Walker v. City of Chi.

559 F.Supp.3d 747

Xavier WALKER, Plaintiff,

v.CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 20 C 7209

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

Signed September 8, 2021

Jeanette Samuels, Samuels & Associates, Ltd., Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.

Avi T. Kamionski, Shneur Z. Nathan, Natalie Adeeyo, Robin Denise Shoffner, Nathan & Kamionski LLP, Christopher A. Wallace, City of Chicago Department of Law, Federal Civil Rights Litigation Division, Misha Itchhaporia, Borkan & Scahill Ltd., Chicago, IL, for Defendant City of Chicago.

Steven Blair Borkan, Christiane Elizabeth Murray, Graham P. Miller, Krista Eleanore Stalf, Timothy P. Scahill, Misha Itchhaporia, Borkan & Scahill, Ltd., Chicago, IL, for Defendants Michael Pietryla, David Wright, Brian Holy, John Cruz, Donald Wolverton, John Riordan, Robert Bartik.

William B. Oberts, Amy M. Kunzer, Tribler Orpett and Meyer, P.C., Shayl Wilson, Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Chicago, IL, for Defendants Anthony Brzeniak, Thomas Mahoney.

Joseph Anthony Hodal, Elizabeth Francine Brogan, Shayl Wilson, Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Chicago, IL, for Defendant Cook County.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Ronald A. Guzmán, United States District Judge

For the reasons stated below, the City Defendants’ [32] motion to dismiss is granted as to Count VI and denied as to the remainder. The County Defendants’ motion to dismiss [31] is granted. Plaintiff is granted leave to replead as to the County Defendants within 14 days of the date of entry of this order.

STATEMENT

Background

Plaintiff alleges that when he was 19 years old, Chicago police officers (with the City of Chicago, the "City Defendants") beat him and fabricated evidence to obtain a false confession for murder. Plaintiff also alleges involvement by a Cook County Sheriff's officer and an assistant state's attorney (the "Cook County Defendants"). After a bench trial, Plaintiff was convicted of first-degree murder and, on June 22, 2004, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Plaintiff filed a supplementary petition for postconviction relief in 2015, asserting actual innocence. At the same time, he sought review from the Cook County State's Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit and filed a complaint with the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission. His conviction was vacated¹ on July 27, 2018, and he was granted a new trial. On December 11, 2019, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office dismissed the charges against Plaintiff.

Plaintiff filed the instant lawsuit on December 6, 2020, alleging the following claims: Counts I and II—Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process violations for false confession; Count III—Fourteenth Amendment due process violation for fabrication of evidence; Count IV—Fourteenth Amendment due process violations for failure to comply with requirements under Brady v. Maryland ; Count V—Fourth Amendment violation for unlawful pretrial detention; Count VI—Fourth Amendment violation for excessive force; Count VII—failure to intervene; Count VIII—Conspiracy; Count IX—malicious prosecution; Count X—intentional infliction of emotional distress; Count XI—indemnification.

The City Defendants and the County Defendants have each filed a motion to dismiss. The Court addresses them in turn.

Standard

In reviewing a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the court accepts all well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draws all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor. Reynolds v. CB Sports Bar, Inc. , 623 F.3d 1143, 1146 (7th Cir. 2010). A complaint must contain a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief," Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2), and contain enough factual matter, accepted as true, to state a plausible claim for relief, not a speculative one. Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) ; Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly , 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007).

Analysis

I. The City Defendants

A. Count VI—Excessive force ²

"Although the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense, dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) ... is appropriate if the complaint contains everything necessary to establish that the claim is untimely." Collins v. Vill. of Palatine , 875 F.3d 839, 842 (7th Cir. 2017). In Illinois, the statute of limitations for § 1983 claims is two years. Excessive force claims accrue upon application of the force. Wallace v. Kato , 549 U.S. 384, 392-93, 127 S.Ct. 1091, 166 L.Ed.2d 973 (2007). According to the City Defendants, Plaintiff alleges that he was beaten and tortured in May 2000; thus, they assert, the statute of limitations expired over 19 years ago. Plaintiff contends that his excessive force claim did not accrue until his charges were dismissed on December 11, 2019 under Heck v. Humphrey , 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), in which the Supreme Court held that "a plaintiff may not pursue civil claims that would necessarily imply the invalidity of his criminal conviction unless he proves that his ‘conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.’ " Quintero v. Vega , No. 19-CV-0759-BHL, 2021 WL 2355310, at *3 (E.D. Wis. June 9, 2021) (citation omitted).

Case law indicates that "claims based on out-of-court events, such as gathering of evidence, accrue as soon as the constitutional violation occurs." Moore v. Burge , 771 F.3d 444, 446 (7th Cir. 2014). As another court in this district explained, "consider that a coerced confession used to incriminate a suspect can form the basis of both a Fourth Amendment coerced-confession claim and a Fifth Amendment self-incrimination claim." Saunders v. City of Chi. , 146 F. Supp. 3d 957, 965 (N.D. Ill. 2015). "The Fourth Amendment claim accrues regardless of whether any subsequent criminal proceeding is initiated, and thus, under Wallace , cannot benefit from Heck tolling." Id. ; see also Wrice v. Byrne , 488 F. Supp. 3d 646, 675-76 (N.D. Ill. 2020) ("A person abused by police during an interrogation has a Fourth Amendment claim for coercive interrogation, regardless whether any evidence obtained from the interrogation is later used at trial. But because that claim does not depend on a defendant's guilt or innocence, it accrues immediately after the interrogation, not when (or if) the defendant's conviction is ultimately reversed or vacated."). Here, the excessive force claim accrued at the time the force was purportedly applied; thus, it is barred by the statute of limitations.³

B. Counts I, II, and III—Due process violations for false confession and fabrication of evidence

The City Defendants also contend that Plaintiff's due process claims are time-barred for the same reason described above, that is, the case was filed more than two years after Plaintiff's conviction was vacated. Defendants point to Johnson v. Winstead , 900 F.3d 428 (7th Cir. 2018), in which the Seventh Circuit stated that " Wallace thus clarified that Heck delays the accrual of a § 1983 claim ‘until the setting aside of an extant conviction which success in that tort action would impugn.’ " Id. at 437 (emphasis in Johnson ). According to the City Defendants, "[u]nder Johnson , the fact that the conviction was vacated is what governs for purposes of accrual" and "[t]he potential for additional prosecution is beside the point." (Defs.’ Reply, Dkt. # 39, at 7.)

Plaintiff, however, contends that the Heck bar was not lifted until the State's Attorney's Office dropped the charges in 2019, thus making the claims timely. See Savory v. Cannon , 947 F.3d 409, 417 (7th Cir. 2020) ("Only once the criminal proceeding has ended in the defendant's favor , or a resulting conviction has been invalidated within the meaning of Heck ... will the statute of limitations begin to run.") (emphasis added). Plaintiff emphasizes language from a more recent Supreme Court case, McDonough v. Smith , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2149, 204 L.Ed.2d 506 (2019), in which the Court stated that "[t]here is not a complete and present cause of action to bring a fabricated-evidence challenge to criminal proceedings while those criminal proceedings are ongoing. " Id. at 2158 (emphasis added and internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Plaintiff points out that the purpose of Heck is to avoid " ‘parallel litigation on the issue of guilt [and] preclude the possibility of conflicting resolutions arising out of the same transaction, .... and respect concerns for comity ... and consistency.’ " Savory , 947 F.3d at 428.

The City Defendants respond that "the proper course for addressing this potential inconsistent outcome is not extending the accrual date to await the outcome of an anticipated future conviction" but for the plaintiff to file a claim after the conviction is vacated and seek a stay from the district court until it is determined whether the plaintiff will be tried again. (City Defs.’ Reply, Dkt. # 39, at 8.) This is the route relied upon in Wallace , in which the Supreme Court expressly rejected the plaintiff's assertion that "an action which would impugn an anticipated future conviction cannot be brought until that conviction occurs and is set aside." Wallace , 549 U.S. at 393, 127 S.Ct. 1091 (emphasis in original). But McDonough rejected that approach for the fabricated-evidence claim before it, stating:

[Defendant] suggests that stays and ad hoc abstention are sufficient to avoid the problems of two-track litigation. Such workarounds are indeed available when claims falling outside Heck ’s scope nevertheless are initiated while a state criminal proceeding is pending, see Wallace , 549 U.S. at 393–394, 127 S. Ct. 1091 (noting the power of district courts to stay civil actions while criminal prosecutions proceed); Heck , 512 U.S. at 487–488, n. 8, 114 S. Ct. 2364 (noting possibility of abstention), but

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