Hincapie v. City of New York

Background

Johnny Hincapie sought damages from the City of New York and several New York City police officers for his alleged wrongful conviction and imprisonment for the 1990 felony murder of Brian Watkins. Hincapie alleged that he was not involved in the crime, but that officers fabricated evidence, coerced his confession, suppressed exculpatory information, and failed to intervene in unconstitutional conduct.

Hincapie was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life. In 2015, a New York state court vacated his conviction after considering newly discovered evidence, including testimony supporting his innocence. The District Attorney’s Office dismissed the indictment on January 25, 2017, stating that it had significant doubt that a retrial would result in a conviction.

Hincapie’s amended complaint asserted claims including federal and state malicious prosecution, denial of a fair trial based on fabricated or suppressed evidence, coercion, supervisory liability, municipal liability under Section 1983, false arrest and imprisonment, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and failure to intervene. The defendants moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

Court’s analysis

At the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court accepted the complaint’s factual allegations as true and considered whether they plausibly stated legal claims. The court held that Hincapie adequately alleged that his criminal case ended in his favor. It explained that an acquittal or proof of actual innocence was not required. The vacatur of the conviction, the newly discovered evidence, the lack of physical evidence, problems with the identification evidence, the alleged coerced confession, and the prosecution’s decision not to retry him were sufficient at this stage.

The court also held that Hincapie plausibly alleged that the indictment was obtained through fraud, suppressed evidence, fabricated statements, and bad-faith conduct. Those allegations were sufficient to overcome, for purposes of the motion to dismiss, the usual presumption that a grand-jury indictment establishes probable cause.

The court allowed the federal and state malicious-prosecution claims to proceed. It also allowed the fair-trial claim based on alleged fabricated evidence to proceed. The court found that Hincapie sufficiently pleaded a fair-trial claim concerning allegedly suppressed statements by Ricardo Lopez against Detectives Swenson and Connolly. The opinion states that the reference to statements by Tannisha Vasquez was not sufficiently pleaded.

The court rejected the argument that the coercion claim was duplicative of the fair-trial claim. Hincapie plausibly alleged that Casey, Gonzalez, Ali, and Christie used threats and violence to obtain his confession and that the confession was used at trial. The court also allowed the failure-to-intervene claim to proceed against the defendants other than Bayshim, Herbst, Demartino, and Mole.

The court dismissed the supervisory-liability claims against Bayshim, Herbst, Demartino, and Mole because the complaint did not allege their personal involvement beyond responsibility for supervising officers at the precinct. It found that the allegations concerning Ali, Borman, and Connolly’s direct participation were sufficient at this stage.

The court dismissed the municipal-liability claim against the City. Hincapie alleged that the New York Police Department had a policy of not recording interrogations, but the court found no adequately pleaded direct link between that policy and his injuries. The court noted that recording interrogations was not legally required at the time and that the alleged coercion could have occurred even if the interrogations had been recorded.

The court dismissed the federal and state false-arrest claims as time-barred. Hincapie conceded that those claims were untimely and did not establish a basis for extending the filing period. The court allowed the intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims to proceed, concluding that the alleged continuing conduct ended when the criminal case was dismissed and that the claims were timely under the facts alleged.

Disposition

Judge Paul A. Crotty ordered that the defendants’ motion to dismiss be granted in part and denied in part. The motion was granted as to Bayshim, Herbst, Demartino, and Mole; granted as to the City’s municipal-liability claim; and granted as to the false-arrest claims. The motion was denied as to the remaining claims and defendants, as stated in the conclusion of the opinion. The Clerk was directed to close the listed motions.