Jason Mucha v. Jutiki JacksonJason Mucha v. Jutiki Jackson
There is no evidence that the defendant in the present casе was remiss in failing to ask what was being smuggled. His responsibilities to the drug cartel, which had only to do with facilitating the transmission of money from the United States to Mexico, did not require him to know how the money had been obtained. Having no need or duty to know, he was not acting unnaturally in failing to inquire.
A major puzzle is the government‘s failure to charge the defendant with money laundering—as to which the government‘s case would have been a slam dunk and the defendant subject to a 20-year maximum sentence,
The conviction and sentence for participating in the conspiracy are reversed and the case remanded for a new trial on that charge. The conviction for conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business, not having been appealed, stands. At oral argument, however, the defendant‘s lawyer pointed out that the guidelines rаnge for that offense was higher than it would have been had his client not also been convicted of participating in a drug conspiracy. We therefore order the money-transmitting sentence vacated pending any further proceedings in the district court.
William Rettko, Attorney, Rettko Law Offices, Brookfield, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Joseph Michael Russell, Attorney, Von Briesen & Roper, S.C., Milwaukee, WI, for Defendants-Appellants.
Before POSNER and KANNE, Circuit Judges, and DARRAH, District Judge.*
The plaintiff charged two Milwaukee police officers (a captain and a lieutenant) with having detained him without a warrаnt or other justification, in violation of the Fourth Amendment as made applicable to state action by interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and in turn to acts of individual state officers by
The plaintiff was a Milwaukee police sergeant. In October 2012, having not reported to duty for seven months as a result of stress related to his police work, he was examined by a psychiatrist at the behest of the Milwaukee Employees’ Retirement System. The psychiatrist submitted his report of the examination to the Director of the Retirement System on November 5. On November 20 the Director forwarded a redacted version of the report to the Milwaukee Police Department (the reason for the delay is unexplained). The redacted version quoted the plaintiff as saying “I have had thoughts of suicide. I have had thoughts of suicide by cop. I don‘t want to kill myself.... I think of going to a command staff meeting with a rifle, shooting them until they shoot me.... I am not intending to do that..... I just can‘t go back [to work]. I can‘t take a chance of them trying to get me. It could have a real bad ending.... [I would] kill myself or them.” He added that he had “over ten guns,” including “twenty two rifles” (presumably he meant several .22 caliber rifles, not 22 rifles) as well as several pistols. The psychiatrist stated that “Jason Mucha is, in a not very veiled man-ner, threatening to shoot people in police
The police department received the report shortly before 5 p.m. on the 20th, and that evening the two defendant officers, accompanied by members of the police department‘s Tactical Enforcement Unit (another name for a SWAT team), drove to Mucha‘s home and interviewed him. He told them that he had “dreams” or “thoughts of suicide and hurting other people” but did not hаve “any intent on [sic] hurting himself or anyone else.” The officers decided to detain him (we don‘t know whether it was their own independent decision or they were acting under orders). They handcuffed him and drove him to the Milwaukee County Mental Health Facility, arriving аt 8:40 p.m. They signed a form which stated that Mucha “evidences behavior which constitutes a substantial probability of physical harm to self or to others,” the evidence consisting of “specific and recent dangerous acts, attempts, threats or оmissions by the subject as observed by me or reliably reported to me.” The treatment director at the facility stated that Mucha was being detained because he suffers from a mental illness called “Adjustment disorder with disturbance of conduct and mood” аnd that this diagnosis had led the director “to conclude [that Mucha] poses a threat of danger to self or others” and to recommend “that involuntary commitment be initiated to secure treatment for the subject.”
Mucha was released from the fаcility three days later—with what conditions, medications, and consequences we have not been told. Adjustment disorder—a reaction to stress—often is transient, although Mucha had been experiencing it for months. See generally Mayo Clinic, “Adjustment Disordеrs,” www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adjustment-disorders/basics/symptoms/con-20031704 (visited May 26, 2015). It is not argued that the defendant officers knew anything about adjustment disorder or were told about it when dispatched to Mucha‘s house on the strength of the psychiatrist‘s report.
The officers had not obtained an arrest warrant when they handcuffed Mucha and took him to the mental health facility, and we‘ll assume that they can be deemed to be responsible or at least partly responsible for his three-day detention in the facility. They rely for their defense of qualified immunity on Wisconsin‘s emergency detention statute,
A state law cannot preempt the Fourth Amendment, but it can establish a standard of conduct that is consistent with the amendment but particularized to a specific situation; for the amendment itself is extremely terse (only 54 words in lеngth).
Mucha argues that the defendant officers didn‘t have probable cause to believe that he was mentally ill and posed a
A police officer is not liable for damages caused by his official acts unless the unlawfulness of the acts is сlearly established in law. The district judge thought this test for liability satisfied by a variety of facts, or supposed facts. One true fact on which he relied was that the police department had received the redacted copy of the psychiatrist‘s report 15 days after the report had been written. The judge thought that this was not “recent” within the meaning of the statute, which requires that the police act on the basis of recent threats, attempts, and so forth. The statute does not define “recent,” hоwever, and if one thinks for a moment about how the word is used it becomes obvious that it is situation specific. If you say you had a headache recently you‘re probably referring to something that happened hours or at most days ago, but if you say that Senator Cruz recently announced that he is seeking the Republican nomination for President in 2016 you may be referring to an event that took place weeks or months earlier. We can assume that had Mucha told the psychiatrist that as a teenager he had dreamed of shooting people the dream would not have been recent enough to justify invoking the Wisconsin emergency detention statute. But the fact that he had told the psychiatrist a month before the police acted that he was currently thinking about suicide and homicide (and indeed about both conjoined) made the dangerous thoughts still “recent” on November 20—or at least it cannot be said that their not being recent was “clearly established.”
We also don‘t understand the judge‘s further determination that Mucha‘s acting “rationally” when the police interviewed him showed that all his bad thoughts had passed into history. As he did not want to be carted off to a mental health facility, he would not have wanted to tell the police what he had told the psychiatrist in what he may have believed to be confidence. Most people planning murder do not prate about it to the police.
The judge also thought that Mucha had never made “threats.” A person to whom you say “I am thinking of killing you but I haven‘t made up my mind yet” will feel threatened. Remember that the psychiatrist who examined him said that Mucha had been “threatening to shoot people” (our emphasis).
Of suicide by cop (as by pointing a gun at a police officer tо provoke him into shooting you in self-defense) we have had
We need not decide whether, in the absence of the state statute, the police would still have been deemed “reasonable” in their treatment of Mucha, which is the key term in the Fourth Amendment itself. But we imagine that they would have been.
The judgment is reversed with instructions to dismiss the two officer defendants from the case.