Harrington v. City of Council Bluffs

902 F. Supp. 2d 1186, 2012 WL 5383689, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157289
Procedural entryThis page is a short order in Harrington v. City of Council Bluffs. Read the opinion of the Court — 902 F. Supp. 2d 1181
District Court, S.D. Iowa·Decided October 26, 2012·No. Nos. 4:03-cv-90616, 4:05-cv-00178, 4:05-cv-00255·Published

Opinion

ORDER

ROBERT W. PRATT, District Judge.

Before the Court are the following motions by Curtis W. McGhee, Jr. (“McGhee”) and Terry Harrington1 (“Harrington”) (collectively “Plaintiffs”): (1) Motion Requesting Judicial Notice of Materiality of Gates Reports and Their Nondisclosure, filed August 22, 2012 (Clerk’s No. 271); (2) Motion That the Non-disclosure of Gates Reports Admissible Evidence under FRE 104, also filed August 22, 2012 (Clerk’s No. 272); and (3) Motion for Judicial Notice of How McGhee and Harrington Obtained Release From Prison (Clerk’s No. 275). The City of Council Bluffs, Iowa, Daniel Larsen, and Lyle Brown (collectively “Defendants”) filed a Resistance to these Motions on September 10, 2012. Clerk’s No. 291. Plaintiffs filed Replies on September 20, 2012. Clerk’s No. 293. The matters are fully submitted.

I. MOTIONS

A. Judicial Notice of the Gates Reports

Plaintiffs move that the Court take judicial notice of the following two facts: (1) [1189] the Gates reports were material, exculpatory evidence; and (2) Harrington and McGhee did not know of these reports when they stood trial in 1978. See Clerk’s No. 271-1 at 3. Plaintiff argues that taking judicial notice of these facts is proper because courts “may take judicial notice of judicial opinions and public records.” See id. at 1 (citing Stutzka v. McCarville, 420 F.3d 757, 761 n. 2 (8th Cir.2005)). Thus, Plaintiff urges the Court to take judicial notice of Harrington v. State, 659 N.W.2d 509 (Iowa 2003), where the Iowa Supreme Court stated as follows:

Under the circumstances presented by the record before us, we cannot be confident that the result of Harrington’s murder trial would have been the same had the exculpatory information been made available to him. We hold, therefore, that Harrington’s due process right to a fair trial was violated by the State’s failure to produce the police reports documenting their investigation of an alternative suspect in Schweer’s murder.

Id. at 525. Although McGhee was not a party to Harrington v. State, he maintains that he “suffered the same due process violations as Harrington [and that] the State never contended otherwise.” See Clerk’s No. 271-1 at 2.

Defendants raise four arguments in resistance to Plaintiffs Motion: (1) whether the Gates reports were material and whether they were disclosed to Harrington and McGhee are non-adjudicative facts; (2) taking judicial notice of these two facts will violate the law of the case; (3) the facts at issue are irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial; and (4) these facts relate to “Brady violations ... for which [Defendants] are immune.”2 See Clerk’s No. 291 at 3-7.

Defendants’ arguments are unavailing. First, adjudicative facts are “ ‘facts that normally go to the jury in a jury case. They relate to the parties, their activities, their businesses.’ ” Qualley v. Clo-Tex Int'l Inc., 212 F.3d 1123, 1128 (8th Cir.2000). Though Defendants claim that the proposed facts are “nonadjudicative,” in that they do not relate to the Defendants, Plaintiffs correctly counter this argument when they point out that the facts are “adjudicative in nature because [they] relate to what happened to plaintiff themselves. It makes no sense to consume court time to prove these matters to a jury when they have already been litigated to an indisputable conclusion.” Pl.’s Reply at 2.

Second, Defendants are incorrect in their assertion that taking judicial notice of these facts will violate the law of the case. Defendants claim that this Court previously determined that the police Defendants disclosed all allegedly exculpatory information to the prosecutors. See Defs.’ Resistance at 5 (citing McGhee v. Pottawattamie Cnty., 475 F.Supp.2d 862, 913 (S.D.Iowa 2007) and Harrington v. Wilber, 670 F.Supp.2d 958, 966 (S.D.Iowa 2009)). The Court made no such independent factual determination. Rather, it found that Plaintiffs had repeatedly alleged in their Complaints that the prosecutors were aware of all exculpatory information.2 3 McGhee, 475 F.Supp.2d at 913. Even had the Court made such a finding, it was in the context of a motion for judgment on [1190] the pleadings that did not ultimately adjudicate all claims in the case. See Fed. R.Civ.P. 54(b) (providing that in such an instance, “any order or other decision ... may be revised at any time”). Moreover, Defendants concede that the law of the case doctrine is “a doctriné of discretion, not a command to the courts.” See Defs.’ Br. at 5 n. 4 (citing Harrington, 670 F.Supp.2d at 966).

Third, the proposed facts are neither irrelevant to the Plaintiffs’ remaining claims against the Defendants nor are they unfairly prejudicial to Defendants. Plaintiffs have asserted that the Defendants, along with the Pottawattamie County prosecutors, engaged in a conspiracy to deprive the Plaintiffs of their constitutional rights. Although various overt acts are alleged in furtherance of this conspiracy, it is indisputable that when the case against Plaintiffs culminated in trial, the material, exculpatory Gates reports were not provided to Plaintiffs. A reasonable jury could conclude that this failure was but one small part of an overarching conspiracy to intentionally deprive Plaintiffs of due process, equal protection, and ultimately of a fair trial. See Villasana v. Wilhoit, 368 F.3d 976, 980-81 (8th Cir.2004) (stating that § 1983 damages can be recovered against a non-prosecutor for actions intended to deprive a defendant of a fair trial). Indeed, the mere fact that Defendants may be immune from liability specifically for withholding Brady evidence from Plaintiffs or from lying about the existence of such evidence during trial does not mean that evidence regarding the fact of the Brady violation is inadmissible for all purposes. Thus, Defendants’ protestations that admission of this evidence would deprive them of the benefits of their qualified immunity is simply without merit.

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Harrington v. City of Council Bluffs, 902 F. Supp. 2d 1186, 2012 WL 5383689, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157289 (S.D. Iowa 2012).

902 F. Supp. 2d 1186 (Harrington v. City of Council Bluffs) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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