Derrick Hamilton (“Hamilton”) has sued City of Chicago police officers Lawrence Thezan (“Thezan”) and John Fitzsimmons (“Fitzsimmons”) under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (“Section 1983”), alleging the officers had deprived Hamilton of his liberty in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Both defendants have moved for summary judgment.
Facts
In the early morning hours of January 30, 1986
Enoch Ross (“Ross”) told Richter he had been waiting in the Granville el station at ground level when a black male approached him and threatened to take his gym shoes. Then a second black male approached, told the first man not to bother with a “brother” (Ross too was black) and said they should find a white guy. Two more black males then entered the station and all four went upstairs to the platform. Ross heard a gunshot, then saw all four run downstairs and out of the station. On his way out the second man told Ross to get out, then dropped a gun, picked it up and left. Ross went up to the el platform and saw Guardipee lying there.
Gary Simmerling (“Simmerling”) told Richter he had been outside the Granville el station when he heard a gunshot. He looked into the station and saw four black males, one of whom picked up a gun, running out of the station.
Simmerling recognized the one with the gun as a member of the Black Gangster Disciples street gang. Based on that information, Simmerling and later Ross were shown photographs of members of that gang. Each identified a photograph of “Reggie Theus” (whose real name was Kelsey Bell) as the man with the gun. However, when Bell was placed in a lineup on January 31, neither witness could make an identification.
On the evening of January 31 an unexpected breakthrough in the Guardipee case came when Jerry Graham (“Graham”) was arrested on unrelated charges. Graham, possibly to help his own cause, volunteered information to the police about events of the preceding day. According to Graham, at 3:30 a.m. January 30 he had been in the apartment of his girl friend Vickie Ruffetti (“Ruffetti”) when a loud knock on the back door broke a pane of glass.
Based on Graham’s information and identification, the police located and arrested Williams (at Ruffetti’s apartment) and Hamilton the morning of February 1. Williams and Hamilton were brought to the Area 6 Violent Crimes Office, where Ross and Simmerling identified both as being at the scene of the crime. Ross identified
Ruffetti was interviewed by Richter and confirmed Graham’s story as to the events in her apartment on the morning of January 30. Hamilton, however, told Richter he was at home with his mother at the time of the crime. Mrs. Hamilton would not confirm that story, at least not on February 1.
Based on Richter’s interviews and on his own personal interviews with Ross, Sim-merling, Graham, Williams and Hamilton, Assistant State’s Attorney (“ASA”) Roberts (“Roberts”) approved murder charges against Williams and Hamilton on February 1. That evening Williams and Hamilton went before a judge on probable cause and bond hearings. Those hearings resulted in findings of probable cause and the setting of a bond ($2 million) that neither suspect could post. Both were taken to Cook County Jail.
On February 7 Anthony Benjamin (“Benjamin”) and his brother William came voluntarily to the police station because they knew they were being sought by the police for questioning about the Guardipee murder. At 7 p.m. defendants entered the picture when they conducted a lineup during which Ross identified Benjamin as the one who threatened to take his gym shoes in the el station. Defendants then arrested Benjamin on murder charges. During the ensuing interview they told Benjamin he had been identified in the lineup. They say Benjamin refused to talk to them and no physical beating or coercion took place. Hamilton claims, though, that Benjamin was physically abused by defendants, re-suiting in a coerced statement implicating Hamilton.
Either way, ASA Mottweiler (“Mottweiler”) then interviewed Benjamin outside defendants’ presence. Benjamin gave a written statement to Mottweiler, who then approved murder charges against Benjamin. Some time later Benjamin also spoke with Richter. Both Richter and Mottweiler swear Benjamin mentioned nothing about a beating, and Richter did not remember seeing any evidence of such beating (not that he performed any physical examination of Benjamin).
On February 24 Ross and Graham testified before a grand jury on a “John Doe” murder investigation (that is, no indictment was then sought). Later that day Richter testified before the same grand jury on the murder investigation specifically directed against Williams, Hamilton and Benjamin. Richter testified as to Benjamin’s statement implicating all three and as to Ross’ identification of Hamilton. At that point the grand jury returned a true bill indicting Hamilton and the others.
Some 20 months later (on October 13, 1987) Benjamin recanted his testimony implicating Hamilton (and Williams). Six days later he testified to the grand jury that Calvin Binion had pulled the trigger. At that point the charges against Hamilton were dropped, and he was released nearly 21 months after his initial incarceration.
Contentions of the Parties
Hamilton charges defendants’ unlawful conduct (the asserted coercion of Benjamin) deprived Hamilton of his liberty in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment (Complaint
Defendants’ summary judgment motion rests on several grounds:
1. Hamilton has no standing to assert the claimed constitutional violation.
2. Defendants’ conduct did not cause any injury to Hamilton because:
(a) Probable cause for his arrest existed on February 1.
(b) No coerced confession was used at any trial.
(c) Hamilton would have been indicted without the Benjamin statement.
3. Even if defendants did cause Hamilton’s injury:
(a) Richter’s testimony was a superseding cause.
(b) It was not foreseeable that Hamilton would be injured as a result of defendants’ alleged coercion of Benjamin.
4. Defendants did not coerce Benjamin, nor were they involved in any statement taken from Benjamin.
5. Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.
Though any one of those grounds, if successful, might be potentially dispositive here, all will be discussed in turn.
Standing
Defendants first contend (Mem. 14-17) Hamilton had no standing to assert a violation of Benjamin’s Fourth Amendment rights (the allegedly coerced confession). But that is myopic, for what Hamilton complains of is his own Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, breached by what he says was an unlawfully procured indictment. Defendants are fortunate that all their contentions are not similarly flawed.
Causation
Defendants’ several arguments as to causation fall into two basic categories:
1. Benjamin’s coerced confession was not a “cause in fact” of Hamilton’s injury-
2. Even if such a but-for causal relationship did exist, the coerced confession was not a “proximate cause” of the injury-
Defendants may be on doubtful paper on the first proposition, but they are right on the second.
1. Cause in Fact
Jones v. City of Chicago,
It is also true, as a matter of elementary principles of legal causation that are as applicable to constitutional torts as to common law torts, ... that if [plaintiff] would have been [injured] even if the defendants had behaved properly, then they did not cause his injury and are riot liable.
That same causation requirement was put succinctly in Carey v. Piphus,
[T]he basic purpose of a § 1983 damages award should be to compensate persons*224 for injuries caused by the deprivation of constitutional rights.8
Defendants seek to make much of the fact that Hamilton was held in custody after a judicial probable cause hearing February 1 — before defendants even entered the picture. But that sequence, which of course negates any causal relationship between defendants’ allegedly unconstitutional conduct and Hamilton’s initial confinement, does not bear on Hamilton’s many months in custody after the assertedly tainted indictment.
Under the 1970 Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const, art. I, § 7, as implemented by Ill. Rev.Stat. ch. 38, ¶ 111-2) there are alternate routes to criminal felony prosecutions: either the time-honored grand jury indictment or a probable cause hearing followed by the filing of an information. That means Hamilton could have been charged with murder after his February 1 probable cause hearing, and hence kept in custody for the same extended 21-month period, entirely without defendants’ interposition in his proceedings.
But that was not the route chosen by the prosecutors. Instead they presented the matter to the grand jury for its decision — a prosecutorial choice the State’s Attorney’s office was free to make with or without a prior affirmative judicial finding of probable cause (see People v. Creque,
Nor — at least at the summary judgment stage — can it be said there is no factual issue as to the causal relationship between Benjamin’s statement inculpating Hamilton (a statement that for the moment is assumed to have been extorted by defendants’ unconstitutional conduct) and the grand jury’s decision to indict Hamilton. It is certainly true that the grand jury heard enough to support a probable cause finding, as measured by the judge’s earlier determination to the same effect.
Before this opinion turns to the next topic, it is worth taking note of a related argument defendants might perhaps have made but did not. Another portion of the record tendered on the current motion reflects that Hamilton was also charged with another separate offense — an armed robbery that occurred on December 9, 1985 (Murphy Dep. Ex. 7, at 9). When he was released on the Guardipee murder charge, Hamilton pleaded guilty to the armed robbery and the judge imposed an 18-month probation sentence after giving “credit for the 21 months that you have been in custody awaiting trial on this [armed robbery] charge and the other [murder] charge that has just been dismissed” (id. at 7-8). If in fact Hamilton was validly in custody on the armed robbery charge, there might truly
In any event, defendants cannot prevail as a matter of law on the notion that no causation in fact connected defendants’ alleged conduct to Hamilton’s lingering in durance vile. It is necessary to continue the analysis.
2. Proximate Cause
Defendants also urge that even if their conduct was arguably a contributing cause to Hamilton’s injury, there were superseding causes that cut off liability. Benjamin’s assertedly coerced confession was never presented to the grand jury. Instead Richter testified to the grand jury about a later conversation he had with Benjamin.
There is no evidence, even with the required pro-Hamilton inferences, to indicate Richter knew of the alleged coercion. Richter did not mention the Benjamin conversation until he talked to ASA Roberts before the indictment — and it will be recalled Roberts had approved the bringing of the murder charge against Hamilton on February 1, before Benjamin entered the picture at all. Nothing in the record presented to this Court supports a reasonable inference that Roberts knew of any coercion or that the asserted coercion played a role in determining which evidence would go before the grand jury.
More importantly, an integral component of Hamilton’s claim is the contention (Complaint ¶ 11) that defendants’ motive in abusing Benjamin was to coerce him into implicating Hamilton in the murder — that they knew the existing evidence was insufficient to obtain a grand jury indictment against Hamilton (id. ¶ 13) and knew Benjamin’s statement was needed for that purpose (id. ¶ 14). But each defendant swears that is not so, that he had no knowledge of that sort at all. There is not a shred of evidence to contravene that perfectly plausible testimony, so Celotex,
Duncan v. Nelson,
Hamilton contends Duncan has been essentially overrüled by this pronouncement in Jones,
[A] prosecutor’s decision to charge, a grand jury’s decision to indict, a prosecutor’s decision not to drop charges but to proceed to trial — none of these decisions will shield a police officer who deliberately supplied misleading information that influenced the decision.
Jones, id. at 993 (quoting Monroe v. Pape,
But what is significant for this case is not whether the result in Duncan would or would not survive Jones. Instead the critical factor is that both those cases condition Section 1983 liability on the fundamental tort concept of foreseeability. Here there is no evidence to show (or that reasonably implies) that defendants anticipated Benjamin would finger Hamilton, or they knew there was information lacking to obtain a grand jury indictment against Hamilton, or they knew Benjamin had a conversation with Richter, or théy knew Richter told Roberts about the conversation with Hamilton, or they knew Roberts had Richter present that conversation to the grand jury — or that they reasonably should have foreseen any of those matters. Nor is there the slightest hint as to why Thezan and Fitzsimmons — officers new to the murder investigation and to whom Hamilton was a total stranger, if they knew of his existence at all — would undertake to torture Benjamin to obtain a statement inculpating Hamilton.
No, even accepting (as this opinion does arguendo) the notion that defendants abused Benjamin, the reasonably foreseeable product of that coercion was a self-incriminatory confession to defendants and to the ASAs to whom Benjamin later spoke —Richter and Mottweiler. Hamilton’s script of unconstitutional conduct in which he was the target is fanciful, not at all to be inferred reasonably from any evidence placed before this Court. And Rule 56(e) renders Hamilton’s Complaint allegations wholly sterile and empty for that purpose.
In sum, Hamilton has not met his burden of showing a material factual issue that it was foreseeable to defendants that their assumed conduct would result in a tainted grand jury indictment against Hamilton. That being so, Jones as well as Duncan teach that Hamilton has failed on the “proximate cause” element necessary to impose Section 1983 liability on defendants.
Coercion
As stated earlier, defendants stoutly deny any misconduct as to Benjamin. That, if true, would necessarily destroy the entire underpinning of Hamilton’s claim here. But as n. 5 reflects, for current purposes only this Court must accept Hamilton’s contrary version of events.
Qualified Immunity
Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity if “their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known” (Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
Recognizing that the operation of this [.Harlow ] standard “depends substantially upon the level of generality at which the relevant ‘legal rule’ is to be identified,” [Anderson v. Creighton,483 U.S. 635 ,107 S.Ct. 3034 ], 3038,97 L.Ed.2d 523 [ (1987) ], the Anderson Court held:
The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. That is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, ... but it is to say that in light of the preexisting law the unlawfulness must be apparent.
Id.107 S.Ct. at 3039 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
Hamilton asserts the obvious: Torturing violates a clearly established constitutional right (Hensley v. Carey,
That question plainly gets a negative answer. What must be looked at for that purpose is the state of the law in 1986 on the type of claim now advanced by Hamilton. For that purpose the analysis will
What that scenario highlights is that the impact of defendants’ allegedly unconstitutional conduct would visit itself on Hamilton only with the presentation to the grand jury — with the tainted testimony of Richter. In terms of the state of the law in 1986, that brings into play Briscoe v. LaHue,
That holding, if extended to grand jury testimony, would of course immunize Richter. And the same principle has been held to extend to police officers who conspired to bring perjured testimony of other police officers into a trial (Williams v. Tansey,
It is true that Briscoe left an open question as to whether the immunity would apply to false testimony given at a probable cause hearing (
Defendants’ conduct thus did not violate any clearly established constitutional right of Hamilton. They are entitled to qualified immunity.
Conclusion
Even when the unsupported claim of defendants’ mistreatment of Benjamin is accepted as true to enable a decision on the current motion, there is no genuine issue of material fact as to other essential elements of Hamilton’s claim. As a matter of law:
1. Hamilton has failed to show the necessary proximate cause on his Section 1983 claims against defendants.
2. Defendants also possess qualified immunity against Hamilton’s claims.
Defendants are therefore entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. This action is dismissed with prejudice.
Notes
. Because Hamilton ascribes identical conduct to Thezan and Fitzsimmons, they will simply be grouped as "defendants” throughout this opinion.
. Familiar Rule 56 principles impose on the movant the burden of establishing the lack of a genuine issue of material fact (Celotex Corp. v. Catrett,
. All further dates also refer to 1986 unless otherwise noted.
. When the police later visited Ruffetti’s apartment, they found a broken window pane in the back door.
. Assertedly defendants handcuffed Benjamin’s hands and feet and hung him on the back of a door by his handcuffed ankles (Complaint ¶ 10). Each of Thezan and Fitzsimmons has submitted an affidavit specifically denying any striking or other coercion of Benjamin. Hamilton supports his claim only by pointing to a hearsay allegation in Benjamin’s motion to suppress his confession (at his criminal trial). Because that and the Complaint allegations are not admissible evidence here, Rule 56(e) would ordinarily doom Hamilton's claim (see Celotex,
. Complaint ¶23 alleges defendants’ conduct caused Hamilton to be wrongfully arrested. That of course is inherently absurd, for Hamilton was arrested a week before defendants’ alleged wrongful conductl However, Complaint If 24 alleges:
That defendants beat and tortured Anthony Benjamin to obtain the statement mentioned in paragraph 11 to create a false impression for the grand jury that there was probable cause to indict the plaintiff for murder.
No other claimed constitutional violation is ascribed to defendants, and the parties’ memoran-da and this opinion have proceeded on that premise.
. As with the asserted coercion-produced Benjamin statements, Hamilton offers no admissible evidence on this score. Once again the assumption as to the former (see n. 5) has to carry with it an assumption as to the truth of the latter.
. [Footnote by this Court] That principle is not at all vitiated by Carey's holding (id. at 266-67,
. Both Graham and Ross told their stories to the grand jury, Ross implicating Hamilton by eyewitness testimony buttressed by his later lineup identification and Graham recounting Williams’ statement (“We just popped [shot] a person on the el”) when he and Hamilton arrived in the wee morning hours right after the killing. Richter also recounted the Ross story to the grand jury, as well as telling it about Benjamin’s confession naming Hamilton too.
. That applies a fortiori to an even more speculative possibility: that the statement by the sentencing judge on the armed robbery charge suggests Hamilton may have suffered no injury because the sentence he would have received for that offense was reduced by the time he spent in jail on the invalid murder charge.
. Oddly enough, Hamilton’s counsel devote themselves in part to questioning whether Benjamin really confessed orally to Richter at all, a point they advert to several times (Mem. 3, 4 & n. 1, 13 n. 1). Yet if Benjamin did not do so — if Richter lied to the grand jury and if it then returned an indictment on the strength of that lie — Hamilton would seem to have taken defendants out of the causation chain entirely by replacing them with Richter. This opinion does not proceed on that premise, however.
. That obviates any need to parse Jones to see whether it would call for the imposition of Section 1983 liability on defendants vis-a-vis Hamilton.