Malicious Prosecution Failure to Include Exculpatory Information in Affidavit of Probable Cause Citation to Fabricated Evidence
Gilyard v. Dusak, PICS Case No. 17-1139 (E.D. Pa. June 29, 2017) Kearney, J. (47 pages).
Detectives not entitled to summary judgment on malicious prosecution claim created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether they lacked probable cause and acted with malice in initiating prosecution of plaintiffs. Summary judgment denied.
Defendants, the City of Philadelphia and three detectives of the Philadelphia Police Department, moved for summary judgment on plaintiffs' malicious prosecution and Monell supervisory liability claim against the city. Plaintiffs were arrested and convicted for the 1995 murder of Thomas Keal. Plaintiffs were ultimately acquitted and released from prison when a third individual confessed to the murder in 2011 and 2013. In their complaint, plaintiffs alleged that the city failed to train and supervise its detectives in reciting the totality of circumstances, including exculpatory information, in the affidavit of probable cause used to secure plaintiffs' arrest warrants, and that the detectives included fabricated evidence and excluded exculpatory information from the affidavit of probable cause.
Defendants moved for summary judgment on all of plaintiffs' claims, including their 1983 malicious prosecution and Monell liability claims and their state law tort claims. Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed all their state law claims. The court dismissed one of the detective defendants, Detective Wynn, because he was not involved with the preparation of the affidavits of probable cause or in the investigation of Keal's murder until after plaintiffs' arrest. However, the court denied summary judgment to the remaining 2 detectives, Detectives Dusak and Benham, because there remained genuine issues of material facts for a jury to resolve.
The court noted that plaintiffs established several of the elements for a malicious prosecution claim Dusak and Benham initiated a criminal proceeding by conducting the investigation and drafting the affidavits of probable cause, and that criminal proceeding ended in plaintiffs' favor when the murder charge was dismissed against them because a third individual credibly confessed to the murder. The court held that Dusak and Benham were not entitled to summary judgment because there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether they initiated criminal proceedings without probable cause, since they failed to admit that the eyewitnesses who identified plaintiffs in photo arrays failed to do so days after the shooting, and instead made positive identifications more than two years after the shooting. The court held that the detectives' omissions could have impacted the credibility of the eyewitness identifications, which were the primary basis of probable cause.