Snodderly v. R.U.F.F. Drug Enforcement Task Force

239 F.3d 892, 2001 WL 101513
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedFebruary 7, 2001
Docket99-3688
StatusPublished
Cited by107 cases

This text of 239 F.3d 892 (Snodderly v. R.U.F.F. Drug Enforcement Task Force) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Snodderly v. R.U.F.F. Drug Enforcement Task Force, 239 F.3d 892, 2001 WL 101513 (7th Cir. 2001).

Opinion

BAUER, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs-Appellants Bill Snodderly et al. (“Snodderly”) appeal from the dismissal of a host of federal and state claims which they brought against several police officers, an inter-district drug enforcement task force, and various Indiana municipalities for damages they claimed to have suffered when Bill Snodderly was arrested and prosecuted on baseless drug charges. The district court dismissed all of the federal claims save for the malicious prosecution claim against several prosecutor-defendants as barred by Indiana’s two-year statute of limitations, which is applicable to all causes of action brought in Indiana under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Finding that the prosecutor-defendants were absolutely immune from suit on the federal malicious prosecution claim, the court dismissed this claim as well, and declined to exercise pendent jurisdiction over any of the remaining state law claims. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

We take the following factual account from the plaintiffs’ complaint as true, as we must on review of a motion to dismiss. Snodderly owns the C.C. Tavern in West College Corner, Indiana. On October 4, 1993, the R.U.F.F. Drug Enforcement Task Force sent Michael Zinman, an undercover informant, to West College Corner to attempt to buy illegal drugs from potential suspects. Later that day, Zin-man informed R.U.F.F. Officer Patrick that he had made arrangements to purchase two ounces of marijuana from a man named “Bill,” who had been identified to Zinman as a bartender at the C.C. Tavern. Officer Keith contacted Officer Marcum to determine the identity of “Bill the Bartender,” and Marcum sent Keith a photograph of Snodderly. That evening, Officer Haehl of the R.U.F.F. Task Force accompanied Zinman (who was “wired” with audio recording equipment) to the C.C. Tavern and made the prearranged drug purchase as planned. Either before or during the purchase, Bill the Bartender told Zinman and/or Haehl where he lived and what type of vehicle he drove. 1 Zin-man and Haehl subsequently returned to the C.C. Tavern several times in hopes of purchasing more drugs from Bill the Bartender. However, they never saw him at the tavern again.

The R.U.F.F. officers made Snodderly the focus of their investigation, operating on the assumption that he was “Bill the bartender.” The officers did not follow up on leads that might have indicated that Snodderly was not Bill the Bartender (for example, they apparently did not compare Bill the Bartender’s description of his residence and vehicle with Snodderly’s residence and vehicle). Together with two Indiana state prosecutors, 2 Officer Haehl *895 prepared an affidavit for an arrest warrant against Snodderly, which included “false” representations as to the existence of probable cause. Snodderly was arrested by R.U.F.F. Officer Keith on April 15, 1994 3 in the presence of his wife, son, and many neighbors, and was detained for some unspecified time before posting bond and being released on the same day. Snodderly was charged with bulk sale of marijuana. The charge was dismissed by an Indiana state court on February 5, 1997.

On February 13, 1998, Snodderly filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana against the R.U.F.F. Drug Enforcement Task Force, several municipalities in Indiana that organized the Task Force, various R.U.F.F. officers and state prosecutors who participated in his arrest and prosecution, and various John and Jane Does. The complaint, as subsequently amended, asserted a claim under § 1983 for damages resulting from Snodderly’s arrest and prosecution, which occurred in violation of the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Specifically, Snodderly claimed that the “[defendants deprived [him] of his rights to be secure in his person and property, freedom from unreasonable arrest, search and seizure, freedom from false arrest, unlawful arrest, freedom from arrest without probable cause, freedom from unreasonable bail bond, freedom from malicious prosecution, and due process of law.” The gravamen of Snodderly’s § 1983 claim is that the defendants caused him to be arrested without probable cause, and continued to prosecute him while knowing that he was not guilty of the crime charged. Snodderly also asserted a smorgasbord of pendent state law claims against various individual defendants, including a claim for false arrest against Officer Keith, 4 a claim for unlawful arrest against defendants Keith, Haehl, and other officers, and a claim for malicious prosecution against Haehl and various prosecutor-defendants. In support of the latter claim, Snodderly claimed that on or about April 6, 1994 (nine days before Snodderly’s arrest), Haehl and two prosecutors filed an affidavit with the clerk of Union Circuit Court in Indiana charging Snodderly with the Class D felony of dealing in marijuana, even though they had no probable cause to do so. Snodderly further stated that the trial court granted him a motion to suppress photo-lineup evidence when “it was found that the photographic line-up had been destroyed approximately two years earlier.”

The district court dismissed all of Snod-derly’s claims. Noting that Indiana’s two-year statute of limitations for personal injuries applies to § 1983 claims, and that Snodderly had filed his original complaint on February 13, 1998, the court ruled that any § 1983 claims that accrued more than two years prior to that date were time-barred. Applying this rule, the court held that all of Snodderly’s § 1983 claims against the police officers were time-barred, because they were based on actions alleged to have taken place more than two years prior to the filing of Snod-derly’s complaint. The court then dismissed the only remaining federal claim— namely, the claim that the prosecutor-defendants pressed forward with the prosecution of Snodderly despite their knowledge that they lacked evidence to establish his guilt on the charged offense-on the ground that prosecutors are absolutely immune from such charges. Having dismissed all of Snodderly’s federal claims, the court declined to exercise supplemen *896 tal jurisdiction over the state law claims, and dismissed those claims for lack of jurisdiction. Snodderly subsequently filed this appeal, challenging only the district court’s dismissal of his § 1983 claims against the police officers. 5

DISCUSSION

We review the district court’s dismissal of a plaintiffs complaint de novo, and we will only affirm a dismissal “if it is clear that [the plaintiff] can prove no set of facts consistent with his complaint which would entitle him to relief.” Sneed v. Rybicki, 146 F.3d 478, 480 (7th Cir.1998) (citation omitted). We must accept all well-pleaded facts in the complaint as true, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. See id.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Blessing v. Walker
N.D. Indiana, 2025
Henderson v. Goldbeck
E.D. Wisconsin, 2025
Steward v. Commissioner
N.D. Indiana, 2025
Elzey v. Newton
N.D. Indiana, 2025
Robinson v. Westville
N.D. Indiana, 2025
Schorey v. Greer
N.D. Indiana, 2025
Burritt v. Marzolf
N.D. Indiana, 2024
Taylor v. Carter
N.D. Indiana, 2024
Lampkins v. Kranick
N.D. Indiana, 2023
Williams v. City Of Chicago
N.D. Illinois, 2023
Johns v. Hyatte
N.D. Indiana, 2023
Fromer v. Payne
N.D. Indiana, 2022
Soberano v. Arreygue Guillen
W.D. Washington, 2022
Hartsell v. Schaaf
N.D. Indiana, 2021
Walker v. White
N.D. Illinois, 2021

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
239 F.3d 892, 2001 WL 101513, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/snodderly-v-ruff-drug-enforcement-task-force-ca7-2001.