Rodriguez-Mateo v. Fuentes-Agostini

USCA1 Opinion

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter

Citation Limited Pursuant to lst Cir. Loc. R. 32.3

United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 02-1662

FELIX L. RODRIGUEZ-MATEO; SHEILA CAMACHO-COLON; CONJUGAL

PARTNERSHIP RODRIGUEZ-CAMACHO; OCTAVIO FERNANDEZ-REYES; ANABEL

CARABALLO-ROSADO; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP FERNANDEZ-CARABALLO;

ALEXANDER RODRIGUEZ-MADERA; ROSALYN RIVERA; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP

RODRIGUEZ-RIVERA; HERIBERTO CASTRO; TAMARA FLORES-CALDERON;

CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP CASTRO-FLORES; ANGEL MORALES-COLON; IRIS

VIOLETA DELGADO; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP MORALES-DELGADO; PEDRO J.

MONTES; MADELINE GONZALEZ-PADILLA; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP MONTES-GONZALEZ; WINSTON SERRANO-FEBUS; DORIS LOZADA-MARRERO; CONJUGAL

PARTNERSHIP SERRANO-LOZADA,

Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.

JOSE FUENTES-AGOSTINI; ZOE LABOY; JOHNNY HEREDIA;

FLEMING CASTILLO; LUIS VAZQUEZ-MORAN; MARIA JUDITH CUBANO;

ANGEL BURGOS; PUERTO RICO POLICE; PEDRO TOLEDO DAVILA;

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BUREAU,

Defendants, Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Jay A. Garcia-Gregory, U.S. District Judge ]

Before

Lynch, Circuit Judge ,

Coffin and Porfilio, (1) Senior Circuit Judges .

Antonio Bauza Torres on brief for appellants.

Luis Sanchez Betances and Sanchez Betances & Sifre, PSC, on

brief for appellees.

May 28, 2003

COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge . Appellant Félix Rodríguez-Mateo

was among some fifteen to eighteen Puerto Rico corrections

department employees investigated for alleged involvement in the

misappropriation of automobile parts from the repair shop at Rio

Piedras State Penitentiary. Thirteen criminal cases eventually

were prosecuted, leading to nine convictions based on guilty

pleas. (2) Appellant was arrested but never prosecuted. At a

preliminary hearing following his arrest, a magistrate judge found

that the evidence was insufficient to establish probable cause to

indict him. He subsequently brought a civil rights suit against

numerous government and law enforcement officials, claiming that

the nature of the investigation and his arrest violated his rights

under the United States and Puerto Rico constitutions. A

magistrate judge recommended that the claims against all but three

defendants - two investigators and a prosecutor (3) - be dismissed on

various grounds. The district court ultimately granted summary

judgment for all defendants, concluding that the defendants

excepted by the magistrate judge were entitled to qualified

immunity. In this appeal, we review only the qualified immunity

ruling. (4)

In brief, appellant claims that his constitutional rights were

violated because the appellees executed "an incomplete,

irresponsible and unprofessional investigation" by failing to

corroborate the unreliable, false testimony of the inmate who was

their primary source of information, by disregarding the

exculpatory evidence they obtained from other sources, and by

presenting what they knew or should have known were false

statements to the magistrate judge who issued the arrest warrants.

Appellant predicates his claim of a constitutional violation

primarily on an allegation of malicious prosecution implicating his

Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Our case law establishes that appellant has no viable claim of

malicious prosecution grounded on either the procedural or

substantive prongs of the Due Process Clause. See Nieves v.

McSweeney , 241 F.3d 46, 53-54 (lst Cir. 2001) (adhering to the view

that "'substantive due process may not furnish the constitutional

peg on which to hang' a federal malicious prosecution tort")

(quoting Albright v. Oliver , 510 U.S. 266 , 271 n.4 (1994)); Pérez-Ruiz v. Crespo-Guillén , 25 F.3d 40, 43 (lst Cir. 1994) ("[T]he

availability of an adequate remedy for malicious prosecution under

commonwealth law [ P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, § 5141 ]. . . is fatal to

appellants' procedural due process claim."). Although the Fourth

Amendment "provides potentially more fertile soil," Nieves , 241

F.3d at 54 , we have explicitly held, after the events that gave

rise to this case, that "[i]t is an open question whether the

Constitution permits the assertion of a section 1983 claim for

malicious prosecution on the basis of an alleged Fourth Amendment

violation," id. (5) Such uncertainty in the legal landscape entitles

state actors to qualified immunity. See , e.g. , Kauch v. Dep't for

Children, Youth & Their Families , 321 F.3d 1, 4 (lst Cir. 2003)

(qualified immunity applies if the asserted constitutional right

was not "clearly established" at the time of the alleged

violation). (6)

Appellant additionally argues that his case remains viable

based on his proposed amended complaint, which was not explicitly

considered by the district court. While that complaint adds

factual background to appellant's contention that his arrest was

made a public spectacle for the benefit of the media and thus

constituted an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, his

reliance on the revised complaint to resuscitate his case is

unavailing at this juncture for several reasons: (1) appellant

neither objected to the magistrate judge's decision not to consider

the new complaint nor invoked it as a barrier to summary judgment

during the district court's review of the magistrate judge's

ruling; (2) the new allegations do not specifically link any of the

remaining defendants to particular conduct surrounding the arrest;

and (3) appellant fails to offer meaningful argument, with case

citation, to support a claim that an arrest effectuated in an

unnecessarily public manner constitutes an unlawful seizure under

the Fourth Amendment, or that such a legal principle was clearly

established at the time of his arrest.

We therefore agree with the district court that appellees

Castillo, Burgos, and Cubano are entitled to qualified immunity,

and we affirm its grant of summary judgment in their favor.

Affirmed.

1. Of the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.

2. Three individuals were acquitted and one case was dismissed

due to a violation of the Speedy Trial Act. See District Court

Opinion and Order at 11.

3. These defendants, now appellees, are: District Attorney

Fleming Castillo, and Agents María Judith Cubano and Angel Burgos,

members of a task force that was supervised by the Puerto Rico

Department of Justice and charged with investigating the alleged

illegal activity by corrections officers.

4. Although the case originally involved seven corrections

department plaintiffs and ten defendants, it is limited at this

stage to one plaintiff-appellant and three defendants-appellees for

two reasons. First, plaintiffs failed to file objections to the

magistrate judge's recommendation that the case be dismissed

against all but the three defendants identified above. Their

untimely response to the recommended decision, filed more than a

week after an extended deadline and three days after the district

court issued its decision, was in effect only a response to the

defendants' objections to the magistrate judge's report. The

absence of timely objections precludes review in this court of the

judgments in favor of the other defendants. See Fed. R. Civ. P.

72(b); U.S. Dist. Ct. Rules D.P.R., Rule 510.2, 510.2A; see also

United States v. Mitchell , 85 F.3d 800, 803 (lst Cir. 1996)

("'There can be no appeal from a magistrate's report and

recommendation unless objections are filed thereto.'" (citation

omitted)). Second, the appeal as argued is brought only on behalf

of Rodríguez-Mateo, the other plaintiffs apparently having decided

to forgo further review.

5. In characterizing the law as unsettled, we relied in Nieves

on the Supreme Court's decision in Albright , issued in 1994, three

years before the investigation leading to appellant's arrest. See

Albright , 510 U.S. at 271 n.4 ("[T]he extent to which a claim of

malicious prosecution is actionable under § 1983 is one 'on which

there is an embarrassing diversity of judicial opinion.'" (citation

omitted)); id. at 275 ("We express no view as to whether

petitioner's claim would succeed under the Fourth Amendment . . .

.").

6. Although appellees' entitlement to immunity precludes any

need to address the issue substantively, we wish to indicate that

even if it had been clearly established that the Fourth Amendment

embraced malicious prosecution, appellant's claim suffered multiple

defects, including that a substantial number of the similarly based

investigations resulted in convictions and that appellant has not

identified any false information or a basis for believing appellees

knew or should have known of it.

We note appellant's assertion that appellees' pursuit of an

arrest warrant without a hearing, allegedly in violation of Rule 6

of the Puerto Rico Rules of Criminal Procedure, see 34 P.R. Laws

Ann. App. II R. 6, evidences an awareness that their informant's

lack of credibility would have been unveiled in a pre-arrest

proceeding. The Rule, however, offers alternative procedures,

including one without a hearing. Whether or not the rule was

violated - and appellant fails to develop the point - we find it of

little significance. He invokes the Rule to reinforce his argument

that appellees knew that their key witness was unreliable - an

allegation undermined by the successful prosecutions.