Jones v. The City of New York

Background

Kareem Omar Jones filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims against state or local officials for certain constitutional violations. He was incarcerated, represented himself, and was allowed to proceed without paying the filing fee. After the court identified deficiencies in his original complaint, Jones filed an amended complaint.

Jones alleged that on July 2, 2016, New York City police officers stopped him in a New York City Housing Authority parking lot, ordered him out of his vehicle, searched him and the vehicle, and arrested him after Officer Gomez found a bag containing a white substance. Jones alleged that the officers fabricated a claim that he had been double-parking and stopped him because he is African American.

A grand jury indicted Jones on drug, drug-paraphernalia, marijuana, and trespassing charges. The trial court denied his motion to suppress the evidence. A jury convicted him of third-degree possession of a controlled substance and unlawful possession of marijuana, while acquitting him of the other listed charges. The appellate court affirmed the drug conviction and vacated the marijuana conviction.

Jones sought money damages for false arrest and malicious prosecution. He argued that the limitations period for his false-arrest claim should be extended because he learned at the suppression hearing that the officers had allegedly invented the double-parking account.

False-Arrest Claims

The court applied the rule from Heck v. Humphrey, which generally bars a prisoner’s damages claim under § 1983 when winning the claim would necessarily show that a conviction or sentence is invalid, unless that conviction has already been overturned or otherwise invalidated. The court concluded that success on Jones’s false-arrest claim relating to the drug arrest would necessarily call his drug-possession conviction into question. Because that conviction had not been overturned or otherwise invalidated, the court dismissed the § 1983 claims arising from the arrest under the prisoner-screening statute.

Malicious-Prosecution Claims

The court explained that a § 1983 malicious-prosecution claim requires, among other things, a criminal proceeding that ended in the plaintiff’s favor, lack of probable cause, actual malice, and a post-arraignment loss of liberty protected by the Fourth Amendment. When a person is acquitted of some charges but convicted of others, the acquitted charges must involve offenses and allegations sufficiently separate from the conviction for a malicious-prosecution claim to proceed.

The court dismissed Jones’s claims concerning the acquitted drug and drug-paraphernalia charges because those charges involved the same facts as the drug-possession charge for which he was convicted. The court also dismissed the claim concerning trespassing because Jones could not show that the trespassing charge alone caused a post-arraignment loss of liberty; the drug charge supported the liberty restriction. The court dismissed the malicious-prosecution claims for failure to state a claim.

Disposition

Judge Louis L. Stanton dismissed Jones’s amended complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii), which requires dismissal of a qualifying complaint that is frivolous, seeks relief from an immune defendant, or fails to state a claim. The opinion does not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.