Officers had probable cause for plaintiff’s arrest for a sexual assault charge based on the totality of information, even though charges were later dismissed. Further later investigation cast doubt, but the officers weren’t reckless. Walz v. Randall, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 19244 (8th Cir. June 29, 2021):
Finally, the Walzes argue that Deputies Randall and Quandt violated the Fourth Amendment by arresting Tanner before properly investigating Haley’s claims, citing Kuehl v. Burtis, 173 F.3d 646 (8th Cir. 1999), in support of their position. Kuehl establishes that “law enforcement officers have a duty to conduct a reasonably thorough investigation prior to arresting a suspect, at least in the absence of exigent circumstances and so long as law enforcement would not be unduly hampered if the agents wait to obtain more facts before seeking to arrest.” Id. at 650 (cleaned up). In Kuehl itself, this court determined that a Fourth Amendment violation had occurred when the officers ignored a number of pieces of exculpatory evidence, interviewed the suspect for only twenty seconds before arresting her, and failed to interview an eyewitness at the scene of the alleged attack. See id. at 648-49, 651. But in a number of cases since, we have explained that Kuehl is applicable primarily in cases in which there is a clear “lack of investigation” prior to arrest, not in any case in which officers might have sought more sources of information before arresting a suspect. Clayborn, 734 F.3d at 809 (distinguishing Kuehl when officers made an arrest after obtaining physical evidence and interviewing witnesses, even though the witnesses’ stories were inconsistent with the suspect’s); see also, e.g., Gilmore v. City of Minneapolis, 837 F.3d 827, 833 (8th Cir. 2016) (finding Kuehl inapposite when the police arrested a suspect based on an eyewitness’ detailed statement); Ross v. City of Jackson, 897 F.3d 916, 922 (8th Cir. 2018) (applying Kuehl when officers arrested a suspect after seeing his Facebook post about guns, without any investigation into whether the post was a true threat and without giving the suspect any chance to explain himself).
In the Walzes’ view, as expressed by their attorney at oral argument, granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants means that, going forward, if somebody tells the police she was raped, “that’s enough—[they] don’t need to do any further investigation” before arresting the person she accused. But that is not what happened here. In the four days between learning of the allegation and arresting Tanner, Deputies Randall and Quandt spoke to Haley’s mother for over an hour; encouraged Haley to get a medical examination and reviewed the medical report, which included Haley’s statement describing the alleged rape; collected physical evidence; observed Haley’s CPC interview, which lasted more than an hour; compared Haley’s interview with her statement in the medical report; and interviewed Tanner himself. Thus, unlike in Kuehl, the deputies made an effort to investigate what happened and to collect statements from the two witnesses to the alleged crime before effectuating an arrest. Though Haley’s and Tanner’s stories of what happened could not be reconciled, “[w]hen an officer is faced with conflicting information that cannot be immediately resolved, he may have arguable probable cause to arrest a suspect” even without additional investigation. Gilmore, 837 F.3d at 833 (cleaned up) (quoting Borgman, 646 F.3d at 523).
Additionally, even though some of the information the deputies later obtained from other people supports Tanner’s version of events, this case is not one in which “minimal further investigation would have exonerated the suspect.” Kuehl, 173 F.3d at 650 (cleaned up). Indeed, the post-arrest interviews are themselves contradictory, with some supporting Haley’s account and some supporting Tanner’s (and one, from one of the boys present at Haley’s house, contradicting both). And as the district court put it: “[E]ven if the deputies had talked to additional witnesses prior to arresting Tanner, at the end of the day, only two people were in the bedroom where the alleged rape occurred: Tanner and [Haley].” Walz v. Randall, No. 1:18-cv-00067, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 221514, 2019 WL 7285555, at *11 (N.D. Iowa Dec. 27, 2019). Between the only two firsthand witnesses, the deputies credited Haley. We disagree that the deputies in this case failed to conduct “a reasonably thorough investigation” as required under Kuehl.
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)