Towne v. Donnelly

44 F.4th 666

Brian TOWNE, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.Karen DONNELLY, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 21-2469

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued February 16, 2022

Decided August 11, 2022

Shawn W. Barnett, Attorney, Hale & Monico, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Jennifer L. Turiello, Kevin M. Casey, Attorneys, Peterson, Johnson & Murray - Chicago LLC, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees Karen Donnelly, George Mueller.

Martin W. McManaman, Attorney, L&G Law Group LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees Brian Vescogni, Matthew Kidder.

Scott B. Dolezal, Alison M. Harrington, Attorneys, Best, Vanderlaan & Harrington, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee David Gualandri.

Before Ripple, Scudder and Kirsch, Circuit Judges.

Ripple, Circuit Judge.

Brian Towne, the former State's Attorney for LaSalle County, Illinois, defeated criminal charges against him when an Illinois court ruled that the proceedings, which had idled for about two years, violated his right to a speedy trial. In the wake of that decision, Mr. Towne brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Pertinent to this appeal, he alleged that State's Attorney Karen Donnelly, with the aid of assistant state's attorneys and police investigators, had prosecuted him in retaliation for his previous campaign for state's attorney and, in so doing, had violated his First Amendment rights. The district court dismissed the complaint as untimely. The court ruled that the two-year statute of limitations for Mr. Towne's First Amendment retaliation claim had expired. The court explained that the limitations period had begun to run when he was indicted, not when he was acquitted.

Because our precedent establishes that a First Amendment retaliation claim such as Mr. Towne's accrues when the underlying criminal charge is brought, and because the Supreme Court's decision in McDonough v. Smith , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2149, 204 L.Ed.2d 506 (2019), has not disturbed that conclusion, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

IBACKGROUND

A. Facts

Because this lawsuit was dismissed on the pleadings, we must take as true the following facts set forth in the operative complaint. See Vergara v. City of Chicago , 939 F.3d 882, 884 (7th Cir. 2019).

Mr. Towne served as the LaSalle County State's Attorney from 2006 until 2016.

During his tenure, Mr. Towne encountered Karen Donnelly in three situations. First, Ms. Donnelly worked as a legal intern with the State's Attorney's Office in 2012. During the internship, she impermissibly accessed a file about the ongoing prosecution of her son, and Mr. Towne locked the file to prohibit her continued access to it. Second, a few years later, Ms. Donnelly applied for a position with the State's Attorney's Office, and Mr. Towne did not hire her. Finally, Ms. Donnelly ran against and defeated Mr. Towne in the 2016 election for State's Attorney.

Soon after taking office, Ms. Donnelly launched an investigation into Mr. Towne's conduct as State's Attorney. She claimed to suspect him of criminal acts during his tenure in office; Mr. Towne alleges that the inquiry "was wholly political and motivated by personal animosity towards" him.¹ Ms. Donnelly enlisted assistant state's attorneys and police officers for the City of Ottawa to help with an investigation. Over the next seven months, they interviewed witnesses, concealed exculpatory portions of the interviews, and fabricated inculpatory testimony.²

Based on this allegedly fabricated evidence, a grand jury indicted, and Mr. Towne moved to have a special prosecutor appointed in the case. The state court granted the motion, but the special prosecutor did not act on the charges against Mr. Towne. After ten months with no development, Mr. Towne moved to dismiss the charges on the ground that the prosecutorial inaction violated his right to a speedy trial. The trial court granted the motion in August 2019 and dismissed all criminal charges against him.

B. District Court Proceedings

In July 2020—nearly three years after Mr. Towne was indicted, and one year after the charges against him were dismissed—Mr. Towne filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Ms. Donnelly, the assistant state's attorneys, the officers involved in the underlying investigation, LaSalle County, and the City of Ottawa. The operative complaint alleged that the individual defendants violated Mr. Towne's First Amendment rights by prosecuting him in retaliation for his having opposed Ms. Donnelly in the 2016 election. The complaint further alleged that these defendants caused him to be held without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment and subjected him to prosecution in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. Finally, the complaint included allegations that the defendants had conspired to infringe Mr. Towne's constitutional rights and had failed to intervene to prevent constitutional violations.³

The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint. Relevant to this appeal, they submitted that Mr. Towne's First Amendment retaliation claim was untimely. According to the defendants, the two-year statute of limitations began to run upon his indictment and, therefore, had expired in September 2019—ten months before Mr. Towne filed this lawsuit. They also maintained that Mr. Towne's Fourth Amendment unlawful detention claim and due process claim were not actionable because he never was taken into custody and his criminal case never proceeded to trial.

In response, Mr. Towne argued that his First Amendment claim was timely under McDonough v. Smith , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2149, 204 L.Ed.2d 506 (2019). In McDonough , the Supreme Court held that a Fourteenth Amendment due process claim based on fabricated evidence does not accrue until the proceedings are favorably terminated. Mr. Towne argued that his retaliation claim, like the due process claim in McDonough , challenged the validity of criminal proceedings. Therefore, he continued, the statute of limitations on his claim did not begin to run until he was acquitted of the charges. As for his Fourth Amendment and due process claims, Mr. Towne contended that they were viable because his liberty was restricted while he was awaiting trial and because the criminal process was based on fabricated evidence.

The district court granted the defendants' motions and dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. Beginning with the First Amendment retaliation claim, the court explained that the claim accrued when the retaliatory act occurred, specifically in 2017 when Mr. Towne was indicted on false criminal charges. The district court was unpersuaded by Mr. Towne's argument that the Supreme Court's holding in McDonough applied to Mr. Towne's First Amendment retaliation claim. Similarly, with respect to Mr. Towne's Fourth Amendment claim, the district court concluded that the claim accrued when his detention ceased; this occurred when he was released on bond in September 2017. Consequently, this claim, too, was untimely. Regarding Mr. Towne's due process claim, the court concluded that Mr. Towne had not suffered a deprivation of liberty as a result of the fabrication of the evidence, and therefore his claim failed. Finally, the court dismissed the failure-to-intervene and conspiracy claims because they were contingent on the presence of an underlying constitutional claim, but none of Mr. Towne's constitutional claims were viable.⁴

IIDISCUSSION

Mr. Towne appeals the district court's dismissal of his First Amendment retaliatory prosecution claim as untimely. Because the parties agree that the statute of limitations for § 1983 claims in Illinois is two years, see 735 ILCS 5/13-202 ; Smith v. City of Chicago , 3 F.4th 332, 335 (7th Cir. 2021), the sole issue on appeal is whether the limitations period began to run when the grand jury returned an indictment against Mr. Towne, as the district court held, or when the charges were dismissed, as he contends. If the latter view is correct, Mr. Towne's First Amendment claim, which he filed one year after his charges were dismissed, was timely. We review de novo a dismissal based on the statute of limitations. Smith , 3 F.4th at 335.

A.

Generally, a claim under § 1983 accrues "when the plaintiff has ‘a complete and present cause of action,’ that is, when ‘the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.’ " Wallace v. Kato , 549 U.S. 384, 388, 127 S.Ct. 1091, 166 L.Ed.2d 973 (2007) (citation omitted) (quoting Bay Area Laundry & Dry Cleaning Pension Tr. Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal. , 522 U.S. 192, 201, 118 S.Ct. 542, 139 L.Ed.2d 553 (1997) ).⁵ At that point, the plaintiff "knows or should know that his or her constitutional rights have been violated." Gekas v. Vasiliades , 814 F.3d 890, 894 (7th Cir. 2016) (quoting Hileman v. Maze , 367 F.3d 694, 696 (7th Cir. 2004) ). To determine when a litigant has a "complete and present" cause of action, we begin by examining the nature of the constitutional right at stake. McDonough , 139 S. Ct. at 2155 (quoting Wallace , 549 U.S. at 388, 127 S.Ct. 1091 ). We also may look "to the common-law principles governing analogous torts." Id. at 2156.

In the context of a First Amendment retaliation claim, we have held that, "[g]enerally, the statute of limitations clock begins to run ... immediately after the retaliatory act occurred," Gekas , 814 F.3d at 894, so long as the plaintiff "knows or should know that his or her constitutional rights have been violated," id. (quoting Hileman , 367 F.3d at 696 ). At least two circuits have held that this general accrual rule for First Amendment retaliation claims applies equally to First Amendment retaliatory prosecution claims and that, consequently, the cause of action typically accrues when the retaliatory charges are brought. See Smith v. Campbell , 782 F.3d 93, 100 (2d Cir. 2015) ; Mata v. Anderson , 635 F.3d 1250, 1253 (10th Cir. 2011).⁶ At that point, a plaintiff can state a complete claim by alleging that (1) he participated in an...