Jones v. City of Mt. Vernon

Background

Ronald Jones sued the City of Mount Vernon, Sergeant Jason Conley, Officer Steven Alcantara, and Officer Edgar Moreta under federal and state law. The claims originally included alleged violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, conspiracy and failure-to-intervene claims, state constitutional due process claims, and several state-law negligence and emotional-distress claims. The opinion states that only Jones’s malicious-prosecution and due-process claims remained.

On November 14, 2018, Conley, Alcantara, and Moreta were conducting a police patrol at Levister Towers. Jones ran after seeing Conley. The officers said they saw Jones reach toward his waistband and believed he had a firearm. Jones disputed that account and said he may have reached toward a pocket containing a bottle of Hennessy. Officers later found a pizza box in an incinerator room containing a pistol, two knives, and marijuana. Jones was handcuffed and taken to police headquarters.

The defendants said Jones confessed during an interview, and Officer Moreta summarized the alleged confession in a report. Jones denied confessing. He was charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, detained, and indicted by a grand jury. The charges were later dismissed. Jones claimed that the indictment was based on a fabricated account of the pursuit and a fabricated confession.

Summary-judgment standard

The court applied Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Summary judgment is proper only when there is no genuine dispute about a material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. A genuine dispute exists when a reasonable jury could decide the fact for the nonmoving party. At this stage, the court must draw reasonable inferences for the nonmoving party and may not weigh evidence or decide witness credibility.

Malicious-prosecution claim

A federal or common-law malicious-prosecution claim requires proof that a criminal proceeding was started or continued, ended in the plaintiff’s favor, lacked probable cause, and was motivated by actual malice. Because a grand jury indicted Jones, the court applied a presumption that probable cause existed. That presumption can be overcome if the indictment resulted from fraud, perjury, suppressed evidence, or other bad-faith police conduct.

The court held that no reasonable jury could credit Jones’s testimony about the officers’ pursuit. The court relied on inconsistencies in Jones’s accounts about whether he entered the incinerator room, as well as police reports and the officers’ sworn testimony. The court therefore rejected that alleged basis for overcoming the probable-cause presumption at summary judgment.

The court reached a different conclusion about the alleged confession. Jones’s sworn deposition testimony denied that he confessed, while the defendants offered testimony and a report supporting the existence of a confession. Although Jones relied on his own testimony and that testimony conflicted with the defendants’ evidence, the court found it was not internally contradictory or incomplete. A reasonable juror could believe Jones, so the conflict presented a genuine dispute of material fact rather than an issue the court could resolve on summary judgment.

That factual dispute affected whether the indictment had been obtained through fraud, whether probable cause existed, and whether actual malice could be inferred. The court therefore denied summary judgment on the malicious-prosecution claim.

Due-process claims

Jones also asserted federal and New York State constitutional due-process claims based on allegedly fabricated evidence. The court described the required showing as evidence that an investigating official fabricated information likely to influence a jury, sent that information to prosecutors, and thereby caused the plaintiff to lose life, liberty, or property.

The court found a factual dispute about whether the defendants fabricated the alleged confession and whether prosecutors relied on that information. It also rejected the defendants’ argument that Jones suffered no deprivation of liberty, stating that Jones was held in jail after the indictment and that time spent in jail constitutes a deprivation of liberty. Because the defendants offered no other substantive opposition to those claims, the court denied summary judgment on both the federal and state due-process claims.

Disposition

The court DENIED the defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. The order did not enter judgment for Jones or decide that the defendants actually fabricated a confession; it held that the disputed facts must not be resolved on summary judgment.