Gregory v. City of Louisville

444 F.3d 725, 2006 WL 909935
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedApril 11, 2006
Docket04-5856, 04-5859, 04-6482
StatusPublished
Cited by635 cases

This text of 444 F.3d 725 (Gregory v. City of Louisville) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gregory v. City of Louisville, 444 F.3d 725, 2006 WL 909935 (6th Cir. 2006).

Opinions

CLAY, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MILLS, D. J., joined. SILER, J. (pp. 761-763), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

OPINION

CLAY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff, William Thomas Gregory, and Defendants cross appeal March 29, 2004 and June 22, 2004 orders entered by the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky which ruled on the parties’ cross-motions for summary [731]*731judgment in this action by Plaintiff for violations of his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and various state laws. The orders below dismissed Plaintiffs claims entirely against the municipal and supervisory Defendants, denied other Defendants absolute or qualified immunity, and dismissed certain claims as unsupported by the record.

For the reasons set forth below, this Court AFFIRMS in part and REVERSES in part the orders of the district court.

I

BACKGROUND

The series of events underlying this action surround Plaintiffs arrest and 1993 conviction on charges of rape, attempted rape, and burglary. Plaintiffs conviction was vacated in 2000 after DNA tests established that the sole physical evidence linking Plaintiff to either of the crime scenes — several hairs — could not have come from Plaintiff. All charges against Plaintiff were dismissed on August 25, 2000, after Plaintiff had spent more than seven years in custody.

A. SUBSTANTIVE FACTS

1. The Assaults on Mrs. v. and Ms. S

Plaintiffs conviction stems from assaults on two women who lived in the same apartment complex as Plaintiff. The first of these two assaults occurred on June 1, 1992, when “Mrs. V,” a white woman, was awakened by an unknown, nude, black male standing over her bed. This intruder, who wore a pair of the victim’s pantyhose as a mask, struggled with the victim, choked her, fondled her breasts, and attempted to rape her. Mrs. V reports that she fought off her attacker, managed to pull off the pantyhose, and scratched the attacker’s face before he fled her apartment. Mrs. V. described her assailant as a black male, 30-40 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall, with a stocky build and long, straight, oily or greasy hair. Mrs. V also informed the police that her attacker had a very small, circumcised penis and had attempted to use a lubricant, which the police later determined was Vaseline. The police later discovered that the attacker had disabled three telephones and stolen a television and a compact disc player from the apartment.

Mrs. V’s neighbors and mother, all white, saw her immediately after the attack. When Mrs. V gave the police a description of her attacker, the neighbors and her mother informed the police that they thought the description matched that of Plaintiff.

Later in the day on June 1,1992, Mrs. V saw Plaintiff in the apartment complex, and police were called to the area. Several officers of the Louisville Division of Police (“LDP”) went to Plaintiffs apartment, told Plaintiff that they were investigating an incident unrelated to Mrs. V’s assault, and were allowed to search Plaintiffs apartment. Police found no evidence linking Plaintiff to the assault, either in the apartment or on Plaintiffs person (such as marks or injuries).

Two days later, Clark and Carroll, LDP officers, showed Mrs. V a photopak that included Plaintiffs picture. Mrs. V initially made no identification, but when asked to pick a photo which resembled her attacker, Mrs. V chose a photo other than Plaintiffs. When Mrs. V’s mother looked through the photopak she identified Plaintiff as living in the same apartment complex.

Later on the same day that Mrs. V had reviewed the photopak, Mrs. V’s mother called police to tell them that Mrs. V had seen Plaintiff at the apartment complex [732]*732and was now sure that he was her assailant. With the assistance of Clark and Carroll, Mrs. V swore out a criminal complaint, pursuant to which Clark and Carroll obtained a warrant for Plaintiffs arrest.

At a preliminary hearing on June 15, 2002, Clark testified on direct examination that Mrs. V had twice identified Plaintiff. Clark was presumably referring to Mrs. Vs two sightings of Plaintiff at the apartment complex, once prior to Mrs. Vs failure to pick Plaintiff out of a photopak, and once after the photopak procedure. On cross-examination Clark revealed that Mrs. V had failed to pick Plaintiff out of a photopak, but did not reveal that Mrs. V actually picked another photo. When asked if the police had any evidence against Plaintiff other that Mrs. Vs identification, Clark responded “Not at this time.” (J.A. at 1301.) When asked if Mrs. V had given a physical description of her assailant, Clark responded: “That’s correct and it fits [Plaintiff].” (J.A. at 1301.) When Plaintiff moved to dismiss for lack of probable cause, the judge denied the motion, but noted that “because of the extremely minimal burden on the Commonwealth I’m gonna have to find probable cause but I’ll state for the record it’s just barely.” (J.A. at 1302.) Plaintiff was released on bail.

According to the testimony of Clark and Carroll at Plaintiffs criminal trial, following Plaintiffs arrest, Plaintiff made a telephone call to a friend and told the friend about the items stolen from Mrs. Vs apartment. Plaintiff claims that, prior to the telephone call, Carroll and Clark told him what had been stolen from the apartment; Carroll and Clark, however, deny that they ever told Plaintiff what had been stolen. Carroll and Clark recorded the overheard telephone conversation in their contemporaneous investigative notes.

In July 1992, Dawn Katz, in her role as Examiner with the Kentucky State Police Crime Laboratory, examined hairs found in the pantyhose Mrs. Vs attacker had been wearing as a mask. Katz compared these hairs to samples taken from Plaintiff. In her laboratory notes, Katz records the hairs found in the pantyhose as “# NH & 1 CH.” (J.A. at 557.) The notes appear as if the number preceding the “NH” (for negroid hairs) had been scratched out (“CH” stands for caucasoid hair). Katz’s notes further record that “5 HHs” (head hairs) were similar to Plaintiffs hair, and later reports that Plaintiffs head ham standard was similar in color and microscopic characteristics with the Negroid hairs recovered from the pantyhose. No mention is made anywhere in Katz’s notes of additional negroid hairs found on the pantyhose. Katz’s deposition for this instant action revealed that Katz had actually found 7 negroid head hairs on the pantyhose, only 5 of which she found similar to Plaintiffs hair. Katz testified in the deposition that before she sent the slide with the hairs to the Innocence Project in 1996, Katz checked to insure there were still 7 hairs on the slide because she remembered that there had been seven hairs taken from the pantyhose. Katz testified that she was not and still is not in the habit of recording dissimilarities.

While Plaintiff was out on bail, a second assault occurred in the same apartment complex on July 19, 1992, on a 71 year old white woman, “Ms. S.” Ms. S awoke to a nude, black male in her apartment. Armed with a kitchen bread knife, the man raped Ms. S with the aid of hand lotion as a lubricant, french-kissed her, and stole items before leaving. Police also discovered that the intruder had drank from several items of liquor in Ms. S’s apartment. A sexual assault kit from Ms.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
444 F.3d 725, 2006 WL 909935, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gregory-v-city-of-louisville-ca6-2006.