Rivera v. Lake County

974 F. Supp. 2d 1179, 2013 WL 5408840, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138261
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedSeptember 26, 2013
DocketCase No. 12 C 8665
StatusPublished
Cited by44 cases

This text of 974 F. Supp. 2d 1179 (Rivera v. Lake County) 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
Rivera v. Lake County, 974 F. Supp. 2d 1179, 2013 WL 5408840, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138261 (N.D. Ill. 2013).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

HARRY D. LEINENWEBER, District Judge.

Pending before the Court are a Motion for Judicial Notice and nine different Motions to Dismiss. For the reasons stated herein, the Motion for Judicial Notice is granted, and the Motions to Dismiss are granted with respect to Count III and denied with respect to all other Counts and all Defendants.

I. BACKGROUND

This case arises out of the tragic wrongful conviction and twenty-year incarceration of Plaintiff Juan Rivera (hereinafter, “Plaintiff’ or “Rivera”). The facts that follow are drawn from the allegations in the Complaint.

In August 1992, eleven-year-old Holly Staker was raped and murdered. It was a high-profile crime that drew significant media attention in the Chicago area. The crime remains unsolved.

At the time, nineteen-year-old Plaintiff was living with his family in Staker’s neighborhood. Plaintiff had recently committed a nonviolent theft offense, and he was under house arrest as a condition of his release. As such, he wore an electronic transmitter around his ankle. The device tracked his every move, and alarms went off whenever Plaintiff left his family’s home.

The transmitter’s records from the night of the murder showed that Plaintiff was at home the entire night. In addition, telephone records reflect that Plaintiff had a phone conversation with his mother, who was out of the country, that evening. This rehable electronic evidence showed that, on the night of the murder, Plaintiff was at home and could not have committed the crime.

Authorities were unable to solve the case, and the killer’s trail went cold. Two months after the murder, police visited Plaintiff at Hill Correctional Center, where he was detained following his plea in the theft case. They asked him what he knew about the murder. Plaintiff provided information that he thought might help solve the crime and samples of his own blood and hair so that he could be eliminated as a suspect.

Three weeks later, police had Plaintiff transferred to Lake County Jail and began interrogating him about the Staker case. Plaintiff alleges that during the interrogation, police observed Plaintiffs difficulty with written and spoken English — his fam[1186]*1186ily had moved from Puerto Rico a few years earlier. In addition, Plaintiff reported to them at the time that he had pronounced psychological and emotional issues, including previous suicide attempts. Plaintiff apparently told the police that he had received psychiatric care and medications to manage those problems.

Though aware of Plaintiffs vulnerabilities, police — acting at the urging of prosecutors who were eager to be seen as taking action on the yet unsolved crime— conducted a four-day interrogation that culminated in more than 24 hours of near constant questioning. To exhaust and disorient Plaintiff, they deprived him of sleep, moved him from one location to another, used different interrogators, and subjected him to multiple polygraph tests. To upset Plaintiff, they screamed at him at the top of their lungs and accused him of committing the rape and murder. To confuse him, they told him that he had failed the polygraph tests, even though the test results showed that his denials were entirely truthful. At one point, they allegedly tied Plaintiffs limbs together in a “hog tie,” which rendered Plaintiff immobile and helpless.

Plaintiff alleges further that the police failed to give him any effective Miranda warnings. Despite the lack of warnings, Plaintiff invoked his right to remain silent and his right to counsel repeatedly. Plaintiff maintained his innocence and provided corroborating evidence. He requested that the police stop their abusive questioning.

But the interrogators persisted, and, after four days, Plaintiff suffered a complete mental breakdown. When police forced him to sign a statement they had written that implicated him in the murder, he submitted.

Plaintiff complains that other officials noticed this misconduct and either acquiesced or participated. Jail personnel observed Plaintiff in a catatonic state and did nothing to stop the interrogation. Prosecutors ignored Plaintiffs verifiable alibi and numerous indications that Plaintiffs statement was coerced. They disregarded the fact that none of the hundreds of pieces of physical evidence from the scene connected Plaintiff to the crime. For example, DNA evidence recovered from the victim’s body did not match Plaintiffs DNA. They knew they had no evidence connecting Plaintiff to the rape and murder, yet they proceeded to prosecute him.

To make matters worse, police and prosecutors recruited a supporting cast of witnesses and used improper promises to induce them to implicate Plaintiff. Police manufactured a series of false and fraudulent police reports that ended up in the case file. It goes without saying that this conduct was concealed from Plaintiff.

In 1993, a jury convicted Plaintiff of rape and first-degree murder. The jury could not agree unanimously on the death penalty, so the trial judge sentenced Plaintiff to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Plaintiff might otherwise have been put to death. Instead, he spent nearly two decades behind bars.

In December 2011, the Illinois Appellate Court vacated Plaintiffs conviction. In that Court’s view, no rational jury could have convicted Plaintiff of the crime. Plaintiff walked free only after prosecutors declined to appeal that decision.

Plaintiffs Complaint alleges six counts of constitutional violations brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and six counts of state law violations. Because of the widespread misconduct that caused Plaintiffs extensive injuries, Plaintiff sues more than twenty-five named persons and entities, as well as unknown Defendants. While this [1187]*1187Court need not recite every Defendant here, it -will note those Defendants that are often referred to collectively. Defendants Lucian Tessman, Donald Meadie, Fernando Shipley, Howard Pratt, and Richard Davis (the “Waukegan Defendants”) are former officers of the Waukegan Police Department and the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force. Defendants Michael Waller, Jeffrey Pavletic, Matthew Chancey, Steven McCollum, and Michael Mermel (the “Prosecutor Defendants”) are or were State’s Attorneys. Defendants Mark Curran, Charles Fagan, Estate of Clinton Grinnell (as successor in interest to Clinton Grinnell), and Michael Blazincic (the “Sheriffs Defendants”) are current and former officers of the Lake County Sheriffs Department and the Lake County Major Crimes task force.

II. LEGAL STANDARD

A Complaint must provide a short and plain statement of the claim showing the plaintiff is entitled to relief. Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). A Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss challenges the legal sufficiency of a complaint. Hallinan v. Fraternal Order of Police of Chicago Lodge No. 7, 570 F.3d 811, 820 (7th Cir.2009). To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual allegations, which when accepted as true, state a claim that is plausible on its face. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct.

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974 F. Supp. 2d 1179, 2013 WL 5408840, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 138261, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rivera-v-lake-county-ilnd-2013.