[00:00:00] Speaker 00:
The state's number 23-1750.

[00:00:01] Speaker 00:
The state can escape the ballots versus District of Columbia and Ruben Dosto officer individually and in his capacity as an employee of the District of Columbia.

[00:00:13] Speaker 00:
Mr. Magid for the ballot.

[00:00:14] Speaker 00:
Mr. Locke for the appellees.

[00:00:19] Speaker 05:
Mr. Magid.

[00:00:21] Speaker 02:
Your honor.

[00:00:22] Speaker 02:
May I reserve two minutes of argument for rebuttal, please?

[00:00:25] Speaker 05:
Certainly.

[00:00:36] Speaker 02:
Please the court.

[00:00:38] Speaker 02:
Primary issue in this case is whether a police officer and more broadly the Metropolitan Police Department or any police agency escape liability by ignoring clear exculpatory evidence.

[00:00:54] Speaker 02:
My client Jose Vazquez was arrested on a warrant issued by Will County, Illinois that named a different Jose Vazquez with a different social security number.

[00:01:05] Speaker 02:
MPD ignored the difference between the Social Security numbers beginning with an arrest in October of 2016 and incarcerated him.

[00:01:19] Speaker 02:
Officer Ruben Augusto took it upon himself to send fingerprints and a photograph of Mr. Vasquez to Will County and less than three hours later got the response

[00:01:29] Speaker 02:
at the teletype room, which is where the responses typically go at MPD headquarters that said, do not, the person you're holding is not the person we want, release him.

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Now, there's been no explanation from MPD what happened to that notice, but it's clear that Officer Augusto didn't do any follow-up.

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He said his job was done in his view when he sent the message.

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And although he acknowledged that he was undertaking to determine whether Mr. Vasquez was in fact the person who was sought by Will County, he apparently thought that the answer to that was unimportant.

[00:02:09] Speaker 05:
Now, whether or not that was a false imprisonment isn't before us, right?

[00:02:16] Speaker 05:
It's only the 2017 incident.

[00:02:18] Speaker 02:
That's correct.

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This is the summary judgment that was granted previously.

[00:02:25] Speaker 02:
So the issue that went to trial was the false imprisonment claim, right?

[00:02:28] Speaker 05:
And you're not appealing the granting of summary judgment on the liability with respect to the 2016 incident?

[00:02:36] Speaker 02:
Well, we absolutely are, Your Honor.

[00:02:38] Speaker 05:
Yeah, one one the the false imprisonment tort or on the.

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or on the constitutional?

[00:02:46] Speaker 05:
On the constitutional argument, Your Honor.

[00:02:49] Speaker 05:
Yes, but no.

[00:02:50] Speaker 05:
Yes, you're right, Your Honor.

[00:02:51] Speaker 05:
I'm just trying to make sure.

[00:02:52] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I misspoke myself, Your Honor.

[00:02:53] Speaker 02:
I apologize.

[00:02:55] Speaker 02:
So the explanation is, Officer Augusto says, well, I didn't think it was my job.

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I thought it was the officer who did the initial check on the NCIC database.

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That officer said, no, that isn't my job.

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My job is only to do the initial check.

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the teletype room says it's absolutely Officer Augusto's responsibility because it's the person who sends the request to the foreign jurisdiction who is responsible for getting the response.

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And then it turns out that it's Officer Augusto who on November 3rd is the person who transmits this information when the U.S.

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Attorney's Office asked for it.

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So he's got it this whole time.

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And the argument the district made and that the

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district court accepted was that there was not clear law for Officer Augusto to follow that said that it was wrongful to ignore the clear statement from Will County that says release this guy and he's then held for another six days.

[00:04:02] Speaker 03:
Are there any police regulations or is there any law requiring them, the police, to make inquiry of the

[00:04:11] Speaker 03:
police in the jurisdiction that issued the warrant?

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That is what MPD practices, whether it's a written policy, I don't know if it is, but MPD says that whether there is a question as to whether the person is the right person incarcerated, they inquire of the foreign jurisdiction.

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When there's a question?

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Right.

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What if they're certain they don't have to make inquiries?

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So that's another, that's a broader issue.

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So apparently what MPD does, if there is no question raised, if someone comes in, they run a very cursory check in the NCIC database to say, is there a person with the same name and birth date, and then stop there.

[00:04:58] Speaker 02:
But then goes to our Monell claims, which is,

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What about people who have very common names like Jose Vasquez, who tell you, I'm not the person arrested.

[00:05:10] Speaker 02:
In fact, I have been cleared before by courts.

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You have a photograph and fingerprints of the person who really is wanted.

[00:05:20] Speaker 02:
That's not me.

[00:05:23] Speaker 02:
There is a clear statement in the NCIC record that says do not arrest the Jose Vasquez with my client's social security number.

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All that's ignored.

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So that gets to a broader policy issue on the part of the District of Columbia, which is what makes this case so perplexing is, you know, on the one hand, you say, well, there's no

[00:05:43] Speaker 02:
firm policy to follow up.

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And that is precisely the problem when you see that over time, repeatedly, it is not uncommon for the wrong person with the same name to be picked up.

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And there's no clear means within MPD of dealing with that situation.

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But the immediate claim against Officer Augusto is he is affirmatively undertaking.

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And he admits that the reason for that is to determine if they've got the right guy.

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And Sergeant Mack, who's in charge of the fugitive unit, says, yeah, it's important to us to find out because we don't want to detain people who are not the person wanted in the warrant.

[00:06:26] Speaker 05:
Now, you cited below a case called Sanders.

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Right.

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that where the DC Court of Appeals in the Fourth Amendment context said that should doubt arise as to the identity of the subject of the warrant, then the police have basically an obligation to make immediate reasonable efforts to confirm or deny whether this warrant applies to this individual.

[00:06:57] Speaker 05:
Is that the

[00:07:00] Speaker 05:
the clearly applicable law to defeat qualified immunity or what other cases can you point to?

[00:07:08] Speaker 02:
There is strangely a paucity of case law on this precise situation.

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But yes, although Saunders was in a somewhat different context, it does state the applicable law in our view, which is

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if you're confronted not just with a single protest of innocence, because I'm sure many prisoners protest innocence and say, I'm not the guy.

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But if you're not only confronted with all kinds of evidence, it's not the right person.

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It's clear in the NCIC report that the person is not being arrested under a valid warrant because it names somebody else.

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And you undertake to find out if that person is the person sought in the warrant, and then just ignore the result.

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An incarcerated person, that is a clear violation of liberty interest.

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Should I turn to the Monell claims, Your Honor, or Your Honor's?

[00:08:14] Speaker 02:
your time okay very briefly on the manel argument again the argument that the district has made that the district court embraced was well there can't be you know

[00:08:27] Speaker 02:
When you talk about a policy, there has to be a clear constitutional violation in the past.

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Otherwise, the fact that there's been a failure to train or a failure to have a clear policy can't give rise to a claim under 1983.

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And that's not the law.

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This court in Heard and in Baker made it clear that it was the risk of a constitutional violation that was the issue.

[00:08:54] Speaker 02:
And here, where we've shown that

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10 times a month, the District of Columbia or Metropolitan Police Department itself confesses that it has miscommunication with its teletype room, which causes delays in providing evidence to the U.S.

[00:09:12] Speaker 02:
Attorney's Office when there is evidence that it is not uncommon for people with very similar names to be arrested and they turn out not to be the right person.

[00:09:22] Speaker 02:
It was all but inevitable that something like this was going to happen if you don't have any kind of clear procedure for what happens when you send a teletype message.

[00:09:33] Speaker 02:
Who is to receive it?

[00:09:34] Speaker 02:
What are you to do?

[00:09:35] Speaker 02:
There's no clear procedure about checking social security numbers.

[00:09:39] Speaker 02:
Yes, it's true that somebody could fake a social security number.

[00:09:43] Speaker 01:
about the false imprisonment binding by the jury.

[00:09:47] Speaker 01:
So there you say that in part that can rest on collective knowledge, which of course is a Fourth Amendment, you know concept drawn from the Fourth Amendment case law.

[00:09:57] Speaker 01:
So I was wondering, are you aware of any DC case that applies collective knowledge in the false imprisonment context?

[00:10:06] Speaker 01:
Obviously the federal court's saying diversity and you know, we're not free to innovate new law.

[00:10:12] Speaker 01:
We have to look at the law of the district.

[00:10:14] Speaker 01:
So are you aware of any case?

[00:10:15] Speaker 02:
I'm not.

[00:10:16] Speaker 02:
This is an issue of first impression, as far as I'm aware, in the district.

[00:10:20] Speaker 02:
The district of Columbia refers to the Curry case, but that's quite different.

[00:10:27] Speaker 02:
It doesn't address this issue.

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
Curry is an issue where somebody was in a giant store, apparently went to the pharmacy and then put a slab of beef under his jacket.

[00:10:36] Speaker 01:
And so there's no case, though, that says this concept applies in this context.

[00:10:41] Speaker 02:
No, there isn't.

[00:10:43] Speaker 02:
But there is law because the district itself advocates for it.

[00:10:48] Speaker 02:
Their argument is that

[00:10:50] Speaker 02:
it's perfectly fine.

[00:10:52] Speaker 02:
And their excuse in 2017 is that it was perfectly fine to continue detaining Plano Fasquez because they could rely on what the Secret Service told them.

[00:11:04] Speaker 02:
So they're saying that despite all of the evidence that this wasn't the right person, they could rely on another law enforcement agency.

[00:11:12] Speaker 02:
So they are

[00:11:13] Speaker 02:
which is not to the fugitive squad but to the people at the precinct.

[00:11:19] Speaker 02:
So they're using this kind of collective knowledge as a defense and the door swings both ways.

[00:11:26] Speaker 05:
So you didn't cite it in your brief.

[00:11:29] Speaker 05:
I'm gonna ask your friend on the other side about a case called Marshall versus District of Columbia at 391 A. Second 1374.

[00:11:39] Speaker 05:
And the pinch side is 1381.

[00:11:42] Speaker 05:
But there, the DC Court of Appeals, in a false imprisonment case, said that an officer is imputed to have constructive knowledge.

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So it didn't use the term collective knowledge, which is kind of the term of art in the Fourth Amendment context.

[00:12:05] Speaker 05:
But it used the term constructive knowledge, and then

[00:12:10] Speaker 05:
The parties cited a case called Scott, and that case is bandied about, and Scott cites a D.C.

[00:12:19] Speaker 05:
Court of Appeals case called Woodward, which is 387, a second, 726.

[00:12:27] Speaker 05:
And Woodward says in the false imprisonment context that if

[00:12:36] Speaker 05:
there's notice of a potential invalidity there.

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The warrant was invalid because it was stale and under DC law, then it was invalid because it was over a year old.

[00:12:51] Speaker 05:
So that was the defect, but basically it stands for the proposition.

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If there's notice that there's a problem,

[00:13:02] Speaker 05:
then you have a duty to investigate, which is the same thing that Sanders says, which is in the Fourth Amendment context.

[00:13:13] Speaker 05:
And Scott cites, which is a false imprisonment case, cites Sanders, even though it's a Fourth Amendment case.

[00:13:24] Speaker 05:
So I don't know that the DC Court of Appeals

[00:13:29] Speaker 05:
sees the Fourth Amendment kind of false arrest context any differently than the common law false arrest context.

[00:13:40] Speaker 05:
Do you disagree with any of that?

[00:13:44] Speaker 02:
I don't disagree.

[00:13:45] Speaker 02:
I'll say that I'm embarrassed that I didn't cite the cases, Your Honor.

[00:13:49] Speaker 02:
But no, I don't disagree.

[00:13:52] Speaker 05:
What is your, the district court

[00:13:58] Speaker 05:
said that that it was granting judgment, notwithstanding the verdict, because it basically agreed with the district's argument that there was no duty to investigate the discrepancy of Social Security numbers.

[00:14:19] Speaker 05:
You obviously disagree.

[00:14:21] Speaker 05:
Why should we reverse that rule?

[00:14:26] Speaker 02:
Well, because you have a situation in which Mr. Vazquez tells MPD, I was just here four months ago.

[00:14:35] Speaker 02:
We went through this whole exercise before.

[00:14:37] Speaker 02:
You look at the photograph, you can tell the guy with the tattoos that's wanted in Illinois is not me.

[00:14:41] Speaker 02:
The fingerprints don't match.

[00:14:43] Speaker 02:
And I was released previously.

[00:14:46] Speaker 02:
Go look at the file MPD has before it.

[00:14:49] Speaker 02:
The social security numbers don't match.

[00:14:51] Speaker 02:
They have available to it all the files and all the rest.

[00:14:54] Speaker 02:
And the duty, you know, the officer just says, yeah, I looked at these and the social security numbers were different.

[00:15:00] Speaker 02:
But essentially, I just chose to ignore that.

[00:15:04] Speaker 02:
And for the reasons you just cited, Your Honor, that's not permissible.

[00:15:08] Speaker 02:
You can't just turn a blind eye to exonerating evidence and say, therefore, I'm in the clear.

[00:15:16] Speaker 02:
So he was confined

[00:15:18] Speaker 03:
in the second arrest for five hours?

[00:15:21] Speaker 02:
No, he was actually confined overnight and then through the following afternoon, the district court tried to characterize it to say, well, really, the only period is five hours because that's when officer

[00:15:36] Speaker 02:
officer who Rollins yes thank you your honor when officer Rollins then went out and made out the affidavit to the court representing that this was the person wanted notwithstanding discrepancy in social security numbers but for the same reason when when

[00:15:50] Speaker 02:
Mr. Vasquez is protesting all of this upon arrest.

[00:15:55] Speaker 02:
You know, this really is imputed for a longer period of time now, just at the time of arrest.

[00:15:59] Speaker 03:
Both of these arrests were for traffic violations?

[00:16:01] Speaker 02:
They were, Your Honor.

[00:16:02] Speaker 02:
I mean, one was, I think, failing to signal a turn.

[00:16:06] Speaker 02:
The other was a broken tail light.

[00:16:07] Speaker 03:
Carham founded?

[00:16:09] Speaker 02:
I don't know, Your Honor.

[00:16:12] Speaker 02:
I know he was.

[00:16:16] Speaker 05:
All right, we'll give you a couple minutes on rebuttal.

[00:16:19] Speaker 05:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:16:20] Speaker 05:
We're here from the District of Columbia.

[00:16:23] Speaker 05:
Mr. Love.

[00:16:28] Speaker 04:
Good morning, Your Honor.

[00:16:29] Speaker 04:
May it please the Court of Richard Love for the District of Columbia and Officer Augusto.

[00:16:34] Speaker 04:
If I could start with the facts relevant to Officer Augusto.

[00:16:38] Speaker 04:
Officer Augusto was not the arresting officer.

[00:16:42] Speaker 04:
And he was not the fugitive unit officer who was responsible for the case and responsible for checking with Will County as to whether the warrant was still active and that they would extradite.

[00:16:57] Speaker 04:
Indeed, he didn't have any contact with the case until five days after Mr. Vasquez was arraigned in court.

[00:17:08] Speaker 04:
And that was because on that day, he happened to answer the phone when there was a call either from the US Attorney's office or Will County.

[00:17:16] Speaker 04:
He could not recollect which.

[00:17:19] Speaker 04:
For him to send a photo and fingerprints to Will County.

[00:17:23] Speaker 04:
He emailed those fingerprints and photo to email to Will County.

[00:17:32] Speaker 04:
He also testified that

[00:17:36] Speaker 04:
or this testimony that the fugitive unit goes up to the teletype office to pick up messages in their inbox at least twice a day, that the response would not have been delivered to him because he wasn't an officer from the fugitive unit whose case this was.

[00:17:58] Speaker 04:
And the teletype, which

[00:18:02] Speaker 04:
is how Will County responded.

[00:18:04] Speaker 04:
They didn't respond by an email reply back to Officer Augusto.

[00:18:11] Speaker 04:
Their teletype is said, attention warrant slash fugitive squad.

[00:18:17] Speaker 04:
Now, under those circumstances, there's no case that indicates that emailing a photo and fingerprints created an ongoing obligation under the Fourth Amendment for Augusto

[00:18:32] Speaker 04:
to personally monitor Will County's response.

[00:18:36] Speaker 04:
Indeed, I would submit the case law is to the contrary.

[00:18:40] Speaker 04:
If you look at the Supreme Court case of Baker v. McConnell, there the court clearly said, indeed, an official charged with maintaining custody of the accused named in a warrant has no constitutional duty to perform an error-free claim investigation of a claim of innocence.

[00:19:02] Speaker 04:
And I think this case is very close to Baker v. McConnell.

[00:19:06] Speaker 04:
They both dealt with mistaken identities or individuals that are arrested on a valid warrant, but the identity is mistaken.

[00:19:18] Speaker 04:
There, it was the wrong McConnell brother in Baker, and here you have the wrong Vasquez.

[00:19:24] Speaker 04:
And the period of time that they're held is very similar.

[00:19:28] Speaker 04:
three days for Mr. McConnell and here it was five days subsequent to Officer Augusto's email.

[00:19:38] Speaker 05:
I don't want to pre-terminate this if my colleagues have questions about the constitutional claims.

[00:19:45] Speaker 05:
I'd really like to hear from you about the ruling on the false imprisonment, particularly given the district court had

[00:19:59] Speaker 05:
The crux of the district court's ruling granting the JNOV was that Rollins had no duty and acted completely reasonably to do nothing more after noticing the discrepancy of the social security.

[00:20:24] Speaker 05:
And I don't see how that comports with the law of the District of Columbia in Woodward or this Mitchell case, where it says that once the police are essentially on inquiry notice, they have to inquire in the false imprisonment context.

[00:20:48] Speaker 05:
So help me help me understand why um it was an error for the judge to grant the motion if that's the DC law.

[00:20:59] Speaker 05:
Well I'm not familiar and it wasn't cited in the case with Marshall or um but the argument was made the argument you have to get the law right you know we can't make arguments for parties but if the argument is made we have to

[00:21:17] Speaker 05:
broadly apply the law that applies to that argument.

[00:21:19] Speaker 04:
Do you agree?

[00:21:21] Speaker 04:
Sure.

[00:21:21] Speaker 04:
I'm just indicating.

[00:21:23] Speaker 04:
I am not familiar with the two cases, so I can't really respond.

[00:21:26] Speaker 04:
I am familiar with Scott.

[00:21:29] Speaker 04:
We did cite that in our brief, because in Scott, where an officer had suspicion that they were holding the wrong

[00:21:41] Speaker 04:
individual, the DC Court of Appeals ruled that that wasn't sufficient and they affirmed a judgment for the district in, I believe, a false imprisonment context.

[00:21:57] Speaker 04:
But if I could address your question, Your Honor, both factually and legally.

[00:22:02] Speaker 04:
So factually, the only

[00:22:08] Speaker 04:
evidence that didn't match was the social security number.

[00:22:18] Speaker 04:
Every other indicia of identification here matched.

[00:22:28] Speaker 04:
The photo did match in 2017.

[00:22:30] Speaker 04:
The photo absolutely did match, Your Honor.

[00:22:33] Speaker 04:
Officer Rollins testified that he relied on the Secret Service told him.

[00:22:40] Speaker 04:
Well, it's in the arrest report.

[00:22:43] Speaker 04:
And officers, we have testimony from Sergeant Mack as well as from Officer Rollins that that

[00:22:50] Speaker 04:
That's what they rely on, because that is the report of the circumstances under which the arrest occurred.

[00:22:57] Speaker 04:
It provides the only details that the fugitive unit

[00:23:05] Speaker 04:
uses and relies on, it establishes the probable cause for he or Mr. Vasquez's arrest.

[00:23:13] Speaker 04:
There was no contrary testimony that was unreasonable rely on the Secret Services report of a photographic confirmation.

[00:23:22] Speaker 04:
It indicated they received a photo from Will Townsend and that it matched the subject that they had arrested.

[00:23:28] Speaker 04:
He also has

[00:23:30] Speaker 04:
the NCIC confirmation, which is, are the names?

[00:23:34] Speaker 03:
Are the photographs in the appendix?

[00:23:37] Speaker 04:
The photograph that Secret Service reported having received is not in the record.

[00:23:46] Speaker 04:
Just the Secret Service, the arrest report itself is, and it was enough.

[00:23:51] Speaker 03:
Not to compare, so we can't look at them and learn or decide whether they match, as you just said.

[00:24:01] Speaker 04:
that right?

[00:24:03] Speaker 04:
Not the photo that Secret Service says they compared.

[00:24:06] Speaker 04:
That's not in the record.

[00:24:08] Speaker 04:
But Officer Rollins clearly testified that he relied on that photographic confirmation that was a part of his

[00:24:18] Speaker 04:
a consideration as to whether the correct individual was in custody, but he also relied, it was the same exact name, it was the same exact birthday, and the physical description matched.

[00:24:32] Speaker 03:
So the only indication- The Secret Service, what, did the agent, the Secret Service agent testify?

[00:24:42] Speaker 04:
Testify in the trial?

[00:24:43] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:24:44] Speaker 04:
No, he did not.

[00:24:46] Speaker 04:
um and either side obviously could have called him but he was not an objection to the testimony by Rollins that it was hearsay oh yes your honor it was an objection that uh it was hearsay and it wasn't admitted for the truth it was not so you're arguing it for the truth to us

[00:25:10] Speaker 04:
No, I'm arguing it justice.

[00:25:12] Speaker 04:
It was admitted into evidence, which is this state of mind for Officer Rollins, Officer Rollins state of mind in terms of why he did what he did.

[00:25:24] Speaker 05:
And that was you just argued that the photos matched and that that's what there would be.

[00:25:29] Speaker 05:
That would be using it for the truth.

[00:25:31] Speaker 04:
No, I'm using it.

[00:25:33] Speaker 04:
That's what Officer Rollins read, that there was a photographic confirmation.

[00:25:39] Speaker 04:
That was his understanding of the facts as to why he proceeded to develop.

[00:25:50] Speaker 05:
So you say you're not familiar with Woodward, and I take that.

[00:25:54] Speaker 05:
But Woodward says that there were the police officers

[00:26:03] Speaker 05:
were on notice of a potential invalidity with the warrant.

[00:26:08] Speaker 05:
The court says, at a minimum, the officers were required, quote, to investigate in order to determine the status of the warrant itself before going further.

[00:26:19] Speaker 05:
And then going to say the failure to investigate would be, open quote, a dereliction of duty, close quote.

[00:26:30] Speaker 05:
That's how it describes the law, false imprisonment.

[00:26:35] Speaker 05:
If that's the law, how is the judgment here, the jury verdict here against the weight of the evidence?

[00:26:44] Speaker 04:
Because I think as the district court probably found that the

[00:26:52] Speaker 04:
You know, we have evidence in the record from multiple people, Officer Rollins, Sergeant Mack, as to the differing social security numbers, that individuals often manipulate their social security number, that it's not a red flag, it's not a disqualifier.

[00:27:14] Speaker 04:
And Officer Curry explained, I mean, excuse me, Officer Rollins explained why he didn't believe that the differing social security numbers was something that needed to be followed up on in light of the matching information from the NCIC data, the birth date.

[00:27:34] Speaker 05:
Why would it be unreasonable for jurors to feel different?

[00:27:40] Speaker 05:
I mean, the issue here isn't whether the juror could reasonably conclude, OK, yeah, maybe that's not a dereliction of duty.

[00:27:51] Speaker 05:
The issue is, is it unreasonable?

[00:27:56] Speaker 05:
Could no rational jury find that?

[00:28:00] Speaker 05:
to be a dereliction of duty?

[00:28:02] Speaker 04:
I would go back to the instruction that the court properly gave, and is from Curry.

[00:28:07] Speaker 04:
And Curry clearly says it's the law of the District of Columbia.

[00:28:11] Speaker 04:
And that is that the officer had to undoubtedly

[00:28:18] Speaker 04:
have learned that that Vasquez was undoubtedly not the subject of the Will County warrant.

[00:28:25] Speaker 04:
And there's simply no evidence.

[00:28:27] Speaker 04:
But that kind of begs the question.

[00:28:29] Speaker 05:
That is the ultimate finding.

[00:28:31] Speaker 05:
But if you have a duty to investigate,

[00:28:34] Speaker 05:
And if you had just simply looked two minutes further into the file and you would have found a document that in bold letters said, don't arrest this man, he's not the guy.

[00:28:46] Speaker 05:
At that point, if he had seen that, do you agree that he would undoubtedly have known that?

[00:28:57] Speaker 05:
Sure, of course, your honor.

[00:28:59] Speaker 05:
Okay, so then if there is a duty to investigate,

[00:29:06] Speaker 05:
How is it under these facts, how would it be irrational for a jury to say he had no duty to inquire further when he saw that there were different social security numbers?

[00:29:24] Speaker 04:
I don't think there was, one, this isn't a negligence case.

[00:29:29] Speaker 04:
Two, he had no duty because, as he explained,

[00:29:33] Speaker 04:
a social security number is not disqualifying, it's not a red flag, and he had abundant evidence from which he resolutely believed

[00:29:42] Speaker 04:
that the Vasquez they had in custody was the correct individual.

[00:29:50] Speaker 01:
I mean, is there some distinction in what duty is required when the original arrest is valid?

[00:29:57] Speaker 01:
Yeah, I think- Or continuing custody?

[00:29:59] Speaker 01:
Because I'm also not familiar with this Woodward case, but that seems to be a situation in which the arrest was not based on, where the arrest was not properly supported.

[00:30:12] Speaker 04:
I think there's an absolute difference.

[00:30:15] Speaker 04:
I mean, here, there's no question there was probable cause for arrest, Mr. Vasquez.

[00:30:20] Speaker 04:
He doesn't challenge that on appeal.

[00:30:21] Speaker 01:
Is there a different standard for the continuing custody after arrest?

[00:30:25] Speaker 04:
Yeah, and I think that's where the instruction comes in.

[00:30:28] Speaker 04:
That's why, again, you look at Baker.

[00:30:34] Speaker 04:
The Supreme Court says that, I understand it's in a constitutional context, that they don't have to,

[00:30:42] Speaker 04:
perform an error-free investigation.

[00:30:44] Speaker 05:
So how can you use the Fourth Amendment cases when they help you in the tort context, but say that Helen can't use the Fourth Amendment cases when they help him in the Fourth Amendment context?

[00:30:59] Speaker 04:
Well, as I said, I acknowledge it's the Fourth Amendment context.

[00:31:03] Speaker 04:
That's why I mentioned that.

[00:31:05] Speaker 04:
And I'm not trying to rely on that.

[00:31:08] Speaker 04:
I think more directly, I'm relying on the instruction, which

[00:31:12] Speaker 04:
is dramatically different from an instruction that would be at issue if this was a challenge to probable cause, whether or not there was an objective basis that there was facts that supported a criminal activity.

[00:31:31] Speaker 05:
So you think that it's different so that if at the moment that he's arrested, he says,

[00:31:41] Speaker 05:
Look, I've been through this drill before.

[00:31:46] Speaker 05:
I have a different Social Security number than the guy that they're looking for in Will County.

[00:31:53] Speaker 05:
And those have been the facts.

[00:31:59] Speaker 05:
You think that the DC law Woodward would mean that, okay, they have a duty to inquire at that point

[00:32:08] Speaker 05:
But if they've had him in custody and he makes that claim and they believe that they had probable cause when they arrested him, they don't have a duty to inquire just because they had probable cause at the time that they arrested him.

[00:32:33] Speaker 05:
I mean, what's the kind of logic behind you have a duty to inquire at the moment of arrest versus later?

[00:32:45] Speaker 04:
Again, I think what the DC Court of Appeals recognized is the law in the District of Columbia relevant to false imprisonment is articulated in the Curry case.

[00:32:58] Speaker 04:
And the standard there is that the officer has to undoubtedly, you know, and here, there was no communication to Officer Rollins.

[00:33:11] Speaker 04:
Officer Rollins never spoke to Mr. Vasquez.

[00:33:14] Speaker 04:
He never knew that he protested at Second D. That's the evidence.

[00:33:18] Speaker 04:
All he knew was that the paperwork showed that this individual matched

[00:33:24] Speaker 04:
The name, birthday, physical description on the NCIC report, and he had photographic confirmation from the Secret Service arrest report.

[00:33:35] Speaker 04:
That's what he knew and he acknowledged.

[00:33:38] Speaker 05:
He knew that there were social security numbers.

[00:33:40] Speaker 04:
He did.

[00:33:41] Speaker 04:
And he did.

[00:33:42] Speaker 04:
And he explained why he did not believe that was disqualifying.

[00:33:47] Speaker 05:
Why would it be irrational for a jury to just reject his explanation and his rationalizing of why he didn't have to do anything further?

[00:33:59] Speaker 04:
Well, I think the court gave an example or referenced the example in the instruction from the restatement that, you know, he and the illustration in the restatement is.

[00:34:18] Speaker 05:
So if the jury has facts that are different than one of the illustrations in the restatement and they've acted rationally,

[00:34:27] Speaker 05:
irrationally?

[00:34:28] Speaker 04:
No, I'm trying to explain that.

[00:34:30] Speaker 04:
I believe that in light of all the evidence, the mere difference in social security number was not sufficient for a reasonable jury to conclude that Officer Rollins undoubtedly knew that Mr. Vasquez was not the person wanted in the motel.

[00:34:49] Speaker 05:
So on the remittitor, one of the grounds for that the district court relied on was the fact that

[00:34:57] Speaker 05:
jury had found in the district's favor on malicious prosecution.

[00:35:02] Speaker 05:
And the district court said that, um, it couldn't reconcile, um, finding in favor of the district on that, um, count and then finding, um, against the district of Columbia on false imprisonment.

[00:35:24] Speaker 05:
Um, but

[00:35:28] Speaker 05:
Malicious prosecution requires proof of malice and false imprisonment doesn't, right?

[00:35:38] Speaker 04:
Right, but it also requires an absence of probable cause and recklessness or malice.

[00:35:47] Speaker 05:
So you could reconcile this by saying that the district, the jury found

[00:35:52] Speaker 05:
that there was an absence of probable cause, but no malice.

[00:35:56] Speaker 05:
And that's why they rendered a verdict for the district in Melissa's prosecution, but they found an absence of probable cause in the district and proof that they knew that this wasn't the right person

[00:36:19] Speaker 05:
And that's why they find in favor of him on on false imprisonment.

[00:36:24] Speaker 05:
There's nothing.

[00:36:25] Speaker 05:
What's what's contradictory based on the elements of those offenses?

[00:36:31] Speaker 04:
Well, I can see it.

[00:36:33] Speaker 04:
You know, the jury could have found

[00:36:39] Speaker 04:
a possible one without the other that would be less supportive of what the district court cited the differing judgments for.

[00:36:55] Speaker 04:
But I don't think the district court relied on simply the malicious prosecution judgment, nor are we.

[00:37:05] Speaker 04:
I think the court- But he said that that was

[00:37:08] Speaker 04:
It was further confirmation.

[00:37:10] Speaker 05:
That was part of what he relied on.

[00:37:13] Speaker 05:
And if that was part of what he relied on, and that was an error of law, isn't that an abuse of discretion?

[00:37:22] Speaker 04:
Well, I think he cited that for the judgment as a matter of law.

[00:37:29] Speaker 04:
I don't think he cited it for the remitted term.

[00:37:32] Speaker 04:
That's true.

[00:37:33] Speaker 05:
I think I misspoke.

[00:37:34] Speaker 05:
He didn't cite it with the remitted term.

[00:37:38] Speaker 04:
I can't know.

[00:37:38] Speaker 04:
I think it's, you know, you would look at, you know, his ruling in his totality.

[00:37:44] Speaker 04:
It's very clear.

[00:37:45] Speaker 04:
It's very clear that at the end he says, you know,

[00:37:49] Speaker 04:
He thought that the judgment on the malicious prosecution provided further support for his ruling that no reasonable juror could have found on the evidence that was submitted to it, that Officer Rawlins undoubtedly knew that Vasquez was the wrong person.

[00:38:08] Speaker 04:
And I think the court certainly was free to and could have construed that verdict as supporting that decision.

[00:38:19] Speaker 04:
Yes, perhaps.

[00:38:23] Speaker 04:
could be construed differently, but I don't think he abused his discretion by citing to that or, and again, he didn't rely on that.

[00:38:33] Speaker 04:
That wasn't his primary reason.

[00:38:35] Speaker 05:
Let me ask you a question about collective knowledge and collective knowledge.

[00:38:39] Speaker 05:
Yeah, sure.

[00:38:40] Speaker 05:
You have to know a little bit about it because I lost the collective knowledge case 30 some years ago when I was a public defender.

[00:38:51] Speaker 05:
But that case in Ray M. E. B. The D. C. Court of Appeals held in the Fourth Amendment context that you could use the corporate knowledge of the police department, even items that weren't communicated from one officer to the arresting officer.

[00:39:14] Speaker 05:
You could add all of that up.

[00:39:17] Speaker 05:
to constitute probable cause or reasonable suspicion.

[00:39:24] Speaker 05:
And it rejected a rule explicitly from the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court had mentioned in a case called USV Hensley that suggested, which is discussed and cited in the papers, which suggests that it's gotta be communicated, because you rely on Hensley

[00:39:46] Speaker 05:
to say that you can't impute knowledge to Officer Rollins.

[00:39:53] Speaker 05:
But the D.C.

[00:39:54] Speaker 05:
Court of Appeals says, well, no, we're adopting a rule broader than Hensley here in NRA MEB, which is 632, 638, a second, 1123.

[00:40:14] Speaker 05:
decided in 1993.

[00:40:16] Speaker 05:
So, if that's the law in the Fourth Amendment context, why shouldn't, why isn't sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander?

[00:40:35] Speaker 05:
Why isn't the knowledge imputed to Officer Rollins

[00:40:42] Speaker 05:
that's in the NCIC report.

[00:40:47] Speaker 05:
I'm sorry, that's in the justice file.

[00:40:51] Speaker 05:
I understand.

[00:40:53] Speaker 05:
Why doesn't it make sense to use it in that fact?

[00:41:00] Speaker 05:
Why is it a one-way ratchet?

[00:41:02] Speaker 04:
Well, two reasons.

[00:41:04] Speaker 04:
I think that

[00:41:07] Speaker 04:
I'm not familiar with NAMED, but I was able to find and no case was cited that holds that probable cause can be created or defeated by aggregating the collective knowledge of officers who have neither communicated nor collaborated and are merely members of the same law enforcement unit.

[00:41:29] Speaker 04:
And I would point to the court, we referenced it in our

[00:41:33] Speaker 04:
I'd like to elaborate a little bit on it.

[00:41:36] Speaker 04:
It is the Gorham case.

[00:41:38] Speaker 04:
I know it's certainly not binding on the court, but I think its analysis is instructive because it deals with the scope of the collective knowledge doctrine and analyzes cases from this circuit and from several other circuits.

[00:41:53] Speaker 04:
And it explains why it would not extend the collective knowledge doctrine

[00:41:59] Speaker 04:
to encompass cases in which no actual communication or direction occurs between the officer conducting the search or seizure and the officer in possession of the information giving rise to the requisite reasonable suspicion and where the relevant facts are merely aggregated after the fact.

[00:42:21] Speaker 04:
And I think that's what

[00:42:22] Speaker 04:
I don't think the collective knowledge doctrine can be expanded to impute to Officer Rollins information that was never communicated to him by any other officer or that simply existed in NPD files that he was unaware of.

[00:42:42] Speaker 04:
The other point in terms of kind of like the goose, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

[00:42:47] Speaker 04:
I think if you look at Ramirez and the cases it cites like Whitley and the other cases, I mean, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but the law in the District of Columbia is in Ray Mebe.

[00:43:02] Speaker 05:
And it says that the corporate information available

[00:43:06] Speaker 05:
at the time that the officers effectuate stop or an arrest or a detention is what is to be considered.

[00:43:19] Speaker 04:
Well, again, I think there is a difference between the initial arrest on a probable cause standard and whether there's an objective basis to do that and whether or not maintaining someone in detention in a false imprisonment case are different for the reasons I've kind of said.

[00:43:45] Speaker 04:
But the other point that I was going to make, Your Honor, if I could, is that in Ramirez and Whitley, the cases that are cited in Ramirez, they found that an officer can act on a warrant or a police communication from another agency or officer to arrest an individual, even if they don't know personally the particulars that have been communicated to him.

[00:44:14] Speaker 04:
But if the warrant turns out to be wrong, the arrest is invalid, as is the search, the fruits of that search.

[00:44:23] Speaker 04:
But none of those cases questioned the reasonableness of the arresting officer's reliance on that information.

[00:44:33] Speaker 04:
And I think that's similar here.

[00:44:37] Speaker 04:
I mean, in all those collective knowledge cases, they acknowledge the officer can reasonably rely on that information.

[00:44:44] Speaker 04:
And here, Officer Rollins reasonably relied on the information that was presented to him to maintain a custody of Mr. Vasquez.

[00:45:00] Speaker 04:
And it's a far cry from that to jumping to the evidence that would need to support a finding.

[00:45:09] Speaker 05:
So let's suppose in this case,

[00:45:13] Speaker 05:
Officer Rollins mentioned to another officer, yeah, this guy says that he's not the one because he has a different social security number, you know, isn't that, you know, you know, we, you know, we hear that all the time.

[00:45:35] Speaker 05:
And the other officer, you know, looks at justice and sees that it's really not the same

[00:45:43] Speaker 05:
same person, but just kind of laughs and says, well, you know, we'll let this guy sit a couple of days and, and somebody will figure it out eventually.

[00:45:55] Speaker 05:
And he never does anything about it.

[00:45:57] Speaker 05:
So he doesn't tell Officer Roberts.

[00:46:01] Speaker 05:
So under your theory of what the law is, um, Mr. Vasquez loses if those are the facts.

[00:46:10] Speaker 04:
Well, I think in the false imprisonment context, and as the jury was instructed in this case, it really rose and fall on Officer Rollins' subjective belief.

[00:46:22] Speaker 05:
And the evidence here is that- So his subjective belief doesn't require him to investigate.

[00:46:33] Speaker 05:
And also, it's immaterial if another officer investigates and finds out

[00:46:40] Speaker 05:
that Vasquez is exonerated but doesn't do anything with it, but as long as it's not communicated to Rollins, no liability for the district.

[00:46:50] Speaker 05:
That's the outcome?

[00:46:52] Speaker 04:
I believe so, Your Honor.

[00:46:53] Speaker 04:
And I think, you know, he's not left with options.

[00:46:56] Speaker 04:
I mean, you know, there may well be the basis for a negligence claim.

[00:47:04] Speaker 04:
But I think in the false imprisonment context where there needs to be evidence that the person being held is, you know, there's knowledge that the person being held is undoubtedly the wrong person.

[00:47:21] Speaker 04:
Here that has to be, Officer Rollins is the only person here in that scenario.

[00:47:26] Speaker 05:
So they can do nothing to try to obtain knowledge when they are on inquiry notice and

[00:47:33] Speaker 05:
We're not going to impute knowledge when somebody else knows it, just as long as the person that gets sued doesn't have the knowledge, the district evades liability.

[00:47:49] Speaker 04:
Well, I think in these facts, there was an inquiry notice because of the abundance of evidence that confirmed his identity and the unreliability of social security numbers, as was explained in the evidence and the testimony of various officers.

[00:48:04] Speaker 05:
We've had an abundance of cases cited to us, but we do our own research and we find other cases that appear to be on point and that appear to say something kind of

[00:48:20] Speaker 05:
So, like, we don't have any duty, you know, just because you cited to us a bunch of other cases, we don't have any inquiry notice or duty to look for other cases.

[00:48:32] Speaker 05:
I mean, I don't see how that's how inquiry notice works.

[00:48:37] Speaker 05:
It's just because either something rises to the level of giving you some sort of duty to investigate or it doesn't.

[00:48:49] Speaker 04:
I'm not arguing to the contrary.

[00:48:51] Speaker 04:
I'm saying here the facts didn't trigger the social security number alone, didn't trigger a further duty to investigate, given the testimony and given the evidence that there was a matching name, a matching birth date, a matching physical description, and photographic confirmation.

[00:49:16] Speaker 05:
All right.

[00:49:16] Speaker 05:
Any other questions?

[00:49:18] Speaker 05:
All right.

[00:49:19] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:49:20] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:49:25] Speaker 05:
All right.

[00:49:25] Speaker 05:
We'll give you two minutes on rebut.

[00:49:28] Speaker 02:
Unless the panel has questions and I am happy to answer those.

[00:49:31] Speaker 02:
I'll waive my.

[00:49:35] Speaker 05:
All right.

[00:49:35] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:49:35] Speaker 05:
We'll take the matter under.

[00:49:37] Speaker 02:
Thank you, your honors.