Marrero v. City of Hialeah

581 F. Supp. 1207, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18769
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Florida
DecidedMarch 8, 1984
DocketCiv. A. No. 78-791-CIV-JLK
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 581 F. Supp. 1207 (Marrero v. City of Hialeah) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Marrero v. City of Hialeah, 581 F. Supp. 1207, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18769 (S.D. Fla. 1984).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

THEIS, District Judge, Sitting by Designation.

This aged civil rights case was called for trial on Monday, January 30, 1984. A jury was empaneled the next day, and that jury heard evidence through February 7th. Because the only two defense witnesses were permitted to testify out of turn to eliminate scheduling conflicts, all of the evidence was in when the plaintiffs rested their case. The case is currently before the Court on the motions of both defendants for directed verdicts. For the reasons that follow, both of these motions must be granted.

I. BACKGROUND

Because the case is before the Court on directed verdict motions by the defendants, the evidence that was introduced during the trial must be viewed in the light most favorable to the Marreros, see, e.g., Boeing v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365 (5th Cir.1969). The following summary of the facts resolves all factual disputes in the Marreros’ favor.

1. Factual Background

The events that form the basis of this . case can be traced back to early 1976, when two detectives from the Hialeah, Florida, police department, Fermín Rodriguez and Philip Rydzewski, were investigating a rash of residential burglaries. In the course of the investigation, two juveniles were arrested, and those juveniles admitted to approximately twelve burglaries. The juveniles also indicated that they were selling the jewelry they had stolen during these burglaries to a man named “Marrero,” apparently the son of the plaintiffs.

As the investigation continued, the juveniles were taken to a Hialeah store called “El Sagrado Corazón,” on June 15 and 16, 1976. The store carried religious artifacts and jewelry, and was owned by a corporation of which the Marreros were the sole officers and stockholders. The juveniles saw three items on display in “El Sagrado Corazón” that they believed to be items previously stolen by them and sold to “Marrero,” namely, a baby bracelet, a gold bracelet with brown stones, and a pair of cuff links. The juveniles prepared drawings of these three items.

Armed with this information, Rodriguez and Rydzewski applied, on June 22, 1976, for a search warrant. The warrant was issued that same day, and listed, as the property to be searched for and seized, all of the jewelry items that the victims of the twelve burglaries had reported stolen. This list comprised some twenty items.

Before executing the search warrant, Rodriguez and Rydzewski requested the State Attorney’s Office in Dade County, Florida, to designate an Assistant State Attorney to accompany them on the execution. Defendant Paul Rashkind, an Assistant State Attorney, received the necessary designation from his superiors and accompanied Rodriguez and Rydzewski to “El Sagrado Corazón,” as did an undetermined number of other police officers and technicians, perhaps numbering as many as a dozen. This entourage arrived at “El Sagrado Corazón” at about four o’clock on the afternoon of June 22, 1976.

By some mechanism not identified with certainty during the trial, representatives of the news media arrived at the store at about the same time as the police. The evidence was conflicting on the number of television stations represented at the scene, ranging from one station by the defend[1209]*1209ants’ evidence, to all of the four or five local stations by the plaintiffs’ evidence.

Rodriguez and Rydzewski were unable to identify with assurance any item listed on the search warrant after searching the store. They then conferred with Rashkind and decided to call in several of the burglary victims, to see if those victims could identify any of their property in the store’s inventory. The first two victims identified nothing, but the third victim identified a gold bracelet with brown stones in the store’s inventory as being an item earlier stolen from her residence. A “gold bracelet with brown stones” was listed on the search warrant. This particular bracelet was one manufactured by an employee of “El Sagrado Corazón,” and was one of approximately three hundred such bracelets made.

Once this single item had been identified, the detectives began the difficult task of sifting through the inventory to determine which items fit within the general descriptions in the search warrant. By the time this task was completed, some 800 items worth $75,000 had been seized. Juan and Maria Marrero were arrested for receipt of stolen property.

As the Marreros were being taken out of their store, then-Lieutenant in the Hialeah police department, Cecil B. Seay, made an announcement to the assembled media. The tenor of this announcement was that the largest stolen-jewelry fencing operation in southern Florida had just been broken up, and that some $75,000 worth of stolen jewelry had just been recovered. The announcement, when coupled with the television pictures of the Marreros and their store, served to personally identify the Marreros as the fences. Seay was the only city or county functionary to make any statements to the press in front of the store.

The story was picked up by the local newspapers as well. On June 23, 1976, a four-sentence story appeared in The Miami Herald. This story consisted of the standard press-release fare, reporting only that the Marreros had been arrested and charged, and that items suspected of having been stolen were seized. Every statement made in this article is true. On June 24, 1976, a five-sentence story appeared on the front page of the Spanish-language newspaper El Sol de Hialeah. This article used less-guarded language, and had much the same tenor as the statement made by then-Lieutenant Seay.

After the seized property had been inventoried, it was displayed in the Hialeah police station. Publicity was given to this display, but the Marreros were not identified by name in the publicity, nor was “El Sagrado Corazón” identified as the source of the recovered property. Members of the general public who had some proof of a loss by burglary — a police report or an insurance claim, for example — were permitted to view the displayed goods. Five more items were tentatively identified as stolen, and criminal charges were brought against the Marreros.

In the course of those criminal proceedings, the Marreros moved to suppress all of the evidence seized from their store. This motion was granted, on April 26,1977, by a Florida state judge, who ruled that only the gold bracelet with brown stones could be proceeded upon. In the course of events, all criminal charges against the Marreros were dropped, and even the gold bracelet with brown stones was eventually returned to them.

The Marreros claim to have been damaged in several respects by these events. Their principal injuries comprise the damage to their personal and business reputations, and the destruction of “El Sagrado Corazón” as a going concern through a substantial loss of business.

2. Procedural Background

The original complaint in this case was filed on February 22,1978, naming the City of Hialeah [the City], Rashkind, and the State Attorney for Dade County, Florida, Janet Reno, as defendants. Although she was State Attorney at the time the complaint was filed, Reno was not the State [1210]*1210Attorney at the time the search and seizure took place.

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Related

Marrero v. City of Hialeah
774 F.2d 1177 (Eleventh Circuit, 1985)

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Bluebook (online)
581 F. Supp. 1207, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18769, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/marrero-v-city-of-hialeah-flsd-1984.