Patrick v. City of Chicago

103 F. Supp. 3d 907, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53143, 2015 WL 1880389
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedApril 23, 2015
DocketNo. 14-cv-3658
StatusPublished
Cited by46 cases

This text of 103 F. Supp. 3d 907 (Patrick v. City of Chicago) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Patrick v. City of Chicago, 103 F. Supp. 3d 907, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53143, 2015 WL 1880389 (N.D. Ill. 2015).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

HON. RONALD A. GUZMAN, United States District Judge.

Plaintiffs Motion for Reconsideration [72] is granted in part and denied in part. Count I of Plaintiffs complaint is hereby reinstated. Count III remains dismissed, but this dismissal is modified to be without prejudice. Plaintiff may file an amended complaint within 21 days of the date of this order.

STATEMENT

On December 17, 2014, the Court granted in part Defendants’ motions to dismiss. (Dkt.# 66.) As relevant here, the Court dismissed Counts I and III of Plaintiffs complaint. Plaintiff now moves for reconsideration of these rulings. (Pl.’s Mot. Recons., Dkt. # 72.) In light of a recent Seventh Circuit decision clarifying the circumstances under which Fifth Amendment claims are time-barred, the Court reinstates Count I of Plaintiffs complaint in its entirety. Plaintiffs motion for reconsideration of the dismissal of Count III is denied. However, the Court reverses its decision to deny Count III with prejudice and Plaintiff is granted leave to amend.

Background

The factual background of this ease is set forth more fully in the Court’s previous order ruling on the motions to dismiss, and is known to the parties. What follows is only the information from Plaintiffs complaint most relevant to the instant motion. The Court presumes that the facts alleged in Plaintiffs complaint are true for the purpose of ruling on Defendants’ motions to dismiss. See Virnich v. Vorwald, 664 F.3d 206, 212 (7th Cir.2011).

Plaintiff and six co-defendants were convicted of the November 16, 1992 murders of Jeffery Lassiter and Sharon Hauga-book, and Plaintiff subsequently spent 21 years in prison before his conviction was vacated and a Certificate of Innocence was issued to him by the Circuit Court of Cook County. (Compl., Dkt. # 1 ¶¶ 1-2, 13.) No physical evidence tied Plaintiff to the crime. (Id. at ¶ 45.) Instead, Plaintiff was implicated primarily by his own confession to police, which was secured by police officers confronting Plaintiff with the incriminating false confessions of his co-defendants — all of which were the product of prolonged and coercive interrogation without counsel present. (Id. at ¶¶ 19-31.)

Officers knew that these confessions could not have been accurate because they conflicted with evidence known to the police and included facts that could not have been true. (Id. at ¶¶ 20-23.) Plaintiff alleges three specific instances relevant here in which police officers concealed evidence inconsistent with the false confessions or [911]*911fabricated evidence to corroborate them. Faye McCoy, a witness who saw the murderers leaving the scene, viewed Plaintiff and other co-defendants at the police station but stated that none were the men she had seen leaving the victims’ apartment. (Id. at ¶ 34.) The results of this lineup were not documented, and instead officers falsely reported that McCoy was afraid to testify in court. (Id.) Daniel Taylor, a co-defendant who all the confessions placed at a park prior to the murders and at the murder scene, was in fact in police lockup on an unrelated arrest at the relevant times. (Id. at ¶¶ 35-36.) Taylor informed officers of this fact sometime after having made his false confession, and his account was corroborated by police records and by the testimony of a man named James Anderson who had shared Taylor’s cell in lockup that night. (Id. at ¶¶ 36, 41.) Police turned over two General Progress Reports to defense counsel which identified Anderson and stated that officers could not locate him. (Id. at ¶ 41.) Officers did, however, eventually locate and speak with Anderson, but neither the interview notes nor any report regarding Anderson’s testimony was disclosed to Plaintiff. (Id. at ¶¶ 41-42.) In order to corroborate the false confessions and rebut the fact that Taylor was in police custody before and during the murders, police officers convinced Adrian Grimes to falsely testify that he saw Taylor and the other co-defendants meeting in a park while Taylor was actually in lockup. (Id. at ¶¶ 37-38.) Officers secured this false testimony by threatening Grimes with drug charges and offering leniency in exchange for his testimony, but details of this coercion were not disclosed to Plaintiff and his co-defendants. (Id. at ¶ 39.)

Following his exoneration 21 years later, Plaintiff filed the instant suit, alleging 13 counts of various civil rights violations. As relevant here, Count I of Plaintiffs complaint alleged that Defendants violated Plaintiffs Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by coercing Plaintiff to confess to a crime he did not commit. Count III of Plaintiffs complaint alleged that Defendants violated Plaintiffs due process rights by withholding exculpatory evidence prior to Plaintiffs trial. The Court dismissed Count I on the grounds that it was time barred, because Plaintiff failed to bring this claim within the two-year statute of limitations period applicable to § 1983 claims in Illinois. (Dkt. # 66, at 6-9.) The Court then dismissed Count III because it found that all of the allegedly exculpatory evidence in question was available to the defense through the exercise of reasonable diligence, and was thus not suppressed within the meaning of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). (Id. at 12-14.) Plaintiff now moves for reconsideration.

Legal Standard

Motions to reconsider interlocutory orders are governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b). This Rule provides that any order that does not resolve all claims as to all parties “may be revised at any time before the entry of a judgment adjudicating all the claims and all the parties’ rights and liabilities.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b). As such, the Court may, at its discretion, reconsider its ruling on Defendants’ motions to dismiss. See Moses H. Cone Mem. Hosp. v. Mercury Const. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 12, 103 S.Ct. 927, 74 L.Ed.2d 765 (1983) (holding that “every order short of a final decree is subject to reopening at the discretion of the district judge”). While motions to reconsider are permitted, however, they are disfavored. Such motions “serve a limited function: to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence.” Conditioned Ocular Enhancement, Inc. v. Bonaventura, 458 F.Supp.2d 704, 707 [912]*912(N.D.Ill.2006) (quoting Caisse Nationale de Credit Agricole v. CBI Indus., Inc., 90 F.3d 1264, 1269 (7th Cir.1996)). A manifest error of law or fact under this standard occurs when a district court “has patently misunderstood a party, or has made a decision outside the adversarial issues presented to the Court by the parties, or has made an .error not of reasoning but of apprehension.” Bank of Waunakee v. Rochester Cheese Sales, Inc.,

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103 F. Supp. 3d 907, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53143, 2015 WL 1880389, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/patrick-v-city-of-chicago-ilnd-2015.