ALBERT WOODS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, OFFICER MAKOWSKI, Chicago Police Officer #16971, OFFICER ALANIS, Chicago Police Officer #5001, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 99-4069
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
Argued September 13, 2000--Decided DECEMBER 8, 2000
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 98 C 7092--Charles R. Norgle, Sr., Judge.
BAUER, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-Appellant Albert Woods appeals from the order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, granting summary judgment to defendants-appellees Makowski, Alanis, and the City of Chicago. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.
BACKGROUND
Albert Woods was arrested at his place of employment for misdemeanor assault. After the charges against him were dropped, Woods filed an action under
Woods filed a memorandum opposing the City‘s motion to dismiss, arguing that his complaint did not demonstrate that the officers had probable cause to arrest him. According to Woods, the complaint merely asserted that a citizen had walked into a Chicago police station on July 21, 1997 and stated that on July 18, 1997 he had been “verbally assaulted” by Woods. Woods noted that the complaint did not allege that this information was communicated to the arresting officers. Furthermore, he contended that even if the arresting officers had been aware of the citizen‘s complaint, it did not provide them with probable cause to arrest because “verbal assault” is not an offense under Illinois law.
The City and the individual defendants jointly filed a reply. Attached to the reply were various exhibits, including a copy of Flores’ verified misdemeanor complaint and a copy of the arresting officer‘s report of Woods’ arrest. The verified misdemeanor complaint (signed under oath by Flores) charged Woods with
[t]he above subject arrested for [a]ggravated assault. On 18 July 97 victim went to truck leasing company where offender is employed to gas up a leased truck. At that time offender got into a verbal arguement [sic] with victim and produced a lead pipe and told victim I‘m going to kill you. When offender started to approach victim, victim got into his truck and fled the scene. R/O‘s interviewed victim who signed complainats [sic], R/O‘s went to offender‘s place of employment, placed subject under arrest and advised subject of his rights which he stated he understood.
The arrest report was signed under the statement “I do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that the facts stated herein are accurate to the best of my knowledge.”
Woods moved to exclude these exhibits on grounds that such evidentiary material could not be considered during a motion to dismiss. He argued that the court could not consider the exhibits unless it first converted the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment under
Woods filed an amended complaint which restated his earlier claim that Flores claimed to have been “verbally assaulted” by Woods, and which explicitly stated that such a claim did not supply the officers with probable cause to arrest Woods. The amended complaint also reasserted that the officers violated Woods’ Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without a warrant for a misdemeanor offense not commited in their presence and not involving a breach of the peace pursuant to a municipal policy authorizing such arrests. Again, the defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that Flores’ complaint established probable cause.1 Woods opposed the defendants’ motion, again contending that even if the officers had been aware of Flores’ complaint (which his complaint did not allege), that complaint did not provide probable cause to arrest because “verbal assault” is not an offense under Illinois law, which defines assault as “conduct which places another in reasonable apprehension of receiving a battery.”
The court then converted the defendants’ motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment, noting that the defendants had attached “pertinent evidentiary material” to their reply to Woods’ memorandum in opposition to the motion to dismiss Woods’ original complaint. Addressing Woods’ claim that Flores had complained merely of a “verbal assault,” the court quoted the arrest report‘s account of Flores’ complaint, which stated that Woods had brandished a lead pipe during the altercation and which specifically referenced Illinois’ aggravated assault statute. The court stated that “the misdemeanor complaint, filed by Gabriel Flores, further indicates that Woods committed an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon while threatening to kill Flores,” and that “this evidence indicates that thearresting officers arrested Woods based on information that Woods committed an aggravated assault.” In ordering Woods to respond to the motion for summary judgment, the court admonished him to “pay particular attention” to
In Woods’ response, he argued that the arrest report and the misdemeanor complaint could not be considered on a motion for summary judgment because: (1) the defendants had not laid any foundation for their admission, (for example, they did not show the date or time of the alleged interview between Flores and the arresting officers in the arrest report); (2) they were unauthenticated; and (3) the police report did not fully and fairly set out the facts. In support of the latter argument, Woods attached a Chicago Police Case Report to his response, which he relied upon for its accuracy. The case report stated that “R/O interviewed the victim who related to R/O that . . . offender . . . grabbed lead pipe--told victim to get out of the truck and said ‘If I get fired over this, I‘m going to kill you.’ Victim left thinking offender overreacting. Today‘s date 21 Dec. ‘97 offender told two of victim‘s co-workers (Kenny and Mike) that he was going to ‘get’ victim because victim filed report. Victim given victim information sheet. R/O advised warrant.” Woods argued that the case report demonstrated that the police lacked probable cause to arrest him because it showed that Flores waited three days to report the incident and told the police that he left thinking Woods was “overreacting,” and because Flores’ account of the incident showed only that Woods had “verbally assaulted” Flores, not that he had placed Flores in reasonable apprehension of receiving а battery. Woods also noted that the police had no documentation showing that they investigated Flores’ complaint or made any effort to corroborate it (e.g. by speaking to Flores’ supervisor or to either of the two coworkers who allegedly heard Woods’ renewed threat to “get” Flores.) Woods asked the district court to vacate its order converting the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment, and in the alternative, to postpone ruling on the motion until Woods
In ruling on the summary judgment motion, the district court found that it could properly consider the police report and the misdemeanor complaint. Responding to Woods’ objection that the documents were not authenticated, the court held that the documents were “credible and trustworthy” because they were sworn to under oath by the officers and by Flores, and because they were business records kept by the police department. Additionally, the court found that Woods had admitted to the accuracy of the complaint and the arrest report by attaching and relying on the case report, which corroborated the account given by the complaint and the arrest report. The court also noted that it was examining the records “not for their truth, but for what the officers knew when they arrested Woods.”
Upon considering the exhibits, the court concluded that they showed that the officers had arrested Woods believing that he had threatened to kill Flores with a lead pipe, and that this alone established probable cause. In response to Woods’ discovery request, the court noted that it had given Woods the opportunity to show why it should not accept the information in the complaint and the arrest report as credible, and that he had failed to do so (indeed, he had even corroborated the documents by submitting the case report). Moreover, the court found that Woods had offered absolutely no evidence that the documents were “fraudulent, signed by mistake, or even inaccurate,” nor had he even denied that he had threatened to kill Flores while approaching him with a lead pipe. Under the circumstances, the court found that depositions would be a waste of time, and it granted summary judgment for the defendants without allowing Woods to depose Flores or the officers who signed the arrest report. This appeal followed.
DISCUSSION
I. Procedural Issues
Woods argues that, in deciding the
A district court may properly grant summary judgment when “the record shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Whetstine v. Gates Rubber Co., 895 F.2d 388, 391-92 (7th Cir. 1990) (citation omitted). The moving party has the burden of establishing the lack of such an issue. See id. at 392 (citing Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986)).
We review a district court‘s grant of summary judgment de novo, drawing all reasonable inferences from the record in the light most favorable to the nonmovant.
As a preliminary matter, we note that the court did nothing improper in converting the defendants’ motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment. Under
However, Woods argues that the district
A. Woods’ Hearsay Argument
Woods argues that the arrest report and the misdemeanor complaint contained inadmissible hearsay, and therefore could not properly be considered on a motion for summary judgment. The district court found that the information in these documents was credible and trustworthy under
While we agree fully with this principle of law, we find that it is not implicated in this case and is of no help to Woods. As the district court noted, the
B. Woods’ “affidavit” argument
Woods also argues that the district court should not have considered the arrest report and the misdemeanor complaint because they did not qualify as admissible “affidavits” under
Woods’ arguments are unpersuasive. First, while
The district court found the documents admissible as a business record under
Woods attached a Chicago Police Case Report to his response to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and he relied on thе case report for its accuracy both in his original response before the district court and in his
We find this reasoning persuasive and applicable to the facts of this case. By submitting the case report and relying on it, Woods has conceded that Flores made out a complaint against him to the Chicago Police, and that in that
Moreover, even were we to hold that the district court erred in considering the arrest report and misdemeanor complaint absent a certifying affidavit or some other traditional method of authentication, such an error would be harmless in this case. Rule 56(c) provides that summary judgment shall be granted if, among other documents, “[the] admissions on file . . . show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” An “admission” includes “anything which is in practical fact an admission” Cerqueira, 828 F.2d at 865 (citation omitted), including statements made in a brief presented to the district court, see United States v. One Heckler-Koch Rifle, 629 F.2d 1250, 1253 (7th Cir. 1980). Woods submitted the case report to the district court, and he relied on its account of the complaint that Flores gavе to the police in his response to the defendants’ summary judgment motion. As a practical matter, this amounted to an admission of the facts presented in the case report, and the district court was entitled to consider the facts admitted in ruling on the defendants’ summary judgment motion. By continuing to rely on the case report and subsequently failing to offer any evidence to rebut its account of Flores’ complaint, Woods left the district court free to grant summary judgment upon consideration of the facts admitted by Woods alone and without even considering the arrest report or the misdemeanor complaint. Thus, even if the latter documents were inadmissible and therefore not available for the district court‘s consideration, the court could still properly have granted summary judgment for the defendants. See In re Sunset Bay Assocs. v. Eureka Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass‘n, 944 F.2d 1503, 1513-14 (9th Cir. 1991) (holding that, once a party had admitted that the opposing party‘s unauthenticated exhibit contains truthful information, the court may consider the material in that exhibit because “an admission is, or course, admissible in evidence“). In his reply brief, Woods tries to avoid having some of the damaging information in the case report admitted against him (in рarticular, the case report‘s statement that the “R/O‘s interviewed the victim“) by asserting that the case report itself is unverified and lacks the “basic foundation predicates of date, time, place, and persons present.” However, while unauthenticated documents generally cannot be considered on a motion for summary judgment, a party who submits such a document without reservation cannot subsequently complain because the district court considered the contents of the document. See Walker v. Wayne County, Iowa, 850 F.2d 433, 435 (8th Cir. 1988).
C. Woods’ discovery request
Woods also argues that the district court “applied an erroneous legal standard” in refusing to permit him to depose Flores and the arresting officers before ruling on the defendants’ summary judgment motion. Citing Illinois State Employees Union v. Lewis, 473 F.2d 561 (7th Cir. 1973), Woods maintains that summary judgment should not be entered “until the party opposing the motion has had a fair opportunity to conduct such discovery as may be necessary to meet the factual basis for the motion.” See Celotex, 477 U.S. at 326. Woods contends that the district court erroneously denied him this opportunity, and that its “sua sponte” decision to enter summary judgment was unfair and premature. Woods’ аrgument is unconvincing.
A district court‘s decision to consider a defendant‘s motion for summary judgment before allowing the plaintiff to depose certain witness is a discovery matter which we review for abuse of discretion. Doty v. Illinois Central R.R. Co., 162 F.3d 460, 461 (7th Cir. 1998). Rule 56(f) authorizes a district court to refuse to grant a motion for summary judgment or to
Further, even if we were to waive Rule 56(f)‘s affidavit requirement in this case, we would still find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling on the motion before granting Woods leave to depose Flores and the arresting officers. Woods offered virtually nothing to demonstrate why the depositions that he sought were likely to generate any genuine issue of material
Indeed, under the circumstances of this case, we would most likely affirm even if the district court had converted the defendants’ motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment and granted the motion without giving Woods any
II. Fourth Amendment Issue
Woods argues that his warrantless arrest for misdemeanor assault was unconstitutional because the alleged assault did not involve a breach of the peace and did not occur in the presence of the arresting officers. Woods notes that the Supreme Court has recently stated that “[i]n determining whether a particular governmental action violates [the Fourth Amendment], we inquire first whether the action was regarded as an unlawful search or seizure under the common law when the Amendment was framed.” Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 299 (1999). The common law in existence at the time of the framing of the Fourth Amendment prohibited a peace officer from making a warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor unless the misdemeanor was committed in the presence of the arresting officer and involved a breach
The Supreme Court has never held that a police officer violates the Fourth Amendment merely by arresting someone without a warrant for a misdemeanor offense which did not occur in the officer‘s presence and/or did not involve a breach of the peace. Rather, when determining the constitutionality of a warrantless arrest for a criminal offense, the Court has repeatedly focused its inquiry on the existence of probable cause for the arrest. See, e.g., Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 111-12 (1975). While “the Court has expressed a preference for the use of arrest warrants when feasible,” Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 113, the Court has never elevated this judicial preference to a per se rule mandating warrants for all arrests irrespective of the existence of probable cause. See, e.g., Watson, 423 U.S. at 417 (stating that “‘such a requirement would constitute an intolerable handicap for legitimate law enforcement‘” (citation omitted)). Indeed, in Gerstein, the court noted that it “has never invalidated an arrest supported by probable cause solely because the officers failed to secure a warrant,” 420 U.S. at 113, and in the intervening years since Gerstein it has strayed from this principle only once, when it imposed a warrant requirement for arrests made in a suspect‘s home. See Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585-86, 589-90 (1980) (holding that, absent exigent circumstances, the Fourth Amendment prоhibits warrantless, nonconsensual entry into a suspect‘s home in order to make a felony arrest--notwithstanding the existence of probable cause to arrest). Moreover, in Payton the Court justified its departure from the
However, Woods argues that the historical analysis employed by the Court in Houghton changed the traditional Fourth Amendment inquiry and imposed a warrant requirement for all routine misdemeanor arrests unless the misdemeanor is committed in the presence of the arresting officer and involved a breach of the peace. Unfortunately for Woods, however, Houghton did not constitutionalize the common law rules regarding misdemeanor arrests, nor did it even address the reasonableness of an arrest under the Fourth Amendment. Houghton addressed the reasonableness of a search, not of a seizure of the person, and it held merely that “police officers
Moreover, in a case that was decided after both Hodari and Wilson, the Court strongly and unequivocally affirmed its traditional view that, absent certain extraordinary circumstances, a seizure is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when it is based upon probable cause regardless of the severity of the offense involved. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 817-18 (1996). In Whren, the Court held that a traffic stop of a motorist by plainclothes policemen in an unmarked car did not violate the Fourth Amendment where the officers had probable cause to believe that the motorist committed a traffic violation. The
In addition, while we have never decided whether the Fourth Amendment incorporates the common law “in the presence” rule for misdemeanor arrests,6 we have held that other aspects of the common law standards of misdemeanor arrests are not part of the Fourth Amendment‘s
Moreover, several of our sister circuits have squarely addressed Woods’ argument, and they have uniformly held or stated that the common law “in the presence” rule is not part of the Fourth Amendment. See Vargas-Badillo v. Diaz-Torres, 114 F.3d 3, 6 (1st Cir. 1997) (upholding a grant of summary judgment for defendant police officer on a sec. 1983 claim alleging illegal arrest, and stating that
Therefore, given the weight of Supreme Court authority on this issue, the overwhelming consensus of the circuits, and our similar holding in Ricci, we reject Woods’ invitation to constitutionalize the framing-era common law of misdemeanor arrests and to overturn any Illinois state or municipal laws which abrogate it.
However, while the Fourth Amendment does not require a warrant for a misdemeanor arrest like the one effected here, it does require that all warrantless arrests be “reasonable.” Payton, 445 U.S. at 585 (citations omitted). We have held that the “reasonableness of an arrest depends on the existence of two objective factors: First, did the arresting officers have probable cause to believe that the defendant had committed or was committing an offense. Second, was the arresting officer authorized by state and or municipal law to effect a custodial arrest for the particular offense.” Ricci, 116 F.3d at 290 (quoting United States v. Trigg, 878 F.2d 1037, 1041 (7th Cir. 1989)). Woods’ warrantless misdemeanor arrest was authorized by Illinois law, see
Probable cause has been defined as “facts and circumstances ‘sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [suspect] had committed or was committing an offense.‘” Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 111-12 (quoting Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964)); see United States v. Rucker, 138 F.3d 697, 700 (7th Cir. 1998). The rule of probable cause is a “practical, nontechnical conception” that affords the “best compromise” between the interests of individual liberty and effective law enforcement. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 231 (1983); Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 112 (citation omitted). Contrary to what its name might seem to suggest, probable cause “demands even less than ‘probability,‘” United States v. Moore, 215 F.3d 681, 685 (7th Cir. 2000) (quoting United States v. Burrell, 963 F.2d 976, 986 (7th Cir. 1992)); it “requires more than bare suspicion but need not be based on evidence sufficient to support a conviction, nor even a showing that the officer‘s belief is more likely true than false.” Id. at 686 (citation omitted).
Applying this standard, we have consistently held that an identification or a report from a single, credible victim or eyewitness can provide the basis for probable cause. See Tangwall v. Stuckey, 135 F.3d 510, 520 (7th Cir. 1998); Hebron, 18 F.3d at 422; Gramenos v. Jewel Cos., Inc., 797 F.2d 432, 439 (7th Cir. 1986) (holding that a police officer had probable сause to arrest an alleged shoplifter based upon the uncorroborated report of a single security guard, and stating that “[w]hen an officer has ‘received information from some person--normally the putative victim or eye witness--who it seems reasonable to believe is telling the truth,’ he has probable cause“) (citation omitted). In this case, the evidence showed that the arresting officers arrested Woods after Flores made out a criminal complaint against him, claiming that Woods had brandished a lead pipe and threatened to kill Flores. Woods has offered nothing to dispute the fact that the complaint was made, nor does he offer anything to challenge either the accuracy or the credibility of Flores’ description of the incident. Woods argues that the complaint as made by Flores, if true, establishes only that Woods had committed a “verbal assault,” which is not a crime under Illinois law; thus, Woods argues that Flores’ complaint did not give the arresting officers probable cause to believe that Woods “had committed an offense.” However, as Woods notes, a offender commits an assault under Illinois law whеn he engages in “conduct which places another in reasonable apprehension of receiving a battery”
Woods also asserts that there is no documentation showing that the officers attempted to corroborate Flores’ complaint in any way, for example by speaking with Flores’ supervisor, his coworkers, or the leasing company about his complaint. However, police officers have no constitutional obligation to conduct any further investigation before making an arrest if they have received information from a reasonably credible victim or eyewitness sufficient to supply probable cause. See Gramenos, 797 F.2d at 440. This is true even if sound police technique would have required such further investigation. See id.; see also Spiegel v. Cortese, 196 F.3d 717, 725 (7th Cir. 2000) (“‘[t]he inquiry is whether an officer has reasonable grounds on which to act, not whether it was reasonable to conduct further investigation.‘“) (citation omitted). Therefore, even if the police had relied exclusively on Flores’ complaint in making the arrest and had made no effort to investigate or corroborate Flores’ version of the events, they would have been justified in making the arrest provided that a reasonable officer would have found Flores’ complaint to be reasonably credible.
In an effort to call the credibility of Flores’ complaint into question, Woods notes that Flores made out the complaint three days after the alleged assault occurred. He also points to the case report, which, in reporting Flores’ description of the assault, states that Flores told the officers that he left the scene of the altercation thinking that Woods was “overreacting.” As we have already noted, however, the case report submitted by Woods indicated that Flores told the police that Woods had renewed his threats against Flores through two of Flores’ coworkers on the very day that Flores
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.