Hendricks v. New Albany Police Department

749 F. Supp. 2d 863, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116291, 2010 WL 4457707
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Indiana
DecidedNovember 1, 2010
Docket1:08-cv-00180
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 749 F. Supp. 2d 863 (Hendricks v. New Albany Police Department) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Indiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hendricks v. New Albany Police Department, 749 F. Supp. 2d 863, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116291, 2010 WL 4457707 (S.D. Ind. 2010).

Opinion

ENTRY ON DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

TANYA WALTON PRATT, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on a Motion for Summary Judgment [Dkt. 81] brought by Defendants: (1) New Albany Police Department Detective John Hall (“Hall”), and (2) the New Albany Police Department (“NAPD”) (collectively, “Defendants"). This motion stems from Plaintiff Ashley Dakota Hendricks’ (“Plaintiff ’) allegations that she was subjected to false arrest, unlawful imprisonment, and illegal search and seizure. Plaintiffs Amended Complaint pursues both state and federal claims against Defendants. For the reasons set forth below, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment in part and DENIES the Motion for Summary Judgment in part.

I. BACKGROUND

In August 2007, because of a case of mistaken identity, Plaintiff was wrongfully deprived of her liberty and her life was temporarily turned upside down: Plaintiff (Ashley Hendricks) was arrested, strip searched, and incarcerated for multiple days when a different Ashley Hendricks should have been arrested. This disturbing incident began on January 6, 2006, when Detective Hall, as part of a large-scale narcotics investigation at a New Albany housing complex, received a tip from a confidential informant that a woman (Ashley Hendricks the suspect, or “Ashley Hendricks") was selling crack cocaine out of her apartment. Based on this tip, Hall orchestrated a controlled buy. Following the buy, Hall spoke with the director of security for the housing complex, Clark *867 Jeffries (“Jeffries”), to ascertain the identity of the woman. Jeffries informed Hall that the apartment was leased to a woman named Ashley Hendricks and provided identifying information for this individual, including a Kentucky identification card and a copy of her lease agreement. Significantly, this identification card contained Ashley Hendricks’ birthdate and indicated that she was a black female who resided at an address in Louisville, Kentucky.

Nearly seven months later, on August 8, 2006, Hall completed a probable cause affidavit as a prerequisite to obtaining an arrest warrant for Ashley Hendricks. In his deposition, Hall attributed the long lag between the drug buy and the affidavit to the scale of the investigation; to maximize arrests and preserve secrecy, the plan was to compile evidence against as many members of the drug cabal as possible and to arrest them all in one fell swoop. The affidavit, stated verbatim, follows:

State of Indiana vs. Ashley Hendricks, 228 Glendora, Louisville, Kentucky, [Suspect’s DOB]
I, John Hall, a Officer with the New Albany Police Department, swear that I believe and have good cause to believe that Ashley Hendricks on or about January 6, 2006 committed the offense of Dealing in Cocaine under 3 grams, within 1,000 [feet] of a Housing Complex in Floyd County, State of Indiana based on the following information:
On January 6, 2006, C.I. 1599 and I went to #23 William O. Vance Court reference a drug transaction. "When I arrived at that location, I searched C.I. 1599 and gave him $20 in cash to purchase cocaine. The C.I. went to the rear of 23 Vance Court and a black female came to the door and gave C.I. 1599 the cocaine and he gave her the money. C.I. 1599 came back to my vehicle and gave me the cocaine that he had just purchased. Later, the substance tested positive for cocaine and weighed .3 gram.

This affidavit contained Ashley Hendricks’ correct identifying information obtained from her Kentucky identification card, including her Louisville, Kentucky address. In fact, Hall testified that he specifically included Ashley Hendricks’ Louisville, Kentucky address because he learned that she had been evicted from the New Albany address.

After drafting the affidavit, Hall sent it to the Floyd County Prosecutor’s Office (“Prosecutor’s Office”). Later, the affidavit was returned to Hall with a post-it note stating, “Ed-How do we know that ‘black female’= Ashley Hendricks.” Upon receiving the affidavit and post-it note, Hall called the Prosecutor’s Office investigator Ed Adams (“Adams”) to explain the steps he took to ascertain the suspect’s identity. Adams then told Hall that he would retype the affidavit because he wanted to alter its format. Apparently, though, Adams changed more than the format. The revised affidavit stated as follows:

State of Indiana vs. Ashley Hendricks, [Plaintiff’s DOB ], 23 William O. Vance Court, New Albany, Indiana
I, John Hall, a Detective with the Jeffersonville Police Department swear that I believe and have good cause to believe that Ashley Hendricks on January 6, 2006 committed the offense of Dealing in Cocaine under 3 grams within 1,000 feet of a Federally Funded Housing Complex based on the following information to wit:
On January 6, 2006, I received information from C.I. 1599 that he could buy narcotics from the resident at 23 William O. Vance Court. I gave the C.I. $20 for the purchase of cocaine and searched him before he went into the residence. I parked near that location and observed the C.I. go inside that *868 location. When the confidential informant returned to my vehicle, he had a piece of cocaine that he advised he had purchased for $20 from a female inside the residence.
Later I checked with Clark Jeffries, the Public Housing Authority’s security advisor, and he advised that the female that lived there was Ashley Hendricks. Later I had Officer Travis Jones try to obtain the information of the subjects who lived there and he was advised by the occupants that they were Ashley Hendricks and Deshawn Walker.

Clearly, the revised affidavit did not contain Ashley Hendricks’ race or her Louisville, Kentucky address. Far worse, the revised affidavit did not contain Ashley Hendricks’ birthday, but instead contained Plaintiffs birthday.

On September 26, 2006, Hall returned to the Prosecutor’s Office to sign 15 to 20 affidavits relating to the investigation at the New Albany housing complex, including the Ashley Hendricks affidavit. Hall completed a totally inadequate and cursory review of the affidavits prior to signing them. In relevant part, Hall testified, “And when I was going through them, I was looking at the name ... I was looking at the date that it occurred because I knew on or about when everything occurred, the charge, and then I was reading the body paragraphs of what occurred. And if it all seemed correct, then I was signing them.” During Hall’s review, he noticed the removal of the Louisville, Kentucky address from the Ashley Hendricks affidavit. Apparently, the Prosecutor’s Office made this change because “they wanted the New Albany address of where [the controlled buy] occurred and [it showed] that she lived there at the time.” Unfortunately, Hall did not catch the birthdate error. According to Hall, he did not confirm birthdate information because he had no reason to believe that it would be substantively changed. Hall does not recall if he caught the fact that the phrase “black female” had been removed from the affidavit.

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Bluebook (online)
749 F. Supp. 2d 863, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116291, 2010 WL 4457707, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hendricks-v-new-albany-police-department-insd-2010.