A summons is not a seizure

Plaintiff received a summons for shoplifting rather than be arrested. A summons was not a seizure. Banton v. Dowds, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78355 (C.D. Ill. August 20, 2007):

The issue of whether the issuance of a summons and requirement that Plaintiff appear in court constitutes a seizure is not the subject of an abundance of case law. “The sparsity of case law on the question suggests not that the principle is dubious but that it is too obvious to have incited many challenges.” Amati v. City of Woodstock, 176 F.3d 952, 956 (7th Cir. 1999). However, of the few courts which have dealt directly with the issue at hand, none have extended the Fourth Amendment concept of seizure to include issuance of a summons or the requirement to appear at an arraignment. Britton v. Maloney, a case with a similar set of circumstances as those alleged herein, considered the question of “whether a state actor effects a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment by filing baseless criminal charges against someone, even when those charges never cause the respondent to be arrested or detained.” Britton v. Maloney, 196 F.3d 24, 29 (1st Cir. 1999). The Britton court determined that the issuance of a summons is not a seizure under those circumstances because “neither the use of physical force nor a show of authority amounts to a seizure unless it results in the ‘intentional acquisition of physical control’ over the subject and causes a ‘termination of [his] freedom of movement.'” Id. at 30 (emphasis in original). The court concluded that “[a]bsent any evidence that [plaintiff] was arrested, detained, restricted in his travel, or otherwise subject to a deprivation of his liberty before the charges against him were dismissed, the fact that he was given a date to appear in court is insufficient to establish a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. See also Myers v. Shaver, 245 F. Supp. 2d 805, 812 (W.D. Va. 2003) (“A summons to answer charges on a criminal complaint is not, by itself, a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”).

Heck bar applies to probation revocation proceedings. Cougle v. County of Desoto, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78929 (N.D. Miss. October 24, 2007).*

Plaintiff, a native born Latina woman, was stopped by ICE officers for no suspicion of any crime, and alleged she was pretextually stopped. The court [troubled by it] finds that the officers would prevail on qualified immunity because the stop at least was reasonable under all the circumstances. Mancha v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78859 (N.D. Ga. October 23, 2007).*