Jorge Rivera-Guadalupe v. City of Harrisburg

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

________________

Nos. 21-1246 & 23-1792

________________

JORGE RIVERA-GUADALUPE

v.

CITY OF HARRISBURG, d/b/a Bureau of Police;

JACOB PIERCE, in his individual and official capacity as a

Detective with the City of Harrisburg, Bureau of Police;

DAUPHIN COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE;

ESQ. MICHAEL SPROW, in his individual and official

capacity

as the First Assistant District Attorney with the Dauphin

County

District Attorney’s Office

City of Harrisburg and Jacob Pierce,

Appellants in No. 21-1246

Jacob Pierce,

Appellant in No. 23-1792

_______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. No. 1-19-cv-01400)

District Judge: Hon. Sylvia H. Rambo

________________

Argued on March 14, 2022

Before: JORDAN, KRAUSE, and PORTER, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: December 24, 2024)

Kimberly A. Boyer-Cohen [ARGUED]

Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin

2000 Market Street, Suite 2300

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Counsel for Appellants

Leticia C. Chavez-Freed [ARGUED]

Chavez-Freed Law Office

2600 N. 3rd Street, 2nd Floor

Harrisburg, PA 17110

Frank J. Lavery, Jr.

Lavery Law

225 Market Street, Suite 304

Harrisburg, PA 17101

Counsel for Appellees

2

________________

OPINION OF THE COURT

________________

KRAUSE, Circuit Judge.

We deny officers qualified immunity for violating

clearly established constitutional rights—not for their failure to

read tea leaves. This past year, the Supreme Court held in

Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon that “the presence of probable

cause for one charge does not automatically defeat a Fourth

Amendment malicious-prosecution claim alleging the absence

of probable cause for another charge.” 602 U.S. 556, 561

(2024). But was that right clearly established when Detective

Jacob Pierce, the Appellant in this case, arrested Appellee

Jorge Rivera-Guadalupe in 2017? No, we conclude, because

although we anticipated the holding of Chiaverini nearly

twenty years ago in Johnson v. Knorr, 477 F.3d 75 (3d Cir.

2007), tension between Johnson and Wright v. City of

Philadelphia, 409 F.3d 595 (3d Cir. 2005), continued to

produce confusion within our circuit that persisted until

Chiaverini. Accordingly, we will reverse the District Court’s

denial of qualified immunity and remand with instruction to

dismiss on that basis.

3

I. Background1

In May of 2017, Rivera-Guadalupe was living in a one-

room unit in a rooming house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

This was not a pleasant dwelling. In his complaint, he called

it “a noisy place” where “visitors were always coming and

going; drugs and alcohol were rampant; and people often

congregated in the hallways.” App. 67. So, when unknown

people mugged and robbed Rivera-Guadalupe on May 21, his

close friend, Christopher Valkosak, came to stay with him at

the rooming house the next day in case trouble returned.

Return it did. Around eleven o’clock the next evening,

Valkosak was standing in the doorway of Rivera-Guadalupe’s

unit, facing the exterior hallway, when, in his telling, two

strangers suddenly appeared. One of the men—“a dark-

skinned male in a black hoodie”—shot Valkosak in the

stomach. App. 68. According to Valkosak, Rivera-Guadalupe

then fetched a gun from under his mattress and left the room,

presumably to chase the shooter.

Det. Pierce was assigned as the crime’s lead

investigator. The day after the shooting, he interviewed a

neighbor who lived down the hall from Rivera-Guadalupe and

had witnessed the incident. The neighbor told Det. Pierce that

a tall Black male dressed in black had been standing in the

hallway outside of Rivera-Guadalupe’s apartment talking to

Valkosak when they began to argue and Valkosak tried to

1

The Court accepts the facts pleaded by Rivera-Guadalupe as

true and draws all reasonable inferences in his favor. See

Zimmerman v. Corbett, 873 F.3d 414, 417–18 (3d Cir. 2017).

4

punch the man. At that point, according to the neighbor, the

man shot Valkosak and fled the rooming house through its rear

door.

The same day he conducted that interview, Det. Pierce

applied for and obtained a warrant to search Rivera-

Guadalupe’s room. In his application, Det. Pierce included the

neighbor’s description of the shooter as a Black male but

omitted various details the neighbor gave about Rivera-

Guadalupe himself that were inconsistent with the description

of the shooter, including that Rivera-Guadalupe is short, of

Puerto Rican descent, and walks with a limp. During the

search of Rivera-Guadalupe’s room, Det. Pierce found

marijuana, a knife, and IDs belonging to Valkosak and Rivera-

Guadalupe, though not a gun. He arrested Rivera-Guadalupe

soon after on the basis of that evidence.

At the preliminary hearing, the Assistant District

Attorney called three witnesses: Valkosak, Det. Pierce, and

Valkosak’s roommate, who did not live in Rivera-Guadalupe’s

building and was not there during the shooting. Although Det.

Pierce had received a tip a few days earlier that the shooter was

a different person, it does not appear he mentioned that call.2

Neither did the prosecution call the neighbor whom Det. Pierce

had interviewed. After hearing what testimony was presented,

the judge found probable cause to hold Rivera-Guadalupe over

for trial and continued his detention.

2

The record does not indicate the tip’s source, nor whether Det.

Pierce followed up on it.

5

The DA’s Office charged Rivera-Guadalupe with nine

offenses, including attempted homicide and possession of

marijuana. But at the outset of trial, it dropped five of those

charges and proceeded to trial on just two firearms charges and

the charges of robbery and theft by unlawful taking. The jury

eventually acquitted Rivera-Guadalupe of all four. By that

time, however, Rivera-Guadalupe had been incarcerated for

over eighteen months—from May 26, 2017, through December

11, 2018.

Rivera-Guadalupe timely filed suit in the Middle

District of Pennsylvania against a number of defendants,

including Det. Pierce, in his individual and official capacities,

for malicious prosecution, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.3

3

In addition to claims against Det. Pierce, Rivera-Guadalupe

filed suit against the City of Harrisburg d/b/a Bureau of Police,

the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office, and the

Dauphin County First Assistant District Attorney in his

personal and professional capacity, alleging malicious

prosecution in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth

Amendments of the Constitution, in violation of § 1983, in

violation of state law, and that their policies violated Monell v.

Dep’t of Social Services of the City of New York, 436 U.S. 658

(1978). The District Court concluded that Rivera-Guadalupe

failed to state a claim against the District Attorney, and

dismissed the Monell claims with prejudice for all defendants

because, in briefing the motion to dismiss, Rivera-Guadalupe

stated his intent to withdraw those claims.

6

While the other defendants were successful in moving to

dismiss, Det. Pierce was not so fortunate.

Seeking dismissal on the basis of qualified immunity,

Det. Pierce contended that there was no constitutional

violation, or at least not one that was clearly established.4 Even

if there was not probable cause for some of the charges against

Rivera-Guadalupe, he argued, a claim of malicious prosecution

was not sustainable where at least one charge was supported

by probable cause. As support for this position, he cited to

4

The District Court first denied Det. Pierce qualified immunity

under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(g)(2) because he

failed to raise the defense in his first motion to dismiss. It

nevertheless addressed the substance of Det. Pierce’s

arguments “for the sake of streamlining the process of this

lawsuit,” App. 279, and, applying our decision in Johnson,

determined that Det. Pierce was not entitled to qualified

immunity. On interlocutory appeal of that order, we remanded

for the limited purpose of clarifying the disposition of Pierce’s

motion to dismiss, as the District Court had addressed the

motion’s merits despite concluding that it was barred by Rule

12(g)(2). On remand, the District Court ordered Det. Pierce to

renew his qualified immunity claim by filing a motion for

judgment on the pleadings, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 12(c). See Oliver v. Roquet, 858 F.3d 180, 188 n.3

(3d Cir. 2017) (“[A] defense omitted from an earlier motion

may nonetheless be raised in a motion for judgment on the

pleadings.”); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(2). He did so, and

the District Court’s order denying his 12(c) motion is now

before us.

7

Wright v. City of Philadelphia, where we had held that

“[p]robable cause need only exist as to any offense that could

be charged under the circumstances,” 409 F.3d at 602 (citations

omitted), to defeat a false arrest claim and then had summarily

concluded that this same rationale “disposes of [plaintiff’s]

malicious prosecution claims,” id. at 604.

The District Court declined to dismiss the malicious

prosecution charge against Det. Pierce, reasoning that Johnson

v. Knorr, decided a few years later, made sufficiently clear that

the “any-crime” rule of Wright applied only to false arrest

claims and not to malicious prosecution claims. It therefore

held that Det. Pierce was not entitled to qualified immunity and

that Rivera-Guadalupe was entitled to move forward to trial.

Det. Pierce timely appealed.

II. Discussion5

Though the burden of asserting a qualified immunity

defense is on the law enforcement officer, Thomas v. Indep.

Twp., 463 F.3d 285, 293 (3d Cir. 2006), those officers are

entitled to immunity under § 1983 “unless the plaintiff shows

that the officer violated ‘clearly established statutory or

constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have

5

The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.

We have jurisdiction over the denial of qualified immunity

under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the collateral order doctrine.

Mammaro v. N.J. Div. of Child Prot. & Permanency, 814 F.3d

164, 168 (3d Cir. 2016). We review the denial of a motion for

judgment on the pleadings de novo. Zimmerman, 873 F.3d at

417.

8

known.’” Lozano v. New Jersey, 9 F.4th 239, 245 (3d Cir.

2021) (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 11 (2015) (per

curiam)). Thus, qualified immunity does not apply when the

facts, taken in the light most favorable to the party claiming

injury, show that the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional

right, id., and, as an additional condition, when the right at

issue— “define[d] . . . at the appropriate level of specificity,”

Peroza-Benitez v. Smith, 994 F.3d 157, 165 (3d Cir. 2021)

(quoting Sharp v. Johnson, 669 F.3d 144, 159 (3d Cir.

2012))—was “clearly established,” Lozano, 9 F.4th at 245. We

may address these questions in the order we deem appropriate,

Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009), and a negative

answer on either inquiry entitles a defendant to qualified

immunity. Peroza-Benitez, 994 F.3d at 165.

Here, the parties dispute whether the existence of

probable cause for some of the charges insulated Det. Pierce

from suit for malicious prosecution. We therefore define the

right at issue as the right to be prosecuted only for charges that

are each supported by probable cause. And because the

determination whether that right was “clearly established” at

the relevant time will resolve this case, that is where our

analysis begins and ends.

A. Johnson Did Not Clearly Establish the Right in

Question

A right is clearly established where, “at the time of the

challenged conduct, the contours of [that] right are sufficiently

clear that every reasonable official would have understood that

what he is doing violates that right.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563

U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (cleaned up). There need not be an

9

analogous case “directly on point, but existing precedent must

have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond

debate.” Id. The question for us, then, is whether the tension

between our pronouncements in Wright and in Johnson put the

right to be prosecuted only on charges that are each supported

by probable cause “beyond debate” at the time of Rivera-

Guadalupe’s prosecution. As explained below, they did not.

We summarize those two cases before describing the debate

that they generated.

In Wright, police officers who had investigated

plaintiff’s claim that she was sexually assaulted while

intoxicated dismissed her claims as unfounded. Instead, they

brought charges against her for “breaking into” the house

where she was attacked immediately after it occurred to

retrieve her personal belongings and collect items she thought

would help the police identify her assailants. The Philadelphia

Police Internal Affairs Division determined that those officers

“conducted a less than proper/thorough investigation” of the

allegations. Wright, 409 F.3d at 598. The charges against the

plaintiff were dismissed, and her assailants eventually brought

to justice.

When Wright brought claims against the officers for

false arrest and malicious prosecution under § 1983, we held

that she failed to state a claim for false arrest because there was

probable cause to believe she violated the law by breaking and

entering, and, applying our precedent in Barna v. City of Perth

Amboy, 42 F.3d 809 (3d Cir. 1994), we said “[p]robable cause

need only exist as to any offense that could be charged under

the circumstances” to defeat a false-arrest claim. Id. at 602

(citing Barna, 42 F.3d at 819). Then, in a brief final paragraph,

10

we added that “[e]ven though our discussion of probable cause

was limited to the criminal trespass claim [for false arrest], it

disposes of her malicious prosecution claims with respect to all

of the charges brought against her.” Id. at 604. Citing no

precedent, we stated that “[t]o prevail on [a malicious

prosecution] claim, [the plaintiff] must show that the officers

lacked probable cause to arrest her,” id., and we therefore

reversed the District Court’s denial of summary judgment

based on qualified immunity for both the false arrest and

malicious prosecution claims.

In Johnson, two years later, we reversed the district

court’s summary judgment in favor of a parole officer who had

argued, based on Wright, that the presence of probable cause

for some charges precluded the plaintiff’s § 1983 claim for

malicious prosecution. Johnson, 477 F.3d at 85. We rejected

the proposition that Wright “establish[ed] legal precedent of

such broad application that it would ‘insulate’ law enforcement

officers from liability for malicious prosecution in all cases in

which they had probable cause for the arrest of the plaintiff on

any one charge.” Id. at 83. Unlike malicious prosecution, we

explained, false arrest “covers damages only for the time of

detention until the issuance of process or arraignment, and not

more,” id. at 82 (quoting Montgomery v. De Simone, 159 F.3d

120, 126 (3d Cir. 1998)), so additional charges that lack

probable cause place only a “limited” additional burden against

the arrestee, whereas adding unjustified charges to a bill of

indictment “almost surely will place an additional burden on

the defendant,” id. at 84. We thus clarified that Wright did not

permit officers to “tack on more serious, unfounded charges

for which there was not probable cause . . . for the initiation of

11

criminal proceedings merely because there was probable cause

for the arrest on any charge.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).

We also viewed Wright as factually distinguishable

when it came to the officers’ involvement in bringing charges.

In Wright, the officer had only prepared an affidavit of

probable cause for the plaintiff’s arrest and was not involved

with the prosecution. By contrast, the plaintiff in Johnson

alleged that the parole agent’s fabricated allegations “le[d] to

the initiation of criminal proceedings.” Id. Because the agent’s

“involvement in both the arrest and the initiation of criminal

proceedings against Johnson was more extensive [than in

Wright] and lasted beyond . . . the arrest itself,” we declined to

apply Wright and held that Johnson could proceed with his

malicious prosecution claim, even though there was probable

cause to arrest him on at least one of the charges. Id.

Here, examining this precedent, the District Court

determined that, under Johnson, the right at issue was clearly

established by the time of Rivera-Guadalupe’s prosecution.

After explicating the factual and legal distinctions between the

cases, the District Court concluded every reasonable officer

would have understood at that point that “the law has never

opened the door for the government to charge someone with a

laundry list of crimes simply because they have probable cause

for one crime.” App. 33. Although we had acknowledged in

our en banc opinion in Kossler v. Crisanti, 564 F.3d 181, 193

(3d Cir. 2009) (en banc), that there was “considerable tension

. . . between our treatment of the probable cause element in

[Wright]” and in Johnson, the District Court dismissed “the

tension between the two [as] merely specious” and our

observation as merely dictum, App. 31, 34. “An issue being

12

complex,” it concluded, “is not the same as it being

ambiguous.” App. 32.6

We agree with the District Court’s assessment that

Wright and Johnson are ultimately distinguishable. See infra

Section II.B. But a judge’s ability to discern boundaries

between cases in the quietude of chambers does not necessarily

translate to what “every reasonable official would [have

understood]” in conducting an arrest or prosecution. al-Kidd,

563 U.S. at 741 (cleaned up). Rather, the relevant precedent

“must have placed the . . . constitutional question beyond

debate.” Id. And though we attempted to clarify in Johnson

that the “any-crime” rule was applicable to false arrests claims,

but not malicious prosecution claims, it did not have that

crystallizing effect.

Quite the opposite. In Kossler, we not only

acknowledged the “considerable tension” between Wright and

Johnson. 564 F.3d at 193. We also said that “the precedential

status of Wright is not diminished,” acknowledged its

malicious prosecution analysis was “difficult to reconcile”

6

Although this opinion concerns the District Court’s denial of

Det. Pierce’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, we quote

here from the District Court’s memorandum opinion regarding

Det. Pierce’s motion to dismiss because it discussed Wright

and Johnson in greater depth. See Mem. on Mot. for J. on the

Pleadings at 20, Rivera-Guadalupe v. City of Harrisburg, No.

1:19-CV-1400 (M.D. Pa. Mar. 27, 2023), ECF No. 84 (“In its

previous decision, the court recounted these cases in some

depth and will not repeat its review here.”).

13

with Johnson, and explained their tension not as illustrating the

different rules applicable to false arrest and malicious

prosecution, but as “illustrat[ing] that the analysis of malicious

prosecution claims involving multiple charges is a fact-

intensive one.” Id. at 194. Yet even as we attempted to

reconcile Wright and Johnson as involving different “fact-

based inquir[ies],” id., we also noted that “assuming arguendo

that [they] are in unavoidable conflict,” Wright, as the earlier

of the two, “must control for purposes of analyzing the

probable cause element,” id. at 194 n.8.

Several years later, in Dempsey v. Bucknell University,

834 F.3d 457 (3d Cir. 2016), we tried again to detangle these

cases, citing to Johnson and explaining that “although false

arrest . . . claims will necessarily fail if probable cause existed

for any one of the crimes charged against the arrestee,” it was

still the case that “‘probable cause on one charge does not

foreclose a malicious prosecution cause of action’ based on

additional charges for which there was no probable cause.” Id.

at 477 (quoting Johnson, 477 F.3d at 83). But we did not

explicitly distinguish Barna and Wright from Johnson or

address our footnote in Kossler. Perhaps it is not surprising,

therefore, that confusion persisted in various forums.

For one, the debate continued among the district courts

in our circuit. See, e.g., DeLade v. Cargan, No. 3:16-CV-

00415, 2019 WL 1387704, at *15–16 (M.D. Pa. Mar. 27, 2019)

(adopting Magistrate Judge’s recommendation to grant

summary judgment on malicious prosecution claim based on

Barna and Wright’s holdings that probable cause need only

exist as to one of several charged offenses); Tate v. Hasara,

No. 14-4609, 2017 WL 5505015, at *8 n.12 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 16,

14

2017) (granting summary judgment on malicious prosecution

claim in view of the “considerable tension” between Wright

and Johnson and Kossler’s instruction “that to the extent the

cases ‘are in unavoidable conflict,’ Wright, the earlier-decided

case, would control” (quoting Kossler, 564 F.3d at 193–94 &

n.8)); Davis v. Graber, No. 14-1416, 2017 WL 222298, at *1

& n.1 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 18, 2017) (concluding that because

Kossler “acknowledged the preeminence of” Wright, the law

was at least “murky” and “that murkiness [] stands at least for

the proposition” that the rule of Johnson was not “clearly

established”).

It also manifested itself in some of our own non-

precedential opinions.7 Compare, e.g., Harvard v. Cesnalis,

973 F.3d 190, 199 n.3 (3d Cir. 2020) (“probable cause on one

charge ‘does not foreclose a malicious prosecution cause of

action’ as to a separate charge which lacks probable cause”

(quoting Johnson, 477 F.3d at 83)), with Simonson v. Borough

of Taylor, 839 F. App’x 735, 740 n.7 (3d Cir. 2020) (explaining

that probable cause on at least one charge defeats a malicious

prosecution claim when the charges were brought

simultaneously and arose from the same incident), and Batiz v.

Brown, 676 F. App’x 138, 142–43 (3d Cir. 2017) (explaining

that the Johnson rule applies only when “the additional charges

for which there might not have been probable cause . . .

resulted in additional restrictions on his liberty beyond those

attributable to the prosecution on the . . . charges for which

7

Our non-precedential opinions are referenced here only to

provide additional evidence that confusion about the

distinctions between Wright and Johnson persisted.

15

there was probable cause” (alterations in original) (citation

omitted)).

In the meantime, other Courts of Appeals came to

different conclusions, ultimately necessitating the Supreme

Court’s intervention in Chiaverini. Disagreement emerged

even before the events at issue in this case. Compare Posr v.

Doherty, 944 F.2d 91, 100 (2d Cir. 1991) (rejecting application

of the any-crime rule to malicious prosecution cases), with

Grider v. City of Auburn, 618 F.3d 1240, 1256–57 (11th Cir.

2010) (suggesting in dictum that the any-crime rule applies to

malicious prosecution). In 2020, however, the Eleventh

Circuit rejected its earlier dictum and held that the any-crime

rule is inapplicable in the malicious prosecution context,

Williams v. Aguirre, 965 F.3d 1147, 1159–62 (11th Cir. 2020),

while the Sixth Circuit took the opposite course and held

“there’s no principled reason for treating a Fourth Amendment

malicious-prosecution claim differently than a Fourth

Amendment false-arrest claim,” Howse v. Hodous, 953 F.3d

402, 409 (6th Cir. 2020).

Considering the combination of confusion within our

own circuit and the other Courts of Appeals, we cannot say that

the bounds of the any-crime rule were “beyond debate” when

Det. Pierce arrested Rivera-Guadalupe in 2017. The Supreme

Court has observed that “[i]f judges [themselves] disagree on

a constitutional question, it is unfair to subject police to money

damages for picking the losing side of the controversy.”

Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 669–70 (2012) (quoting

Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 618 (1999)). And while not

dispositive, “a split among the Federal Circuits”—even one

that developed only “[b]etween the time of the events of this

16

case and [the Supreme Court’s decision resolving it]”—

provides additional evidence of ambiguity. Layne, 526 U.S. at

618; see also Rivera v. Monko, 37 F.4th 909, 922 (3d Cir. 2022)

(observing that even “[a] two-court circuit split demonstrates

that no ‘robust consensus’ exists”). Though Chiaverini has

now made crystal clear that the any-crime rule does not pertain

to malicious prosecution claims, that ambiguity existed in the

timeframe relevant here.

Because the right that Rivera-Guadalupe seeks to

vindicate in his malicious prosecution suit was not clearly

established at the relevant time, the District Court erred in

denying Det. Pierce qualified immunity.

B. The Any-Crime Rule Still Applies to False

Arrest Claims

To end what has proven to be a years-long muddle and

for the avoidance of doubt in the wake of Chiaverini, we take

this opportunity to clarify that the any-crime rule of Wright

governs claims for false arrest, whereas Johnson—and now

Chiaverini— states the rule for malicious-prosecution claims.

Although both claims arise out of the Fourth

Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable seizures, the

seizures they concern are different in substance and duration.

As the Supreme Court has explained, claims for false arrest

challenge “detention without legal process,” Wallace v. Kato,

549 U.S. 384, 389 (2007), while malicious prosecution

involves seizure “pursuant to legal process,” Thompson v.

Clark, 596 U.S. 36, 42 (2022); see also Heck v. Humphrey, 512

U.S. 477, 484 (1994) (“[U]nlike the related cause of action for

false arrest or imprisonment, [malicious prosecution] permits

17

damages for confinement imposed pursuant to legal process.”).

And a person arrested may be constitutionally detained without

a warrant only for a short period before she must be presented

to a neutral magistrate for a determination of probable cause,

Cnty. of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 56 (1991),

whereas a person held pursuant to legal process may be

subjected to far longer detention, and each charge she faces

“almost surely will place an additional burden on the

defendant,” Johnson, 477 F3.d at 84.

In recognition of these distinct burdens, the majority of

our sister circuits to address the question held—even before

Chiaverini—that the any-crime rule applies only to false arrest,

and not malicious prosecution claims. See, e.g., Aguirre, 965

F.3d at 1159–62; Doherty, 944 F.2d at 100; see also Holmes v.

Vill. of Hoffman Estates, 511 F.3d 673, 682–83 (7th Cir. 2007)

(adopting the same rule in the context of a state-law malicious-

prosecution claim). Though there were some outliers that

perceived “no principled reason for treating a Fourth

Amendment malicious-prosecution claim differently than a

Fourth Amendment false-arrest claim,” Hodous, 953 F.3d at

409, Chiaverini has now put the debate to rest, once and for all,

602 U.S. at 561.

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we will reverse the District

Court’s denial of qualified immunity and remand for

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

18