Torres v. Goddard

194 F. Supp. 3d 886, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86004, 2016 WL 3570430
District Court, D. Arizona·Decided July 1, 2016·No. No. CV-06-2482-PHX-SMM·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

Stephen M. McNamee, Senior United States District Judge

This case is on remand from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. See Torres v. Goddard, 793 F.3d 1046 (9th Cir.2015). The Ninth Circuit remanded the issue of whether Defendants, although not entitled to absolute immunity, are entitled to qualified immunity for the service and execution of seizure for forfeiture warrants authorized by the Maricopa County Superior Court. Id. at 1056-59. The parties have briefed the issue and it is now ready for the Court’s review. (Docs. 276, 282-83.)

After due consideration of the parties’ submissions, the Court will grant Defendants’ Supplemental Motion for Summary Judgment Re: Qualified Immunity. (Doc. 276.)

BACKGROUND

This Court and the Ninth Circuit have previously detailed the extensive factual background of this case. See Torres, 793 F.3d at 1048-50; (Doc. 261 at 2-8.) In order to determine the narrow qualified immunity issue remanded to this Court, the Court will set out the following relevant facts.

Between 2001 and 2006, in its effort to combat the proliferation of coyotes bringing in undocumented immigrants, Arizona officials executed over twenty warrants to seize thousands of wire transfers that they claimed were highly likely to be connected [889] to criminal conduct. Torres, 793 F.3d at 1048.

Plaintiffs Javier Torres and Lia Rivade-neyra (“Plaintiffs”) were customers of Western Union Financial Services, Inc. (“Western Union”) whose money transfers were subject to seizure for forfeiture warrants issued by the Maricopa County Superior Court. At the time the seizure for forfeiture warrants were carried out and at the time this lawsuit was initiated, Defendant Terry Goddard (“Goddard”) was Attorney General of Arizona. (Doc. 261.) During the time period from 2000 to 2007, Defendant Cameron Holmes (“Holmes”) was an Assistant Attorney General in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.1 Holmes supervised the Financial Remedies Section within the Criminal Division of the Attorney General’s Office. (Doc. 261.) Holmes’s caseload consisted, in part, of civil forfeiture lawsuits. (Id.) In connection with the seizure warrants at issue and the subsequent forfeiture proceedings involving the electronic money transfers, Holmes acted as the “attorney for the state.” Under Arizona’s forfeiture statutes, A.R.S. §§ 13-4301 through 13-4315, “[attorney for the state” means an attorney designated by the attorney general ... to investigate, commence and prosecute an action under this chapter.” A.R.S. § 4301(1) (2006).

The warrant program was carried out by the Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force. The Task Force consisted of personnel from several public agencies including the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Cameron Holmes ... worked with the Task Force. Holmes sought court approval for and obtained seizure warrants pursuant to Arizona’s civil forfeiture statutes. See [A.R.S.]§ 13-4305(A)(1).
While some of the earlier warrants sought seizure of wire transfers involving specific names listed in the warrants, later warrants, or “sweeps,” authorized seizure of all wire transfers that met certain specified criteria. The six “criteria-based” warrants identified in plaintiffs’ complaint authorized the seizure of every person-to-person Western Union wire transfer that (1) was sent from certain states to Arizona or, under one warrant, from certain states to Sonora, Mexico; (2) met or exceeded a threshold amount ranging from $500 to $2000; and (3) was made during a certain time period — typically three or four weeks in the spring or fall. Accompanying the warrant applications were factual affidavits sworn to by Task Force detectives. The affidavits claimed that any wire transfer that met the warrants’ criteria had a very high likelihood, for some warrants as high as 97 percent, of being “directly involved in illegal drug and/or human smuggling.”
The seizures followed the same basic pattern. Holmes supervised the preparation of the seizure warrants and warrant applications. Holmes also reviewed the factual affidavits sworn to by Task Force detectives “in order to satisfy [himself] that the seizure warrant[s] being applied for [were] supported by probable cause.” Holmes then sought approval of the warrants before a state court judge. Once the warrants were approved, Holmes served them on Western Union’s corporate headquarters. The warrants were “effective upon receipt” by Western Union. They required Western Union to identify all wire transfers that met the listed criteria and “cause the transaction^] to be ‘force paid’ to a detention account” maintained for the [890] state by Western Union. Western Union seized the funds on the state’s behalf by loading the criteria into its computer system. When a wire transfer that met all the criteria listed in a warrant was initiated, Western Union’s computer system automatically diverted the transfer to Arizona’s detention account. While the seized funds were held by Western Union, they were considered to be in the “constructive custody of the law enforcement agency making the seizure for forfeiture.”

Torres, 793 F.3d at 1049. The Ninth Circuit summarized the Plaintiffs’ complaint, as follows:

[Plaintiffs’] section 1983 complaint alleges that defendants, “both personally and through agents or representatives,” “served and executed” the criteria-based warrants and “have illegally seized more than $9 million in interstate and international money transfers.” Plaintiffs allege that the seizures were unconstitutional because they were conducted without “particularized probable cause” to believe that their wire transfers “were involved in, or “were the fruits or in-strumentalities of, any of the stated criminal offenses" in the warrants,

Torres, 793 F.3d at 1050 (emphasis added).

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Torres v. Goddard, 194 F. Supp. 3d 886, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86004, 2016 WL 3570430 (D. Ariz. 2016).

194 F. Supp. 3d 886 (Torres v. Goddard) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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