§ 1983 Claim: Summons and Travel Restrictions Do Not Amount to a Fourth Amendment Seizure; Withholding Evidence Does Not Constitute a Brady Violation When Defendant is Acquitted and Earlier Disclosure Would Not Have Resulted in Dismissal of Charge
BIELANSKI v. COUNTY OF KANE (December 18, 2008)
Kane County set up a Child Advocacy Center (“Center”) to coordinate the investigation and prosecution of child sexual abuse. The Child Advocacy Advisory Board (“Board”) is responsible for drafting the policies and procedures for those investigations and prosecutions. Kathryn Berg and David Byrne were a child protection investigator and police officer, respectively, assigned to the Center. [The facts that follow, given the posture of the appeal from a motion to dismiss, are taken from the complaint.] In mid-2001, Berg and Byrne interviewed a six-year old boy and his parents. The boy claimed he had been sexually abused by “Lorri.” Berg and Byrne failed to follow accepted techniques used in child victim interviews. They did not use techniques to identify the perpetrator and did not even ask the boy to describe her. Within days, Lorri Bielanski, a fifteen-year-old neighbor of the boy, was notified that credible evidence existed that she had sexually assaulted the boy. Sometime shortly after Berg and Byrne’s interview of the boy, they learned that: a) he was taking medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, b) he was in special education classes, c) he was known, on two occasions, to have undressed with others and tried to get others to undress, d) his parents confronted him about the undressing incidents and punished him, and e) his parents suggested to him that he may have been sexually abused. Berg and Byrne did not disclose this information to the prosecutors or Bielanski. The county filed a Petition for Adjudication of Wardship, alleging the commission of two sexual assault felonies. As a result, Bielanski was forced to attend court hearings and an interview with a probation officer and was not allowed to travel out of the state without court permission. Bielanski was eventually acquitted of all charges and was successful in getting her record expunged. She filed a complaint against the County, the Center, the Board, Berg, and Byrne. Based on § 1983, she alleged: a) that the defendants violated her Fourth Amendment rights by compelling her to attend the court hearings and restricting her movement, and b) that Byrne and Berg violated her rights to a fair trial and due process by withholding the information they had about the boy. The district court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss. Bielanski appeals.
In their opinion, Judges Posner, Kanne and Rovner affirmed. The Court began with Bielanski’s Fourth Amendment claim. In order to make out such a claim, the plaintiff must allege a seizure and that it was unreasonable. Since Bielanski was not seized in the normal sense of an arrest, the Court reviewed Justice Ginsburg’s “continuing seizure” concurrence in Albright and other circuits’ approaches in similar situations. In Albright, Justice Ginsburg supported a Fourth Amendment analysis whereby a defendant who was arrested, released, and then summoned back to court based on the misleading testimony of a police officer could state a claim for unlawful seizure. No other Justice has adopted the analysis. The Court concluded that a summons, even when combined with travel restrictions and a forced probation officer interview, is an insufficient restraint on freedom to constitute a seizure. The Court then addressed the fair trial claim. The elements of that claim are that: a) the evidence is favorable to the accused, b) that it was suppressed by the government, and c) that it was material. The Court noted that materiality was the only element in dispute and that the Supreme Court had not addressed a case in which evidence was withheld and the defendant was later acquitted. Several other circuits have concluded that a Brady claim cannot survive an acquittal or dismissal of charges. The Court concluded that Bielanski had no Brady claim since earlier disclosure of the evidence would not have resulted in a dismissal of the charges.
