Williams v. N.Y.C. Dept. of Corrections

Background

Alexander Williams brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Bernard Mathis and Jakar Wells violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments by retaliating against him. Williams alleged that, while detained at the Manhattan Detention Complex in 2019, he filed grievances about restrictions on his mail and prison law-library access. He claimed that Mathis threatened and mistreated him because of those grievances and a later lawsuit, and that Wells and another officer stole legal papers during a cell search.

The opinion resolved the parties’ motions in limine, which are pretrial requests asking the court to decide whether particular evidence may be presented to the jury. Trial was scheduled for May 1, 2023.

Prior convictions and arrests

The court excluded Williams’s drug-related conviction from use against him in cross-examination. The court reasoned that the conviction was not shown to bear on truthfulness and that more than ten years would have passed from the conviction by the time of trial. The court did not categorically exclude Williams’s bail-jumping conviction: assuming the defendants could show that the offense was punishable by more than one year in prison, the conviction could be used for impeachment because the court found it directly relevant to credibility.

The court granted Williams’s request to exclude his witness Samuel Ceruti’s conviction for trafficking stolen merchandise because the defendants had not shown that it involved a dishonest act or false statement. The court reserved a ruling on Ceruti’s conspiracy conviction until the final pretrial conference because the record did not establish the exact nature of that offense.

The court excluded Ceruti’s robbery convictions, which were more than ten years old, from impeachment. It also excluded Williams’s and Ceruti’s arrests that had not resulted in convictions, including Williams’s pending murder charge and Ceruti’s previously dismissed murder charge. The court found that evidence of those matters posed a substantial risk of unfairly causing the jury to judge Williams personally rather than the evidence in the civil case.

Lockdown orders

The court excluded evidence of the fact and contents of the lockdown and command-level orders, as well as evidence about why the orders were issued. If Williams introduced evidence or argument about restrictions on outgoing mail or law-library access, however, the court said it would instruct the jury that those restrictions were imposed by court order and that the jury should not consider why the restrictions were imposed or whether they were lawful.

The court found that the orders and their reasons were not relevant to the retaliation claims as presented. Williams challenged alleged retaliation involving incoming mail and restrictions on calls, rather than the restrictions imposed by the lockdown orders. The court also found that the evidence could unfairly lead the jury to view Williams as dangerous.

Ceruti’s videotaped deposition

The court granted Williams’s request to use Ceruti’s videotaped deposition at trial. Ceruti was incarcerated more than 100 miles from the courthouse, and defense counsel had attended the deposition and had an opportunity to question him. The court held that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 32(a)(4)(B) allowed the deposition to be used and rejected the argument that Williams first had to seek a court order bringing Ceruti to the courthouse.

Cell 11 incident

Williams alleged that officers later strip-searched him and threatened him in a Cell 11 incident, referring to Mathis as the captain of the response team. The court allowed Williams to testify about that incident as evidence relevant to Mathis’s alleged retaliatory intent, rather than as proof that Mathis acted in conformity with a character trait.

The court granted Williams’s request to bar defendants from calling witnesses about the Cell 11 incident who had not been identified in their required disclosure. The court permitted only Captain Lucie Doliscar, the witness listed in the defendants’ amended disclosures. The court found no substantial justification for the defendants’ failure to identify additional witnesses and found that allowing new witnesses would prejudice Williams and delay trial.

The court declined to give an adverse-inference instruction based on the defendants’ failure to produce additional witnesses. Williams’s attorney could argue that the defendants offered no witnesses about the incident if that remained true, but the court would not instruct the jury to draw an adverse inference.

Williams’s proposed exhibits

The court held that the fact, timing, and general content of Williams’s grievances were relevant to whether defendants knew about his protected communications. The documents would not be admitted to prove the truth of the allegations in the grievances. The court denied the motion to admit the grievances on Rule 403 grounds at that stage and reserved whether particular grievances would be admitted after a specific proffer and consideration of the trial context.

The court denied Williams’s request to admit several documents concerning the Cell 11 incident, including court materials, counsel’s letters, and disclosure documents. The court said those materials were irrelevant to whether defendants actually called witnesses at trial. The court reserved ruling on the related video footage until the final pretrial conference if the footage was submitted.

The court denied admission of the Department of Correction’s inmate grievance procedures. It found that the central issue was whether defendants retaliated against Williams, not whether they violated the department’s grievance procedures, and that the lengthy technical document could confuse the jury.

Defendants’ disciplinary histories

The court excluded the defendants’ disciplinary histories as general character evidence. It nevertheless allowed cross-examination of Wells about discipline for inaccurate report writing because that conduct directly related to truthfulness. The court did not allow cross-examination of Mathis about prior discipline for unauthorized use of force, finding that such conduct did not directly bear on veracity.

Qualified immunity and other trial limits

The court rejected Williams’s argument that defendants had waived qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is a defense that can protect government officials from damages when their conduct did not violate a clearly established right. The court found that defendants had raised the defense in their answer, motion papers, and proposed trial defenses, so they could present it at trial or seek a ruling on it as permitted by law.

The court ruled that witnesses could discuss relevant people who were no longer defendants, but the fact that those people had been named and dismissed generally would not be presented to the jury unless relevant through a witness’s testimony. The court granted in part the request to change documents bearing the case caption: materials shown to jurors would identify only Williams and the two defendants going to trial, without identifying other defendants.

The court also granted the defendants’ request to prevent Williams from calling defense counsel “City Attorneys” or attorneys for New York City or the Department of Correction. The court said counsel would instead be introduced as attorneys from the Corporation Counsel’s Office. It additionally granted unopposed requests concerning evidence of the City’s indemnification and suggestions of a specific dollar amount to the jury.

Disposition

The court ordered that both Williams’s and the defendants’ motions in limine were granted in part and denied in part. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the docket entries for the motions.