Washington v. City of Chi.

98 F.4th 860

Tabatha WASHINGTON and Donte Howard, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 22-2467

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued October 24, 2023

Decided April 15, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:20-cv-00442 — Manish S. Shah, Judge.

Mark D. Roth, Attorney, Roth Fioretti, LLC, Chicago, IL, Patrick F. Solon, Attorney, Paul K. Vickrey, Esq., Attorney, Dylan M. Brown, Attorney, Vitale, Vickrey, Niro, Solon & Gasey LLP, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Stephen G. Collins, Attorney, Office of the Corporation Counsel, Appeals Division, Chicago,IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before Rovner, Wood, and Hamilton, Circuit Judges.

Hamilton, Circuit Judge.

This case presents claims for unlawful pretrial detention under the Fourth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, along with state-law claims for malicious prosecution. Plaintiffs Tabatha Washington and Donte Howard claim that defendants, Chicago Police Department detectives Vincent Alonzo, Adrian Garcia, and Demosthenes Balodimas, deliberately misled judges and a grand jury to secure judicial determinations of probable cause to detain plaintiffs on charges of first-degree murder. After over a year in custody, Washington and Howard were tried and acquitted on all charges. They then filed this suit. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, and plaintiffs have appealed.

Fourth Amendment claims for unlawful pretrial detention can survive a judicial determination of probable cause. See generally Manuel v. City of Joliet, 580 U.S. 357, 137 S.Ct. 911, 197 L.Ed.2d 312 (2017) (Manuel I). "[P]retrial detention is a 'seizure'—both before formal legal process and after—and is justified only on probable cause." Lewis v. City of Chicago, 914 F.3d 472, 477 (7th Cir. 2019), citing Manuel I, 580 U.S. at 366-67, 137 S.Ct. 911. "[I]f the proceeding is tainted—[such as] by fabricated evidence—and the result is that probable cause is lacking, then the ensuing pretrial detention violates the confined person's Fourth Amendment rights . . . ." Manuel I, 580 U.S. at 369 n.8, 137 S.Ct. 911.

The existence of probable cause is a defense to both Fourth Amendment and malicious prosecution claims. Young v. City of Chicago, 987 F.3d 641, 646 (7th Cir. 2021). Consequently, this case turns on whether probable cause existed to detain Washington and Howard in advance of their trials. In civil litigation like this case, a rebuttable presumption of probable cause arises after a judicial determination of probable cause. See Lewis, 914 F.3d at 477. To overcome this presumption, plaintiffs must show "that the officer who sought the warrant [1] 'knowingly or intentionally or with a reckless disregard for the truth, made false statements to the judicial officer, and [2] that the false statements were necessary to the judicial officer's determination that probable cause existed for the arrest.' " Whitlock v. Brown, 596 F.3d 406, 410 (7th Cir. 2010) (alterations omitted), quoting Beauchamp v. City of Noblesville, 320 F.3d 733, 742-43 (7th Cir. 2003), citing in turn Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 155-56, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978).¹

Here, undisputed facts show that plaintiffs cannot rebut this presumption. Even if we assume plaintiffs' list of the detectives' alleged misrepresentations and omissions is correct, plaintiffs cannot meet the second prong of the test in Beauchamp: establishing that those false statements or deliberately misleading omissions were "necessary" to the judicial officers' determinations of probable cause. This is so for two independent reasons. First, the State's Attorney's Office conducted its own independent fact-gathering before deciding to file charges. Second, and again, assuming that plaintiffs' list of misrepresentations and misleading omissions is correct, the remaining undisputed facts would still show probable cause to detain plaintiffs for first-degree murder. Because plaintiffs cannot overcome the presumption of probable cause that arises after a judicial determination, we affirm summary judgment for the defendants.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

A. Factual History

In the evening of May 30, 2018, plaintiffs Tabatha Washington and Donte Howard, along with Washington's cousin Carlton White, all engaged in physical altercations with Kim Edmondson outside Washington's apartment in Chicago. When the conflict ended, Edmondson left the area and walked about half a mile north. There he encountered three of his friends, Anthony Beard, Khadijah Hill, and Larry Nelson, in a parking lot. Edmondson was shirtless and bleeding from his lip and chest. He told his friends that he had been jumped by two men and one or two women with a pole. He then walked behind a nearby dumpster to urinate. Soon after that, someone else told Beard, Hill, and Nelson that Edmondson had collapsed. They walked over and saw him behind the dumpster lying on his back, not breathing, with blood pooling around his head. They called 911 and flagged down nearby police officers, but first responders were unable to revive Edmondson. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The medical examiner later concluded that Edmondson died from blunt-force trauma to the back of the head.

Chicago Police Department detectives Vincent Alonzo, Adrian Garcia, and Demosthenes Balodimas arrived to investigate. The three parking-lot witnesses each told them of Edmondson's wounds to the chest and lip, and they told the detectives Edmondson's story about being beaten up by several of his neighbors. One of the parking-lot witnesses knew where Edmondson had lived and led detectives to the apartment building, about a half-mile away—the same building where Washington lived.

The detectives canvassed the building to see if anyone knew about an altercation with Edmondson. Detective Balodimas later said that, when he was standing outside Washington's apartment, he heard her say, "F*** that b**** he got what he deserved," and "he ain't gonna get my gun." Balodimas also said he heard White say, "You gotta protect, you gotta fight." Plaintiffs dispute all of these assertions. A detective knocked on the door of Washington's apartment and Washington, White, and Howard opened the door. Howard at first told the detectives they could not enter without a warrant. The detectives asked if everything was alright, and Washington told them "there was an altercation earlier, with some guy that had been evicted from this building." She also said, "He was trying to fight me."

Washington then allowed the detectives to enter her apartment. She and White spoke to detectives in one room while Howard and another friend, Cynthia Cage, sat on a couch nearby. White explained that there was an altercation with a man who had been evicted from the building who "kept coming around trying to fight," and White was defending himself. Washington added "he tried to hit me," saying she hit him to defend herself. Detective Garcia told the group that they needed to come to the police station to straighten everything out. Washington said that Cage had not been involved in the altercation and that Howard had just gotten there. Howard told detectives falsely that his name was Jeremiah Johnson and claimed that he had just arrived at the apartment.

The detectives handcuffed Washington and White, placed them in separate squad cars, and took them to the police station for further investigation. Once at the station and just after midnight on May 31, Detectives Garcia and Alonzo began separately interrogating Washington and White. During the various overnight interrogations, White and Washington recounted a variety of sometimes contradictory details about their encounter with Edmondson. The district court's order granting summary judgment provides a thorough account of their various explanations during these interrogations. Washington v. City of Chicago, No. 20-cv-442, 2022 WL 2905669 (N.D. Ill. July 22, 2022).

White told detectives that Edmondson had attacked him a week earlier and had left a cut on his face. White said the altercation earlier that evening started when Edmondson—clearly high on cocaine or other drugs—approached him and Cage and repeatedly called Cage a b****. When White tried to calm him down, Edmondson swung at him. White ducked the punch and hit Edmondson once. White eventually indicated that Washington came out from her apartment with a gray, non-wooden stick and hit Edmondson "probably three" times—in the chest, arm, and lip—telling him, "stop playing with my cousin."

After being told that Washington had identified a third man involved in the fight, White ultimately confirmed that the other man in the fight had been Howard, whom the detectives had spoken to in Washington's apartment but who had given the detectives a false name and falsely said he had just arrived there. White said that Howard was tussling in the street with Edmondson but that they were not really fighting. White repeatedly told detectives that neither Howard nor Edmondson landed a punch on the other and that Edmondson left after the fight with Howard. It was then, according to White, that Washington ran up and hit Edmondson with the little stick. According to White, Edmondson then said, "I'll be back," and walked away, and White thought it was over. White was adamant that no one ever hit Edmondson on the top of the head and that Edmondson had no head injury when he left the scene of the altercation.

In separate interrogations the same night, Washington at first denied having any negative history with Edmondson. She admitted to hitting Edmondson in the chest with a stick or a pole after he tried to hit her, and she said White had stepped in and begun to fight Edmondson. She also admitted that after she had tried to break up the fight between White and Edmondson, a third man had gotten involved, at first saying that she did not know his...