Megan Winfrey v. Keith Pikett

872 F.3d 640, 2017 WL 4324978, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 18903
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedSeptember 29, 2017
Docket16-20728
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 872 F.3d 640 (Megan Winfrey v. Keith Pikett) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Megan Winfrey v. Keith Pikett, 872 F.3d 640, 2017 WL 4324978, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 18903 (5th Cir. 2017).

Opinion

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:

Megan Winfrey brought this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Texas law enforcement officers, alleging that they violated her due process rights during a murder investigation. Relevant to this appeal, Megan alleges that Deputy Keith Pikett, a deputy sheriff and canine handler, conducted a dog-scent lineup—a peculiar lineup indeed—that ultimately resulted in her convictions for capital murder and conspiracy to commit capital murder— convictions since vacated by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Pikett moved for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. The district court denied Pikett’s motion, and Pikett timely appealed. We DISMISS for lack of appellate jurisdiction because of material factual disputes concerning qualified immunity.

I.

This ease originated when Murray Wayne Burr was found murdered in his home in San Jacinto County, Texas, in August 2004. The San Jacinto 'County Sheriffs Office and the Texas Rangers investigated the murder, focusing on three suspects: then-sixteen-year-old Megan Winfrey; her seventeen-year-old brother, Richard Winfrey, Jr. (“Junior”); and their father, Richard Winfrey, Sr. (“Senior”).

Several weeks after the murder, Texas Ranger Grover Huff requested that Pikett, a deputy from a nearby law enforcement agency, assist the investigation by running *642 scent lineups using two of his pet bloodhounds. and scents from four suspects— Megan and Junior as well as Megan’s boyfriend, Chris Hammond, and Hammond’s friend, Adam Szarf. Pikett agreed and conducted the scent lineups, which were videotaped.

Before the scent lineups, Pikett asked the lead investigators to gather scents from the suspects and the victim. Huff asked each suspect to rub a piece of gauze on his or her skin. Each suspect placed the gauze in a plastic bag. Additionally, Huff rubbed a piece of gauze on Burr’s clothing and put that in a separate plastic bag.

Pikett also had filler scents that he took from prisoners at the Fort Bend County Jail. He kept these scents in a duffle bag in the back of his SUV, which is also where he let his dogs ride daily. He reused filler scents multiple times—the ones used in the 2004 lineups were anywhere from one to two years old—instead of gathering new ones for each investigation. These scents were much older than the fresh scents from the suspects. Tracker dogs are more likely to follow fresher scents than older scents.

Later, Pikett met the investigators in a field. He brought his dogs, unused paint cans, and filler scents. Huff put a different suspect’s scent or a filler scent in each paint can. Then, he placed the cans in the field. Pikett then gave one dog the victim’s scent and waited to see if the dog “alerted” to any can. After doing the lineup with the first dog, Pikett did it .with another dog to confirm the result. The cans stayed in the same position for each dog. The dogs alerted on Megan’s scent and Junior’s scent as a match to the scent on Burr’s clothes.

Pikett says that each bloodhound alerts in a different way and that he has been unable to train the dogs to alert in a specific manner. He learns each dog’s individual alert as he works with it. If the dog alerts on a can, Pikett concludes that the can’s scent matches the scent given to the dog. No independent source ever tested or certified Pikett and his dogs.

More than two years after Pikett performed the scent lineups, Megan, Junior, and Senior were all arrested for Burr’s murder. Megan was indicted for capital murder during the course of robbery and conspiracy to commit capital murder.

Megan’s case went to trial, where the scent lineups were a crucial part of the evidence used against her. The lineups were the only evidence that purported to directly connect Megan to the crime scene. Pikett testified that Megan likely had contact with the clothing Burr wore when he was murdered because the dogs alerted at Megan’s scent sample. Additionally, Pikett characterized Megan’s contact with Burr’s clothing as “significant,” and he speculated that it was highly unlikely for that contact to be the result of anything other than direct contact close in time to the murder. Based in no small part on the scent-lineup evidence, the jury convicted Megan on both counts of the indictment.

The Texas Ninth Court of Appeals in Beaumont affirmed Megan’s convictions. Winfrey v. State, 338 S.W.3d 687, 689 (Tex. App. 2011). But in February 2013, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and rendered acquittals on both counts, holding that the scent lineups and other corroborating evidence were legally insufficient to support a conviction of capital murder beyond a reasonable doubt or to sustain the agreement element of conspiracy. Winfrey v. State, 393 S.W.3d 763, 765, 772-74 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013).

Megan subsequently filed this § 1983 suit against Pikett and various other police investigators. She argues that Pikett violated her due process rights by knowingly using fabricated junk science, manipulat *643 ing and falsifying the results of his dog-scent lineups, and employing an unduly suggestive lineup procedure that resulted in a faulty identification of Megan, which was used to secure her arrest warrant and wrongful conviction.

In November 2014, Pikett moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. In response, Megan submitted the videotape of the dog-scent lineups and a report by Steven Nicely, a police canine expert who watched the videotape of the lineups and reviewed Pikett’s deposition. As stated by the district court, Nicely found that the lineups were flawed because:

(a) newer scents stand out as fresher amongst older scents; (b) scents from people who live in the same place smell similar!]; (c) dogs can become accustomed to scents if they are exposed to them regularly; (d) Pikett’s claim that his dogs are accurate ninety-nine percent of the time is unreliable; (e) Pikett may have influenced his dogs because he kept them on a short leash and could see in the cans; and (f) the dogs may have responded to deliberate cues from Pik-ett.

Winfrey v. Pikett, No. CV H-10-1896, 2016 WL 5817065, at *10 (S.D. Tex. Oct. 4, 2016). These flaws, Nicely concluded, showed that Deputy Pikett consciously influenced his dogs’ behavior at or near the target cans. Nicely also said that Pikett demonstrated that “he had no desire to protect someone from being' falsely accused based on the use of Scent ID dogs” by not maintaining and recording results to establish the accuracy of his dogs. Further, Nicely said that using multiple dogs to confirm the results did not matter because Pikett could see in the cans each time and the cans were not rearranged.

In October 2016, the district court denied Pikett’s motion for summary judgment because Megan introduced enough evidence to create a question about whether Pikett recklessly or intentionally designed a flawed test.

Pikett timely appealed.

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Bluebook (online)
872 F.3d 640, 2017 WL 4324978, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 18903, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/megan-winfrey-v-keith-pikett-ca5-2017.