# Ciria v. Gerrans

> Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit · June 5, 2026

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11338251

## Case

- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- **Decided:** June 5, 2026
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Opinion
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11338251

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that the use of such techniques, without more, is insufficient
- emphasizing that “general statements of the law are not inherently incapable of giving fair and clear warning” and that “a general constitutional rule already identified in the decisional law may apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question” (citation omitted)
- holding that officers could not rely on suspicions of a witness who “had no personal knowledge” and whose suspicions were not confirmed by objective evidence
- describing an unreliable comparative identification

## Opinion text

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JOAQUIN CIRIA, No. 24-3308
D.C. No.
Plaintiff - Appellee,
4:22-cv-07510-
KAW
v.

ARTHUR GERRANS; JAMES OPINION
CROWLEY,

Defendants - Appellants,

and

CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN
FRANCISCO, NICOLAS RUBINO,
SAN FRANCISCO POLICE
DEPARTMENT,

Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Kandis A. Westmore, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted April 8, 2025
San Francisco, California
2 CIRIA V. GERRANS

Filed June 5, 2026

Before: Mary M. Schroeder, Richard A. Paez, and Eric D.
Miller, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Paez;
Dissent by Judge Miller

SUMMARY *

Qualified Immunity

In an interlocutory appeal, the panel affirmed the district
court’s order denying qualified immunity to San Francisco
Police Department Inspectors James Crowley and Arthur
Gerrans (“Defendants”) on Joaquin Ciria’s fabrication-of-
evidence and malicious prosecution claims under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983.
Ciria was exonerated after serving thirty-two years in
prison for the 1990 murder of Felix Bastarrica. The San
Francisco District Attorney’s Innocence Commission found
that his conviction could not stand and that he was factually
innocent. According to the Commission’s investigation,
George Varela, the star witness at Ciria’s criminal trial, had
falsely named Ciria as the shooter and was granted immunity
in exchange for his testimony. In his 42 U.S.C. § 1983
action, Ciria alleged in part that Defendants acted with
deliberate indifference to or reckless disregard of his right

*
This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
CIRIA V. GERRANS 3

not to be criminally charged based on fabricated evidence
and maliciously prosecuted him.
Addressing the fabrication-of-evidence claim, the panel
held under this court’s precedents and based on the assumed
facts, a reasonable jury could find that Defendants (1) were
deliberately indifferent or exhibited reckless disregard
towards Ciria’s right not to be charged based on fabricated
evidence, (2) fabricated evidence against Ciria by using
interrogation tactics including threatening Varela with an
adult murder charge and offering him a story that exculpated
him to get him to name Ciria as the shooter, and (3) knew or
should have known Varela was not telling the truth.
The panel held that it was clearly established at the time
of the investigation in 1990 that Defendants’ conduct would
violate Ciria’s due process right not to be subjected to
criminal charges on the basis of false evidence that was
deliberately fabricated by the government. Further, any
reasonable officer would know that threatening a young
witness and offering him a story that insulates him from
liability to get him to falsely implicate a suspect violates the
accused suspect’s due process rights.
The panel next held that Defendants were not entitled to
qualified immunity on Ciria’s malicious prosecution claim
at this stage. Considering all of the surrounding
circumstances, and viewing the facts in the light most
favorable to Ciria, it is not reasonably arguable that the
officers had probable cause to arrest Ciria and charge him
with murder. The state of the law in 1990 gave Defendants
fair warning that they lacked probable cause to arrest and
charge Ciria with first-degree murder.
Dissenting, Judge Miller wrote that even assuming the
officers violated Ciria’s constitutional rights, Ciria cannot
4 CIRIA V. GERRANS

show that the relevant rights were clearly established at the
time of the investigation in March 1990. He would therefore
reverse the district court’s denial of qualified immunity to
Defendants on both claims.

COUNSEL

George C. Harris (argued), Janelle T. Sampana, James
Bennett, and Matthew Ohlheiser, The Norton Law Firm PC,
Oakland, California, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Peter J. Keith (argued), Chief of Special Litigation; Aaron
Wiener and Jose Zelidon-Zepeda, Deputy City Attorneys;
Jennifer E. Choi, Chief Trial Deputy; Yvonne R. Meré,
Chief Deputy City Attorney; David Chiu, City Attorney; San
Francisco City Attorney's Office, San Francisco, California;
for Defendants-Appellants.
CIRIA V. GERRANS 5

OPINION

PAEZ, Circuit Judge:

On April 18, 2022, Joaquin Ciria was exonerated after
serving thirty-two years in prison. The San Francisco
District Attorney did not oppose his release; in fact, after a
five-month investigation, the District Attorney’s Innocence
Commission unanimously found that Ciria’s murder
“conviction [could not] stand” and that Ciria was “factually
innocent.”
According to the Commission’s investigation, George
Varela, the star witness at Ciria’s criminal trial and an
accomplice to the actual shooter, had falsely named Ciria as
the shooter in a San Francisco murder. Ciria argues that
Varela, 18 years old at the time, did so only after Inspectors
Crowley and Gerrans (“Defendants”) threatened to charge
Varela with murder unless he adopted the story they fed him.
Ciria argues that Defendants operated with tunnel vision
during their investigation: they decided that Ciria was the
shooter and then, to support their case, deliberately elicited
Varela’s statement naming Ciria through abusive and
threatening tactics. Once they secured Varela’s statement,
they charged Ciria with murder, never investigating Ciria’s
alibi or corroborating Varela’s account. Outside of Varela’s
statement, Ciria argues, Defendants based their murder
charge on little more than rumors and similarities to a
general physical description. Ciria further argues that
Defendants acted with deliberate indifference to or reckless
disregard of his right not to be criminally charged based on
fabricated evidence, see Gantt v. City of Los Angeles, 717
F.3d 702, 708 (9th Cir. 2013), and relatedly, that Defendants
maliciously prosecuted him.
6 CIRIA V. GERRANS

In this interlocutory appeal of the district court’s order
denying Defendants qualified immunity on Ciria’s
fabrication-of-evidence and malicious prosecution claims
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, we affirm the district court’s order.
We hold that a reasonable jury could find that Defendants
used coercive and abusive tactics to elicit a fabricated
statement against Ciria and that in 1990, it was clearly
established that doing so would violate Ciria’s constitutional
rights. We also hold that because a reasonable jury could
find that Defendants lacked probable cause to charge Ciria
without Varela’s statement and it was not “reasonably
arguable” that probable cause existed, Defendants are not
entitled to qualified immunity on Ciria’s malicious
prosecution claim. Rosenbaum v. Washoe County, 663 F.3d
1071, 1076 (9th Cir. 2011) (emphasis omitted).
I. Background
A. Facts
The facts about Inspectors Crowley and Gerrans’s
investigation are drawn largely from their declarations on
summary judgment, plus copies of handwritten notes and
transcripts of recorded interviews from their investigation.
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Ciria, we
focus on what the inspectors knew at the time they
interrogated Varela and charged Ciria with murder. See
Davis v. United States, 854 F.3d 594, 598 (9th Cir. 2017).
1.
We note at the outset that Ciria has presented evidence
from which a reasonable jury could find that the inspectors’
records of their investigation are at times incomplete,
inaccurate, and skewed towards corroborating Ciria’s guilt.
CIRIA V. GERRANS 7

Ciria first points to evidence of inaccurate notes. For
example, one witness, Edward Lavalle, has declared that he
did not make certain statements attributed to him in the
inspectors’ notes, observing further that the phone number
listed in the notes as his number was not his. Ciria next
points to evidence that important parts of the investigation
were never documented. For example, one witness from
Galan’s Bar, a bar where Ciria was a patron shortly before
the murder, declared that he had been interviewed at the bar
and had told the officers what Ciria was wearing that night
(which did not match the eyewitnesses’ descriptions of the
shooter’s clothing)—but that interview is never mentioned
in the investigative record. Another witness, Mercedes
Mora, declared that her interview notes left out key context:
her daughter told the inspectors not to interview Mora and
come back another time because Mora had suffered two
epileptic attacks and was not mentally or physically prepared
to talk to anyone. Another witness testified in her deposition
that the notes from her interview omitted certain exculpatory
statements.
Finally, Ciria points to evidence that Defendants may
have incentivized certain witnesses with the prospect of
monetary rewards, which may diminish the reliability of
their statements. For example, one of the inspectors’ notes
said, “Antonio and his wife came to the homicide detail this
date and asked me if I was lying to him about receiving a
reward in this case . . . . I showed Antonio and his wife a
copy of the Mayor[’]s ten thousand dollar reward
authorization.”
2.
With that context in mind, we recount the investigation
up to Varela’s interrogation, as described in the inspectors’
8 CIRIA V. GERRANS

declarations and accompanying notes. On March 25, 1990,
Inspectors Crowley and Gerrans responded to the scene of a
murder. Felix Bastarrica, a Cuban man, had been shot in a
narrow alleyway behind a San Francisco motel.
Two men, Kenneth Duff and Anthony Queen, had
witnessed the shooting from their car and spoke to the
inspectors at the scene. They said that they saw a man get
out of the passenger seat of a white and yellow Chevy Monte
Carlo. This man confronted another man on the sidewalk,
arguing loudly in a foreign language, possibly Spanish. The
man from the Monte Carlo then shot the man on the
sidewalk, got back in the car, and left. Duff and Queen
described the shooter as “dark-skinned, Middle Eastern or
possibly Iranian,” 5’10” or 5’11”, in his late 30s, around 190
pounds, and “wearing an olive green ‘London Fog type
coat’” and “darker slacks.”
Later that night, Gerrans interviewed the only other
eyewitness, Kathleen Guevara. She stated that she was in
her second-floor apartment on the same street where
Bastarrica was murdered when she heard a loud argument
and saw a large white car from her window. She saw two
men yelling at each other and walking around for about two
minutes, before one man shot the other. She described the
shooter as a forty-year-old black male of “stocky build” who
was wearing an overcoat. She said, however, that it was
“[h]ard to tell” his height and weight because she “was
looking down on him.”
Next, Crowley and Gerrans interviewed Edward Lavalle,
Bastarrica’s brother-in-law, who had been staying with
Bastarrica the day of the murder. Lavalle explained that he
thought that Bastarrica was involved in selling narcotics. He
said that Bastarrica had told him that he witnessed a murder
CIRIA V. GERRANS 9

the night prior: his friend, Roberto Socorro, killed Ruben
Alfonso. Lavalle never mentioned Ciria’s name.
After this interview, the inspectors pulled Bastarrica’s
rap sheet and an incident report of a December 27, 1989,
arrest. This report referred to a drug seizure, which involved
five arrestees, including Ciria and Socorro. The arrest report
noted Ciria was 5’9”, 193 pounds, and a black man.
Over the next few days, Crowley and Gerrans heard that
there was a “drug war” going on between the “Cubans” that
was related to Ruben Alfonso’s murder. The inspectors
heard from witnesses that Socorro had killed Alfonso after
an argument about drugs and money and that Socorro had
since left town with a person called “Manolo.” No one ever
reported that Ciria was involved in or present at Alfonso’s
murder.
The inspectors then interviewed a person named Charles
Austin, who was present at Alfonso’s murder. Based on a
partial transcript of the interview, Austin stated that Ciria,
Alfonso, Socorro, and Bastarrica used to work together
selling drugs and that Ciria and Bastarrica could not stand
each other. Austin admitted that he had no personal
knowledge about Bastarrica’s murder but that he had heard
about it from a friend and read about it in the newspaper. He
said that the “word” was “all over” that Ciria had killed
Bastarrica and that “people say that [Ciria] was there.”
Crowley and Gerrans met with Kathleen Guevara, one of
the eyewitnesses, to see if she could identify Bastarrica’s
shooter. Crowley had prepared a six-photo array that
included Ciria’s most recent mugshot. According to the
inspectors’ notes, Guevara could make only a comparative
identification of Ciria, saying, “of the six mugshots, ‘this
looks the most like the suspect—especially the profile, or
10 CIRIA V. GERRANS

maybe more the attitude.’” Crowley confirmed in his
deposition that this did not constitute a positive
identification.
The following week, Crowley and Gerrans met with
Duff, the other eyewitness to the shooting. Duff was also
shown a mugshot spread with Ciria’s photograph. He was
unable to make an identification. According to Gerrans’s
deposition testimony, as a matter of practice, “[i]f somebody
doesn’t identity somebody in a lineup or a mug spread, then
that’s that. It’s over with as far as [he is] concerned.”
In Duff’s interview, he confirmed that the suspect was
“wearing a dark raincoat, like, greenish type coat, with dark
pants.” He said he thought the shooter was “Hindu” but
agreed with an inspector’s suggestion that he could be a
black man. He described the shooter as a stocky man,
“almost 6 [feet],” and in his early 30s.
Another week later, Crowley and Gerrans interviewed
Mercedes Mora at her home, over Mora’s daughter’s
objections. Mora had lived with Ciria for several years as
his common-law wife before he left her for a younger
woman. She told them that Socorro, Alfonso, Bastarrica,
and Ciria had been fighting over drugs and money and that
she felt “very strong in her heart” that Ciria killed Bastarrica
“because of the things he says and his attitude.” She claimed
that she had seen Ciria near the hotel on the morning
Bastarrica was killed, told Ciria that Socorro had killed
Alfonso the night before at the Star Motel, and given Ciria
Bastarrica’s address.
Mora also said that someone named “Candito” was
telling people at Bastarrica’s funeral that Ciria had killed
Bastarrica. Candito was a black Cuban male around Ciria’s
age who was 5’9” or 5’10,” muscular, and also staying at the
CIRIA V. GERRANS 11

Star Motel. The investigators’ notes do not indicate much
more information about this man, but in a 2020 declaration,
Socorro named a “Candido” as Bastarrica’s actual killer and
explained that, like the shooter, Candido “had a distinctive
and dramatic way of dressing . . . He almost always wore
long dark trench coats.” Notably, Crowley and Gerrans
never investigated this “Candito”/“Candido.” Crowley
claimed in his deposition that Ciria was the only suspect they
investigated because “[n]obody ever brought any attention
to anybody [else] as a suspect.”
The next day, Ciria, with an attorney present, voluntarily
spoke with Crowley and Gerrans. He denied any
involvement with the murder. He explained that people were
spreading false rumors that he killed Bastarrica. He also
offered an alibi: he had been out with Varela earlier in the
evening at a video game arcade around 7:30 p.m., they went
to Galan’s Bar around 8 p.m., he got in a bar fight there, and
then Varela dropped him home around 8:25 p.m. Ciria then
spent the rest of the evening with his wife, Yojana Paiz, his
son, and their housemate, Marina Flores. Ciria stated that he
would take a polygraph test, but his counsel advised against
it. The inspectors never interviewed Ciria’s alibi witnesses
until after they had charged him with murder.
Other than the Varela interrogation, the aforementioned
evidence was the only evidence the inspectors had when they
arrested Ciria and signed a criminal complaint charging him
with first-degree murder. The inspectors never had any
physical evidence linking Ciria to the crime. The ballistics
report identified a “.44 S&W Special Charter Arms
‘Bulldog’” revolver as the murder weapon, but there was no
evidence that Ciria owned such a weapon. They never asked
anyone whether Ciria, or any other person, owned or was
ever seen wearing a trench coat like the one witnesses
12 CIRIA V. GERRANS

observed that night. They never corroborated with anyone
that Ciria was at Galan’s Bar that night, what Ciria was
wearing there, or when he left the bar. They never asked
Yojana Paiz or Marina Flores about Ciria’s alibi or his
apparel. No eyewitnesses saw Ciria near the murder scene
that night, and neither of the two eyewitnesses could
positively identify Ciria from a photo array. The inspectors
also knew that someone who matched the eyewitnesses’
description of the shooter had been telling people that Ciria
had killed Bastarrica.
3.
This brings us to Varela’s interrogation. Varela began
by corroborating Ciria’s innocence. He explained he was
downtown with Ciria at an arcade until around 7 p.m. to
7:30 p.m. He then drove Ciria to a bar that Ciria wanted to
quickly visit. They arrived there around 8 p.m. Soon after,
Varela noticed that Ciria was involved in a bar fight. Varela
then drove Ciria home, dropped him off, and returned home
before 9 p.m.
The inspectors 1 then asked whether Varela had been in
an alleyway that night. Varela denied that he had been there.

1
The District Attorney’s transcript does not distinguish or specify
whether Crowley or Gerrans was speaking during the interrogation. For
simplicity, we refer to whichever officer was speaking as “the
inspectors” or “Inspector.”
CIRIA V. GERRANS 13

The following is a transcription of what occurred next,
around four minutes into the interrogation:

Inspector: Okay, I want to tell you something. Do you
understand how the law works—can you
look at me?
...
Can you look at me? You understand how
the law works, if—if two people go out
together, alright? And they take type—any
type of action where—you said you don’t
know, in your mind, you don’t know that
Joaquin was planning on killing somebody.
Just say you go with Joaquin, and in your
mind you know that he’s either going to beat
a guy, he’s going to beat somebody up, or
maybe he’s going to rob somebody, or
maybe he’s going to thump somebody, or
kick his ass. So you don’t know, in your
mind, you’re not planning on killing him.
Okay? So you go with him, and you’re—you
know that Joaquin is going [sic] maybe jump
on somebody and beat the shit out of
somebody. And just say you’re driving the
car, and Joaquin gets out and he shoots
somebody, and you’re driving that car,
alright? You could be tried for murder. You
could be tried as being part of the murder
because you would be a principle [sic] in the
murder, or you could be tried as an
accessory to the murder, which means you
helped somebody in___.
14 CIRIA V. GERRANS

Varela: I ain’t helped nobody do shit.

Inspector: Huh?

Varela: I ain’t helped nobody do nothing.

Inspector: Alright.—

Varela: I know what you’re getting at. Why don’t
you get to the point? . . . so we can get it over
with.
Inspector: Okay, why don’t we get to the point. We
brought you down here—we know what
went on in that alley, okay? Pretty much.
Whether you realized it or not when you
came down the alley the first time in your car
you messed up the left front fender—no,
listen to me.
Varela: There’s plenty of Monte Carlos___
CIRIA V. GERRANS 15

Inspector: Alright, well,— alright, we’ve talked to some
people, okay? Okay. There were two people
sitting there in that alley. Two guys, okay?
And they saw. . . .
You got yourself into a situation, you know,
and we know you didn’t do it. But if you’re
going to continue to sit in here and lie and
cover up for Joaquin, you’re going to be in
some deep shit, because we know—we don’t
speak Spanish, we know who got out of the
car, we have witnesses because—see, the
problem was he argued and fought out there
with a guy and yelled and screamed and
people came out and looked out the window.
. . . The shit went down, it went sour, he shot,
he jumped back in your car, and you drove
off, and that’s exactly what happened.
And be honest with us son. You’re only 18
years old, you’ve been [sic] shit as a
juvenile, you don’t want to get in shit as an
adult. . . .
Varela: Alright.
Inspector: What you ought to do is tell us exactly what
happened. No lies. For your own good, son.
Okay? It’s best for you to tell us exactly what
went down. We know you didn’t do it. We
know—
Varela: I didn’t know what was going to happen. I
didn’t know what was going to___. Hey,
whatever you said.
16 CIRIA V. GERRANS

Inspector: I want you to tell us. You’re the one that’s
either in the hot seat. You’re going to either
be involved in this or not involved with this.
You know you just happened to be there—
you know, either you’re there or as a
suspect—you’re either there as a suspect—
we know you’re there. You’re either there
involved in it as a suspect, or you’re just
there as an innocent party who happened to
be there.
Varela: I just didn’t know what was going to happen.
It was like everything happened all quick.
And if would have knew what was going to
happen I would have told him to get in the
car and went home and said fuck the whole
deal and I would have been ____.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to even try to
cover up. Like you said, I’m going to be 18.
I damn sure I don’t want to go to the can for
something I didn’t do. I don’t want to go.
Inspector: I know. You tell us exactly what happened,
and how you got down there and what
happened.

Varela expressed hesitation. The inspectors then offered
their supposed understanding of what happened with a story
that insulated Varela from liability. The officers then said,
“the thing you should do right now [is] just tell us, so you
don’t get in shit, ‘cause you’re really in heavy shit, in other
words, unless you tell us the truth.” Varela was hesitant.
Soon after, he said, “But what you’re saying is, because of
what went down, ___ cover me up.” He then said, “Just
don’t—please keep me out of it.” The inspectors responded,
CIRIA V. GERRANS 17

“Alright. [J]ust tell us what happened.” Varela asked, “Can
I go home after this?” The inspectors responded, “After we
talk? Yeah.” Varela was not given Miranda warnings.
Varela still did not explicitly name Ciria. Instead, he
gave his account, starting with, “Okay, just like you said.”
As the District Attorney’s Innocence Commission
concluded, Varela then recounted the night without naming
any names, only later explicitly agreeing with the inspectors’
assumption that Ciria was the shooter.
In recounting what happened that night, Varela could not
offer many details about Ciria’s involvement in the events at
the motel, such as when he picked up Ciria and dropped him
off at home, what brought them to the motel, or why Ciria
was involved:

Inspector: What ___, did he—did you go over his house
and pick him up that night? Did he call you
and say, “Hey, come and pick me up. We
want to go somewhere.” Or ___. Where did
you meet that day?

Varela: I talked to him. I probably had seemed off
and on during the day, and somehow or
another we were together, like on the way to
the bar, but to be honest with you, I can’t
remember whether—obviously he didn’t
come to my house, because I dropped him off
at home.

Inspector: Did you go to his house and pick him that
day?
18 CIRIA V. GERRANS

Varela: Think I did. Matter of fact, I had to, because
that’s what I took him home.

Inspector: You picked him up at his house. Then where
did you go?
Varela: And then that’s when we were riding around
at stuff.
Inspector: What was he saying—

Varela: He wasn’t really saying too much, man. He
was just kicking it. . . . We drove—probably
went by my house first, and then we went
down ___ and then everything happened.

The way I—the way I said. I can’t quite
remember, to be honest with you, whether I
picked [him] up at home, or whether he came
to my house. Let me see. Shit, evidently I
had to pick him up at home, because that’s
where I took him.

The interrogation proceeded, as Varela recounted what
happened based on what he saw at the scene of the murder.
The inspectors then obtained a statement from Varela. That
statement ended with the inspectors confirming that Varela
“began to talk to [them]” because he “did not want to be
considered . . . as a suspect . . . , rather than as a witness in
the case.”
4.
After the interview, without any additional investigation,
Crowley and Gerrans shared their investigative files with a
district attorney. Crowley prepared and signed an affidavit
CIRIA V. GERRANS 19

for a search warrant for Ciria’s home, which was signed by
a judge. The affidavit attached to the search warrant
included only Varela’s statements from the interrogation as
the basis for probable cause. Crowley prepared and signed
an arrest warrant at the same time that he did the search
warrant, but the declaration accompanying that warrant is
lost. Crowley also prepared and signed a criminal complaint
charging Ciria with murder and felon in possession of a
firearm. Ciria maintained his innocence and never
confessed.
5.
Five days after his arrest on April 19, 1990, Ciria was
arraigned. At his preliminary hearing in September 1990,
the Superior Court found probable cause and bound him over
for trial. Ciria’s trial began on February 4, 1991. During the
trial, Varela testified about his interview, but the jury did not
hear the portion that is the basis of Ciria’s fabrication-of-
evidence claim. 2 According to the District Attorney’s
Innocence Commission, “Varela was the prosecution’s star
witness at trial” and “was granted immunity in exchange for
his testimony.” On February 20, 1991, a jury convicted Ciria
of Bastarrica’s murder.
6.
On January 19, 2021, after three decades of
incarceration, Ciria filed a state habeas petition challenging
the validity of his conviction. The San Francisco District
Attorney referred Ciria’s case to its Innocence Commission,

2
Ciria’s trial attorney now acknowledges that it was a mistake not to
include a recording of the full testimony because “[t]he jury needed to
hear the police threatening Mr. Varela and specifically telling him that
he was lying and covering up, not for the killer, but for Joaquin.”
20 CIRIA V. GERRANS

which unanimously found that “Ciria’s conviction cannot
stand” and that Ciria was “factually innocent.” As to
Varela’s statement, the Commission found that the police
“pressured Varela to implicate Ciria” and that Varela’s
testimony at trial was “self-serving” and “incentivized.”
On April 18, 2022, the San Francisco Superior Court
granted in part Ciria’s state habeas petition, vacating his
conviction on the ground that he presented credible new
evidence of his innocence under California Penal Code
§ 1473(b)(3) (2022). 3 The new evidence included
declarations from Denise Corretjer, Varela’s sister, and
Caridad Gonzalez, Varela’s family friend, who each
separately declared that Varela told them that Ciria did not
kill Bastarrica. Varela told Corretjer that he lied because the
police had pushed him to “go with the flow” because they
“wanted Joaquin so bad.”
Ciria was released from custody two days after the court
vacated his conviction. The District Attorney moved to
dismiss all charges against Ciria in the interest of justice
based on a lack of sufficient evidence, and the court granted
the motion.
B. Procedural History
In November 2022, Ciria sued the City and County of
San Francisco, its police department, and three of its
employees—Inspector Crowley, Inspector Gerrans, and
Officer Rubino—for violating his civil rights under 42

3
In California, state habeas relief is available if “[n]ew evidence exists
that is credible, material, presented without substantial delay, and of such
decisive force and value that it would have more likely than not changed
the outcome at trial.” Cal. Pen. Code § 1473(b)(3) (2022) (later amended
and now codified Cal. Pen. Code § 1473(b)(1)(C)).
CIRIA V. GERRANS 21

U.S.C. § 1983 and California law. Ciria alleged three claims
under § 1983: (1) fabrication of evidence; (2) malicious
prosecution; and (3) failure to disclose exculpatory evidence
of rewards and incentives provided to Varela and Guevara.
Ciria also alleged several state law claims. Ciria additionally
alleged municipal liability for all his claims.
On a motion to dismiss, the district court limited Ciria’s
recovery on his California law claims to the harm suffered
prior to his arraignment. Defendants then moved for
summary judgment on Ciria’s remaining federal claims,
invoking qualified immunity. The district court granted the
motion in part and denied it in part, with rulings on
Defendants’ evidentiary objections. Officer Rubino and the
City of San Francisco and its police department prevailed on
all federal claims against them. Inspectors Crowley and
Gerrans prevailed on the nondisclosure claim. The district
court, however, denied Inspectors Crowley and Gerrans
qualified immunity on the § 1983 claims for fabrication of
evidence and malicious prosecution. Defendants timely
appealed.
II. Jurisdiction and Standard of Review
The denial of a defendant’s motion for summary
judgment based on qualified immunity is a reviewable
collateral order under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. See Mitchell v.
Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 528–30 (1985); Plumhoff v. Rickard,
572 U.S. 765, 771–72 (2014). “The scope of our review in
this context, however, is circumscribed.” Est. of Anderson
v. Marsh, 985 F.3d 726, 730 (9th Cir. 2021) (alterations and
quotations omitted). In Johnson v. Jones, the Supreme Court
held that any “portion of a district court’s summary
judgment order that, though entered in a ‘qualified
immunity’ case, determines only a question of ‘evidence
22 CIRIA V. GERRANS

sufficiency,’ i.e., which facts a party may, or may not, be
able to prove at trial . . . is not appealable.” 515 U.S. 304,
313 (1995). Only the portion of a summary judgment order
that turns on “the application of ‘clearly established’ law to
a given (for appellate purposes undisputed) set of facts” is
immediately appealable. Id.; accord Peck v. Montoya, 51
F.4th 877, 885 (9th Cir. 2022); Est. of Anderson, 985 F.3d at
731; Foster v. City of Indio, 908 F.3d 1204, 1210 (9th Cir.
2018).
At this stage, our jurisdiction is limited to purely legal
issues, which we review de novo. See Est. of Lopez ex rel.
Lopez v. Gelhaus, 871 F.3d 998, 1005, 1007 (9th Cir. 2017).
We must “accept the district court’s determinations that
there are genuine disputes of fact,” Peck, 51 F.4th at 887,
and “take, as given, the facts that the district court assumed
when it denied summary judgment for a (purely legal)
reason,” Est. of Lopez, 871 F.3d at 1007 (quoting Watkins v.
City of Oakland, 145 F.3d 1087, 1091 (9th Cir. 1998)).
“[W]here the district court does not explicitly set out the
facts that it relied upon, we undertake a review of the pretrial
record only to the extent necessary to determine what facts
the district court, in the light most favorable to the
nonmoving party, likely assumed.” Id. (quoting Watkins,
145 F.3d at 1091). Although “qualified immunity is to be
determined at the earliest possible point in the litigation,”
“summary judgment in favor of moving defendants is
inappropriate where a genuine issue of material fact prevents
a determination of qualified immunity until after trial on the
merits.” Id. at 1021 (quoting Liston v. County of Riverside,
120 F.3d 965, 975 (9th Cir. 1997)).
CIRIA V. GERRANS 23

III. Fabrication of Evidence
A. Scope of Jurisdiction
We first clarify the scope of our jurisdiction by isolating
the legal questions on appeal going to the fabrication of
evidence claim. A public official sued for damages in his
individual capacity is entitled to qualified immunity unless
(1) “the facts taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff
show that the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional
right,” and (2) “the right in question was clearly established
at the time of the officer’s actions, such that any reasonably
well-trained officer would have known that his conduct was
unlawful.” Orn v. City of Tacoma, 949 F.3d 1167, 1174 (9th
Cir. 2020).
In this case, the district court held that a reasonable jury
could find: (1) the Varela interview “went beyond
explaining to a witness the advantages of telling the truth”;
(2) it “involved inspectors threatening an 18-year-old, who
had a juvenile record” and “did not feel free to leave,” “with
an adult murder charge for driving a vehicle they knew was
involved in the Bastarrica murder”; (3) the officers “told
[Varela] exactly what information was necessary to protect
himself from that adult murder charge and to, instead, serve
as a witness”; (4) Varela’s response to their threat was,
“Hey, whatever you said”; and (5) Varela confirmed to the
inspectors that “he was talking to them because he wanted to
be a witness rather than a suspect.” We may not revisit these
factual determinations on appeal. See Est. of Lopez, 871
F.3d at 1007.
Our jurisdiction is thus limited to the two “purely legal
issues,” id. (citation omitted), of: (1) whether a reasonable
jury could find on these facts that the inspectors fabricated
evidence against Ciria; and, if so, (2) whether in 1990, the
24 CIRIA V. GERRANS

inspectors had a fair warning that their conduct—
“threatening” Varela with a murder charge and “feeding him
the story he needed to tell to avoid it”—violated Ciria’s due
process rights.
Defendants also ask us to review purely factual disputes,
which we lack jurisdiction to consider at this stage. See Est.
of Anderson, 985 F.3d at 731. First, we lack jurisdiction to
consider Defendants’ argument that the government did not
fabricate evidence because even before the interrogation,
“Varela had already named Ciria as the shooter to his
girlfriend Kristina Martin.” The district court determined,
because of statements made during Martin’s deposition and
the fact that Martin only spoke to inspectors after Varela had
already falsely implicated Ciria, that “a reasonable jury
could conclude that Varela told Martin what to say” and that
Varela had not actually named Ciria as the shooter
beforehand. Defendants nonetheless argue that “it is not
reasonable or rational to infer from Martin’s testimony that
she lied to police about what Varela said to her about the
shooting.” This amounts to an appeal of the district court’s
contrary evidence-sufficiency determination, and we lack
jurisdiction to entertain it. See id.
Second, Defendants challenge the district court’s
determination that a reasonable jury could find that the
inspectors knew or should have known Varela’s statement
was fabricated because “[b]y the time they interviewed
Varela, [the inspectors] already had ample evidence against
Ciria.” But the district court concluded that a reasonable
jury could find that the inspectors did not have “ample
evidence” that Ciria was the shooter for various reasons,
including that key witnesses had failed to identify him and
that there had only been gossip about his involvement in the
murder. Because Defendants’ challenge amounts to a fact-
CIRIA V. GERRANS 25

related dispute over the pre-trial record, rather than a dispute
over the application of law to the district court’s assumed
facts, we lack jurisdiction to consider it. See Est. of Lopez,
871 F.3d at 1007.
B. Constitutional Violation
We next consider whether, given the facts assumed by
the district court, a reasonable jury could find that Inspectors
Crowley and Gerrans violated Ciria’s constitutional rights.
We agree with the district court that a reasonable jury could.
Ciria has a Fourteenth Amendment due process right not
to be deprived of liberty as a result of evidence fabricated by
a government officer. See Devereaux v. Abbey, 263 F.3d
1070, 1074–75 (9th Cir. 2001) (en banc). “To prevail on a
§ 1983 claim of deliberate fabrication, a plaintiff must prove
that (1) the defendant official deliberately fabricated
evidence and (2) the deliberate fabrication caused the
plaintiff’s deprivation of liberty.” Spencer v. Peters, 857
F.3d 789, 798 (9th Cir. 2017). 4
A plaintiff can establish the first element of a fabrication-
of-evidence claim with direct evidence of fabrication, such
as a “direct misquotation of witnesses in investigative
reports,” id. at 799, as well as with circumstantial evidence,
such as evidence that the defendants (i) “continued their
investigation of [the plaintiff] despite the fact that they knew
or should have known that he was innocent,” or (ii) “used
investigative techniques that were so coercive and abusive

4
Defendants have not raised any arguments regarding causation and
have therefore waived any challenge to the second prong. See Friends
of Yosemite Valley v. Kempthorne, 520 F.3d 1024, 1033 (9th Cir. 2008)
(“Arguments not raised by a party in its opening brief are deemed
waived.”).
26 CIRIA V. GERRANS

that they knew or should have known that those techniques
would yield false information,” Devereaux, 263 F.3d at
1076; see also Spencer, 857 F.3d at 799. The key is that the
plaintiff must make some showing of “dishonesty” through
either direct or circumstantial evidence. Devereaux, 263
F.3d at 1076. “The Devereaux test envisions an investigator
whose unlawful motivation is illustrated by her state of mind
regarding the alleged perpetrator’s innocence, or who
surreptitiously fabricates evidence by using coercive
investigative methods. These are circumstantial methods of
proving deliberate falsification.” Costanich v. Dep’t of Soc.
& Health Servs., 627 F.3d 1101, 1111 (9th Cir. 2010).
Taking the facts as the district court assumed them, and
in the light most favorable to Ciria, Inspectors Crowley and
Gerrans threatened an 18-year-old who was at the murder
scene into adopting a story naming Ciria as the shooter; the
inspectors made their story attractive by telling Varela
exactly what he needed to say to avoid liability; Varela did
not feel free to leave the interrogation; he was evidently
going along with their version of events to avoid a murder
charge; and there was minimal objective evidence that Ciria
was the shooter at the time of the interrogation. Ciria has
therefore presented evidence from which a jury could
reasonably conclude that Defendants used coercive or
abusive tactics during Varela’s interrogation to fabricate
evidence against Ciria.
The dissent characterizes Varela’s interview as
involving only “standard interrogation methods.” This
approach, however, disregards our jurisdictional limitations.
As discussed above, see supra Sections II & III.A, we may
not revisit the district court’s determinations that a
reasonable jury could find the interview “went beyond
explaining . . . the advantages of telling the truth” and
CIRIA V. GERRANS 27

“involved inspectors threatening an 18-year-old” who “did
not feel free to leave,” “with an adult murder charge for
driving a vehicle they knew was involved in the Bastarrica
murder.” Est. of Lopez, 871 F.3d at 1007. And while the
dissent suggests “Varela provided an account of the shooting
that implicated Ciria,” we lack jurisdiction to reconsider the
district court’s determination that a reasonable jury could
find after threatening Varela, the officers “fe[d] him the story
he needed to tell to avoid” a murder charge, to which Varela
acceded, “Hey, whatever you said.” These factual
characterizations are beyond the scope of our review.
Instead, the “purely legal issue[]” we have jurisdiction to
review is whether a reasonable jury could find that these
assumed facts amount to a constitutional violation. Id. We
decline the dissent’s invitation to weigh the evidence
presented by Ciria. That is a task for the jury.
Importantly, Ciria does not merely argue that the
inspectors used “improper” techniques or techniques that
“violated state regulations.” Devereaux, 263 F.3d at 1075
(holding that the use of such techniques, without more, is
insufficient). Rather, he has presented evidence that the
inspectors “knew or should have known [their] interview
tactics would yield false information.” Gausvik v. Perez,
345 F.3d 813, 817 (9th Cir. 2003). This provides the
requisite circumstantial evidence of “dishonesty.”
Devereaux, 263 F.3d 1076.
For example, a reasonable jury could find that during
their interrogation, Defendants faced numerous indicia that
Varela was not providing a truthful account of what
happened but was merely repeating what the inspectors
wanted him to say. A reasonable jury could find that despite
this, Defendants continued to threaten Varela and offered
him a story insulating him from liability so that they could
28 CIRIA V. GERRANS

obtain a statement naming Ciria as the shooter. As the
district court explained, and as the assumed facts show,
Defendants told Varela that he could be liable for murder if
he continued to “cover up for [Ciria]”:

Inspector: Alright, well,— alright, we’ve talked to some
people, okay? Okay. There were two people
sitting there in that alley. Two guys, okay?
And they saw. . . .
You got yourself into a situation, you know,
and we know you didn’t do it. But if you’re
going to continue to sit in here and lie and
cover up for Joaquin, you’re going to be in
some deep shit, because we know—we don’t
speak Spanish, we know who got out of the
car, we have witnesses because—see, the
problem was he argued and fought out there
with a guy and yelled and screamed and
people came out and looked out the window.
. . . The shit went down, it went sour, he shot,
he jumped back in your car, and you drove
off, and that’s exactly what happened.
And be honest with us son. You’re only 18
years old, you’ve been [sic] shit as a
juvenile, you don’t want to get in shit as an
adult.

Defendants again asked Varela what happened, telling him
that they knew he did nothing wrong; in response, Varela
said, “Hey, whatever you said.”
After one of the inspectors said, “You’re going to either
be involved in this or not involved in this,” Varela replied,
CIRIA V. GERRANS 29

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to even try to cover up. Like
you said, I’m going to be 18.” And after an inspector said
Varela could go home only after talking to them, and without
giving him Miranda warnings, one of the inspectors again
asked what happened, and Varela responded, “Okay, just like
you said.” Throughout the interrogation, Varela sought
assurances that compliance with Defendants’ wishes would
keep him out of trouble, and Varela struggled to provide
details about Ciria’s involvement in the events at the murder
scene.
As the district court determined, a reasonable jury could
find that Varela, scared by the threat of serious criminal
liability, was adopting the story Defendants fed him. The
jury could reasonably find that this story implicating Ciria
was not backed by objective evidence of Ciria’s guilt and
was elicited through threats of criminal prosecution against
a young witness. And the jury could reasonably find that,
despite the indicia that Varela was merely repeating what
Defendants wanted him to say, Defendants used Varela’s
statement to charge Ciria with murder. Defendants never
attempted to corroborate Varela’s story or ask anyone about
Varela’s credibility.
Our holding in Gantt, where we determined that there
was sufficient evidence to submit the fabrication-of-
evidence claim to the jury, confirms that the factual
circumstances here present a triable question for the jury.
717 F.3d at 708. In Gantt, the essence of the plaintiffs’ claim
was that Rosemond, another suspect, falsely implicated the
plaintiffs due to police pressure. The key evidence was that
Rosemond “testified that the detectives threatened to charge
him with murder if he did not provide information.” Id.
Rosemond testified that the officers told him “if [he] didn’t
give them something, that [he] would go down for it.” Id. at
30 CIRIA V. GERRANS

704. In addition to this testimony, we noted some of the
“manner and circumstances” of Rosemond’s interrogation—
the officers allegedly told him not to tell anyone they showed
him certain materials, and even though the officers “did not
think Rosemond was still under the influence during the
interrogation,” Rosemond testified that he “had been awake
for approximately two days straight on a crack binge, and
was in fact still high when he made his identifications.” Id.
at 708.
The crux of the fabrication claims here and in Gantt—
threatening a witness with criminal liability unless he agreed
to the officers’ story—is the same, and any factual
differences between the cases are not legally meaningful.
While Defendants point out that Rosemond’s interrogation
lasted four to six hours a day for multiple days, see id. at 704,
this fact was plainly not dispositive, as we never mentioned
it in explaining our decision, see id. at 708.
Additionally, a jury could reasonably find facts that
would make Ciria’s fabrication-of-evidence claim even
stronger. As the district court noted, Varela, at only 18 years
old, was a teenager who was at the scene of the murder,
making an adult murder charge with a life sentence
especially daunting. Moreover, while Rosemond was only
threatened to provide “information,” id. at 704, the
inspectors offered Varela an enticing story that specifically
named Ciria as the shooter. As the district court further
noted, a jury could also reasonably find that Varela did not
feel free to leave the interrogation. By withholding Miranda
warnings from him, a jury could reasonably conclude that
the inspectors increased the pressure on Varela to agree with
whatever they said, as Varela was not made aware of his
right to remain silent or to speak to an attorney in the face of
their interrogation.
CIRIA V. GERRANS 31

The Sixth Circuit, which relies on a framework for
fabrication-of-evidence claims similar to ours, recently held
that a jury could conclude that inspectors fabricated evidence
under similar circumstances, where: (1) the witness
repeatedly denied knowing anything about the crime; (2) the
witness told inconsistent stories; (3) the defendants were
aware of an alibi witness for the named suspect; and (4) the
defendants pressured the witness into giving a statement by
threatening to take away her children. See Clark v.
Abdallah, 131 F.4th 432, 448 (6th Cir. 2025). The Sixth
Circuit concluded that there was “no legal reason why the
combination of factors presented here could not support a
jury verdict in [the plaintiffs’] favor.” Id. at 449.
Defendants appeal to three types of cases to argue that,
as a matter of law, the assumed facts do not make out a
constitutional violation: first, they point to distinguishable
fabrication-of-evidence cases; second, they point to cases
about unconstitutional interrogations under the Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendments; finally, they point to cases
resolved under the legal standard for dismissing indictments
on due process grounds. None of these cases affect our
holding.
1.
Defendants argue that because the plaintiffs in
Devereaux, 263 F.3d 1070, and Cunningham v. City of
Wenatchee, 345 F.3d 802 (9th Cir. 2003), failed to present
triable fabrication-of-evidence claims, Ciria’s claim
necessarily fails. But both cases are readily distinguished.
In Devereaux, a fabrication-of-evidence claim failed
where an officer confronted A.R., a minor, about her
recanting her allegations against Devereaux. 263 F.3d at
1078. The officer threatened her with charges for “false
32 CIRIA V. GERRANS

reporting” if she stuck to her recantation. Id. Importantly,
the claim did not fail because this tactic was not coercive—
rather, we recognized that the officer employed a “coercive
technique” and referenced the “coercive nature of the
threat.” Id. The claim failed because A.R. stuck to her
recantation, so the threat “did not . . . yield any false
testimony.” Id. Devereaux therefore held that
“unsuccessfully” applying pressure cannot support a
fabrication-of-evidence claim, while nonetheless
acknowledging the coercive nature of a threat to file charges
against a vulnerable witness. Id. (emphasis in original).
Here, by contrast, the pressure was successful, or at least a
reasonable jury could so find in light of Varela’s comments.
Cunningham is also distinguishable. There, we
concluded that a fabrication-of-evidence claim failed where
an investigator “kept questioning the [accused’s] daughters
after they initially denied the sex abuse” and “may have also
told [one of the daughters] that she could not leave [the
hospital] until she confessed to the abuse.” 345 F.3d at 812.
First, threatening an 18-year-old with an adult murder charge
is more analogous to telling someone he would go “down for
murder” if he did not give the officers “information” (which
created a triable issue for the jury in Gantt, 717 F.3d at 708)
or threatening a child with false reporting charges (which
was considered coercive in Devereaux, 263 F.3d at 1078).
Second, the officer in Cunningham faced distinguishable
circumstances in his investigation. Notably, one daughter
had previously claimed that her father sexually abused her
and was now denying it, and Cunningham had confessed to
the abuse. See 345 F.3d at 805–06. Because Cunningham’s
daughters “did not immediately corroborate the confession,”
and one had even backtracked from her earlier claim, the
police “kept questioning” them, and the daughters eventually
CIRIA V. GERRANS 33

implicated their father. Id. at 811–12. Here, however,
Varela had never backtracked from claiming Ciria was the
shooter, nor had Ciria confessed. Rather, Varela had
corroborated Ciria’s alibi, and Ciria maintained his
innocence.
Given the context of the investigation, there was
ultimately no evidence in Cunningham that the officer knew
or should have known that when the daughters implicated
their father, they were lying in response to his tactics.
Absent any “independent evidence that [the officer] knew or
should have known his interview tactics would yield false
information,” Gausvik, 345 F.3d at 817, we held that
repeated questioning amounted at most to an “improper
interview technique[].” Cunningham, 345 F.3d at 812. By
contrast, here, as the district court determined, a reasonable
jury could find that the inspectors were aware or should have
been aware that Varela was not being truthful and was
merely adopting Defendants’ account of events in response
to police pressure. Cunningham, therefore, creates no legal
obstacle to presenting this case to a jury.
2.
Defendants next rely on the fact that many of the
techniques the inspectors used were constitutional under the
Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment standards for
involuntary confessions. In such contexts, they argue,
continuing to question a suspect after he claims he is
innocent, accusing a suspect of lying, explaining potential
criminal liability, or explaining the advantages of telling the
truth do not automatically render a confession involuntary.
This argument fails for several reasons.
First, “it may be true that application of each of these
tactics would not render the witness’s statement
34 CIRIA V. GERRANS

constitutionally involuntary,” but “it does not follow that
when an officer uses these tactics together, he could not infer
that the witness’s story was false or at least highly
unreliable.” Clark, 131 F.4th at 450 (emphasis omitted).
Whether officers violated someone’s constitutionally-
protected right against self-incrimination is a separate
question from whether they used coercive or abusive tactics
to elicit a fabricated statement against someone. The latter
is the essence of a fabrication-of-evidence claim. An officer
can fabricate evidence by pressuring a witness to make a
false statement, even without violating that witness’s
constitutional right. After all, coercing someone into
incriminating themselves would typically require an even
higher level of coercion than coercing someone into
incriminating someone else. The “critical element” of a
fabrication of evidence claim is not whether use of the tactics
alone would be constitutional against the interrogated
witness but whether “the defendants . . . knew or should have
known that they were eliciting false accusations” against the
eventual defendant. Devereaux, 263 F.3d at 1076 (citation
omitted). Thus, even if the inspectors’ tactics did not violate
Varela’s Fifth Amendment right, it does not follow that the
inspectors did not fabricate evidence against Ciria.
Defendants’ reliance on cases from the Fourteenth
Amendment involuntary confession context is similarly
misplaced. See, e.g., Stoot v. City of Everett, 582 F.3d 910,
928 (9th Cir. 2009). It is irrelevant whether Varela’s
substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth
Amendment were violated by the inspectors’ interrogation.
Ciria’s claim is that the conduct that shocks the conscience
is not what the inspectors did to Varela, but what they did to
him—specifically, that the inspectors used abusive tactics to
produce a statement against him and then used that statement
CIRIA V. GERRANS 35

to charge him with murder, acting with deliberate
indifference to or with reckless disregard towards his right
not to be charged with fabricated evidence. See Gantt, 717
F.3d at 707–08.
Unsurprisingly, we never held in Devereaux that
fabrication-of-evidence claims only arise when the
underlying interrogation violates the constitutional rights of
the person being questioned. Confirming this point,
Defendants cannot identify any case that has applied Fifth or
Fourteenth Amendment involuntary confession standards to
the fabrication-of-evidence context.
Furthermore, even if cases from the Fifth Amendment
context were informative regarding the type of tactics that
produce unreliable statements, Defendants’ tactics, at least
when viewed in the light most favorable to Ciria, would still
qualify as coercive. We have recognized that “threats”
constitute a coercive interrogation technique and that
confessions made in a coercive manner are “likely to be
unreliable.” United States v. Tingle, 658 F.2d 1332, 1334–
35 (9th Cir. 1981). At this stage, we take as given that that
the inspectors threatened Varela with criminal liability.
None of the cases Defendants point to permit officers to
use threats. For example, in People v. Andersen, 161 Cal.
Rptr. 707, 715 (Cal. Ct. App. 1980), although the court held
that there was “nothing wrong in the statements made by the
police officers to the interviewee urging her to tell the truth,”
that was because “the admonition to tell the truth was
appropriate and timely and not one extraneously dragged in
as a club with which to bully the suspect.” Id.. Likewise, in
United States v. Leon Guerrero, 847 F.2d 1363, 1366 n.2
(9th Cir. 1988), we observed that while officers may
incentivize cooperation by promising to tell prosecutors if a
36 CIRIA V. GERRANS

witness cooperates, they may not threaten someone to adopt
a particular statement.
Regardless, the essence of a fabrication-of-evidence
claim is not the constitutionality of the techniques as applied
to the person being questioned—in this case, Varela—but
whether there is “independent evidence that [the officers]
knew or should have known [their] interview tactics would
yield false information.” Gausvik, 345 F.3d at 817; see
Devereaux, 263 F.3d at 1078. Defendants have not pointed
us to any authority—nor could we find any—for their
proposition that there can be no fabrication of evidence if the
interview did not violate the witness’s constitutional rights.
3.
Finally, Defendants cite cases in which this court has
declined to dismiss an indictment on due process grounds.
See, e.g., United States v. Ryan, 548 F.2d 782 (9th Cir.
1976). In Ryan, we declined to dismiss an indictment on due
process grounds where officers secured an informant’s
cooperation through assertions that the informant would go
to jail if he refused to cooperate, “[p]rophecies that his health
would suffer irreparably if he went to jail,” and “[a]ssurances
that his friends . . . would be kept ‘out of it.’” Id. at 789.
Defendants argue that the inspectors’ tactics here are less
coercive or at least comparable to the practices in Ryan, so
they do not amount to fabrication of evidence.
Ryan has little relevance here. First, Ryan involves an
informant’s consent to have his conversations with a suspect
recorded. Id. at 785, 789. Concerns regarding the officers’
techniques producing false information were never raised
and would naturally be far less salient in those
circumstances, since the government sought the informant’s
willingness to be recorded when talking to a suspect, not the
CIRIA V. GERRANS 37

adoption of a specific statement implicating someone. Id. at
786.
Second, in Ryan, the issue before us was whether an
indictment should be dismissed on due process grounds.
That involves a high standard not found in the context of
fabrication-of-evidence claims brought under § 1983: the
government conduct must be “so outrageous that due process
principles would absolutely bar the government from
invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction.” Id. at
788 (citation omitted). There is no basis in our precedent to
graft this standard onto our analysis of fabrication-of-
evidence claims under § 1983. See Gantt, 717 F.3d at 707–
08 (explaining the legal standard for fabrication-of-evidence
claims).
Finally, even if the facts and legal standard in Ryan were
relevant here, the case’s procedural posture makes it
inapposite. In considering whether the informant’s consent
was voluntary under these circumstances, we were
reviewing the trial court’s factual determination for clear
error. Ryan, 548 F.2d at 791. That is a distinct legal inquiry
from the one here, which is whether any reasonable jury
could find that the inspectors used coercive and abusive
tactics to produce a false statement against Ciria.
In sum, we are not persuaded by any of the cases
Defendants raise that there can be no constitutional violation
on these facts. Under our precedents and based on the
assumed facts, a reasonable jury could find that the
inspectors were deliberately indifferent or exhibited reckless
disregard towards Ciria’s right not to be charged based on
fabricated evidence. A reasonable jury could also find that
the inspectors fabricated evidence against Ciria by using
interrogation tactics including threatening Varela with an
38 CIRIA V. GERRANS

adult murder charge and offering him a story that exculpated
him to get him to name Ciria as the shooter. Finally, given
the context of the full investigation and comments Varela
made during the interrogation, a reasonable jury could find
that the inspectors knew or should have known Varela was
not telling the truth but merely adopting the fabricated story
they fed him.
C. Clearly Established Law
We consider next whether Defendants are nonetheless
entitled to qualified immunity at this stage because the law
was not clearly established at the time of the events in
question. We conclude that they are not.
Even if he violated a constitutional right, a public official
sued for damages in his individual capacity is entitled to
qualified immunity unless “the right in question was clearly
established at the time of the officer’s actions, such that any
reasonably well-trained officer would have known that his
conduct was unlawful.” Orn, 949 F.3d at 1174. “There need
not be a case directly on point for a right to be clearly
established.” Martinez v. City of Clovis, 943 F.3d 1260,
1275 (9th Cir. 2019). “The ‘salient question . . . is whether
the state of the law’ at the time of their misconduct” gave the
officers “‘fair warning that their [misconduct] was
unconstitutional.’” Rieman v. Vazquez, 96 F.4th 1085, 1094
(9th Cir. 2024) (alteration in original) (quoting Hardwick v.
County of Orange, 844 F.3d 1112, 1117 (9th Cir. 2017)).
The constitutional question must be “beyond debate.”
Hardwick, 844 F.3d at 1117.
As discussed above, a reasonable jury could find that
Defendants used abusive tactics to feed Varela a story
naming Ciria as a shooter. A reasonable jury could also find
that Defendants used Varela’s statement to charge Ciria with
CIRIA V. GERRANS 39

murder, even though they knew or should have known based
on their investigation and Varela’s responses that Varela was
merely adopting the story they fed him. The relevant
question at this juncture is whether, assuming these facts as
we must, it was clearly established in 1990 that such conduct
would violate Ciria’s due process rights. We hold that it
was. Defendants, of course, emphasize that they never
threatened Varela and that they had no reason to know
Varela’s statement was not truthful. But those are factual
issues for the jury to resolve, not us. In any case, we lack
jurisdiction to review the district court’s contrary factual
determinations on those points.
Several authorities put the constitutional question
“beyond debate.” Id. As an initial matter, there is no dispute
that in 1990, “there [was] a clearly established constitutional
due process right not to be subjected to criminal charges on
the basis of false evidence that was deliberately fabricated
by the government.” Devereaux, 263 F.3d at 1074–75.
Although Devereaux was only published in 2001,
Defendants do not dispute that this due process right was
clearly established in 1990, at the time of Varela’s
interrogation. Indeed, Devereaux observed that a right not
to be charged based on fabricated evidence was “virtually
self-evident,” even without a prior case on point. Id. at 1075;
see also Limone v. Condon, 372 F.3d 39, 44–45 (1st Cir.
2004) (holding that it is “self-evident” that “those charged
with upholding the law are prohibited from deliberately
fabricating evidence and framing individuals for crimes they
did not commit”).
Even if it were not obvious, an array of Supreme Court
cases confirm Ciria’s constitutional right not to be charged
with deliberately fabricated evidence. In Miller v. Pate, the
Supreme Court emphasized the “established principle” that
40 CIRIA V. GERRANS

the “Fourteenth Amendment cannot tolerate a state criminal
conviction obtained by the knowing use of false evidence.”
386 U.S. 1, 7 (1967). Even earlier, Pyle v. Kansas, 317 U.S.
213, 216 (1942), established that the knowing use of
perjured testimony to secure a criminal conviction violates
the accused’s constitutional due process rights. Pyle
emphasized that public officials may not coerce and threaten
witnesses to testify falsely against a suspect. Id. at 214–15.
In addition to finding the “wrongfulness of charging
someone on the basis of deliberately fabricated evidence . . .
sufficiently obvious,” Devereaux held that “Pyle is
sufficiently analogous” to a “right to be free from such
charges.” 263 F.3d at 1075; see also Halsey v. Pfeiffer, 750
F.3d 273, 296 (3d Cir. 2014).
We also conclude that, as a necessary corollary to this
general prohibition, it would have been clear to any
reasonable official in Defendants’ shoes that they could not
use coercive and abusive interrogation tactics to get a
witness to adopt a story they knew or should have known
was fabricated. After all, any reasonable officer would know
that if he uses certain interrogation tactics to get a witness to
adopt a fabricated statement, he has fabricated evidence
against the accused person, whether directly or
surreptitiously. See Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741
(2002) (emphasizing that “general statements of the law are
not inherently incapable of giving fair and clear warning”
and that “a general constitutional rule already identified in
the decisional law may apply with obvious clarity to the
specific conduct in question” (citation omitted)). Therefore,
even in 1990, it was beyond debate that using interrogation
tactics to feed Varela a fabricated story naming Ciria
constituted fabricating evidence and that fabricating
evidence violated Ciria’s constitutional rights. See also
CIRIA V. GERRANS 41

Jackson v. City of Cleveland, 925 F.3d 793, 825 (6th Cir.
2019).
If that were not enough, as Defendants claim, Pyle
confirms that Defendants had a further warning that their
tactic—threatening a witness with criminal liability—is one
way to elicit false testimony. See Pyle, 317 U.S. at 215. In
Pyle, the Supreme Court held that Pyle “set forth allegations
that his imprisonment resulted from perjured testimony”
when one witness alleged that he was threatened with a
penitentiary sentence for burglary if he did not testify falsely
against Pyle and that another was threatened with
prosecution unless he testified for the State. Id. at 214–216.
Pyle therefore “confirms what common sense dictates,” Est.
of Soakai v. Abdelaziz, 137 F.4th 969, 978 (9th Cir. 2025),
that threatening a witness with criminal liability to elicit a
false statement against the accused violates the accused
person’s rights.
Given this array of authorities solidifying the principle,
and because the proposition is self-evident, any reasonable
officer would know that threatening a young witness and
offering him a story that insulates him from liability to get
him to falsely implicate a suspect violates the accused
suspect’s due process rights. Defendants dispute that they
threatened or intimidated Varela, or that the officers knew or
should have known that Varela’s statement was not truthful,
but these are factual questions for the jury to resolve. As the
district court determined, a reasonable jury could find that
the inspectors threatened and pressured Varela, who was
evidently susceptible to intimidation, into adopting a
fabricated story that the inspectors fed him. As we must, we
assume these factual determinations are true. Because even
in 1990, it was clearly established that such conduct would
42 CIRIA V. GERRANS

violate Ciria’s rights, qualified immunity is improper at this
stage.
IV. Malicious Prosecution Claim
We next analyze Ciria’s malicious prosecution claim.
The elements of a malicious prosecution claim under § 1983
derive from the state law elements of malicious prosecution.
See Usher v. City of Los Angeles, 828 F.2d 556, 561–62 (9th
Cir. 1987). To prevail on a § 1983 claim of malicious
prosecution in California, a plaintiff “must show that the
defendants prosecuted [him] with malice and without
probable cause, and that they did so for the purpose of
denying [him] equal protection or another specific
constitutional right.” Awabdy v. City of Adelanto, 368 F.3d
1062, 1066 (9th Cir. 2004) (alterations in original) (quoting
Freeman v. City of Santa Ana, 68 F.3d 1180, 1189 (9th Cir.
1995)). 5
To sustain a malicious prosecution claim, Ciria must also
show the absence of probable cause. See Yousefian v. City
of Glendale, 779 F.3d 1010, 1014 (9th Cir. 2015). “The
probable cause inquiry is objective, asking whether a
reasonable person would have thought that the claim was
legally tenable.” Est. of Tucker ex rel. Tucker v. Interscope
Recs., Inc., 515 F.3d 1019, 1031 (9th Cir. 2008). The

5
Because no freestanding “substantive due process right exists under the
Fourteenth Amendment to be free from malicious prosecution,” to bring
a malicious prosecution claim under § 1983, Ciria must point to another
constitutional right that Defendants violated in prosecuting him.
Awabdy, 368 F.3d at 1069. The district court recognized this
constitutional right as the right not to be charged based on fabricated
evidence under the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendants do not
challenge that determination.
CIRIA V. GERRANS 43

probable cause determination is the focus of Defendants’
appeal.
On appeal, Defendants argue that (1) the district court
erred in focusing solely on the four corners of the search
warrant affidavit (produced at the same time as the arrest
warrant and draft of the Criminal Complaint), rather than
everything the inspectors knew at the time they charged
Ciria; (2) even excluding Varela’s statement implicating
Ciria, probable cause existed to charge Ciria with murder;
and (3) even if probable cause did not exist to charge Ciria,
the existence of probable cause was reasonably arguable, so
Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on the
malicious prosecution claim.
A. Constitutional Violation
To begin, we agree with Defendants that we are not
limited to the contents of the affidavit that accompanied the
inspectors’ search warrant in analyzing whether Defendants
had probable cause to charge Ciria. 6 Crowley declared that
after he interviewed Varela, and before he signed the
Criminal Complaint against Ciria, he and Gerrans met with
the Assistant District Attorney assigned to the case, shared
the full investigative file with him, and discussed the
investigation. We therefore consider the totality of the
circumstances known to the inspectors at the time they
signed the Criminal Complaint.
Probable cause exists when “under the totality of
circumstances known to the arresting officers, a prudent

6
Where the scope of the officers’ knowledge is uncertain on the record,
as here, the affidavit may nonetheless be evidence of what information
the officers found sufficiently credible to attest to and present to a
magistrate.
44 CIRIA V. GERRANS

person would have concluded that there was a fair
probability that [the defendant] had committed a crime.”
United States v. Smith, 790 F.2d 789, 792 (9th Cir. 1986).
The totality of the evidence shows only that Ciria looked
somewhat like the shooter and was involved in drug dealing
with Bastarrica and other Cuban people in the area. There
was no physical evidence linking Ciria to the crime. There
was no match between what Ciria had been wearing an hour
before the murder (at Galan’s Bar) and the distinctive trench
coat that the shooter wore and was specifically noted by two
eyewitnesses. No one had placed him near the scene of the
murder that night. Neither eyewitness could positively
identify Ciria as the shooter. He also had an unverified alibi.
Moreover, Ciria was willing to talk to the inspectors and take
a polygraph test; he made no attempt to flee. And
Defendants knew of at least one other person who knew
Bastarrica and that matched the description of the shooter,
but they did not seek him out for further investigation.
Considering this evidence as a whole, viewed in the light
most favorable to Ciria, a reasonable jury could find that
there was less than a “fair probability” that Ciria was the
shooter. Id.
First, “[m]ere suspicion, common rumor, or even strong
reason to suspect are not enough” to provide probable cause.
McKenzie v. Lamb, 738 F.2d 1005, 1008 (9th Cir. 1984).
Mercedes Mora’s and Charles Austin’s statements about
what people had been saying about the identity of the shooter
cannot help Defendants. Statements about the “word” in the
community are clearly rumors, and the officers had no idea
what the bases of those statements were. See id. at 1009
(holding that officers could not rely on suspicions of a
witness who “had no personal knowledge” and whose
suspicions were not confirmed by objective evidence); see
CIRIA V. GERRANS 45

also United States v. Freitas, 716 F.2d 1216, 1222 (9th Cir.
1983). Among the credible new evidence of Ciria’s
innocence identified by the Innocence Commission, it was
the person named by Socorro as the actual shooter, Candido,
who spread the rumors about the shooting to cast suspicion
onto Ciria. Likewise, there is no evidence regarding the
basis for Austin’s and Mora’s belief that Ciria had a falling
out with Bastarrica, and, viewing the evidence in the light
most favorable to Ciria, a jury could reasonably find that this
was an accompanying rumor. Indeed, no one linked Ciria to
the scene of Bastarrica’s murder, and no witness placed him
at Alfonso’s murder the night before.
Second, the evidence regarding Ciria’s match to the
physical description of the shooter was weak. Guevara
viewed the shooting only from above. She could not see the
shooter’s face, and she said she was not sure about his height
and weight. Duff witnessed the shooting from around thirty
feet away, and his descriptions were both general and
changed a bit over time, in height (from 5’10”–5’11” to
almost 6’0”), age (from late 30s to no older than early 30s),
and race (including Middle Eastern or Iranian, Hindu, and
Black).
Although general physical descriptions can be relevant,
see United States v. Pinion, 800 F.2d 976, 979 (9th Cir.
1986), they are not sufficient. We have repeatedly observed
that “mere resemblance to a general description is not
enough to establish probable cause.” Grant v. City of Long
Beach, 315 F.3d 1081, 1088 (9th Cir. 2002); accord Torres
v. City of Los Angeles, 548 F.3d 1197, 1208 (9th Cir. 2008);
United States v. Lopez, 482 F.3d 1067, 1073 (9th Cir. 2007);
see also United States v. Ricardo D., 912 F.2d 337, 342 (9th
Cir. 1990).
46 CIRIA V. GERRANS

There were also key and “more specific aspects” of the
description that were missing, such as the distinctive trench
coat worn by the shooter. Lopez, 482 F.3d at 1073; see also
Torres, 548 F.3d at 1208. The inspectors should have known
that Ciria had not been wearing the dark trench coat that both
witnesses observed the shooter wearing that night.
Tellingly, as the inspectors have admitted, the eyewitnesses
whose physical descriptions they relied on could not
positively identify Ciria as the shooter. See Lopez, 482 F.3d
at 1074 (“The effect of evidence which may support, or
incline toward, a finding of probable cause can, of course, be
vitiated by countervailing evidence.”); see also Torres, 548
F.3d at 1209 (describing an unreliable comparative
identification). There was additionally no physical evidence
linking Ciria to the murder scene.
Finally, Ciria made “no attempt to flee” and instead
voluntarily offered to talk to the inspectors. Torres, 548 F.3d
at 1209. Further, Ciria had an alibi, which the officers never
attempted to verify before charging him with murder. See
also Gilker v. Baker, 576 F.2d 245, 247 (9th Cir. 1978) (“His
explanation lent itself to verification which apparently was
never sought.”).
As a whole, when viewed in the light most favorable to
Ciria, this case involves evidence similar in strength and in
type to McKenzie, 738 F.2d at 1006–10: rumor and
suspicions not based on objective evidence, an imperfect
match to a general physical description, some circumstantial
evidence linking the suspect to the crime but no physical
evidence, and a failed identification from a key witness.
These circumstances did not establish probable cause in
McKenzie, and they do not establish probable cause here.
Defendants make no other argument challenging the district
court’s determination that Ciria has a triable malicious
CIRIA V. GERRANS 47

prosecution claim. We thus agree with the district court,
although for different reasons, that a reasonable jury could
find that the inspectors lacked probable cause that Ciria was
the murderer, and accordingly, that Ciria—if Defendants are
not immune—has a viable malicious prosecution claim.
B. Clearly Established Law
We next consider whether Defendants are entitled to
qualified immunity on the malicious prosecution claim.
Malicious prosecution claims based on a violation of a
constitutional right were actionable under § 1983 in 1990, as
they are now. See Usher, 828 F.2d at 562; Cline v. Brusett,
661 F.2d 108, 112 (9th Cir. 1981); see also Malley v. Briggs,
475 U.S. 335, 340–41 (1986) (“In 1871, the generally
accepted rule was that one who procured the issuance of an
arrest warrant by submitting a complaint could be held liable
if the complaint was made maliciously and without probable
cause.”). It was also clearly established in 1990 that a
malicious prosecution claim may be brought not only against
prosecutors but also against others, including police officers,
who wrongfully caused prosecution. See, e.g., Usher, 828
F.2d at 562.
Malicious prosecution claims require a lack of probable
cause. Probable cause “exists when officers have knowledge
or reasonably trustworthy information sufficient to lead a
person of reasonable caution to believe that an offense has
been or is being committed by the person being
arrested.” Sialoi v. City of San Diego, 823 F.3d 1223, 1232
(9th Cir. 2016) (quoting Lopez, 482 F.3d at 1072); see also
Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964). While not a
“high bar,” probable cause requires a “substantial chance of
criminal activity.” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S.
48, 57, 61 (2018) (quoting Kaley v. United States, 571 U.S.
48 CIRIA V. GERRANS

320, 338 (2014) and Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 243 n.13
(1983)).
In applying qualified immunity analysis to claims of a
lack of probable cause, we consider “whether it is
reasonably arguable that there was probable cause.”
Johnson v. Barr, 79 F.4th 996, 1005 (9th Cir. 2023)
(emphasis in original) (quoting Rosenbaum, 663 F.3d at
1076). “Given its imprecise nature, officers will often find
it difficult to know how the general standard of probable
cause applies in ‘the precise situation encountered.’” Wesby,
583 U.S. at 64 (citation omitted). But in an “obvious case,”
the “unlawfulness of the officer’s conduct” may be
“sufficiently clear even though existing precedent does not
address similar circumstances.” Id. (citation omitted).
Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Ciria, it
is not reasonably arguable that the officers had probable
cause to arrest Ciria and charge him with murder. As the
district court observed, outside of Varela’s statements,
“much of the other cited evidence and witness interviews
were not based on personal knowledge, and, instead, are
more akin to gossip or rumor.” It was clearly established in
1990 that “[m]ere suspicion” and “common rumor” cannot
provide probable cause. McKenzie, 738 F.2d at 1008; see
Freitas, 716 F.2d at 1222 (discounting assertions where
there was “no assurance that [the] source had gathered his
information from personal observation rather than ‘casual
rumor’”). Similarly, the physical descriptions offered by
eyewitnesses were weak, inconsistent, and highly generic.
And at the time of the relevant events, it was clearly
established that “mere resemblance to a general description
is not enough to establish probable cause.” Grant, 315 F.3d
at 1088; see also Ricardo D., 912 F.2d at 342; Pinion, 800
CIRIA V. GERRANS 49

F.2d at 979 (explaining that a match to a “general”
description is “insufficient to establish probable cause”).
The “state of the law” in 1990 thus gave the officers “fair
warning” that they lacked probable cause to arrest and
charge Ciria with first-degree murder. Hope, 536 U.S. at
741.
This is not a case where “reasonable officers could
disagree as to the legality of [Ciria’s] arrest.” Rosenbaum,
663 F.3d at 1076. Tellingly, the inspectors relied exclusively
on Varela’s statements as the basis for probable cause in the
search warrant affidavit, and as we have explained, a
reasonable jury could find that the inspectors coerced Varela
into producing those false statements. In their attempt to
demonstrate probable cause before the magistrate, the
inspectors did not include the “word” in the community,
“common rumor” about Ciria’s relationship with Bastarrica,
or even the imperfect match to a physical description of the
shooter. McKenzie, 738 F.2d at 1008. Defendants’
entitlement to qualified immunity rises and falls with this
same evidence. Like the arresting officers who declined to
rely on this weak evidence when seeking a search warrant, it
is clear to us that this evidence is insufficient to render it
“reasonably” arguable that there was probable cause.
Rosenbaum, 663 F.3d at 1076.
Not only was it clearly established that rumor and a weak
match to a general description were insufficient for probable
cause, the unlawfulness of the Defendants’ conduct should
also have been “obvious.” Wesby, 583 U.S. at 64. Officers
do not need a case on point to know that it is unlawful to
charge first-degree murder principally on the basis of a
single coerced and false statement, particularly when the
50 CIRIA V. GERRANS

only other available evidence is rumor and a weak match to
a generic physical description.
The cases Defendants cite are inapposite. Defendants
invoke three cases to argue that a match to a detailed physical
description provided by eyewitnesses and a close connection
with a vehicle linked to the crime are sufficient for probable
cause. See United States v. Gaines, 563 F.2d 1352, 1358
(9th Cir. 1977); United States v. Barnett, 423 F.2d 694, 694
(9th Cir. 1970); Hollins v. United States, 338 F.2d 227, 229
(9th Cir. 1964). But in each of these cases, there was
probable cause because the suspect in question actually
matched the description provided by witnesses and was
directly connected to the vehicle associated with the crime.
For example, in Gaines, physical descriptions of the
robbery suspects matched the occupants of the vehicle
“which was unquestionably linked to the bank robbery.” 563
F.2d at 1358. Importantly, because Gaines had also
acknowledged to the officer that he and his girlfriend had
“sole” use of the vehicle and he had possession of it when
the robberies were committed, we concluded that the officers
possessed adequate information to take Gaines into custody.
Id.
Similarly, there was probable cause to arrest Barnett
because he matched the physical description of the robber,
the officers knew his name and address based on the license
plate on the getaway car, and he had approached the known
address and identified himself by name. 423 F.2d at 694.
Finally, in Hollins, the officer had a litany of “trustworthy
information” amounting to probable cause. 338 F.2d at 229.
Hollins’s “generally similar” match to a physical description
of the suspect was only a part of our analysis. Id. The officer
also had reliable information that the bank had been robbed
CIRIA V. GERRANS 51

around an hour before and that the robber had fled in a car
with the same make, description, and license plate as the car
parked in the driveway of the home where Hollins lived and
answered the door. Id. The officer even observed that the
car parked in the driveway was “still warm” when he arrived,
demonstrating a strong connection between the vehicle, the
suspect, and the crime. Id.
These cases show that it was unreasonable for the
officers to believe they had probable cause in this case.
Construing the facts in the light most favorable to Ciria,
there was an absence of knowledge or “trustworthy
information” sufficient to lead a reasonable officer to
“believ[e] that [Ciria] had committed . . . an offense.” Beck,
379 U.S. at 91; see also Lopez, 482 F.3d at 1072. To
reiterate, the evidence regarding Ciria’s match to the general
physical description of the shooter was weak. Eyewitnesses
could not positively identify Ciria as the shooter. And
importantly, evidence that undermined this match was
missing, such as the distinctive trench coat two eyewitnesses
said that the shooter wore on the night of the murder. With
respect to the vehicle, Ciria did not own the Monte Carlo;
the officers knew it belonged to Varela. No one connected
Ciria to the vehicle at the time of the shooting. No one even
placed him near the scene of the murder that night. He had
an unverified alibi. There was no physical evidence linking
him to the murder. And the officers knew that the only
concrete piece of evidence they had linking Ciria to the
murder was a statement that they fabricated.
“[C]onsidering all of the surrounding circumstances,” it
is not reasonably arguable that the officers had probable
cause to arrest Ciria. Wesby, 583 U.S. at 61 (citation
omitted). Under these circumstances, Defendants are not
52 CIRIA V. GERRANS

entitled to qualified immunity on Ciria’s malicious
prosecution claim.
AFFIRMED.
Defendants shall bear all costs on appeal.

MILLER, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

Joaquin Ciria spent many years in prison based on a
murder conviction that has now been vacated, so it is natural
to think that he should be compensated. But this case does
not present the abstract question whether Ciria is entitled to
some form of compensation. Instead, it presents a more
specific legal question: whether James Crowley and Arthur
Gerrans, the two police officers who investigated Ciria, are
subject to liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for fabrication of
evidence and malicious prosecution.
Officers are shielded from civil liability under section
1983 unless a plaintiff establishes that their conduct
“violate[d] clearly established statutory or constitutional
rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). First, the
plaintiff must show “a violation of a constitutional right.”
Carrillo v. County of Los Angeles, 798 F.3d 1210, 1218 (9th
Cir. 2015). Second, that right must be “‘clearly established’
at the time of the alleged misconduct.” Id. (quoting Pearson
v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009).
The Supreme Court has “repeatedly told courts—and the
Ninth Circuit in particular—not to define clearly established
law at a high level of generality.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563
U.S. 731, 742 (2011) (citation omitted). Instead, we must
focus on “whether the violative nature of particular conduct
CIRIA V. GERRANS 53

is clearly established.” Id. (emphasis added). “The relevant,
dispositive inquiry . . . is whether it would be clear to a
reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the
situation he confronted.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202
(2001); accord Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198–99
(2004). Thus, except in an “obvious case,” a plaintiff seeking
to overcome an assertion of qualified immunity “must
identify a case that put [the defendant] on notice that his
specific conduct was unlawful.” Rivas-Villegas v.
Cortesluna, 595 U.S. 1, 6 (2021) (per curiam).
Both of Ciria’s claims fail because, even assuming that
the officers violated Ciria’s constitutional rights, Ciria
cannot show that the relevant rights were clearly established
at the time of the investigation in March 1990. I would
therefore reverse the district court’s order denying the
officers’ motion to dismiss.
I
Ciria’s fabrication-of-evidence claim rests on the
officers’ interview with George Varela, a witness who
named Ciria as the shooter in the murder for which he was
ultimately convicted. The record shows that the officers first
explained “how the law works” by telling Varela that if he
drove Ciria to the crime scene and Ciria shot someone, then
Varela “could be tried as being a part of the murder . . . or
[he] could be tried as an accessory to the murder.” Varela
responded by denying involvement: “I ain’t helped nobody
do nothing.” The officers then told Varela that they spoke to
eyewitnesses who “saw the driver.” They added that Varela
had “got [himself] into a situation” and that if he was “going
to continue to sit in here and lie and cover up for Joaquin
[Ciria], [he was] going to be in” legal jeopardy. The officers
cautioned Varela to “be honest,” noting that he was 18 years
54 CIRIA V. GERRANS

old, had been in trouble as a juvenile, and did not want to get
in trouble as an adult. They added: “What you ought to do is
tell us exactly what happened. No lies. For your own good,
son. Okay? It’s best for you to tell us exactly what went
down. We know you didn’t do it.” Soon after that exchange,
Varela provided an account of the shooting that implicated
Ciria.
Ciria alleges that the techniques used to interview Varela
were “so coercive and abusive that [the officers] knew or
should have known that those techniques would yield false
information.” Devereaux v. Abbey, 263 F.3d 1070, 1076 (9th
Cir. 2001) (en banc). Even assuming that the interview
violated the rule we announced in Devereaux more than a
decade after the interview took place, this is hardly a case in
which the constitutional violation was “obvious” at the time.
Cf. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 738 (2002). Notably, the
coerciveness of the interrogation was not obvious to Ciria’s
lawyer, who had access to the entire transcript of Varela’s
interrogation—including all of the exchanges that the court
today uses to decide that “Varela, scared by the threat of
serious criminal liability, was adopting the story Defendants
fed him”—but concluded that it would not be helpful to
present any of it to the jury at Ciria’s criminal trial.
The officers did not use or threaten to use physical force
against Varela, and their statements reflected standard
interrogation methods. The officers’ observation that
someone who drove a shooter to a crime scene might be
subject to prosecution either as a principal or an accessory
was an accurate statement of the law. See People v. Jennings,
237 P.3d 474, 513 (Cal. 2010). Their statement that Varela
matched the description of the driver given by an eyewitness
was an accurate statement of the facts. And their explanation
of Varela’s potential criminal liability was a tactic that this
CIRIA V. GERRANS 55

court has repeatedly approved. See, e.g., Cunningham v. City
of Wenatchee, 345 F.3d 802, 810 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Officers
are allowed to recite the sentence a suspect may receive if
found guilty.”); United States v. Bautista-Avila, 6 F.3d 1360,
1364–65 (9th Cir. 1993) (same); cf. Amaya-Ruiz v. Stewart,
121 F.3d 486, 494 (9th Cir. 1997) (approving of
interrogation in which officer told suspect, “[w]e can forgive
your lies, but the United States Court system will not forgive
your lies”), overruled on other grounds by United States v.
Preston, 751 F.3d 1008 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc).
To recognize that the officers lacked fair notice that their
interrogation methods violated Ciria’s constitutional rights,
we need not revisit the district court’s factual
determinations. In particular, the district court’s
characterization of the officer’s conduct as “feeding [Varela]
the story he needed to tell to avoid” a murder charge is not a
factual determination, which we would lack jurisdiction to
review. Rather, it is a legal conclusion—one that we review
de novo—about the coerciveness of the officer’s
interrogation tactics.
Ciria emphasizes a statement Varela made partway
through the interrogation: “I didn’t know what was going to
happen. I didn’t know what was going to—Hey, whatever
you said.” That statement is ambiguous, but construing it in
the light most favorable to Ciria, as we must, it supports an
inference that Valera was merely adopting the officer’s
version of events. I agree that if Valera had been coerced into
giving a false statement implicating Ciria, that would violate
the Fourteenth Amendment. But whether Valera was
coerced into adopting the story fed to him by police depends
on the interrogation tactics that preceded Valera’s
admission. To prevail, he needs to show that those tactics
were unconstitutionally coercive.
56 CIRIA V. GERRANS

Even if, under the totality of the circumstances, the
officers’ questioning of Varela crossed the boundary into
unlawful conduct, no case law in 1990 would have put the
officers on notice that their interrogation tactics would
amount to fabrication of evidence in violation of the Due
Process Clause. To be sure, our decision in Devereaux
makes clear that, as of 1990, “there [was] a clearly
established constitutional due process right not to be
subjected to criminal charges on the basis of false evidence
that was deliberately fabricated by the government.” 263
F.3d at 1074–75. The court today reasons that “a necessary
corollary to this general prohibition” is that officers “could
not use coercive and abusive interrogation tactics to get a
witness to adopt a story they knew or should have known
was fabricated.” But clearly established law is not evaluated
based on “general proposition[s].” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201.
Instead, Ciria must identify a decided case that would have
put the officers on notice that their specific conduct
amounted to tactics so coercive and abusive that they should
have known the interrogation would produce false
information. Specificity is important because “[i]t is
sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the
relevant legal doctrine”—here, the due-process prohibition
on using coercive or abusive tactics to obtain false
information in an interrogation—“will apply to the factual
situation the officer confronts.” Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S.
7, 12 (2015) (per curiam) (quoting Saucier, 533 U.S. at 205).
Devereaux did not provide such specificity because, as
already noted, it was not decided until years after Varela’s
interview. The same is true of Gantt v. City of Los Angeles,
717 F.3d 702 (9th Cir. 2013), on which Ciria relies. And the
handful of other cases identified by Ciria do not do the job
either.
CIRIA V. GERRANS 57

In United States v. Tingle, for example, a federal agent
interrogated a criminal defendant and told her that she would
not see her two-year-old child “for a while if she went to
prison.” 658 F.2d 1332, 1334 (9th Cir. 1981). In addressing
a Fifth Amendment claim brought by the defendant, we
stated that “a confession ‘must not be extracted by any sort
of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied
promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any
improper influence.’” Id. at 1335 (quoting Malloy v. Hogan,
378 U.S. 1, 7 (1964)). And considering the “cumulative
effect” of the coercive tactics employed by the agent, id. at
1336 n.4, we concluded that the defendant had been
subjected to a form of “psychological coercion generated by
concern for a loved one [that] could impair a suspect’s
capacity for self control,” id. at 1336 (quoting United States
v. McShane, 462 F.2d 5, 7 (9th Cir. 1972)). The case
involved much more than an implicit threat of prosecution,
and it did not involve a claim of fabrication of evidence
through coercive interrogation of a third party.
Similarly unhelpful is Pyle v. Kansas, 317 U.S. 213
(1942). There, a state habeas petitioner submitted evidence
of perjured testimony knowingly used by the State to convict
him, including one witness who had previously been
committed to a mental institution and who was threatened
with prosecution if he did not testify for the State. Id. at 214.
The Supreme Court determined that the petitioner’s
allegations “sufficiently charge a deprivation of
[constitutional] rights.” Id. at 216. But Pyle arose in the
context of perjured testimony used by prosecutors at trial. It
did not provide guidance on whether the threat of
prosecution would be a coercive and abusive technique that
yields false information during police interrogations. And
the opinion in Pyle provided no details about how exactly
58 CIRIA V. GERRANS

the State threatened the witness, so it would not have
allowed the officers here to assess whether their conduct was
impermissible. See id. at 214 (describing the petitioner’s
allegations as “crude”).
Ciria cites no other examples of cases that might have
told the officers that their exchange with Varela—explaining
the law of accomplice liability, detailing the consequences
of an adult murder charge, and cautioning Varela that
eyewitnesses saw the driver—could support a claim of a
deliberate fabrication of evidence. For that reason, the
officers are entitled to qualified immunity.
II
Ciria’s malicious-prosecution claim fails for similar
reasons. A necessary element of a malicious-prosecution
claim is lack of probable cause. Awabdy v. City of Adelanto,
368 F.3d 1062, 1066 (9th Cir. 2004). Even assuming that
Ciria has adequately alleged that the defendant officers
lacked probable cause to charge him with murder, he cannot
overcome qualified immunity because it was at least
“reasonably arguable” that probable cause existed. Johnson
v. Barr, 79 F.4th 996, 1005 (9th Cir. 2023).
Probable cause “requires only a probability or substantial
chance of criminal activity, not an actual showing of such
activity.” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 57
(2018) (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 243 n.13
(1983)). It “is not a high bar.” Id. (quoting Kaley v. United
States, 571 U.S. 320, 338 (2014)). Here, it is undisputed that
Ciria fit the general physical description of the shooter
offered by eyewitnesses, that he was previously involved in
narcotics dealing with the victim, that the two had had a
falling out and one of Ciria’s friends had been murdered just
the night before, that Ciria was with Varela—who was
CIRIA V. GERRANS 59

placed at the scene of the murder—earlier that night, and that
Ciria had a criminal record. On those facts, it is at least
reasonably arguable that a reasonable officer would have
thought there was a “fair probability” that Ciria was the
shooter. Gates, 462 U.S. at 238.
To be sure, some of our pre-1990 cases stated that
probable cause cannot be established through gossip and
rumor or mere resemblance to a general physical description.
See, e.g., United States v. Pinion, 800 F.2d 976, 979 (9th Cir.
1986) (resemblance); McKenzie v. Lamb, 738 F.2d 1005,
1008 (9th Cir. 1984) (rumors). But the Supreme Court has
held that “[i]t is not enough that the rule is suggested by then-
existing precedent. The precedent must be clear enough that
every reasonable official would interpret it to establish the
particular rule the plaintiff seeks to apply.” Wesby, 583 U.S.
at 63. Thus, a “robust consensus of cases . . . finding a Fourth
Amendment violation ‘under similar circumstances’” is
usually necessary to “place the lawfulness of a particular
arrest ‘beyond debate.’” Id. at 65 (first quoting White v.
Pauly, 580 U.S. 73, 79 (2017) (per curiam); and then quoting
al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741).
Ciria has identified no authority that, in 1990, would
have put the defendant officers on notice that they lacked
probable cause under these specific circumstances.
McKenzie, for example, involved significantly weaker
evidence than is present here. In that case, the defendants,
both jewelry salesmen, possessed three items of jewelry
resembling “general inventory descriptions” of jewelry
stolen in an earlier robbery-homicide. 738 F.2d at 1009. One
defendant also had “some similarity” to a description of the
suspect, but the eyewitness who had provided that
description stated that the defendant was not the person he
had observed. Id. at 1008–09.
60 CIRIA V. GERRANS

The other cases on which Ciria relies addressed discrete
categories of evidence in isolation—such as resemblance to
a general physical description or uncorroborated rumor—
rather than the cumulative effect of multiple pieces of
inculpatory evidence considered together. But “this sort of
divide-and-conquer analysis” is antithetical to the totality-
of-the-circumstances approach that is key to the probable-
cause inquiry. Wesby, 583 U.S. at 61 (quoting United States
v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 274 (2002)). More importantly,
overcoming qualified immunity requires a much closer
factual correspondence: Existing precedent must have
placed the unlawfulness of the officers’ conduct “beyond
debate” under the particular circumstances they confronted.
Id. at 63 (quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741). No such case
did so here. Nor is this “the rare ‘obvious case,’ where the
unlawfulness of the officer’s conduct is sufficiently clear
even though existing precedent does not address similar
circumstances.” Wesby, 583 U.S. at 65 (quoting Brosseau v.
Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199 (2004) (per curiam)).
I would reverse the district court’s denial of qualified
immunity to defendants on both claims.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11338251. Public record. Not legal advice.