Plaintiff-appellant Angel Santos (“Santos”) appeals from a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Dominic J. Squatrito, Judge) granting summary judgment to defendants-appellees, five named Hartford police officers and other unidentified officers. Because we find that the sole piece of evidence proffered by Santos in opposition to defendants’ motion for summary judgment-an .affidavit by a non-party witness-would be inadmissible at trial for substantive purposes and did not show that the witness would testify in support of Santos’s case at trial, we affirm the district court’s determination that Santos failed to show that there was a genuine issue as to any material fact.
This case arose from the March 1994 murder of a seven-year-old girl, for which Santos was a suspect. On the day of the murder, the police questioned Santos and performed physical tests on him, but they did not place him under arrest. Later, on April 7, 1994, while investigating an unrelated robbery, the police arrested Ernesto Diaz Gonzalez, Santos’s step-uncle, on an outstanding, unrelated warrant. While in custody, Gonzalez provided the police with a sworn statement that implicated Santos in the murder. According to Gonzalez, Santos admitted to Gonzalez that he had killed the girl.
Based on Gonzalez’s sworn statement, defendants submitted an application for an arrest warrant. The warrant was granted, and Santos was arrested on April 26, 1994. He was held in jail throughout the criminal proceedings. At a probable cause hearing held after Santos’s arrest, Gonzalez again
Santos brought this action under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1988 alleging that defendants violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by knowingly submitting an arrest warrant application containing false statements and by arresting him without probable cause. During the course of discovery, defendants twice deposed Gonzalez, asking him about the circumstances surrounding the original police statement that led to Santos’s arrest. Santos’s counsel was present at both depositions and cross-examined Gonzalez on both occasions. At the first deposition, Gonzalez invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege and refused to testify about the events that gave rise to his first statement incriminating Santos. At the second deposition, however, Gonzalez testified that he had not been coerced by the officers but had falsely implicated Santos in order to secure favorable treatment in connection with the criminal charges against him.
The officers moved for summary judgment. Santos’s only evidence in opposition to the motion was the affidavit in which Gonzalez claimed he had been coerced into implicating Santos, showing, according to Santos, that Gonzalez might testify consistent "with the affidavit at trial. The district court granted the summary judgment motion, finding that the evidence was too “speculative” to raise genuine issues of material fact. Santos now appeals.
Our review of a district court’s grant of summary judgment is
de novo,
and we apply the same principles as are applied by the district courts.
Howley v. Town of Stratford,
Summary judgment is appropriate where “the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Once a party moving for summary judgment has made the requisite showing that there is no factual dispute, the nonmoving party bears the burden of presenting evidence to show that there is, indeed, a genuine issue for trial.
See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett,
In opposition to summary judgment, Santos relied exclusively upon the affidavit in which Gonzalez recanted the
Nor does the affidavit show that Gonzalez would testify in support of Santos’s case at trial. Defendants have affirmatively shown that Gonzalez is prepared to testify that he was not coerced, but rather incriminated Santos in order to gain favorable treatment from the police. Santos, on the other hand, provides nothing that would affirmatively indicate that Gonzalez is prepared to testify in a manner consistent with the affidavit. Absent such a showing, a nonmoving party’s claim cannot survive a motion for summary judgment.
See McMillian v. Johnson,
For the reasons set forth above, we affirm the district court’s grant of defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
