Maurice Lewis v. City of Chicago

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

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No. 17-1510

MAURICE LEWIS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 16-CV-7592 — Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED FEBRUARY 6, 2018 — DECIDED JANUARY 23, 2019

____________________

Before RIPPLE, SYKES, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. Maurice Lewis spent more than two

years in pretrial detention in the Cook County Jail based on

police reports falsely implicating him for unlawfully pos-

sessing a firearm. After the charges against him were

dropped, Lewis sued the City of Chicago and six police

officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking damages for violation

2 No. 17-1510

of his rights under the Fourth Amendment and the Due

Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The district court dismissed the suit, ruling that both

claims were time-barred. Lewis appealed. Twelve days later

the Supreme Court decided Manuel v. City of Joliet

(“Manuel I”), 137 S. Ct. 911, 920 (2017), clarifying that deten-

tion without probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment

“when it precedes, but also when it follows, the start of legal

process in a criminal case.” Id. at 918. The Court declined to

decide when such claims accrue, instead remanding the case

to this court to resolve that issue. Id. at 922. In September the

Manuel panel held that a Fourth Amendment claim for

wrongful pretrial detention accrues on the date the detention

ends. Manuel v. City of Joliet (“Manuel II”), 903 F.3d 667, 670

(7th Cir. 2018).

The combined effect of Manuel I and II saves part of

Lewis’s case. Consistent with Manuel I, Lewis pleaded a

viable Fourth Amendment claim for unlawful pretrial

detention. And Manuel II confirms that the claim is timely

because Lewis filed it within two years of his release from

detention.

The due-process claim is another matter. Manuel I makes

clear that the Fourth Amendment, not the Due Process

Clause, governs a claim for wrongful pretrial detention. To

the extent Hurt v. Wise, 880 F.3d 831, 843–44 (7th Cir. 2018),

holds otherwise, it is incompatible with Manuel I and II and

is overruled. 1 We therefore reverse the dismissal of the

1 Because this opinion resolves a conflict in our circuit caselaw, it was

circulated to all judges in active service. See 7TH CIR. R. 40(e). None

No. 17-1510 3

Fourth Amendment claim and affirm the dismissal of the

due-process claim, though on different grounds.

I. Background

On September 12, 2013, Chicago police officers searched

an apartment on West Walton Street where they encoun-

tered Lewis and two others. During the search, the officers

discovered a handgun. Lewis alleges that the officers had no

basis to believe the gun was his. He claims that he didn’t live

at the apartment and never told the officers otherwise. He

further alleges that the officers never found anything in the

apartment indicating that he lived there.

The officers arrested Lewis for illegally possessing the

firearm. Lewis claims that the officers prepared police

reports falsely stating that he “had admitted to residing in

the Walton Street Apartment” and that the officers “had

found and seized evidence establishing that [Lewis] resided

in the Walton Street Apartment.”

The day after Lewis’s arrest, a state-court judge held a

probable-cause hearing and found cause to believe that

Lewis illegally possessed the weapon, 720 ILL. COMP. STAT.

5/24-1.1(a), and violated Illinois’s armed habitual criminal

statute, id. § 5/24-1.7(a). The judge ordered Lewis held for

trial. Two weeks later a prosecutor amended the charges,

and a different judge held a probable-cause hearing on the

new charges. Officer Abraham Mora testified that the search

of the apartment uncovered a handgun and two documents

addressed to Lewis at the Walton Street address. The judge

favored a hearing en banc. Circuit Judge Amy J. St. Eve did not partici-

pate.

4 No. 17-1510

found probable cause to detain Lewis for trial. He sat in the

Cook County Jail for two years until the charges were

dropped on September 29, 2015.

On July 26, 2016, Lewis sued the City and six officers un-

der § 1983 alleging that he was held in jail pending trial

based on falsified evidence, violating his rights under the

Fourth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due

Process Clause. He also raised a claim under Illinois law for

malicious prosecution.

The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint under

Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The

judge granted the motion, dismissing the constitutional

claims with prejudice after finding them time-barred under

the two-year statute of limitations applicable to § 1983 claims

in Illinois. The judge then relinquished supplemental juris-

diction over the state-law claim, dismissing it without

prejudice.

II. Discussion

We review a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal de novo. Jakupovic v.

Curran, 850 F.3d 898, 901 (7th Cir. 2017). To survive a motion

to dismiss, a complaint must contain “factual content that

allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the

defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v.

Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).

A. Fourth Amendment Claim

Lewis maintains that he pleaded a viable Fourth

Amendment claim for unlawful pretrial detention based on

falsified evidence. He also argues that the claim is timely.

Under Manuel I and II, he is correct on both points.

No. 17-1510 5

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the peo-

ple to be secure in their persons … against unreasonable …

seizures.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. A person is “seized”

whenever an official “restrains his freedom of movement”

such that he is “not free to leave.” Brendlin v. California,

551 U.S. 249, 254–55 (2007). “[T]he general rule [is] that

Fourth Amendment seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if based

on probable cause to believe that the individual has commit-

ted a crime.” Bailey v. United States, 568 U.S. 186, 192 (2013)

(internal quotation marks omitted).

Lewis alleges that he was detained—that is to say,

“seized”—in the Cook County Jail for two years based on

falsified police reports and that this injury is actionable

under § 1983 as a violation of his Fourth Amendment right

to be free from unreasonable seizure. Our circuit caselaw

once foreclosed this theory. See, e.g., Newsome v. McCabe,

256 F.3d 747, 750 (7th Cir. 2001). Prior to Manuel I, our cases

held that “once detention by reason of arrest turns into

detention by way of arraignment—once police action gives

way to legal process—the Fourth Amendment falls out of

the picture and the detainee’s claim that the detention is

improper becomes a claim of malicious prosecution violative

of due process.” Llovet v. City of Chicago, 761 F.3d 759, 763

(7th Cir. 2014).

The Supreme Court superseded this circuit precedent in

Manuel I. Elijah Manuel was arrested for possession of

unlawful drugs. After a probable-cause hearing based on

evidence allegedly fabricated by the police, a local judge

found probable cause and sent Manuel to the county jail to

await trial. There he sat for 48 days until the prosecutor

dismissed the charge. Manuel I, 137 S. Ct. at 915–16. He

6 No. 17-1510

sought damages under § 1983 alleging that his pretrial

detention violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court

dismissed the claim based on binding circuit precedent and

we affirmed. Id. at 916. The Supreme Court reversed, hold-

ing that Manuel stated a Fourth Amendment claim when he

sought relief “not merely for his (pre-legal-process) arrest,

but also for his (post-legal process) pretrial detention.” Id. at

919.

The Court jettisoned the malicious-prosecution analogy

and the due-process source of the right, instead grounding

the claim in long-established Fourth Amendment doctrine:

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government

officials from detaining a person in the absence

of probable cause. That can happen when the

police hold someone without any reason before

the formal onset of a criminal proceeding. But

it can also occur when legal process itself goes

wrong—when, for example, a judge’s

probable-cause determination is predicated

solely on a police officer’s false statements.

Then, too, a person is confined without consti-

tutionally adequate justification. Legal process

has gone forward, but it has done nothing to

satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s probable-

cause requirement. And for that reason, it can-

not extinguish the detainee’s Fourth Amend-

ment claim—or somehow, as the Seventh

Circuit has held, convert that claim into one

founded on the Due Process Clause.

Id. at 918–19 (citations omitted).

No. 17-1510 7

Manuel I thus clarified that the constitutional injury aris-

ing from a wrongful pretrial detention rests on the funda-

mental Fourth Amendment principle that a pretrial

detention is a “seizure”—both before formal legal process

and after—and is justified only on probable cause. Id. at 918.

Manuel alleged that his detention was not supported by

probable cause because the judge’s order holding him for

trial was based only on “police fabrications.” Id. at 919. If

that proved to be true, his detention was unreasonable in

violation of the Fourth Amendment. Id.

Put another way, the initiation of formal legal process

“did not expunge Manuel’s Fourth Amendment claim

because the process he received failed to establish what that

Amendment makes essential for pretrial detention—

probable cause to believe he committed a crime.” Id. at 919–

20. As we explained in our decision on remand in Manuel II,

a Fourth Amendment claim for wrongful pretrial detention

is concerned with “the detention rather than the existence of

criminal charges.” 903 F.3d at 670.

Lewis’s allegations are materially indistinguishable from

Manuel’s. He has therefore pleaded a plausible Fourth

Amendment claim. The officers respond with an assertion of

qualified immunity. “Qualified immunity attaches when an

official’s conduct does not violate clearly established statuto-

ry or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person

would have known.” Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1151

(2018) (per curiam) (quoting White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 548,

551 (2017) (per curiam)). Qualified immunity requires a two-

part inquiry: we must determine (1) whether facts alleged or

shown by a plaintiff make out a violation of a constitutional

right, and (2) if so, whether that right was clearly established

8 No. 17-1510

at the time of the defendant’s alleged misconduct. Pearson v.

Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009).

It has been clear since at least Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S.

154 (1978), that falsifying the factual basis for a judicial

probable-cause determination violates the Fourth Amend-

ment. A judicial determination of probable cause is normally

entitled to a presumption of validity, but

this presumption is premised on an “assump-

tion … that there will be a truthful showing” of

probable cause. [Franks, 438 U.S.] at 164–65, 98

S. Ct. 2674 (emphasis in original). Accordingly,

the presumption may give way on a showing

that the officer who sought the warrant “know-

ingly or intentionally or with a reckless disre-

gard for the truth, made false statements to the

judicial officer, and that the false statements

were necessary to the judicial officer’s deter-

mination that probable cause existed for the ar-

rest.” Beauchamp v. City of Noblesville, Ind.,

320 F.3d 733, 742–43 (7th Cir. 2003) (citing

Franks, 438 U.S. at 155–56, 98 S. Ct. 2674).

Whitlock v. Brown, 596 F.3d 406, 410 (7th Cir. 2010) (omission

in original) (alterations omitted).

Lewis alleges that the officers falsely asserted, both in

their police reports and in testimony at the probable-cause

hearing, that he admitted residing at the apartment where

the gun was found and that they found evidence showing

that he lived there. Accepting these allegations as true, as we

must at this stage, no reasonable officer could have thought

this conduct was constitutionally permissible. It makes no

No. 17-1510 9

difference that our circuit caselaw situated the constitutional

violation in the Due Process Clause rather than the Fourth

Amendment.

The question remains whether the claim is timely. A

§ 1983 claim borrows the statute of limitations for analogous

personal-injury claims in the forum state; in Illinois that

period is two years. 735 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/13-202; Wallace v.

Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388–89 (2007). But federal law determines

when the claim accrues. Wallace, 549 U.S. at 388–89.

Manuel II addressed the accrual question the Supreme

Court remanded in Manuel I, holding that a Fourth Amend-

ment claim for wrongful pretrial detention accrues when the

detention ceases. 903 F.3d at 669. Two considerations sup-

ported this conclusion. First, because the constitutional

violation is “ongoing” rather than “discrete,” the claim

accrues when the ongoing violation ends. Id. Second, “a

claim cannot accrue until the would-be plaintiff is entitled to

sue, yet the existence of detention forbids a suit for damages

contesting that detention’s validity.” Id. at 670 (citing Preiser

v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475 (1973), and Heck v. Humphrey,

512 U.S. 477 (1994)).

Under Manuel II, Lewis’s Fourth Amendment claim is

timely. Lewis remained in jail until the charges against him

were dropped on September 29, 2015. He filed this § 1983

suit less than a year later on July 26, 2016, well within the

two-year statute of limitations. 2 He is entitled to move

forward on his Fourth Amendment claim.

2 We note that the Supreme Court has granted certiorari to resolve a

circuit split on the claim-accrual question reserved in Manuel I. See

McDonough v. Smith, No. 18-485, 2019 WL 166879 (Mem.) (Jan. 11, 2019).

10 No. 17-1510

B. Due-Process Claim

Lewis argues that this same misconduct by law enforce-

ment—falsifying the police reports that led to his pretrial

detention—also violated his right to due process, giving rise

to an additional constitutional claim under § 1983. Manuel I

holds otherwise, as does our decision on remand in

Manuel II.

To reiterate, Manuel I explained that “[i]f the complaint is

that a form of legal process resulted in pretrial detention

unsupported by probable cause, then the right allegedly

infringed lies in the Fourth Amendment.” 137 S. Ct. at 919.

As we’ve noted above, Manuel I clarified that the initiation of

formal legal process “cannot extinguish the detainee’s

Fourth Amendment claim—or somehow, as the Seventh Circuit

has held, convert that claim into one founded on the Due Process

Clause.” Id. at 918–19 (emphasis added). It’s now clear that a

§ 1983 claim for unlawful pretrial detention rests exclusively

on the Fourth Amendment.

Lewis relies on Hurt v. Wise as support for his position

that pretrial detention based on fabricated evidence violates

rights secured by two constitutional provisions—the Fourth

Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth—

and is actionable under § 1983 as two separate constitutional

claims. Hurt conflicts with Manuel I and II, so we take this

opportunity to clear up the conflict.

In Hurt the police arrested three siblings for their sus-

pected roles in the death of their uncle. “But one by one,

each was absolved”: one sibling was never criminally

charged, the next saw the charges against her dropped after

four months in jail, and the third was acquitted at trial after

No. 17-1510 11

eight months in jail. Hurt, 880 F.3d at 835. The three siblings

sued the officers accusing them of fabricating evidence—

including confessions—and seeking relief under § 1983 and

Illinois law. Id. The officers moved for summary judgment

based on qualified immunity. The district court denied the

motion, id. at 839, and we mostly affirmed.

As relevant here, Hurt first rejected the officers’ qualified-

immunity defense on the Fourth Amendment claim, con-

cluding that in light of the evidence in the summary-

judgment record, a reasonable trier of fact could find that the

plaintiffs “were arrested without even arguable probable

cause[] and thus in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Id.

at 843 (citing Manuel I, 137 S. Ct. at 918–19).

Two of the Hurt plaintiffs—the two that were held in jail

pending trial—argued that the same police misconduct

supported an additional claim for violation of their right to

due process, relying on the malicious-prosecution/due-

process theory embedded in our circuit caselaw. See, e.g.,

Julian v. Hanna, 732 F.3d 842 (7th Cir. 2013); Newsome,

256 F.3d 747. Hurt determined that Manuel I had not dis-

turbed the general rule of the Newsome line of cases: while

there is “no free-standing constitutional tort of malicious

prosecution,” other constitutional rights protect people

against “abusive arrests [and] fabrication of evidence.”

880 F.3d at 843. What mattered was that the plaintiffs had

“identified the constitutional right at issue”—the Due

Process Clause, which “forbids the [S]tate from depriving a

person of liberty (including by pre-trial detention) based on

manufactured evidence.” Id.

But in Manuel II—decided nine months after Hurt—we

explained that all § 1983 claims for wrongful pretrial deten-

12 No. 17-1510

tion—whether based on fabricated evidence or some other

defect—sound in the Fourth Amendment. Like the plaintiffs

in Hurt, Manuel relied on the tort of malicious prosecution

as an analogy. 903 F.3d at 669. We explained that while this

“might have seemed sensible before the Supreme Court

spoke,” after Manuel I it is the “wrong characterization”;

indeed, “the Justices deprecated the analogy to malicious

prosecution.” Id. at 669–70 (citing Manuel I, 137 S. Ct. at 917–

20). Instead, the constitutional right in question is the “right

not to be held in custody without probable cause,” the

violation of which gives rise to a “plain-vanilla Fourth

Amendment” claim under § 1983 because the essential

constitutional wrong is the “absence of probable cause that

would justify the detention.” Id. at 670 (citing Manuel I,

137 S. Ct. at 917–20). In other words, the Fourth Amend-

ment, not the Due Process Clause, is the source of the right

in a § 1983 claim for unlawful pretrial detention, whether

before or after the initiation of formal legal process.

We overrule precedent only in limited circumstances; a

clear intracircuit conflict is one of them. Glaser v. Wound Care

Consultants, Inc., 570 F.3d 907, 915–16 (7th Cir. 2009).

Manuel II and Hurt cannot be reconciled. Indeed, Hurt is

hard to square with Manuel I. The Supreme Court held that

the initiation of formal legal process following an arrest does

not convert a Fourth Amendment unreasonable-seizure

claim “into one founded on the Due Process Clause.”

137 S. Ct. at 919. The injury of wrongful pretrial detention

may be remedied under § 1983 as a violation of the Fourth

Amendment, not the Due Process Clause. To the extent Hurt

holds otherwise, it is overruled.

No. 17-1510 13

We close by noting the important point that a claim for

wrongful pretrial detention based on fabricated evidence is

distinct from a claim for wrongful conviction based on fabri-

cated evidence: “[C]onvictions premised on deliberately

fabricated evidence will always violate the defendant’s right

to due process.” Avery v. City of Milwaukee, 847 F.3d 433, 439

(7th Cir. 2017) (emphasis added); see also Mooney v. Holohan,

294 U.S. 103, 112 (1935) (explaining that the use of perjured

testimony “to procure the conviction and imprisonment of a

defendant is as inconsistent with the rudimentary demands

of justice as is the obtaining of a like result by intimidation”);

Whitlock v. Brueggemann, 682 F.3d 567, 580 (7th Cir. 2012).

Moreover, misconduct of this type that results in a convic-

tion might also violate the accused’s right to due process

under the rubric of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and

Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995), if government officials

suppressed evidence of the fabrication. Avery, 847 F.3d at

443–44. We reiterate that we deal here only with a claim of

wrongful pretrial detention, not a claim of wrongful convic-

tion.

* * *

Applying Manuel I and II, we hold that Lewis timely filed

a viable Fourth Amendment claim for wrongful pretrial

detention. We therefore reverse the dismissal of that claim

and remand for further proceedings. Under Manuel I and II,

the Due Process Clause does not apply, so the judgment is

otherwise affirmed.

AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED AND REMANDED in part.