16‐3980
Morales v. Weiss
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A SUMMARY
ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF
APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT=S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A SUMMARY
ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL
APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION ASUMMARY ORDER@). A PARTY
CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY
COUNSEL.
At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit, held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40
Foley Square, in the City of New York, on the 24th day of January, two thousand
eighteen.
PRESENT:
DENNIS JACOBS,
REENA RAGGI,
PETER W. HALL,
Circuit Judges.
_____________________________________
Santos Morales,
Plaintiff‐Appellant,
v. 16‐3980
Steven Weiss, Mitchell Rubin,
Defendants‐Appellees,
Michael Mulhall, Ramon Gibson, Terry
Lauf, Anna Futyma, John Doe, ASA, Joseph
Darling, Leo C. Arnone, City of Stamford,
Jessica Bloomer, Richard Roe, Officer,
Andrew Czubatyi, Richard Phelan,
Defendants.
_____________________________________
FOR PLAINTIFF‐APPELLANT: Santos Morales, pro se,
Stamford, CT.
FOR DEFENDANTS‐APPELLEES: Stephen R. Finucane (Terrence
M. OʹNeill, Neil Parille, on the
brief) Assistant Attorneys
General, for George Jepsen,
Attorney General of the State
of Connecticut, Hartford, CT.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District
of Connecticut (Eginton, J.).
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED,
ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
Appellant Santos Morales, pro se, filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint against
two state prosecutors, Steven Weiss and Mitchell Rubin. Morales asserted that
after his arrest for felony possession of a firearm, defendants refused to contact
witnesses on his behalf and asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(“ICE”) to place a detainer on him after he filed a bond motion. Morales was
placed in immigration detention by ICE for approximately three months, then
returned to state custody for approximately nineteen months, and finally
discharged back to ICE after the state dropped the charges against him in April
2011. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, finding
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that Weiss and Rubin were entitled to absolute immunity for their decision not to
interview witnesses, and Weiss was entitled to qualified immunity for contacting
ICE. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the
procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal.
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo and
focus on whether the district court properly concluded that there was no genuine
issue as to any material fact. See Sotomayor v. City of New York, 713 F.3d 163,
164 (2d Cir. 2013). “Absolute immunity bars a civil suit against a prosecutor for
advocatory conduct that is intimately associated with the judicial phase of the
criminal process,” Giraldo v. Kessler, 694 F.3d 161, 165 (2d Cir. 2012) (internal
citation and quotation marks omitted), and applies to “virtually all acts,
regardless of motivation, associated with [the prosecutor’s] function as an
advocate,” Dory v. Ryan, 25 F.3d 81, 83 (2d Cir. 1994). Defendants “are entitled
to qualified immunity if they can establish either that (1) a constitutional right
was not violated or (2) the right was not clearly established.” Royal Crown Day
Care LLC v. Dep’t of Health and Mental Hygiene of City of New York, 746 F.3d
538, 543 (2d Cir. 2014) (internal citation, alteration, and quotation marks omitted).
The district court properly granted summary judgment, and we affirm for
substantially the reasons stated by the district court in its July 19, 2016 decision:
Weiss and Rubin were entitled to absolute immunity for their decision not to
contact witnesses, see Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 273 (1993); and Weiss
was entitled to qualified immunity for contacting ICE because that act did not
violate any clearly established constitutional or statutory right, see Royal Crown
Day Care, 746 F.3d at 543.
We have considered all of Morales’s remaining arguments and find them to
be without merit. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
FOR THE COURT:
Catherine O=Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court
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