CA10: Wrongfully extending arrest on false charge stated Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim

Allegedly falsified factual basis for an arrest warrant states a § 1983 Fourth Amendment claim. Plaintiff surrendered on a warrant where his attorney had an agreement with the state he would bond out. Defendant then told the jail that he couldn’t be released because additional charges would be filed, and they were. Plaintiff was portrayed in the media as a methamphetamine dealer. After drug testing was done by the state lab, no controlled substances were found, and the charges were dismissed. Plaintiff properly filed a Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim. Myers v. Koopman, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 25357 (10th Cir. December 20, 2013):

Jeremy Myers challenges the district court’s dismissal of his § 1983 malicious-prosecution claim alleging violations of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In his complaint, he asserted that Detective Brian Koopman obtained an arrest warrant by fabricating facts to create the illusion of probable cause. As a result, Myers spent three days in custody.

Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we conclude that the district court rightly dismissed Myers’ Fourteenth Amendment claim because an adequate state remedy existed, but we conclude that the district court improperly dismissed Myers’ Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim as untimely after recasting it as a claim for false imprisonment. In fact, Myers correctly styled his Fourth Amendment claim as one for malicious prosecution because he was seized after the institution of legal process. The malicious prosecution claim is timely. Accordingly, we reverse the dismissal of that claim.

…

What separates the two claims?—the institution of legal process. Unreasonable seizures imposed without legal process precipitate Fourth Amendment false imprisonment claims. See Wallace, 549 U.S. at 389 (concluding that false imprisonment was the proper analogy where defendants did not have a warrant for the plaintiff’s arrest and thus detention occurred without legal process). Unreasonable seizures imposed with legal process precipitate Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claims.FN3 See Heck, 512 U.S. at 484 (where detention occurs with legal process the “common-law cause of action for malicious prosecution provides the closest analogy”). Like rain and snow, the claims emanate from the same source, but under different conditions.

3. Unreasonable seizures that occur after the institution of legal process can also form the basis for Fourteenth Amendment malicious-prosecution claims where an adequate state remedy does not exist. See Mondragon v. Thompson, 519 F.3d 1078, 1082 (10th Cir. 2008).

In Wilkins v. DeReyes, we employed the legal-process distinction. 528 F.3d 790 (10th Cir. 2008). DeReyes allegedly obtained an arrest warrant for Wilkins based on fabricated evidence gathered by using coercive interrogation techniques. Id. at 793-94. This Court said that where detention occurs after the institution of legal process, a plaintiff can claim that the legal process itself was wrongful, and thereby state a “Fourth Amendment violation sufficient to support a § 1983 malicious prosecution cause of action.” Id. at 799.