Heard v. Jackson

Background

Richard Barrett was shot in San Francisco in November 2008. Charles Heard was later arrested and convicted of participating in the murder. In 2020, his conviction was overturned because the prosecution had not disclosed the identification of alternative suspects. The California Court of Appeals later held that Heard had met his burden to prove factual innocence.

Heard sued Damon Jackson, Reese Burrows, Sean Griffin, Robert Lynch, Kevin Jones, and the City and County of San Francisco under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute. He alleged that Jackson, Burrows, and Griffin violated the rule requiring disclosure of favorable evidence under Brady v. Maryland by failing to disclose information from a 2008 meeting about possible alternative suspects. He also alleged that Lynch and Jones maliciously prosecuted him, fabricated evidence, and used an unlawfully suggestive identification procedure. Against the City, he alleged a failure to train employees about their Brady obligations.

The defendants initially moved to dismiss. Because Heard asked to submit evidence outside the pleadings, the court converted the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(d). Summary judgment is appropriate only when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over facts that could affect the outcome.

Claims Against Jackson, Burrows, and Griffin

The court denied summary judgment on Heard’s Brady claims against Jackson, Burrows, and Griffin. A Brady claim requires evidence that was favorable to the defense, suppressed by the government, and prejudicial to the plaintiff. Individual officers may be liable when they deliberately disregard an accused’s rights or the truth by withholding evidence from prosecutors.

The defendants argued that Heard should be barred from claiming that a District Attorney’s Office employee was not present at the 2008 meeting because Heard had previously relied on testimony suggesting that such an employee was present. The court rejected that argument. It reasoned that Heard had not discredited the alternative position in the earlier proceedings and that Jackson, rather than Heard, had changed his account of what happened at the meeting.

The defendants also argued that Jackson’s alleged identification of alternative suspects was immaterial because other evidence supported the prosecution. The court disagreed. The information could have been used to challenge Francis Smith’s eyewitness identification, could have affected the trial court’s decision about admitting evidence concerning Dennis Anderson, and could have led jurors to find reasonable doubt. The court held that it could not draw disputed inferences in the defendants’ favor on summary judgment.

The court also concluded that Jackson’s deposition testimony supported reasonable inferences that Burrows and Griffin attended the meeting, knew about the alternative-suspect information, and failed to disclose it to a District Attorney’s Office employee. Because genuine factual disputes remained, the claims against those officers could proceed.

Claims Against Jones and Lynch

The court granted summary judgment to Jones because the record contained no evidence referring to him.

Heard asserted three claims against Lynch: malicious prosecution, deliberate fabrication of evidence, and a due-process claim based on a suggestive identification procedure. The court granted Lynch summary judgment on the malicious-prosecution claim. It found that Heard had not rebutted the preliminary finding of probable cause or the presumption that the prosecutor independently decided to pursue the case. The court also noted that Smith identified Heard before speaking with Lynch, that Lynch included Smith’s uncertainty and her reference to a single gold tooth in the warrant affidavit, and that the identification issues were explored at the preliminary hearing.

The court granted Lynch summary judgment on the evidence-fabrication claim. It held that repeating Smith’s reference to gold “teeth” during the phone call, followed by accurately reporting her single-gold-tooth description in the warrant affidavit, did not provide sufficient evidence of deliberate fabrication. The court also found insufficient evidence that Lynch knew or should have known Heard was innocent or used investigative methods so coercive and abusive that they were likely to produce false information.

The court stated that Heard’s suggestive-identification due-process claim failed for the same reason as the fabrication claim. The court’s conclusion granted Lynch’s motion for summary judgment and Jones’s motion for summary judgment.

Claim Against the City

The court denied the City’s motion for summary judgment on Heard’s failure-to-train claim. To establish municipal liability, Heard had to show an inadequate training program, deliberate indifference by city officials to constitutional rights, and a causal connection between the training deficiency and the alleged violation.

The City argued that Heard lacked evidence that it had notice of a pattern of similar constitutional violations. The court held that Heard could rely on a Ninth Circuit decision involving San Francisco police officers who allegedly withheld exculpatory evidence, including information about alternative murder suspects. The court concluded that the decision could have put the City on notice of the risk of similar Brady violations and that the City had not shown otherwise at the summary-judgment stage.

Disposition

Judge Jacquelyn Corley’s order denied summary judgment to Jackson, Burrows, Griffin, and the City. It granted summary judgment to Lynch and Jones. The court directed the parties to schedule another settlement conference and set a case-management conference for September 21, 2023.