Guzman Rivera v. Rivera Cruz

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

No. 93-2164
HECTOR GUZMAN-RIVERA, ET AL.,

Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.

HECTOR RIVERA-CRUZ, ET AL.,

Defendants, Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Gilberto Gierbolini, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Cyr, Circuit Judge,

Bownes, Senior Circuit Judge,

and Stahl, Circuit Judge.

Victoria A. Ferrer-Kerber, with whom Alvaro R. Calder n, Jr. and

Law Offices of Alvaro R. Calder n, Jr. were on brief for appellants.

Jos R. Gaztambide-A eses, with whom Benito I. Rodr guez-Mass

and Law Offices of Gaztambide & Plaza were on brief for appellees.

July 13, 1994

CYR, Circuit Judge. Plaintiffs Hector Guzman Rivera
CYR, Circuit Judge.

("Guzman") and family members appeal a district court judgment

dismissing Guzman's civil rights action against various present

and former officials of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as time-

barred. We vacate the summary judgment entered by the district

court and remand for further proceedings.

I

BACKGROUND

On Christmas Eve, 1987, the manager of a Domino's Pizza

establishment in Carolina, Puerto Rico, was shot and killed

during an armed robbery. Eyewitnesses identified Guzman as the

perpetrator. Guzman, who was living in New York at the time, was

extradited, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 119 years' impris-

onment. In the wake of the conviction, Guzman's father, Hector

Guzman Fernandez, instigated an independent investigation which

yielded an "informant" who claimed to have provided the weapon

used in the robbery and to know the identity of the real culprit.

Guzman's father, proof in hand, set out on August 21, 1989, to

secure his son's exoneration.

During the fall of 1989 and the spring of 1990, Guz-

man's father repeatedly corresponded and met with defendants-

appellees Hector Rivera Cruz, Secretary of Justice, and either

Luis Feliciano Carreras, Director of the Prosecutor's Office, or

his successor, Pedro Geronimo Goyco (collectively, the defen-

dants). During an investigation conducted by the Civil Rights

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Division of the Puerto Rico Justice Department in March 1990, an

eyewitness recanted her identification; the informant confirmed

that Guzman was not the killer and identified the real perpetra-

tor; and Guzman's mother attested that her son was in New York at

the time of the murder.

The mounting evidence of Guzman's innocence notwith-

standing, even after the Civil Rights Division issued its own

investigative report concluding that Guzman had not committed the

murder, the Director of the Prosecutor's Office refused to

authorize Guzman's release. Indeed, at a meeting in April 1990

Guzman's father was informed that the Prosecutor's Office would

take no corrective action regarding Guzman until the actual

perpetrator had been taken into custody.

At or about June 15, 1990, Guzman filed a motion for

new trial with the San Juan Superior Court and served the Secre-

tary of Justice with a motion for release. Before the Secretary

of Justice acted on the motion for release, the Governor of

Puerto Rico, in response to a request from Guzman's father,

directed Guzman's release on June 15, 1990.

Guzman instituted the present action on June 14, 1991.

Defendants countered with a motion to dismiss, see Fed. R. Civ.

P. 12(b)(6), asserting prosecutorial immunity and the statute of

limitations. The district court later entered summary judgment

for all defendants-appellees, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b), 56, on

the ground that the action was time-barred under the applicable

one-year statute of limitations. On appeal, Guzman argues that

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summary judgment was improvidently granted on the limitations

defense because a trialworthy issue existed as to the date on

which the section 1983 claim accrued. We agree.

II

DISCUSSION

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, employ-

ing the same criteria incumbent upon the district court in the

first instance. Velez-Gomez v. SMA Life Assur. Co., 8 F.3d 873,

874-75 (1st Cir. 1993). Summary judgment is appropriate where

the record, viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving

party, reveals no genuine issue as to any material fact, and the

moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id.

Although it is clear that the one-year personal injury

limitation applies to the present action, see, e.g., Lafont-

Rivera v. Soler-Zapata, 984 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1993); see also

P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, 5298 (1991), federal law controls the

accrual of section 1983 claims. Lafont-Rivera, 984 F.2d at 3.

The first step in fixing accrual is to identify the actual injury

of which the plaintiff complains. Heck v. Humphrey, 62 U.S.L.W.

4594, 4598 (U.S. June 24, 1994) (prescribing federal accrual

analysis in section 1983 actions predicated on the alleged

invalidity of an underlying criminal conviction); see also

LaFont-Rivera, 984 F.2d at 3. Guzman essentially contends that

the defendant officials owed him a constitutionally-based duty to

investigate substantial post-conviction allegations of innocence

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and to release him from confinement upon presentation of an

unspecified quantum of exculpatory evidence. The district court

indulged Guzman's theory for purposes of its limitations ruling.

Although we note scant authority for the theory,1 we need not

determine its viability at this juncture because the actual

injury implicitly alleged is that Guzman was wrongfully convicted

and/or wrongfully detained after defendants were apprised of the

exculpatory evidence. We consider the accrual issue in this

light.

The Supreme Court recently clarified the circumstances

in which section 1983 can be used to redress alleged constitu-

tional deprivations sounding in malicious prosecution, false

1Guzman relies on a fragment of dicta from Maslauskas v.

United States, 583 F. Supp. 349 (D. Mass. 1984) a Federal Tort

Claims Act case wherein the court observed that "in certain
circumstances the government owes prisoners a continuing duty to
uncover 'the absence of a constitutionally adequate basis for
confinement,'" id. at 351 (citing Steubig v. Hammel, 446 F. Supp.

31, 33 (M.D. Pa. 1977)) but ignores the very next clause in
the district court opinion which emphasizes that the government
generally "does not owe the prisoner a continuing duty to review
and re-review" the basis for confinement, id. Moreover, Steubig,

like O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), involved an

attempt to use section 1983 to redress excessive confinement
arising from an inaccurate assessment of the progress of a
patient involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. Of
course, as the district court itself suggested, see Maslauskas,

583 F. Supp. at 351, the government's "continuing duty to review
and re-review" the basis for confinement is more clear in those
circumstances. Other cases relied on by Guzman are likewise
inapposite. See Lewis v. O'Grady, 853 F.2d 1366 (7th Cir. 1988)

(section 1983 used to redress excessive confinement arising from
mistaken incarceration of plaintiff after judicial exoneration);
Haygood v. Younger, 769 F.2d 1350 (9th Cir. 1985) (en banc)

(section 1983 used to redress excessive confinement arising from
miscalculation of sentence), cert. denied, 478 U.S. 1020 (1986).

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imprisonment, and false arrest, by outlining the federal accrual

analysis applicable to claims akin to the present:

[I]n order to recover for damages for alleg-
edly unconstitutional conviction or imprison-
ment, or for other harm caused by actions

whose unlawfulness would render a conviction

or sentence invalid, a 1983 plaintiff must

prove that the conviction or sentence has
been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by
executive order, declared invalid by a state
tribunal authorized to make such determina-
tion, or called into question by a federal
court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.
* * *
[Accordingly,] a 1983 cause of action

for damages attributable to an unconstitu-

tional conviction or sentence does not accrue

until the conviction or sentence has been

invalidated.

Heck, 62 U.S.L.W. at 4598 (emphasis added). We now apply the

Heck analysis to the present action.

It is clear from the summary judgment record that

Guzman was released from prison on June 15, 1990, less than one

year prior to the filing of the instant action. Therefore, if

the conviction was "reversed[,] . . . expunged . . . [or] held

invalid," id., by competent executive or judicial action2 not

earlier than June 14, 1990, an actionable section 1983 claim "for

harm caused by actions whose unlawfulness would render [his]

conviction or sentence invalid," id., would not be time-barred.

2Guzman's brief on appeal represents that his release was

prompted by the intervention of the Governor of Puerto Rico.
However, the official record of the Puerto Rico Administration of
Corrections indicates that Guzman was released on bond June 15,
1990, after his motion for new trial had been granted. The
record does not disclose whether a new trial has ever been
conducted, nor whether any governmental action has been taken to
expunge or invalidate the conviction.

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The summary judgment proceedings included in the appellate record

do not enable a determination as to whether, and if so, when,

Guzman's conviction was undone. Consequently, as the accrual

issue cannot be resolved on the present record, summary judgment

was premature. See, e.g., Greenburg v. Puerto Rico Maritime

Shipping Auth., 835 F.2d 932, 934 (1st Cir. 1987) (if material

factual issues require resolution before pivotal legal issue can

be decided, summary judgment must be vacated).

III

CONCLUSION

The district court judgment must be vacated. The case

shall be remanded to permit the district court to determine

whether Guzman's conviction was ever invalidated as required

under Heck. See Heck, 62 U.S.L.W. at 4598. If not, the section

1983 claims against all defendants shall be dismissed, without

prejudice, as premature. Otherwise, any actionable section 1983

claim shall be deemed to have accrued not earlier than the date

on which Guzman's conviction was reversed, expunged or otherwise

determined invalid, see id.

The district court judgment is vacated; the case is

remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion;

costs to appellants.

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