before, 16–year–old Shaurn Thomas had been arrested for attempted theft of a bicycle in Center City. He spent the night in a juvenile holding cell. The next morning, his mother picked him up and took him to the Philadelphia Youth Study Center, where he was interviewed by a juvenile probation officer. He was not released from the Youth Study Center until the afternoon of November 13—hours after the Martinez murder.

Detectives Worrell and Devlin knew that Shaurn Thomas was arrested the day before the murder and would have been at the Youth Study Center at the time of the murder. According to the complaint here, they failed to investigate this alibi because it did not fit with the story to be told at trial.

B. Eyewitnesses

All four eyewitnesses controvert the story given by the detectives to the prosecutor. All witnesses saw either a Chevrolet Nova or a Buick Skylark. None saw a blue Mercury, the car driven by Shaurn Thomas early in 1990. And none saw a blue Chevrolet, the car the detectives told the prosecutor was used in the murder.

The eyewitness accounts did not fit with the detectives' story in four ways: number of attackers, number of cars, car color, and car type.

Witness Witness's Position Number Number of Cars Car Car Type
of Color
Assailants
Allen      Two cars behind the   Three        One                  Red and     Either a Chevy Nova
King       attackers                                               white car   or Buick Skylark
Roy        Two cars behind the   Three        One                  Red and
Howard     attackers (Allen                                        white car
           King's passenger)
Carmen     Pedestrian several    Three        One                  Gray        Chevy Nova
Garcia     hundred feet from
           scene
Ronald     Directly behind       Three        Only one car: only
Smith      attackers' car                     one car was
                                              between witness's
                                              car and Martinez's
                                              car
Story at   -                     Six Two One blue, Blue Chevrolet
Trial one gray Caprice or blue
Mercury

C. Paint Traces

The day of...