Jones v. United States

Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 1 Filed: 02/16/2022
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
DEBRA JONES, AS PERSONAL
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF TODD R.
MURRAY, DECEASED, FOR AND ON BEHALF OF
THE HEIRS OF TODD R. MURRAY, ARDEN C.
POST, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS THE NATURAL
PARENTS OF TODD R. MURRAY,
Plaintiffs-Appellants
UTE INDIAN TRIBE OF THE UINTAH AND OURAY
RESERVATION,
Plaintiff
v.
UNITED STATES,
Defendant-Appellee
______________________
2020-2182
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims
in No. 1:13-cv-00227-RAH, Judge Richard A. Hertling.
______________________
Decided: February 16, 2022
______________________
JEFFREY S. RASMUSSEN, Patterson Earnhart Real Bird
& Wilson LLP, Louisville, CO, argued for plaintiffs-
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2 JONES v. US
appellants. Also represented by FRANCES C. BASSETT.
THEKLA HANSEN-YOUNG, Environment and Natural
Resources Division, United States Department of Justice,
Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee. Also rep-
resented by JEAN E. WILLIAMS.
______________________
Before NEWMAN, O’MALLEY, and TARANTO, Circuit Judges.
O’MALLEY, Circuit Judge.
Debra Jones and Arden C. Post (collectively “Mr. Mur-
ray’s parents”) appeal from a final judgment in favor of the
United States in Jones v. United States, 149 Fed. Cl. 335(Fed. Cl. 2020) (“Issue Preclusion Order”) and from an order
sanctioning the United States for spoliating a handgun and
finding that the federal government did not spoliate other
evidence in Jones v. United States, 146 Fed. Cl. 726(Fed. Cl. 2020) (“Spoliation Order”). We hold that the
Court of Federal Claims (“Claims Court”) applied the
wrong standard in its spoliation opinion when it found that
the government did not have a duty to preserve any alleg-
edly spoliated evidence other than the Hi-Point .380 hand-
gun. 1 We also conclude that the Claims Court abused its
discretion in issuing an ineffective sanction for the govern-
ment’s spoliation of the handgun. We further find that the
Claims Court erred in finding that the spoliation of the
handgun did not change the evidentiary landscape of this
case as compared to a related previously litigated case be-
fore the District Court for the District of Utah. That erro-
neous finding led the Claims Court to incorrectly find that
the doctrine of issue preclusion barred Mr. Murray’s
1 The United States does not cross-appeal the Claims
Court’s finding that the United States spoliated the Hi-
Point .380 handgun and we do not disturb that finding.
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JONES v. US 3
parents from relitigating issues critical to their claims. We
reverse-in-part, vacate-in-part, and remand.
I. BACKGROUND
This is the second time this case has come before this
court. The background of this case is described in our prior
opinion, Jones v. United States (Jones II), 846 F.3d 1343(Fed. Cir. 2017). We briefly summarize the pertinent back-
ground here.
On April 1, 2007, Todd Murray, a member of the Ute
Indian Tribe, was shot to death. The circumstances of his
death are in dispute. Mr. Murray’s parents contend that
he was shot by an off-duty police officer employed by the
Vernal City Police Department, Vance Norton. Officer
Norton contends that Mr. Murray shot himself. Mr. Mur-
ray’s parents argue that the United States’ spoliation of ev-
idence makes it impossible to determine which party is
correct.
Officer Norton was driving his personal vehicle outside
of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation2 (“Reservation”)
when he saw a Utah State Trooper in pursuit of a vehicle.
Officer Norton joined the chase. Some 25 miles within the
border of the Reservation, well beyond the jurisdiction of
either the Vernal City Police Department or the Utah State
Troopers, the car chase ended. The driver of the car and
his passenger, Mr. Murray, emerged from their vehicle and
fled in different directions. Officer Norton came on the
scene shortly thereafter. He pursued Mr. Murray.
At this point, the parties’ stories diverge. Officer Nor-
ton claims Mr. Murray fired a gun at him, whereupon Of-
ficer Norton retreated and fired two rounds at Mr. Murray.
He claims both of those shots missed. According to Officer
2 Our prior decision in this case refers to the Reser-
vation by another name, the Uncompahgre Reservation.
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4 JONES v. US
Norton, Mr. Murray turned his gun on himself and shot
himself in the head.
Mr. Murray’s parents contend that the manner of Mr.
Murray’s death is unknown because the United States de-
stroyed or failed to collect key evidence. They also assert
that the scant evidence that still exists indicates that Of-
ficer Norton shot Mr. Murray.
After Mr. Murray was shot, two more officers, Trooper
Craig Young and Uintah County Deputy Anthoney Byron,
arrived on the scene. They handcuffed Mr. Murray, who
was, at that time, still alive. Officer Norton walked the
scene, taking photographs. An ambulance arrived and took
Mr. Murray to a hospital, where he died.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) agents arrived
on the scene after the ambulance had departed with Mr.
Murray. The FBI had jurisdiction to investigate the inci-
dent because it has exclusive jurisdiction to investigate in-
cidents on the Reservation involving non-tribal law
enforcement officers. When he arrived on the scene, FBI
Special Agent Rex Ashdown was told that Mr. Murray had
shot himself. He collected evidence, including the gun on
the ground near where Mr. Murray had been shot—a Hi-
Point .380. He also collected two spent .380 caliber shell
casings found near the Hi-Point .380, collected two spent
.40 caliber shell casings from Officer Norton’s .40 caliber
handgun, and photographed the scene. Agent Ashdown
spoke with Officer Norton, whom he had known profession-
ally for a decade, on the scene. He did not perform or re-
quest any testing of Officer Norton’s clothing or firearm.
Vernal City Police Chief Gary Jensen took possession
of Officer Norton’s firearm. He did not perform any testing
on the firearm or on Officer Norton’s clothes. The gun was
later returned to Officer Norton.
After Mr. Murray passed away at the hospital, an of-
ficer was photographed inserting his fingers in the wound
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JONES v. US 5
in Mr. Murray’s skull. State and local police officers then
transported Mr. Murray’s body to a mortuary. At the mor-
tuary, those officers attempted to draw blood from Mr.
Murray’s body by inserting a needle into his heart. Then a
mortuary employee, at the officers’ behest, cut Mr. Mur-
ray’s neck to obtain a blood sample.
The next day, Mr. Murray’s body was transported to
the Office of the Utah Medical Examiner in Salt Lake City.
The FBI asked the Medical Examiner to perform an au-
topsy. The Medical Examiner performed an external ex-
amination but did not perform the requested autopsy. He
noted that Mr. Murray’s left hand was “clean and free of
any debris,” but his right hand was “caked in blood.” Spo-
liation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 732. He found that the cause
of Mr. Murray’s death was a gunshot wound to the left of
his skull and opined that manner of his death was suicide.
A September 2008 FBI memorandum recommended
closing the investigation of Mr. Murray’s death. The mem-
orandum stated that “[d]ue to an active civil suit involving
[redacted] and the [Vernal City Police Department],” the
two .40 caliber shell casings and two .380 caliber shell cas-
ings had been provided to the Vernal City Police Depart-
ment. J.A. 361–62. The memorandum noted that no items
other than the Hi-Point .380 remained in FBI evidence. A
few months later, in December 2008, the FBI turned the
Hi-Point .380 over to the U.S. Marshals Service, which de-
stroyed the weapon.
In July 2009, Mr. Murray’s parents sued state and local
officers for alleged violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, assault
and battery, wrongful death, and intentional infliction of
emotional distress. The District of Utah granted summary
judgment in favor of the defendants, and the Tenth Circuit
affirmed. Jones v. Norton, 3 F. Supp. 3d 1170 (D. Utah
2014), aff’d, 809 F.3d 564 (10th Cir. 2015).
In April 2013, Mr. Murray’s parents filed this suit in
the Claims Court. They seek compensation for Mr.
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6 JONES v. US
Murray’s death under the “bad men” provision in the
March 2, 1868 Treaty with the Ute. The “bad men” provi-
sion requires the United States to compensate individual
members of the Ute Tribe for losses incurred if “bad men
among the whites or among other people, subject to the au-
thority of the United States, shall commit any wrong” on
the tribal member’s person or property. Treaty with the
Ute, art. VI, Mar. 2, 1868, 15 Stat. 619, 620.
In July 2015, the Claims Court granted the United
States’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Jones
v. United States (Jones I), 122 Fed. Cl. 490, 522, 529–30
(2015), vacated and remanded, 846 F.3d 1343 (Fed. Cir.
2017). The Claims Court held, inter alia, that the doctrine
of issue preclusion prevented relitigation of Mr. Murray’s
parents’ assertions of spoliation and the ultimate issue of
whether Officer Norton killed Mr. Murray. Id. at 490,
523–25, 529–30. We vacated the Claims Court’s issue pre-
clusion decision and remanded for consideration of Mr.
Murray’s parents’ spoliation assertions. Jones II, 846 F.3d
1343. We explained that “[t]he absence of the federal offic-
ers as defendants in the district court litigation fundamen-
tally undermines the preclusive effect of several of the
district court’s ultimate conclusions, including the key con-
clusion that Murray shot himself.” Id. at 1363. We noted
that a spoliation sanction might provide sufficient evidence
for Mr. Murray’s parents’ claims to survive a motion for
summary judgment. We noted that, if the Claims Court
determined that “the appropriate [spoliation] sanctions
would not change the evidentiary landscape for particular
issues, the [Claims Court] may reconsider the application
of issue preclusion.” Id. at 1363–64.
On remand, the Claims Court granted-in-part and de-
nied-in-part Mr. Murray’s parents’ motion for spoliation
sanctions. Spoliation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. 726. It found
that the United States spoliated the Hi-Point .380 hand-
gun. As a sanction for that spoliation, the Claims Court
forbade the United States from relying on any facts related
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JONES v. US 7
to the .380 handgun—including the fact that a third shell
casing was not ejected, and the presence or absence of fin-
gerprints or “blowback” on the gun—as evidence support-
ing its claim that Mr. Murray shot himself. The Claims
Court did not mandate that negative inferences should be
drawn from the United States’ spoliation of evidence.
The Claims Court found that the United States did not
spoliate any other evidence. It found that the federal gov-
ernment did not control other evidence, including Officer
Norton’s gun, clothing, person, or vehicle; Mr. Murray’s
person or clothing; and the shooting scene, because federal
agents never possessed the evidence. It also found that the
local officers’ “grossly inappropriate” treatment of Mr.
Murray’s body at the hospital and mortuary “support a fac-
tual finding that the federal agents did not preserve Mr.
Murray’s hands and clothing for forensic testing” but “did
not otherwise affect evidence relevant to the plaintiffs’
claims about the cause of Mr. Murray’s death.” Id. at 737.
Then, on July 8, 2020, the Claims Court granted the
United States’ motion for summary judgment. The Claims
Court found that the spoliation of the Hi-Point .380 “has
not changed the evidentiary landscape for the central is-
sues relevant in this case decided by the district court, such
as the cause of Mr. Murray’s death.” Issue Preclusion Or-
der, 149 Fed. Cl. at 349. Thus, the Claims Court concluded,
issue preclusion applied to those central issues.
Mr. Murray’s parents appeal aspects of both the Claims
Court’s spoliation decision and its summary judgment de-
cision. We have jurisdiction to hear their appeal under
28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3).
II. DISCUSSION
A. Spoliation
“[A] party can only be sanctioned for destroying evi-
dence if it had a duty to preserve it.” Micron Tech., Inc. v.
Rambus Inc., 645 F.3d 1311, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (quoting
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8 JONES v. US
Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 216
(S.D.N.Y. 2003)). A duty to preserve evidence arises when
a party knows or reasonably should know that evidence in
its control may be relevant to a reasonably foreseeable le-
gal action. See id. Spoliation is the breach of the duty to
preserve evidence, either through destruction of evidence
or through failure to properly preserve it. Id. (citing Sil-
vestri v. Gen. Motors Corp., 271 F.3d 583, 590 (4th Cir.
2001)).
We review the Claims Court’s evidentiary decisions, in-
cluding determinations that a party has breached their
duty to preserve evidence, for abuse of discretion. See Zafer
Taahhut Insaat ve Ticaret A.S. v. United States, 833 F.3d
1356, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The Claims Court abuses its
discretion where (1) its decision is “clearly unreasonable,
arbitrary, or fanciful”; (2) its decision is “based on an erro-
neous conclusion of the law”; (3) its factual findings are
clearly erroneous; or (4) the record lacks evidence on which
the court “rationally could have based its decision.” Id.(quoting Air Land Forwarders, Inc. v. United States,
172 F.3d 1338, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 1999)).
Mr. Murray’s parents identify two errors in the Claims
Court’s spoliation order. First, they assert that the Claims
Court erred in finding that the government did not spoliate
any evidence other than the Hi-Point .380 handgun. Sec-
ond, they argue that the Claims Court abused its discretion
in its choice of sanction for the government’s spoliation of
the Hi-Point .380 handgun. We address each issue in turn.
1. Spoliation of Evidence Other than the Handgun
Mr. Murray’s parents argue that the Claims Court im-
properly found that the government did not spoliate any
evidence other than the Hi-Point .380 handgun. They spe-
cifically argue that the Claims Court erred in holding that
the government does not control evidence that it does not
physically possess—a standard different than that applied
to all other non-governmental civil litigants. They argue
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JONES v. US 9
that key evidence, including evidence from Mr. Murray’s
body, Officer Norton’s gun, and Officer Norton’s clothing,
was in the government’s control and that the government
had a duty to preserve that evidence.
We agree that the Claims Court erred in applying a dif-
ferent definition of “control” to the government than that
applied to all other civil litigants. By defining “control” to
require that the government physically possess evidence
rather than merely have a right to obtain or control that
evidence, the Claims Court held the government to a lesser
duty to preserve than other civil litigants. But, as the
Claims Court has previously explained, the government
has the same duty to ensure that relevant evidence is pre-
served as any litigant. United Med. Supply Co. v. United
States, 77 Fed. Cl. 257, 274 (2007). Law enforcement offic-
ers are not held to a lower duty to preserve evidence than
other civil litigants. Like any other civil litigant, the gov-
ernment “controls” evidence under the duty to preserve
where it has a legal right to obtain or control that evidence.
Physical possession is not a prerequisite to the imposi-
tion of a duty to preserve. See, e.g., Silvestri, 271 F.3d at
591 (explaining how the duty to preserve evidence applies
to evidence to which the party has access but does not own).
In fact, in other cases, the Claims Court has found that a
party with a legal right to obtain or control relevant evi-
dence has a duty to preserve that evidence, even where the
party does not actually possess the evidence. See Spolia-
tion Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 738. It departed from that prec-
edent in this case, holding that federal agents did not
control evidence that they did not physically possess. Id.
The Claims Court noted that federal agents had jurisdic-
tion over the investigation into Mr. Murray’s death and,
“[s]ubject to constitutional requirements and limits,” could
have “searched or collected elements of the shooting scene,”
“seized Officer Norton’s gun and clothes for testing and
searched Officer Norton’s vehicle for Mr. Murray's blood,”
or “detained Officer Norton to prevent him from tampering
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10 JONES v. US
with other shooting-scene elements.” Id. at 739. But the
court ultimately held that “the federal agents’ limited au-
thority to investigate and collect evidence of a crime” is not
“the property-like right-to-control sufficient to find spolia-
tion.” Id. at 738
The government argues that the Claims Court cor-
rectly found no spoliation of any evidence other than the
Hi-Point .380 handgun for five reasons. First, the govern-
ment argues that the Claims Court correctly required
physical possession of the evidence as a prerequisite to a
duty to preserve. Second, the government argues that it
was under no obligation to collect any particular evi-
dence—any investigation into the crime scene was purely
discretionary. Third, the government argues that its juris-
diction over the investigation did not provide it with control
over the allegedly spoliated evidence. Fourth, the govern-
ment argues that, despite ordering an autopsy of Mr. Mur-
ray’s body, it never exercised control over his body because
the Medical Examiner did not comply with its request and
never performed an autopsy. It further argues that no al-
legedly spoliated evidence on Mr. Murray’s body is relevant
to Mr. Murray’s parents’ claims. Finally, the government
argues that, even if the allegedly spoliated evidence was
under its control, it had no duty to preserve that evidence
because the FBI did not reasonably foresee civil litigation
during its investigation. We have already explained that
the Claims Court erred in requiring physical possession as
a prerequisite to a duty to preserve. Thus, the govern-
ment’s first argument fails. We address the government’s
remaining four arguments in turn.
The government’s second argument—that it had no
duty to preserve evidence because it had no obligation to
collect any evidence—conflates the minimum standards re-
quired in conducting a criminal investigation with the duty
to preserve evidence applicable in this civil suit. In a crim-
inal prosecution, the Due Process Clause does not “impos[e]
on the police an undifferentiated and absolute duty to
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JONES v. US 11
retain and to preserve all material that might be of conceiv-
able evidentiary significance.” Arizona v. Youngblood, 488
U.S. 51, 58 (1988). The government and the Claims Court
cite to several criminal and habeas corpus cases, including
Youngblood, in support of the proposition that law enforce-
ment does not control evidence that it is not required to
collect and preserve under the Due Process Clause. These
cases principally address constitutional requirements on
law enforcement, which set a floor on collection duties but
do not preclude additional non-constitutional requirements
such as anti-spoliation duties in a civil case as a matter of
judicial policy. Evidence in the government’s control for
purposes of civil litigation does not mean evidence that the
government had a legal requirement to obtain—it is evi-
dence that the government had a legal right to obtain. And,
to the limited extent the sources on which the government
relies involve the executive branch’s non-constitutional
policy choices, the choices are keyed to the mix of consider-
ations relevant to a criminal prosecution. Such choices do
not control the judicial system’s policy choices that define
the duty to preserve evidence in a civil case. The govern-
ment has not given us persuasive reasons to exempt it from
the ordinary civil-case rules imposing a duty to preserve
relevant evidence in its control for reasonably foreseeable
civil litigation.
Similarly unpersuasive are the government’s citations
to cases addressing whether the United States is immune
to suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act for law enforce-
ments’ discretionary actions, such as Gonzalez v. United
States, 814 F.3d 1022 (9th Cir. 2016). Gonzalez and other
Federal Tort Claims Act cases raised by the government,
like the criminal cases and habeas corpus cases cited by the
government and the Claims Court, address what steps law
enforcement is required to take—not what evidence law en-
forcement has a right to control. Those Federal Tort
Claims Act cases, thus, provide no guidance in our applica-
tion of the civil-litigation duty to preserve evidence.
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12 JONES v. US
The government and the Claims Court identify four
civil cases from other circuit and district courts that do not
arise in the Federal Tort Claims Act context. These cases,
as we explain here, either say nothing about the govern-
ment’s duty to preserve evidence for civil litigation, are un-
persuasive, or support our holding that the normal duty to
preserve evidence applies to the government.
The government cites Cunningham v. City of
Wenatchee, in which the Ninth Circuit held that a police
officer’s failure to record exculpatory evidence in a criminal
investigation was not a civil rights violation under 42
U.S.C. § 1983. 345 F.3d 802, 812 (9th Cir. 2003). Although
Cunningham was a civil case, the issue there was whether
police had violated the Due Process Clause by failing to
gather and preserve exculpatory evidence in their criminal
investigation. Id. The Ninth Circuit correctly applied the
Youngblood standard applicable to allegations of a denial
of due process stemming from the collection and preserva-
tion of evidence in criminal investigations and prosecu-
tions. But the court did not consider the issue of spoliation
of evidence. A party may breach its duty to preserve evi-
dence for civil litigation even where that failure to preserve
evidence does not rise to the level of a due process violation.
Thus, Cunningham provides no guidance as to the govern-
ment’s duty to preserve evidence in civil cases.
The government also cites Howell v. Earl, where a mag-
istrate judge in the District of Montana recommended
against finding that a highway patrol trooper spoliated ev-
idence when he did not record his conversation with a
woman who later sued the state. No. 13-cv-48-BU-DWM-
JCL, 2014 WL 2761352 (D. Mont. June 3, 2014), report and
recommendation adopted, 2014 WL 2761342 (D. Mont.
June 18, 2014). The magistrate judge stated that “[l]aw
enforcement officers have no affirmative legal duty to
gather and collect evidence, but are obligated to preserve
evidence once it is gathered.” Id. at *1. No party objected
to the magistrate’s recommendation, which the district
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JONES v. US 13
court judge adopted after finding no clear error in the mag-
istrate’s spoliation analysis. Howell, 2014 WL 2761342, at
*1. This non-precedential district court decision is not
binding on this court. As we have already explained, con-
trol requires only a legal right to obtain evidence, not a le-
gal requirement to obtain evidence. Thus, we decline to
follow the example set by the District of Montana in that
single non-precedential order.
In addition to the cases cited by the government in its
brief on appeal, the Claims Court identified two cases
where other courts have denied spoliation sanctions
against the government in civil cases, Estate of Trentadue
ex rel. Aguilar v. United States, 397 F.3d 840 (10th Cir.
2005), and Tchatat v. O’Hara, 249 F. Supp. 3d 701(S.D.N.Y. 2017), objections overruled, No. 14 CIV. 2385
(LGS), 2017 WL 3172715 (S.D.N.Y. July 25, 2017), aff’d sub
nom., Tchatat v. City of New York, 795 F. App’x 34 (2d Cir.
2019). The Claims Court read those cases as establishing
a rule that courts “refuse to use spoliation sanctions to im-
pose on law enforcement a duty to collect evidence.” Spoli-
ation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 740. But those cases do not
stand for that proposition. Rather, the courts in those
cases applied the familiar duty to preserve that applies to
all civil litigants in the applicable jurisdictions and, based
on the specific facts of the cases before them, did not abuse
their discretion in denying spoliation sanctions.
The Claims Court mischaracterized the Tenth Circuit’s
decision in Trentadue by conflating the evidentiary ruling
of spoliation with the tort of intentional destruction of evi-
dence. The Claims Court said that “the Tenth Circuit af-
firmed the trial court’s holding that the prison officials’
next-day cleaning and repainting of the inmate’s cell did
not constitute intentional destruction of evidence that
could be sanctioned as spoliation.” Id. But that is not what
the Tenth Circuit held. Rather, it affirmed the trial court’s
holding that, under Oklahoma law, intentional destruction
of evidence is not a recognized tort. Trentadue, 397 F.3d at
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14 JONES v. US
861–62. It separately affirmed the trial court’s selection of
a sanction for the loss of evidence. Id. at 862–63.
The district court in Trentadue also recognized that its
evidentiary rulings were separate from its holding on tort
liability. It noted that, while Oklahoma does not recognize
the tort of intentional destruction of evidence, “[t]his is not
to suggest, however, that the court has not properly taken
into account plaintiffs[’] claims that certain important
items of relevant evidence in this case were destroyed, lost
or shown to be inaccurate.” Estate of Trentadue v. United
States, No. CIV-97-849-L, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25864, at
*33 (W.D. Okla. May 1, 2001). In fact, the district court did
apply sanctions for the loss of evidence, stating that,
“[w]here appropriate, the court has drawn reasonable in-
ferences from the circumstances surrounding lost or inac-
curate evidence in deciding what weight should be given to
that evidence.” Id. It just did not apply an adverse infer-
ence. See id.The Tenth Circuit, moreover, did not import the
Youngblood standard to the civil-litigation spoliation con-
text as the Claims Court did here. Rather, it seems to have
applied the familiar civil litigation spoliation standard,
which, under Oklahoma law, permits a sanction of an ad-
verse inference “only in cases of willful destruction or sup-
pression.” Trentadue, 397 F.3d at 864 (quoting Beverly v.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 3 P.3d 163, 165 (Okla. Civ. App.
1999)) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted).
Trentadue, therefore, does not support the Claims Court’s
departure from the familiar duty to preserve evidence for
civil litigation.
The Claims Court also mischaracterized the holding in
Tchatat, where a magistrate judge found that the New
York Police Department did not spoliate evidence from the
scene of an alleged shoplifting that it failed to collect, or
collected but failed to preserve. The Claims Court stated
that the Tchatat court held “that the Supreme Court’s
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JONES v. US 15
limits on law enforcement’s Brady obligations in
Youngblood precluded the court from finding a spoliation-
related duty for the officers” 3 to collect and preserve evi-
dence. See Spoliation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 740. To the
contrary, however, the district court in Tchatat held law
enforcement to the familiar duty to preserve evidence. In
doing so, it simply found that police officers had no duty to
preserve the allegedly spoliated evidence at issue because
Mr. Tchatat’s later civil litigation was not “reasonably fore-
seeable” while they had control of the evidence. Tchatat,
249 F.Supp.3d at 708–09.
The district court’s subsequent discussion of law en-
forcement’s Brady obligations is dicta. Mr. Tchatat argued
that the police’s duty to collect and preserve evidence in his
criminal prosecution transferred to his later civil suit. Id.
at 709. In response to this argument, the district court
noted that, “even if [it] were to import the Brady and re-
lated obligations arising from criminal prosecutions into
the spoliation analysis,” those obligations only required
disclosures (and therefore preservation) of evidence for use
at the criminal trial. Id. at 709–10. The district court ex-
plained that “any purported preservation obligation was
extinguished on acquittal, long before [Mr. Tchatat’s civil]
action was brought,” and thus “no spoliation sanction can
issue.” Id. at 710. Thus, contrary to the Claims Court’s
representation, the district court in Tchatat did not “ap-
ply[] Youngblood to limit the application of spoliation sanc-
tions to law enforcement in a civil case.” See Spoliation
Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 739.
We have found no cases in which any of our sister cir-
cuits have adopted the Youngblood standard to lessen the
3 In Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held
that, in a prosecution, the Due Process Clause requires the
government to turn over material evidence in its possession
that is favorable to the accused. 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963)
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16 JONES v. US
government’s duty to preserve evidence that may be rele-
vant to reasonably foreseeable civil litigation. The few rel-
evant cases identified by the parties and the Claims Court,
with the exception of the District of Montana’s non-prece-
dential order in Howell, apply the same duty to preserve
evidence on law enforcement as on every other civil liti-
gant. We will not depart from that pattern and exempt law
enforcement from its duty to preserve relevant evidence
within its control where litigation is reasonably foreseea-
ble.
The Claims Court expressed concern that applying the
familiar duty to preserve evidence would create an “open-
ended duty for law enforcement to investigate to future lit-
igants’ standards.” Spoliation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 739.
The Claims Court’s fears are unfounded as “control” is not
the sole requirement of a party’s duty to preserve—the
duty to preserve is further limited in scope to relevant evi-
dence and limited in time to when litigation becomes rea-
sonably foreseeable. See Micron, 645 F.3d at 1320 (The
“obligation to preserve evidence arises when the party has
notice that the evidence is relevant to litigation . . . as for
example when a party should have known that the evi-
dence may be relevant to future litigation.” (quoting
Kronisch v. United States, 150 F.3d 112, 126 (2d
Cir.1998))). Moreover, as we explain below, law enforce-
ment’s “control” over an investigation scene is not unlim-
ited and, therefore, neither is its duty to preserve evidence
on that investigation scene.
We now address the government’s third argument—
that its jurisdiction over the investigation did not provide
it with control over the allegedly spoliated evidence. As we
have already explained, a party, including the government,
controls evidence under the duty to preserve where it has
a legal right to obtain or control that evidence. Thus, the
government may have control over evidence where it has
jurisdiction to investigate an incident if its jurisdiction
gives it the right to obtain or control that evidence. We stop
Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 17 Filed: 02/16/2022
JONES v. US 17
short of holding that the government always controls all
evidence on an investigation scene. The Fourth Amend-
ment of the United States Constitution constrains the gov-
ernment’s legal right to obtain or control evidence in an
investigation. As the Claims Court noted, the extent of the
government’s control over an investigation scene is depend-
ent on its suspicion of a crime. Spoliation Order, 146 Fed.
Cl. at 739. The government could not have, for example,
taken Officer Norton into custody absent probable cause.
See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 216 (1979). The
inverse of this statement is also true: If the FBI had prob-
able cause, it had a legal right to take Officer Norton into
custody, as well as control over the evidence on his person.
Mr. Murray’s parents urge us to find that the govern-
ment had control over all allegedly spoliated evidence.
While it is true that the government’s right to control evi-
dence extends well beyond the Hi-Point .380 handgun, the
extent of its control and other elements of the spoliation
standard (such as reasonable foreseeability of litigation)
are factual questions that we leave for the Claims Court to
decide in the first instance.
Turning to the government’s fourth argument—that
the government lacked control over Mr. Murray’s body de-
spite ordering an autopsy—we similarly remand this fac-
tual issue for the Claims Court to decide as necessary in
the first instance.
We are unpersuaded by the government’s alternative
argument that there was no spoliation of evidence that
could have been obtained from Mr. Murray’s body because,
as the Claims Court found, the mishandling of the body
was irrelevant. It is true that the Claims Court found that
the mistreatment of Mr. Murray’s body that occurred when
officers photographed themselves inserting their fingers in
the deceased Mr. Murray’s head wound, stabbed him in the
heart with a syringe, and cut open his neck—“while grossly
inappropriate—did not otherwise affect evidence relevant
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18 JONES v. US
to the plaintiffs’ claims about the cause of Mr. Murray’s
death” and, thus, is not a basis for spoliation sanctions.
Spoliation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 737. But Mr. Murray’s
parents’ spoliation allegations, as they relate to Mr. Mur-
ray’s body, are not limited to those grossly inappropriate
acts. Mr. Murray’s parents also allege spoliation stemming
from the FBI’s failure to enforce its request for an autopsy
and failure to bag Mr. Murray’s hands. Appellant’s Princ.
Br. 24–25. The Claims Court made no relevancy determi-
nations as to that evidence and must decide on remand
whether the government spoliated that evidence.
As to the government’s fifth argument—that it could
not reasonably foresee the prospect of civil litigation while
it had control over the investigation scene—we think it ad-
visable to remand for further consideration of this issue.
The government asserts that “when the FBI was at the
scene and able to collect evidence, future civil litigation
over the manner of Mr. Murray’s death was not reasonably
foreseeable.” Appellee’s Br. 28. The Claims Court rejected
the government’s similar argument that litigation was not
reasonably foreseeable when the gun was destroyed 4—
finding that “[l]itigation involving the gun was reasonably
foreseeable when the gun was destroyed” in December
2008 and that, “ ‘in light of the seriousness of the incident
and the involvement of officers on the Reservation where
they did not have jurisdiction, litigation could reasonably
be expected.’ ” Spoliation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 741 (quot-
ing Jones v. Norton, No. 2:09-CV-730-TC, 2014 WL 909569,
at *7 (D. Utah Mar. 7, 2014), aff’d, 809 F.3d 564 (10th Cir.
2015)). It is not clear whether the Claims Court deter-
mined that litigation was reasonably foreseeable only as of
4 The government does not appeal the Claims
Court’s finding that the litigation was reasonably foresee-
able as of December 2008 and we do not disturb that find-
ing.
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JONES v. US 19
December 2008, or whether litigation was reasonably fore-
seeable earlier in the investigation as well. We remand for
the Claims Court to clarify, as necessary, whether litiga-
tion was reasonably foreseeable while the government had
control (as we define it here) over any allegedly spoliated
evidence other than the spoliated Hi-Point .380 handgun. 5
2. Spoliation Remedy
We turn now to the sanction imposed by the Claims
Court for the government’s spoliation of the Hi-Point .380
handgun with which, the government asserts, Mr. Murray
shot himself. The Claims Court’s sanction prohibited the
government from relying on any facts related to the .380
handgun—including the fact that a third shell casing was
not ejected and the presence or absence of fingerprints or
blowback on the gun—as evidence supporting its claim that
Mr. Murray shot himself with that gun. The Claims Court
limited the sanction to the government’s principal case.
Spoliation Order, 146 Fed. Cl. at 743. It explicitly reserved
the issue of whether the government may use the spoliated
5 The Claims Court should consider all evidence per-
taining to the reasonable foreseeability of litigation, includ-
ing its factual finding that litigation could reasonably be
expected due to “ ‘the seriousness of the incident and the
involvement of officers on the Reservation where they did
not have jurisdiction,’ ” which we do not disturb. See Spo-
liation Order, 146 Fed. 32 Cl. at 741 (quoting Jones, 2014
WL 909569, at *7, aff’d, 809 F.3d 564). This inquiry would
necessarily include all information the federal officers
gleaned from their observations at the scene, morgue, and
coroner’s office, including the coroner’s failure to carry out
the ordered autopsy. Reasonable foreseeability “is an ob-
jective standard, asking not whether the party in fact rea-
sonably foresaw litigation, but whether a reasonable party
in the same factual circumstances would have reasonably
foreseen litigation.” Micron, 645 F.3d at 1320.
Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 20 Filed: 02/16/2022
20 JONES v. US
evidence to rebut any arguments presented by Mr. Mur-
ray’s parents based on the gun. Id. at 743 n.9. The Claims
Court refused to adopt any negative inferences stemming
from the government’s spoliation of the gun.
Mr. Murray’s parents argue that the district court
should have imposed a harsher sanction. We agree that
the Claims Court abused its discretion. Although the
Claims Court exercises considerable discretion in imposing
sanctions, we find that its choice of sanction here is futile.
Considering the import of the Hi-Point .380 handgun to Mr.
Murray’s parents’ case, a harsher sanction is required.
As the Second and Fourth Circuits have noted, an ap-
propriate sanction for spoliation “should be molded to serve
the prophylactic, punitive, and remedial rationales under-
lying the spoliation doctrine.” Silvestri, 271 F.3d at 590(quoting West v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 167 F.3d 776,
779 (2d Cir. 1999)); accord Flury v. Daimler Chrysler Corp.,
427 F.3d 939, 944 (11th Cir. 2005) (“[S]anctions for discov-
ery abuses are intended to prevent unfair prejudice to liti-
gants and to [ensure] the integrity of the discovery
process.” (citation omitted)). That is, an appropriate sanc-
tion should be designed to:
(1) deter parties from engaging in spoliation;
(2) place the risk of an erroneous judgment on the
party who wrongfully created the risk; and
(3) restore “the prejudiced party to the same posi-
tion he would have been in absent the wrongful de-
struction of evidence by the opposing party.”
West, 167 F.3d at 779 (quoting Kronisch, 150 F.3d at 126).
We agree with those circuits. A sanction is futile when it
does not serve those prophylactic, punitive, and remedial
rationales, and the imposition of a futile sanction is an
abuse of discretion. See Flury, 427 F.3d at 940, 943 (re-
versing the district court’s imposition of a lesser sanction
because the district court “failed to impose meaningful
Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 21 Filed: 02/16/2022
JONES v. US 21
sanctions for plaintiff’s spoliation of critical evidence” and
holding that “the extraordinary nature of plaintiff’s actions
coupled with extreme prejudice to the defendant warrants
dismissal”); see also Leon v. IDX Sys. Corp., 464 F.3d 951(9th Cir. 2006) (affirming dismissal where lesser sanctions,
like the exclusion of evidence or a jury instruction creating
an evidentiary presumption, would be “futile”).
The Claims Court’s sanction does not serve the prophy-
lactic, punitive, or remedial rationales underlying the spo-
liation doctrine. Even before the Claims Court imposed its
sanction, the government did not rely on the spoliated gun
or any facts related to it. Indeed, the 2015 Claims Court
decision in Jones I granting summary judgment to the gov-
ernment based on issue preclusion did not rely on the evi-
dence forbidden by the sanction—fingerprints, blowback,
and other evidence which may have been found on the spo-
liated gun. See Jones I, 122 Fed. Cl. at 523–30. Nor did
Officer Norton rely on that prohibited evidence in his mo-
tion for summary judgment in the district court. Issue Pre-
clusion Order, 149 Fed. Cl at 353. These opinions gave the
United States a roadmap by which to prevail in this case
without relying on the prohibited evidence. By granting a
sanction preventing the United States from relying on evi-
dence on which it never needed to rely in the first place, the
Claims Court crafted a meaningless sanction that fails to
deter the government from engaging in spoliation and
places the risk of an erroneous judgment on Mr. Murray’s
parents. It is no sanction at all to prevent a spoliator from
relying on evidence which it does not need to support its
case.
The meaninglessness of the Claims Court’s sanction is
confirmed by the loopholes in that sanction. Although it
prevented the government from relying on the gun itself or
facts related to that gun such as fingerprints or blowback,
the Claims Court’s sanction does not prevent the govern-
ment from relying on FBI agent testimony regarding the
spoliated handgun or photographs of the spoliated
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22 JONES v. US
handgun. In fact, the Claims Court cited that evidence in
its recitation of the facts:
Agent Ashdown photographed a spent shell-casing
that apparently had failed to eject properly,
“jammed” inside the .380 handgun. The FBI re-
tained possession of the .380 handgun. Agent Ash-
down did not request a test firing of the .380
handgun, later testifying that the only purpose of
test firing it would have been to confirm that it
functioned and had been fired.
Issue Preclusion Order, 149 Fed. Cl at 342 (internal cita-
tions omitted). By allowing the government to rely on its
own testimony regarding the evidence it spoliated, the
Claims Court effectively permits the government to side-
step the court’s already weak sanction. This non-sanction
serves neither the prophylactic nor punitive rationales of
an appropriate spoliation sanction.
Nor does the Claims Court’s sanction serve to remedy
the prejudice inflicted on Mr. Murray’s parents by the spo-
liation of the Hi-Point .380 handgun. The Claims Court
found that Mr. Murray’s parents failed to show that the
government’s destruction of the gun prejudiced them be-
cause they failed to provide more than speculation as to
what evidence might have been found on the gun. The
Claims Court held Mr. Murray’s parents to an impossible
standard. Mr. Murray’s parents could not provide any-
thing more than speculation as to what evidence might
have been found on the Hi-Point .380 handgun because the
government destroyed the gun along with any evidence Mr.
Murray’s parents could have collected from it. As we have
previously explained, a party may satisfy its burden to
show prejudice by coming forward “with plausible, concrete
suggestions as to what [the destroyed] evidence might have
been.” Micron, 645 F.3d at 1328 (emphasis in original)
(quoting Schmid v. Milwaukee Elec. Tool Corp., 13 F.3d 76,
80 (3d Cir. 1994)). In this case, plausible, concrete
Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 23 Filed: 02/16/2022
JONES v. US 23
suggestions must suffice to show prejudice lest the govern-
ment be permitted to avoid spoliation sanctions by virtue
of the spoliation itself.
Mr. Murray’s parents came forward with plausible con-
crete suggestions as to what evidence might have been
found on the spoliated gun. For example, they suggested
that forensic testing of the gun might have shown the pres-
ence of Officer Norton’s fingerprints. The gun may also
have shown the presence or absence of blowback, or finger-
prints indicating in which hand Mr. Murray, who is right-
handed, held the gun. That this suggested evidence is both
plausible and concrete is proven by the Tenth Circuit’s re-
liance on similar evidence in affirming summary judgment
in favor of Officer Norton and other defendants. The Tenth
Circuit held that “there is no genuine dispute of fact that
the shooter was anyone but Murray himself,” based, in
part, on the fact that there was no blowback observed on
Officer Norton. Jones, 809 F.3d at 575. If absence of blow-
back on Officer Norton is evidence that he did not shoot Mr.
Murry, it is a plausible and concrete suggestion that ab-
sence of blowback on the Hi-Point .380 handgun is evidence
that it was not used to shoot Mr. Murray. Had the govern-
ment not destroyed the gun, these suggestions may have
been evidence that constituted a key part of Mr. Murray’s
parents’ case. That the government’s spoliation of the gun
deprived them of this potential evidence is prejudice.
Although a sanction preventing the spoliator from re-
lying on the evidence they destroyed might be appropriate
in other cases, it is not appropriate in this case because it
serves none of the rationales underlying the spoliation doc-
trine. We, thus, conclude that the Claims Court abused its
discretion in crafting its sanction for the government’s spo-
liation of the Hi-Point .380 handgun, and we remand for
consideration of a more appropriate sanction. Specifically,
we remand for the Claims Court to determine the exact
bounds of the appropriate remedy, such as an adverse in-
ference or inferences, that should apply to any spoliated
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24 JONES v. US
evidence in this case. On remand, the Claims Court should
also consider whether the government should be permitted
to rely on secondary evidence related to the spoliated gun
in the form of photographs and testimony where it has de-
stroyed the primary evidence.
B. Issue Preclusion
We review the Claims Court’s summary judgment de-
cision de novo. As we explained in Jones II, issue preclu-
sion is available as a defense where the following four
elements are met:
1. The issue previously decided is identical with
the one presented in the action in question.
2. The prior action has been finally adjudicated on
the merits.
3. The party against whom the doctrine is invoked
was a party, or in privity with a party, to the prior
adjudication.
4. The party against whom the doctrine is raised
had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue
in the prior action.
Jones II, 846 F.3d at 1361 (citing Park Lake Res. Ltd. Liab.
Co. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 378 F.3d 1132, 1136 (10th Cir.
2004)). As in our prior decision, only the first and fourth
factors are under dispute.
In Jones II, we instructed the Claims Court to consider
whether any spoliation sanctions it decided to impose
would “change the evidentiary landscape.” Id. at 1363–64.
We explained that, if its spoliation sanctions did not change
the evidentiary landscape, the Claims Court could consider
anew the application of issue preclusion. Id. But, if its
spoliation sanctions changed the evidentiary landscape, we
instructed the Claims Court to “independently consider
[Mr. Murray’s parents’] substantive allegations of bad men
violations.” Id. at 1364.
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JONES v. US 25
The Claims Court found that the sanction it devised for
the “spoliation of the .380 handgun reduces the evidence
available to the United States to argue that Mr. Murray
shot himself, but it does not augment the evidence that is
available to the plaintiffs . . . to prove that Officer Norton
shot Mr. Murray.” Issue Preclusion Order, 149 Fed. Cl. at
353. It thus concluded that the evidentiary landscape was
unchanged, as Mr. Murray’s parents were able to provide
no new evidence of their son’s alleged murder. Mr. Mur-
ray’s parents argue on appeal that the Claims Court’s de-
termination that the spoliation of the handgun did not
change the evidentiary landscape is incorrect. We agree.
There was a change in the evidentiary landscape, and the
Claims Court committed two errors in coming to the oppo-
site conclusion.
First, the Claims Court misinterpreted our instruction
to consider whether its sanction “change[s] the evidentiary
landscape” when it used the evidence on which the district
court based its summary judgment decision as the baseline
against which any change in the evidentiary landscape
should be measured. Issue Preclusion Order, 149 Fed. Cl.
at 353 (noting that Officer Norton’s motion for summary
judgment in the district court did not rely on the spoliated
gun). The proper baseline against which to measure a
change in the evidentiary landscape is not the evidence re-
lied on in the district court decision, but the evidence as it
existed before the spoliation. The district court case was
filed after the gun was destroyed, and, thus, the district
court could not rely on the gun as it had already been de-
stroyed. Although a spoliation sanction concerning some
other, less critical, evidence may not have changed the ev-
identiary landscape—spoliation of the alleged suicide
weapon did.
Second, as we have already explained, the Claims
Court abused its discretion in awarding a sanction that did
not augment the evidence available to Mr. Murray’s par-
ents. Had the Claims Court measured the change in the
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26 JONES v. US
evidentiary landscape from a time before the spoliation of
the Hi-Point .380 handgun, or had it applied an appropri-
ate sanction augmenting the evidence available to Mr.
Murray’s parents, it would have found that the spoliation
of the gun changed the evidentiary landscape. Because the
evidentiary landscape is changed, we reverse the Claims
Court’s grant of summary judgment and remand for it to
“independently consider [Mr. Murray’s parents’] substan-
tive allegations of bad men violations.” See Jones II, 846
F.3d at 1364.
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons we vacate the Claims Court’s
spoliation decision as to all evidence other than the Hi-
Point .380 handgun and as to the sanction for the spoliation
of the Hi-Point .380 handgun. We remand the spoliation
decision for consideration in accordance with this opinion.
We reverse the Claims Court’s summary judgment decision
and remand for further proceedings.
VACATED-IN-PART, REVERSED-IN-PART, AND
REMANDED
COSTS
No costs.