Cook v. Hill

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
February 27, 2006
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
LEWIS AARON COOK,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 05-5061
(D.C. No. 04-CV-412-K)
ANTONIA R. HILL, Tulsa Police (N.D. Okla.)
Officer; DAVID MOSS CRIMINAL
JUSTICE CENTER, Sued as:
David L. Moss C.C.A.,
Defendants-Appellees.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before HENRY, McKAY, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of
this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is
therefore ordered submitted without oral argument.
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
Plaintiff-appellant Lewis Aaron Cook, appearing pro se, appeals from a
judgment granted in favor of defendants Officer Antonia Hill and the David Moss
Criminal Justice Center (hereinafter “C.C.A.”). Mr. Cook’s suit alleges violation
of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He claims that Officer Hill unlawfully searched and arrested
him, illegally towed his car, and then lied about where she found the evidence
used to incriminate and prosecute him. He asserts that defendant C.C.A. illegally
confined him because he was innocent of the charges. Our jurisdiction arises
under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm in part and reverse in part.
I.
Mr. Cook was arrested in a motel room in August 2000 after police
received a call about a disturbance. An alleged eyewitness stated that Mr. Cook
and a minor female were selling and smoking crack cocaine in Mr. Cook’s motel
room. Officer Hill and another officer knocked on Mr. Cook’s door and,
according to Officer Hill’s arrest report and trial testimony, obtained his consent
to search the room. Officer Hill reported that she found a glass pipe and other
items commonly used to smoke crack cocaine in plain view. She arrested
Mr. Cook and had his car towed away at the request of the motel manager.
Mr. Cook was confined at C.C.A. pending trial on a charge of possession of
drug paraphernalia.
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The state trial court apparently rejected Mr. Cook’s pre-trial contentions
that the evidence against him was illegally obtained without a warrant and without
consent. 1 After a jury trial, Mr. Cook was convicted and sentenced to one year in
prison. His sentence has been served. According to the district court, the
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals specifically rejected Mr. Cook’s contention
on direct appeal that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he possessed drug
paraphernalia. But the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Mr. Cook’s conviction
after concluding that the trial court had improperly denied Mr. Cook the right to
represent himself in his criminal proceedings. Apparently because he had already
served the sentence, the State ultimately dismissed the criminal case in 2004
instead of conducting a new trial.
Mr. Cook filed the instant suit in federal court in 2004, alleging violation
of his constitutional rights. Adopting and affirming the magistrate judge’s report
and recommendations, the district court granted defendant C.C.A.’s motion for
summary judgment. The court held that Mr. Hill did not allege any facts in his
complaint or other pleadings indicating that C.C.A.’s actions, policies,
procedures, or customs violated his rights.
1
We do not know whether these rulings were challenged in Mr. Cook’s
direct appeal because the criminal proceedings are not part of the record in this
case.
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The district court also dismissed Mr. Cook’s claims against Officer Hill for
illegal arrest and search and for illegal seizure and towing of his car, holding they
were barred by a two-year statute of limitations. Mr. Cook does not challenge
these rulings on appeal.
The district court granted summary judgment to Officer Hill on Mr. Cook’s
remaining claim that Officer Hill purposefully lied in order to establish probable
cause for his arrest and prosecution. The district court concluded that Mr. Cook
failed to “come forward with any facts to support his claim that Officer Hill
knowingly supplied false information which lead to the filing of false charges
against him.” R. Doc. 30 at 10.
II.
Mr. Cook initially raises three issues in his appellate brief: whether the
district court treated him unfairly by (1) “staying” the proceedings; (2) denying
his request for an expedited hearing; and (3) refusing to consider the notarized
statement of a witness to the conduct charged in his state criminal proceedings.
Aplt. Br. at 1. But he did not brief or further discuss either of the first two issues,
so they are deemed waived. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(5), (9) (requiring that
appellate brief contain a statement of the issues presented for review as well as an
argument containing “the appellant’s contentions and the reasons for them, with
citations to the authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies”);
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Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 679 (10th Cir. 1998) (“[a]rguments
inadequately briefed in the opening brief are waived”); Wilburn v. Mid-South
Health Dev., Inc., 343 F.3d 1274, 1281 (10th Cir. 2003) (“We . . . will not
consider issues that are raised on appeal but not adequately addressed.”).
In the body of Mr. Cook’s appellate brief, he asserts that the district court
erred in granting both defendants’ motions for summary judgment.
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo,
applying the same legal standard used by the district court. Summary
judgment is appropriate “if 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 and
that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.”
Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). When applying this standard, we view the
evidence and draw reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most
favorable to the nonmoving party.
Simms v. Okla. ex rel. Dep’t of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Servs.,
165 F.3d 1321, 1326 (10th Cir. 1999) (citation omitted).
A. C.C.A.
Mr. Cook alleges error in granting judgment in favor of C.C.A. solely on
his assertion that C.C.A. illegally confined him. See Aplt. Br. at 12-13. A review
of the record shows that Mr. Cook has made allegations of “fact” in his appellate
brief that were never made in any pleadings before the district court. For
example, he now claims that he made bail on the possession of drug paraphernalia
charge, but that C.C.A. illegally continued holding him on charges that were
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never filed. Because Mr. Cook did not make this claim before the district court,
we will not consider it here. See Parker v. Scott, 394 F.3d 1302, 1307 (10th Cir.
2005). Further, Mr. Cook does not address any alleged error in the district court’s
legal reasoning for granting summary judgment to C.C.A. We therefore affirm
the district court’s judgment in favor of C.C.A.
B. Officer Hill
Mr. Cook next asserts that the district court erred by granting Officer Hill’s
motion for summary judgment on the issue of qualified immunity.
Under the framework enunciated by the Supreme Court in Saucier v.
Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L. Ed. 2d 272 (2001),
courts are to conduct two distinct inquiries when encountering a
defense of qualified immunity. First, the court must determine
whether the facts, as pled by the plaintiff, set forth a constitutional
violation. Id. Second, assuming that a violation has been properly
alleged, the court is to determine whether such violation was clearly
established as of the time of the conduct. Id.Pierce v. Gilchrist, 359 F.3d 1279, 1284 (10th Cir. 2004).
Mr. Cook complains that Officer Hill forced her way into his hotel room,
illegally searched it and “found nothing,” then unlawfully arrested him and filed
false charges against him. Aplt. Br. at 13. In his complaint, Mr. Cook also
asserted that Officer Hill lied about finding the crack pipe in his motel room,
insisting that she took it from the alleged eyewitness who was at the scene.
R. Doc. 1 at 6.
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In her motions to dismiss and for summary judgment and in her appellate
brief, Officer Hill did not address Mr. Cook’s allegations that she lied about
where she obtained the crack pipe. 2 She addressed only probable cause for
Mr. Cook’s arrest and search, raising only the undisputed facts that police were
called to investigate a disturbance and that the alleged eyewitness claimed
Mr. Cook was engaged in criminal activity. Thus, Mr. Cook’s claims based upon
his assertion that Officer Hill lied about where she found the crack pipe were
never properly before the district court on summary judgment.
While the facts Officer Hill did address may have been enough to give
Officer Hill reasonable suspicion to investigate and probable cause to search
Mr. Cook’s motel room, they are not sufficient to establish probable cause for his
arrest and prosecution on a possession-of-drug-paraphernalia charge. That charge
rested solely on Officer Hill’s testimony about where she found the crack pipe.
As mentioned above, the magistrate judge stated that Mr. Cook had not
come forward with any facts to support his claim that Officer Hill knowingly
supplied false information that led to the filing of false charges against him. The
2
Officer Hill apparently never filed an answer to Mr. Cook’s complaint.
Instead, Officer Hill filed a motion to dismiss by the answer deadline. Almost six
months later, she filed a motion for summary judgment. The magistrate judge did
not file his report and recommendations on the motions until a week before the
trial was originally set to commence. The district court reset the trial date the
same day the report was filed.
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magistrate judge discussed only Mr. Cook’s claims that Officer Hill lied about the
age of the female, Ms. Overstreet, who was in Mr. Cook’s motel room at the time
of Mr. Cook’s arrest. 3 See R. Doc. 30 at 9.
In his objections to the magistrate judge’s report, Mr. Cook supported
his assertions in his complaint with Ms. Overstreet’s affidavit. 4 There,
Ms. Overstreet swore that she and Mr. Cook had cleaned the room before they
went to bed, that there was no drug paraphernalia in the room, and that Officer
Hill refused to show Mr. Cook the crack pipe that Officer Hill claimed she found
during her search of his motel room. R. Doc. 33 at 6-8. The district court, in
conducting its de novo review, did not discuss these allegations.
Although the magistrate judge couched Mr. Cook’s claims against Officer
Hill as a “filing of false charges/malicious prosecution” claim, R. Doc. 30 at 9,
we have clarified that a complaint alleging that an officer knowingly gave false
information in order to obtain an arrest and conviction independently states a
3
We agree with the district court that Ms. Overstreet’s age is irrelevant to
the charge on which Mr. Cook was arrested and prosecuted.
4
The affidavit was timely submitted to the district court because Officer
Hill’s summary judgment motion did not indicate that Officer Hill challenged
Mr. Cook’s allegations regarding where Officer Hill found the crack pipe.
Therefore, Mr. Cook had no notice that the magistrate judge would recommend
granting summary judgment in favor of Officer Hill without discussing all of the
allegations in Mr. Cook’s complaint. Given Officer Hill’s failure to challenge the
claims, perhaps it is not surprising that neither the magistrate judge nor the
district court discussed them in their respective orders.
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Fourth Amendment violation, Pierce, 359 F.3d at 1296 (“it is a violation of the
Fourth Amendment . . . for an arrest warrant affiant to include false statements in
the affidavit”), as well as a violation of the Due Process Clause, id. at 1299(“a defendant’s due process rights are implicated when the state knowingly uses
false testimony to obtain a conviction”). We noted that “the prohibition on
falsification or omission of evidence, knowingly or with reckless disregard for the
truth, was firmly established as of 1986, in the context of information supplied to
support a warrant for arrest.” Id. at 1298. Thus, an officer who has engaged in
such behavior is not entitled to qualified immunity. See Robinson v. Maruffi,
895 F.2d 649, 655-56 (10th Cir. 1990) (noting that if a police officer purposefully
misrepresents material facts to prosecuting attorney, the officer is not insulated by
the prosecutor’s subsequent actions).
Further, an initial finding of probable cause at the trial-court level is not
conclusive. See Pierce, 359 F.3d at 1295-96; cf. Danner v. Dillard Dep’t Stores,
Inc., 949 P.2d 680, 683 (Okla. 1997) (holding that, because the plaintiffs had
shown in their criminal trial that false testimony supported the probable cause
determination, the “false testimony should not provide the basis for both a
determination of probable cause for an arrest and preclusion of relitigation of that
issue in a civil suit”); Ames v. Strain, 301 P.2d 641, 643-44 (Okla. 1956)
(recognizing that question of probable cause resolved by magistrate at preliminary
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hearing precludes civil prosecution for false arrest except when the arresting
officer “is shown to have presented the facts to the justice dishonestly, or to
have . . . acted without probable cause”) (quotation marks and italics omitted).
If, as Mr. Cook claims, Officer Hill lied about where she obtained the crack
pipe, Mr. Cook could establish a constitutional violation and Officer Hill would
not be entitled to qualified immunity. Cf. Pierce, 359 F.3d at 1296-98. Because
the district court did not discuss all of Mr. Cook’s allegations that present a
genuine issue of material fact on the issue of probable cause for his prosecution,
and Officer Hill did not provide the complete record of the criminal proceedings
to the district court, we conclude that the district court erred in granting summary
judgment to Officer Hill. See Simms, 165 F.3d at 1326; Salazar v. City of Okla.
City, 976 P.2d 1056, 1062 (Okla. 1999) (noting that failure to submit the entire
judgment roll from the previous litigation to the court in the subsequent civil case
“is fatal to [an] issue-preclusion defense” on summary judgment).
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The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED
in part and REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this order
and judgment.
Entered for the Court
Michael R. Murphy
Circuit Judge
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