Rodriguez v. Derienzo
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-00087
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 7
In Rodriguez v. Derienzo, Judge McMahon dismissed Rodriguez’s complaint seeking prosecution and damages over alleged false evidence and testimony.
Jovanny Rodriguez’s complaint was dismissed, and he was denied permission to appeal without paying fees. Detective Donald Derienzo was protected from the claim based on his grand-jury testimony and was not required to face the requested prosecution.
What happened
Jovanny Rodriguez, representing himself while incarcerated, sued Detective Donald Derienzo. Rodriguez sought Derienzo’s prosecution and alleged that Derienzo falsely testified and recorded that two codefendants had been identified in a photo array, affecting Rodriguez’s criminal case.
The court ruled that a private person cannot ask the court to prosecute someone else. It also held that a witness has complete protection from civil-rights claims based on grand-jury testimony, even if the testimony was false. The court further found that Rodriguez did not plausibly connect the alleged statements about his codefendants to his own conviction.
In Rodriguez v. Derienzo, Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed the complaint under the prisoner-screening statute for being frivolous or failing to state a claim, declined to allow amendment, and denied permission to appeal without paying fees.
The detailed version
- Rodriguez v. Derienzo · No. 1:20-cv-00087
- Colleen McMahon
- Feb. 7, 2020
Background
Jovanny Rodriguez, who was incarcerated and proceeding without a lawyer, sued Detective Donald Derienzo. Rodriguez sought to have Derienzo prosecuted for alleged violations of federal obstruction statutes. He also alleged that Derienzo gave false grand-jury testimony and prepared an investigative report and sealed complaint stating that Victim-1 identified Rodriguez’s codefendants, Juan Marte and Jose Ortega, in a photo array.
Rodriguez alleged that these statements caused the codefendants to cooperate with authorities and implicate him. He claimed that the alleged false evidence contaminated his criminal trial and violated his constitutional right to a fair trial. The opinion states that Rodriguez had been convicted of multiple offenses and sentenced to life imprisonment, and that the conviction was affirmed on appeal.
Court’s analysis
The court first rejected Rodriguez’s request to prosecute Derienzo. A private person does not have a legally protected interest in having another person arrested or prosecuted, and prosecutorial decisions belong to prosecutors rather than private citizens or courts. The court therefore dismissed the claim seeking Derienzo’s prosecution.
The court next considered whether Rodriguez’s allegations could be treated as a civil-rights claim for fabricating evidence. It held that a grand-jury witness, including a law-enforcement officer, has absolute immunity from civil-rights claims based on the witness’s testimony, even when the testimony is allegedly perjured.
The court separately considered whether Rodriguez could state a fabrication-of-evidence claim based on conduct independent of the grand-jury testimony. Such a claim requires allegations that an investigating official fabricated information likely to influence a jury, passed it to prosecutors, and caused the plaintiff to lose liberty or property as a result. The court concluded that, even assuming Derienzo fabricated information about Marte and Ortega’s photo-array identification, the alleged harm to Rodriguez was not a foreseeable result of that conduct. Rodriguez did not allege facts suggesting that his own prosecution would not have proceeded without the alleged fabricated evidence.
Disposition
The court dismissed Rodriguez’s claims against Derienzo for failure to state a claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i)-(ii) and declined to allow amendment because amendment would be futile. The Clerk was directed to mail the order to Rodriguez and note service on the docket. The court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying fees.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.