Roland v. City of New York

Background

On January 29, 2016, Undercover Officer No. 322 participated in a police “buy and bust” operation. The officer gave Jerome Winley prerecorded money to buy narcotics. After Winley spoke with three people, including Gerald Roland, the officer reported that the people were involved in the transaction. Police arrested Roland and the other two people. The parties disputed what happened to the prerecorded money, although defendants presented evidence that two of the marked $20 bills were recovered from Roland.

Roland was charged with drug offenses, indicted, and later released. A New York state court suppressed the prerecorded money and the undercover officer’s identification of Roland, finding that police lacked a specific articulable reason for the stop and search. The criminal charges were dismissed on July 11, 2017. Roland filed this federal action on July 14, 2020, asserting claims under federal civil-rights statutes and the United States Constitution, as well as state and municipal claims. He later withdrew his municipal-liability claim.

Federal claims filed too late

The court held that Roland’s federal claims for unlawful search and seizure, false arrest and imprisonment, excessive force, malicious abuse of process, and equal protection were barred by New York’s three-year statute of limitations. The claims accrued on the arrest date or, for false arrest and imprisonment, when legal process began. The court also held that related conspiracy and failure-to-intervene claims were time-barred. The court considered pandemic-related tolling but concluded that Roland still filed these claims too late.

The court noted that Roland’s federal malicious-prosecution and fair-trial claims accrued when the criminal charges were dismissed. Because of pandemic-related tolling, those two claims were timely and were considered on their merits.

State and municipal claims

The court granted summary judgment against the City on all of Roland’s state-law claims because he undisputedly had not filed a notice of claim. A notice of claim is a required advance notice to the municipality for the types of claims at issue.

As to the individual defendants, the court said it could not determine from the parties’ briefing whether the City had a statutory duty to indemnify them, which could affect whether the notice-of-claim requirement applied. The court nevertheless granted summary judgment on the state-law claims against those defendants because the intentional-tort claims were barred by New York’s statutes of limitations, and the New York constitutional claims duplicated available federal claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The court also held that the state-law failure-to-intervene claim failed because it depended on underlying claims that failed.

Malicious-prosecution claim

A grand-jury indictment ordinarily creates a presumption that probable cause existed for the prosecution. Roland argued that the presumption was overcome because Undercover Officer No. 322 omitted information from grand-jury testimony, Detective Rios included fabricated information in the criminal complaint, and the undercover officer falsely told Rios that Roland had received money from Winley.

The court rejected these arguments. It found that the undercover officer’s grand-jury testimony was consistent with his later deposition testimony and did not state that he saw Roland personally exchange crack cocaine with Winley. The court also found no material inconsistency between the criminal complaint and the officer’s testimony. Although Rios later testified that the undercover officer had identified Roland as the person who received the money, the record did not show that this alleged statement contributed to the indictment or prosecution. The court further found Roland’s testimony about the marked money and his interaction with Winley contradictory and incomplete. It concluded that no reasonable juror could credit his fabrication allegations on this record.

Because Roland did not rebut the presumption of probable cause, the court granted summary judgment on his federal malicious-prosecution claim.

Fair-trial claim

Roland also claimed that the defendants fabricated evidence and forwarded it to prosecutors, violating his constitutional right to a fair trial. The court considered the same three alleged sources of fabrication: the undercover officer’s grand-jury testimony, the criminal complaint, and the alleged post-arrest statement to Rios and Detective Mero.

The court found no triable issue of fact. It concluded that the grand-jury testimony and criminal complaint did not contain the alleged fabrications, and that Roland’s inconsistent testimony could not establish otherwise. The record also did not show that the alleged post-arrest statement was forwarded to prosecutors or caused Roland’s detention or prosecution. The court therefore granted summary judgment on the fair-trial claim.

Other rulings and disposition

Because Roland failed to establish an underlying constitutional violation, his related conspiracy and failure-to-intervene claims also failed. The court did not decide whether the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on the malicious-prosecution claim because it had already found probable cause to prosecute. The defendants’ motion for summary judgment was granted. The claims against the unidentified John or Jane Doe defendants were dismissed without prejudice because they remained unidentified and unserved after discovery closed. Judge Timothy M. Reif directed the clerk to terminate the open motion.