Anderson v. Caldwell County Sheriff's Office

524 F. App'x 854
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedApril 24, 2013
Docket11-2344
StatusUnpublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 524 F. App'x 854 (Anderson v. Caldwell County Sheriff's Office) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Anderson v. Caldwell County Sheriff's Office, 524 F. App'x 854 (4th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

Reversed in part, dismissed in part, and remanded by unpublished PER CURIAM opinion.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

PER CURIAM:

This case comes before the Court on an interlocutory appeal of the district court’s denial of a motion for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity. The central issue is whether law enforcement officers had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff-appellee for the murder of his wife. The Court finds that probable cause existed for the arrest, entitling the arresting officers to qualified immunity on the plaintiff-appellee’s- claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Because those claims fail, the *856 plaintiff-appellee’s derivative federal claims of supervisory and local government liability also fail. The Court also concludes that public officers’ and governmental immunity shield the defendants-appellants from most of the plaintiff-appellee’s state law claims, but the Court lacks jurisdiction to review the statutory bond claim.

I.

A.

Jerry Anderson (“Anderson”) commenced this action by filing a complaint in which he alleged that the defendants had harmed him in various ways. Specifically, under § 1983 he asserted a claim that various Caldwell County Deputy Sheriffs, led by Captain Jeffery Lee Stafford (“Stafford”), violated his Fourth Amendment rights. He sued the Caldwell County Sheriffs Office (“CCSO”) and Sheriff Alan C. Jones (“Jones”) for failure to train and supervise the deputy sheriffs. He also asserted state law claims of malicious prosecution, false arrest, and obstruction of justice. Finally, he sued the CCSO’s liability insurer and bonding company for any damages caused by the alleged violations of his rights. 1

The defendants-appellants filed motions for summary judgment on a number of bases, including qualified immunity, public officers’ immunity, and governmental immunity. The district court denied those motions, leading to this interlocutory appeal. 2

B.

In December 2005, the plaintiff-appel-lee’s wife, Emily Anderson (“Emily”) went missing from their farm in Caldwell County, North Carolina. Nine days later, Stafford and the CCSO investigative team found her body in the toolbox of her truck, which had been abandoned in South Carolina. After a lengthy investigation, Stafford arrested Anderson for his wife’s murder. A grand jury indicted him about two weeks later for first-degree murder. Anderson stood trial for nine weeks in mid-2007, but the jury could not reach a verdict. The judge declared a mistrial, and ultimately the state dismissed the case without prejudice.

The following facts led to Anderson’s arrest and prosecution:

On December 29, 2005, the day Emily disappeared, a worker on Anderson’s farm heard Emily and Anderson arguing. At 9:30 a.m., not long after the argument, Anderson and Emily drove to a wooded area of their farm — Anderson drove a front-end loader and Emily drove her pickup truck. A neighbor heard the front-end loader driving on Anderson’s farm near the wooded area, and then heard two shots. Another neighbor also heard two shots. When the police later found Emily’s body, it had dirt and grass on it, as well as two gunshot wounds.

One half-hour after driving out to the wooded area, Anderson returned to the farm buildings in the front-end loader. He told workers on the farm to clean the *857 loader, paying special attention to the bucket. A worker told the officers that this was an unusual request by Anderson. Forensic analysis later showed bloodstains on the bucket of the front-end loader.

Sometime between 10 a.m. and noon, Anderson had a worker drive him to the wooded area, where Anderson got out of the vehicle with a large plastic bag. The next day, he told his employees to search the area for a cell phone.

Although none of the farm workers saw Anderson again until the late afternoon, he instructed them to tell anyone who asked that he had been at the farm all day. To bolster this story, he later changed oil filters on some farm equipment, backdated the documentation of the repair to December 29, 2005, and told a worker to lie about the date they had changed the filters.

The CCSO unearthed additional evidence relating to Emily’s death, most of it pointing to Anderson as the culprit. In summary, the evidence is as follows:

• Several people indicated that the Andersons were unhappily married, and that Emily planned to leave Anderson.
• Anderson had found cards to Emily from a man named Bill. He also had found indications that someone had sent her flowers.
• When the deputies told Anderson about Emily’s death, he showed no emotion and, in fact, laughed and “told stories.”
• Not long before Emily’s disappearance, Anderson had applied for and received a new passport, listing his sister as his emergency contact.
• Emily had $4.5 million in life insurance with Anderson and their company as beneficiaries. Anderson’s first wife, Teresa Martin, told officers that Anderson had her get life insurance designating him as the beneficiary. Martin stated that at some point during the marriage she woke up disorientated in the trunk of the car. Anderson said he planned to hide her away and collect the insurance money, but eventually he let her out of the trunk.
• Bank of America notified the deputies that there had been no activity on Emily’s account since December 23, 2005.
• Alltel, the Andersons’ phone company, reported that Emily’s phone showed no activity after December 28, 2005. The deputies found her phone attached to her belt. The phone company told the CCSO that the phone had been in South Carolina since December 29, 2005.
• An Alltel representative told the CCSO that he believed that Anderson had turned his cell phone off between the hours of 12:04 p.m. and 4:51 p.m. on December 29, 2005. Turning the phone off would avoid cell site registry during that time. In addition, Anderson had Emily’s calls forwarded to his phone.
• Although he told the deputies he owned no guns, Anderson actually owned several firearms.
• Cadaver dogs had indicated that a corpse had been in the wooded area of Anderson’s farm.

Based on the foregoing, Stafford and the deputies developed a theory of the crime. They believed that while in the wooded area on the morning of December 29, 2005, Anderson had fatally shot Emily. He then loaded her body into the toolbox on her truck, and drove her to South Carolina, where he abandoned the truck in a motel parking lot.

*858 Not all the evidence, however, indicated Anderson’s guilt. The following evidence surfaced casting some doubt on the deputies’ theory:

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Untitled Case
D. South Carolina, 2026
Untitled Case
D. Maryland, 2026
McKoy v. City of Raleigh
E.D. North Carolina, 2025
Waring v. Kraft
D. South Carolina, 2025
Laschober v. Cochran
W.D. North Carolina, 2024
Warren v. Braswell
E.D. North Carolina, 2024
Parson v. Palmer
E.D. Virginia, 2023
Simon v. Gladstone
D. Maryland, 2023
Rich v. Hersl
D. Maryland, 2021
Jones v. City of Danville
W.D. Virginia, 2021
McConnell v. Watauga County
W.D. North Carolina, 2019

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
524 F. App'x 854, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/anderson-v-caldwell-county-sheriffs-office-ca4-2013.