F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
SEP 14 2004
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
TENTH CIRCUIT
ALISON JENNINGS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 03-6206
CITY OF STILLWATER, a municipal
corporation; DETECTIVE ROBERT
BUZZARD, individually and in his
official capacity as police officer for
the city of Stillwater; OFFICER LES
LITTLE, individually and in his
official capacity,
Defendants-Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA
(D.C. NO. CV-01-1785-L)
Mark Hammons (Tamara L.F. Gowens with him of the brief), Hammons &
Associates, Inc., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Margaret McMorrow-Love, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before EBEL , KELLY , and McCONNELL , Circuit Judges.
McCONNELL, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff Alison Jennings claims that members of the Stillwater, Oklahoma
Police Department (the “Defendants”) violated her constitutional rights by failing
to adequately investigate an alleged rape and by discouraging her from pursuing
prosecutions of the alleged assailants. The underlying facts stem from a sexual
encounter between Ms. Jennings, then an Oklahoma State University (“OSU”)
student, and Alvin Porter, J.B. Flowers, Evan Howell and Marcellus Rivers, four
members of the OSU football team whom we will refer to, for convenience, as the
“football players.” The encounter took place early Sunday morning on November
21, 1999, at a party at the house of a football teammate, Tim Sydnes. Plaintiff
claims that she was raped; the football players maintain that the encounter was
consensual. The football players were not charged with any crime as a result of
these events.
In this suit brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Plaintiff claims that lead
investigator, Detective Robert Buzzard, did everything in his power to derail the
investigation and make certain that the football players would be shielded from
public and legal scrutiny. Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that Detective Buzzard
failed to collect material evidence, failed to challenge the football players’
account of the events, discouraged Plaintiff from prosecuting the football players
in violation of state and federal law, and finally, caused the physical evidence
from the alleged rape to be destroyed, making it difficult to maintain a civil action
against the football players. The district court granted summary judgment to the
defendants on all claims. For reasons set forth below, we affirm.
I. Background
Because this case arises on appeal from a grant of summary judgment, we
will recount the facts in the light most favorable to the party opposed to summary
judgment, namely Plaintiff. The case has not gone to trial and many of these facts
are disputed. The question before us is whether, resolving all disputed questions
of material fact in favor of Plaintiff, she has stated a claim for legal relief.
Shortly after the alleged assault, Plaintiff checked herself into a hospital.
Pursuant to standard procedure, the Stillwater Police Department was notified,
and two officers were dispatched to the hospital. There, a nurse assembled a
“rape kit,” which included samples of Plaintiff’s blood and other bodily fluids.
At about the same time, two other officers, Detective Buzzard and Officer Les
Little, were dispatched to the Sydnes house.
Detective Buzzard was a 1994 OSU graduate. He had received an athletic
scholarship to play baseball as a student. Detective Buzzard’s second cousin,
whom he sees about twice a year, is OSU’s director of media relations. [424]. At
the onset of the 1998-99 football season, Detective Buzzard addressed the football
team about the police department’s “role within the community and the
involvement with citizens.” [425.] Detective Buzzard served as lead investigator
in the Jennings sexual assault case. In that capacity, he was primarily responsible
3
for deciding who would be investigated and what evidence would be collected.
[461].
After his visit to the Sydnes residence, Detective Buzzard went to the
football team’s on-campus offices to interview each of the accused football
players. He met with each player for no more than half an hour. In written
statements, each of the football players admitted to having some form of sexual
contact with Plaintiff, but maintained that it was consensual. [See App. 705
(Howell); 706-07 (Rivers); 709-10 (Porter); 711 (Flowers); see also 415-18
(Report of Det. Buzzard)]. After this initial round of interviews, the football
players were not again questioned by police. One further fact alleged by Plaintiff,
which has some basis in the record [see 517-18] but is vigorously disputed by
Defendants, is that prior to being interviewed separately by Detective Buzzard,
the football players met together with Detective Buzzard and their coach, from
which Plaintiff infers that Detective Buzzard might have assisted the football
players in formulating a unified story and strategy.
Thereafter, Detective Buzzard interviewed Plaintiff. The session was
videotaped. During this interview Plaintiff indicated that she had been drunk at
the time of the alleged assaualt, [713-14] and that she might have trouble
physically identifying each of the suspects [714]. Our review of the tape and
transcript reveals that on several occasions, Detective Buzzard challenged her
4
account of the events of the previous night. He stated that police had interviewed
“numerous people” at the party and told Plaintiff “something is not jiving, okay,
with what you’re saying and what everybody else is telling me.” [App. 714].
Later, at deposition, Detective Buzzard admitted that the “numerous people” who
had contradicted Plaintiff’s account were none other than the four football
players. [App. 1011]. Detective Buzzard was also interested in whether Plaintiff
had any part in leaking the story to the press, inquiring about this at both the
beginning and end of the short interview. [See App. 714, 717]. Plaintiff
expressed some reluctance to pursue criminal prosecutions. At the conclusion of
the interview, Detective Buzzard said that he had some “paperwork to get.” [717]
After asking Plaintiff for a second time whether she had leaked the story to the
media, Detective Buzzard placed a “waiver of prosecution” form in front of
Plaintiff, which she signed. [717]. Detective Buzzard later testified that he never
used a waiver of prosecution form in any of the other fifty rape investigations in
which he has been involved. [993].
Plaintiff’s signing of the waiver did not end the investigation. Many of the
written witness statements were obtained after Plaintiff signed the waiver form.
[See 392; 458] Over the course of the investigation, a team of nearly twelve
officers collected over twenty written statements from potential witnesses. [1442,
1445].
5
Within twenty-four hours of her interview with Detective Buzzard, Plaintiff
returned to the police station. She asked to retract the waiver of prosecution and
to be re-interviewed by a female officer. The request was granted, and Plaintiff
was interviewed by Officer Skye Woodward. [See App.137-97]. Officer
Woodward is not a defendant, and Plaintiff apparently concedes that this
interview was properly conducted. Plaintiff seemed more comfortable talking to
Officer Woodward, and described the events in greater detail. Plaintiff told
Officer Woodward that she had been uncomfortable discussing the case with
Detective Buzzard (146) and that she did not feel Detective Buzzard gave her a
fair chance to present her story because he was “more in favor of the football
team and protecting the players.” (147). Plaintiff further indicated she was
confused about the purpose and effect of the prosecution waiver form. [147-48].
Plaintiff informed Officer Woodward that she was likely drunk at the party
and could not remember all of the night’s events. [142]. She insisted, however,
that the sexual contact was not consensual. [145,153] Plaintiff stated that prior to
the night in question, she had never spoken to any of the football players [155],
and while she conceded that she might have agreed to have sex with one of the
football players [167-68], she most certainly would not have agreed to have sex
with all of them at the same time. [Id.]
6
The discussion moved toward whether Plaintiff wished to press charges
against the football players. [185-96]. Plaintiff was at least partially mollified
when she learned that the players had been suspended from school, “so that they
got a little bit of . . . what they deserve.” [187]. However, the central issue on
Plaintiff’s mind was the public nature of the trial and the associated media
scrutiny. [See, e.g., 188,191,193]. Ultimately, Plaintiff was less than certain that
she wanted to prosecute.
The interview concluded as follows:
Q: [Officer Woodward] Is that what you think? Again I do
not want to put words in your mouth.
A: [Plaintiff] Yeah. I mean, - I don’t 100 percent feel like
they got what they deserved, but I don’t have the energy
or anything to go on and do the whole legal thing.
Q: You’re sure?
A: Yeah.
Q: I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have an
opportunity.
A: Oh, I know. And I- obviously, I did because I signed
that waiver thing but after I got thinking about it last
night, I was like, “No, that was stupid.” So I came back
in. But it really has a lot to do with them getting
suspended today and the media. I don’t want to deal
with the media. Also I don’t feel like seeing them again.
I don’t want to deal with them again.
* * *
Q: Do you have any questions? We’ll just leave it at this.
A: So, okay, so this pretty much ends it. Like I don’t want
to do anything more about that. It is done. It’s a done
deal.
Q: It is your case. We’re going to do what you want to do.
A Right.
Q: It is over.
7
A: Okay. I would much rather do that than have this huge
court thing and have the media following me everywhere
and calling me all the time.
[193-96].
Plaintiff maintains that the investigation into the alleged rape was deficient.
In particular, she criticizes Detective Buzzard’s decision not to re-interview the
football players [461], despite factual inconsistencies between the various
statements of the football players. For example, one player stated that none of the
four could get an erection, [Howell 705] while another player admitted to having
intercourse with Ms. Jennings [Flowers 711]. [see app at 389].
One further investigative omission relates to Jill Roberts. Ms. Roberts was
arguably the most important witness because, other than the few minutes Plaintiff
spent with the football players in the bedroom, Ms. Roberts was with Plaintiff the
entire night. [See 140, 42-46, 148, 155-57]. Plaintiff told police that “Jill was
like the key witness– because she was there, by my side, the entire night.” [148]
Ms. Roberts escorted Plaintiff to the hospital after the assault, [145-46] and tried
to enter the bedroom while the events were taking place [148]. Later, Ms.
Roberts accompanied Plaintiff to the station and told officers that she was the
only one present at the incident who was not interviewed even though she felt that
she had important statements to make. [798]. Although an officer gave Ms.
Roberts a witness report to fill out when she took Plaintiff to the hospital, Ms.
8
Roberts testified that she was never asked any questions or interviewed by police,
nor was she contacted by police for any follow-up investigation. [727] .
The officers also failed to follow up on the written statements of David
Camacho. Mr. Camacho was a teammate of the football players who briefly
peeked into the bedroom while the encounter was taking place. [515] In at least
one portion of his written statement, Mr. Camacho expressed his opinion that the
football players should be prosecuted. [517]. Further, Tim Sydnes wrote that
“Camacho called . . . and told me that he thinks they all raped her.” [Sydnes 776].
Despite knowledge of these statements, police did not further question Mr.
Camacho. Plaintiff claims that Mr. Camacho later became unwilling to provide
testimony against his teammates, and thus that the failure of the police to pursue
his testimony at the time resulted in its loss. [Br. 30].
As lead investigator, Detective Buzzard was responsible for submitting a
report to the District Attorney, Robert Hudson. Detective Buzzard’s report was
used by Mr. Hudson, along with other information, in deciding whether to
prosecute the football players [1028]. The report mainly summarized the
statements of Plaintiff and the football players. [414-420] While the report
pointed out inconsistencies in Plaintiff’s story, it did not explore the problems
with the football players’ account. The report also stated that “[d]uring the
[interview] I asked Jennings if she was willing to testify in court. Without
9
hesitation she answered ‘no.’” [419]. Plaintiff asserts that no portion of the
interview can be fairly construed in this manner. Lastly, Detective Buzzard’s
report indicated “Jennings agreed [that] sexual contact with Alvin Porter and
possibly J.B. Flowers was consensual.” [420]. Detective Buzzard later stated that
this portion of his report was drawn from Plaintiff’s interview with Officer
Woodward. [1029] Again, her actual statement is more ambiguous than the report
suggests. Plaintiff stated:
So what bugged me is that perhaps I might have given
consen[s]ual or had consen[s]ual sex with one of them,
but I would know I would never, ever say “Hey , let’s all
go in there and have a big party.”. . .
Q: So if any of it was consen[s]ual, do you know who you
might have agreed to have sex with?
A: No. I really don’t. I want to say Alvin, but I’m not like,
100 percent positive on that. . . .
...
Q: Do you think that it is possible you could have agreed to
be with the other guys – or any of them?
A: No. I know there is no way. . .
[167-68].
About one week after the incident, District Attorney Robert Hudson issued
a press release announcing that he would not press charges against the football
players. [1442] The press release noted that twenty-nine witnesses were
interviewed and that the investigation involved nearly a dozen police officers.
District Attorney Hudson based his decision on the fact that it was his “duty . . .
to file only those charges that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a Court
10
of law.”
Mr. Hudson testified that he became involved at a very early stage of the
case. (1445-46) Throughout his deposition, the district attorney stood by
Detective Buzzard’s investigation of the case, and repeatedly asserted that he
found nothing unusual about the investigative procedures or techniques. [1448-49,
1451, 1453-54]. Mr. Hudson also stated that there had been other rape cases
where waivers of prosecution had been used [1448], and that his office routinely
prosecuted other OSU athletes. He specifically recalled prosecuting at least one
other OSU football player for rape at or around the time of the Jennings incident.
(1452).
In mid-January of 2000, about seven weeks after the events in question,
Kyle Gibbs, an employee of the Stillwater Police Department, emailed District
Attorney Hudson to inquire whether the police department “should continue
holding the evidence [related to the Jennings case]. . . or may we release it.”
[204]. District Attorney Hudson replied that he could “think of no reason to hold
it any longer.” [id.] The rape kit was destroyed on January 22, 2000. [421].
Plaintiff contends that the investigation was deficient to the extent of
violating her constitutional rights to procedural due process, access to the courts,
and equal protection. Defendants’ view of these facts is quite different. They
note that the investigation lasted several days in which over twenty-five witnesses
11
were either interviewed or gave written statements, and that nearly a dozen
officers were involved. Further, because the football players did not deny the
sexual encounter, the entire case would be premised on Plaintiff’s lack of consent,
regarding which, they say, there was little conclusive evidence. Plaintiff also
indicated that she might have difficulty physically identifying each of the alleged
assailants, and decided not once, but twice, to waive prosecution. The second
decision was made after police acceded to her request to revoke the first waiver
and be re-interviewed by a female officer. She makes no claim that the second
interview was improperly conducted.
Defendants further note that the decision not to prosecute was made by the
District Attorney, not the police department. In this regard, District Attorney
Hudson testified that in addition to reading the report, he had access to the entire
file [1454], had seen portions of the taped interviews with both Detective Buzzard
and Officer Woodward, [1449] and was aware of Plaintiff’s complaints that she
felt coerced into signing the waiver form. [1496] Mr. Hudson testified that he was
“absolutely” confident that he had enough information to make a reasonable
decision as to whether to prosecute the football defendants. [1454].
Plaintiff initially filed a single lawsuit against OSU, the football players,
and the Defendants in this action. Later, the decision was made to sever the
lawsuits and proceed against each group of defendants under different legal
12
theories. Plaintiff has informed the Court that her claims against the football
players and OSU have been settled. Pl. Br. 4. At oral argument, the Court was
informed that Plaintiff is under contractual duty to keep the settlement amount
confidential.
II. Analysis
The question in this case is whether the United States Constitution provides
a cause of action for victims of crime when state or local law enforcement
officials fail to perform a proper investigation. In general, federal courts are not
entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring the effective enforcement of state
criminal laws; that role falls to state and local law enforcement authorities. It is
the duty of executive officials – not the courts – to take care that the criminal
laws are faithfully executed. See U.S. Const., art. II, §3 ; see Morrison v. Olson,
487 U.S. 654, 690 (1988).
Plaintiff puts forward three alternative legal theories for a constitutional
cause of action against the police officers who allegedly mishandled or sabotaged
the case against her alleged assailants, and the City of Stillwater. 1 First, she
1
Plaintiff pursues this appeal against Defendants City of Stillwater,
Detective Buzzard and Officer Les Little. It is somewhat unclear which of her
claims are asserted against which parties. In her filings, Plaintiff is most critical
of the conduct of Detective Buzzard, and has little to say about Officer Little’s
involvement. We therefore assume that all three claims are directed against
Defendant Buzzard. To the extent that these claims are also alleged against
(continued...)
13
alleges that Detective Buzzard’s failure to comply with Oklahoma statutes
relating to rape investigations violated her procedural due process rights.
Secondly, that the destruction of the rape kit, the failure to conduct follow-up
investigations of material witnesses, and the inaccuracies and omissions contained
in the police reports impaired her constitutional right of access to the courts.
Lastly, Plaintiff raises an equal protection claim stating that over the course of the
rape investigation Detective Buzzard discriminated against her by favoring and
seeking to protect the football players. Sympathetic though we are to a young
person who has undergone such an ordeal, exacerbated by the alleged dereliction
of duty on the part of the police who are employed to protect her, we conclude
that none of these legal theories can be sustained.
A. Procedural Due Process
Plaintiff first asserts a violation of her procedural due process rights. She
argues that Oklahoma statutes create a constitutionally-protected property interest
in “not being discouraged from prosecuting” a sexual assault claim and that the
1
(...continued)
Defendant Little, our analysis of the issues and dismissal as to Defendant Buzzard
applies equally to Defendant Little. We further note that a municipality cannot be
liable for constitutional violations unless its officers committed a constitutional
violation. Trigalet v. City of Tulsa, 239 F.3d 1150 (10th Cir. 2001). Because we
find that neither of the individual defendants violated Plaintiff’s constitutional
rights, we do not independently consider the city’s liability, and affirm the
dismissal as to the City of Stillwater.
14
various actions taken by Detective Buzzard deprived her of this right without due
process.
When a due process claim is premised on a deprivation of property, the
court first must define the precise nature of the property threatened by the state.
See Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248, 256 (1983). As the Supreme Court has
stated, “[p]rocess is not an end in itself. Its constitutional purpose is to protect a
substantive interest to which the individual has a claim of entitlement.” Olim v.
Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 250 (1983) (citations omitted). Even a detailed
procedural structure does not give rise to a protected liberty interest, Hewitt v.
Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 471 (1983), and the procedural due process claim will fail
unless the plaintiff can point to some substantive legal obligation underlying the
procedures. Doe by Fein v. District of Columbia, 93 F.3d 861, 868 (D.C. Cir.
1996). 2 The property interest must be “specific and presently enforceable.”
Doyle v. Okla. Bar Ass’n, 998 F.2d 1559, 1569 (10th Cir. 1993). As a general
matter a protectable interest is not created when the state provides “‘substantive
predicates’ to govern official decisionmaking,” but only when the state
“mandat[es] the outcome to be reached.” Id., quoting Ky. Dep’t of Corr. v.
2
Although the Supreme Court has disavowed the Olim/Hewitt approach as
it relates to prison regulations, Sandin v. Connor, 515 U.S. 472, 481-84 (1995),
this Court has continued to apply that analytical framework to analyzing statutes
defining rights and remedies available to the general public. See Gonzales v. City
of Castle Rock, 366 F.3d 1093, 1102 n.6 (10th Cir. 2004) (en banc).
15
Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 459 (1989) (emphasis in original; internal quotation
marks omitted).
Here, Plaintiff relies on the rights granted to rape victims under Oklahoma
statutory law. The then-applicable statutes provided in relevant part:
Upon the preliminary investigation of any rape or forcible
sodomy, it shall be the duty of the officer who interviews the
victim to . . . give notice to the victim . . . of certain rights of
the victim. The notice shall consist of handing such victim . . .
a written statement in substantially the following form:
“As a victim of the crime of rape or forcible sodomy, you have
certain rights. These rights are as follows:
1. The right to request that charges be pressed against
your assailant;”
Okla. Stat. tit. 22, § 40.1 (1999).
A peace officer shall not discourage a victim of rape, forcible
sodomy or domestic abuse from pressing charges against the
assailant of the victim.
Okla. Stat. tit. 22 § 40.3(A) (1999). 3
Relying on the panel opinion in Gonzalez v. City of Castle Rock, 307 F.3d
1258, 1264 (10th Cir. 2002), Plaintiff argues that when regulatory language in a
statute “is so mandatory that it creates a right to rely on that language,” an
entitlement is created that “[cannot] be withdrawn without due process.” Id.,
3
The language of the statute was slightly modified in 2002. The current
provision, codified at 22 Okla. Stat. § 40.2 (2002), reads: “No peace officer shall
discourage a victim of rape or forcible sodomy from pressing charges against any
assailant of the victim.”
16
quoting Cosco v. Uphoff, 195 F.3d 1221, 1223 (10th Cir. 1999) (per curiam).
Plaintiff argues that Okla. Stat. tit. 22, § 40.3(A) entitles her not to be
discouraged from prosecuting the offenders, and that Detective Buzzard deprived
her of this right.
Whatever the force of this argument under our Gonzales holding as it
existed at the time Plaintiff filed her appeal, it is foreclosed by our subsequent en
banc opinion, issued just before this case was argued. See Gonzales v. City of
Castle Rock, 366 F.3d 1093 (10th Cir. 2004) (en banc) [hereinafter Gonzales II].
In Gonzales II we analyzed due process claims brought against local police
officers who failed to enforce a court-issued restraining order. Both the
restraining order and the relevant state statute contained language that required
police to arrest restrained persons who were in violation of the order. The statute
provided: “A peace officer shall arrest, or, if arrest is impractical . . . seek a
warrant for the arrest of the restrained person.” Gonzales II, 366 F.3d at 1097,
1104. While the original panel opinion left open the possibility that the
mandatory statutory language, standing alone, could create an interest enforceable
through the due process clause, that position was rejected by the en banc Court.
The en banc Court characterized Ms. Gonzales’ property interest as the product of
a court-issued restraining order, coupled with statutory language requiring
enforcement. See id. at 1101-05. The Court disclaimed the theory Plaintiff now
17
urges:
In this context, many of the cases cite[d in the] dissent are
inapposite to the specific facts and legal arguments raised in
the present case because the courts in those cases rejected the
argument that statutes detailing procedures regarding general
child abuse investigations and reporting could alone create a
protected interest in such services. [citing cases] In this case,
the [state] statute alone does not create the property interest.
Rather, the court-issued restraining order, which specifically
dictated that its terms must be enforced, and the state statute
commanding the same, establish the basis for Ms. Gonzales'
procedural due process claim.
Id. at 1101 n.5 (emphasis added).
Similarly, after addressing the state’s statutory regime, the Court dropped a
footnote stating:
While we asked the parties to brief whether a protected
property interest was created by the mandatory terms and
objective predicates laid out in [the state statutes], we do not
so hold. Rather, we conclude that the statute’s force derives
from the existence of a restraining order issued by a court on
behalf of a particular person and directed at specific
individuals and the police.
Id. at 1104 n.9.
Here, unlike Gonzales II, Plaintiff’s asserted property interest rests solely
on the language of the Oklahoma statute. There was no court order specifically
applying the protections of the statute to her. The procedural due process claim
can thus not be maintained.
B. Access to the Courts
18
Plaintiff next claims that she was unconstitutionally denied access to the
courts. Her claim is premised on the City’s destruction of the rape kit and on the
various investigative omissions and irregularities allegedly committed by
Detective Buzzard, which undermined her ability to bring a private tort action
against her alleged assailants. Plaintiff alleges that Detective Buzzard’s
assumption of the role of lead investigator, the failure to interview Mr. Camacho
and Ms. Roberts, and a host of other investigative shortcomings were all part of a
plot to protect the football players. When taken in the aggregate, she insists that
these actions violated her constitutional right to meaningful and effective access
to the courts. [Br. 30; App. 405-07.]
This Circuit has not recognized a constitutional cause of action based on
denial of access to the courts under these circumstances. In Wilson v. Meeks, 52
F.3d 1547 (10th Cir. 1995), abrogated on other grounds, Saucier v. Katz, 533
U.S. 194 (2001), plaintiff Wilson claimed that members of a local police force
used excessive force in shooting him and then failed to render the requisite
medical care. According to the allegations, police failed to properly investigate
the incident, lost evidence, altered evidence, and set up a “code of silence”
amongst the officer corps, all in an attempt to cover-up the prior misdeeds. Id. at
1556-57. Wilson brought a constitutional claim based on the cover-up,
characterized as a deprivation of the right of access to courts.
19
On appeal from the district court’s denial of summary judgment for the
defendants based on qualified immunity, this Court noted that while “[o]ther
circuits have recognized a cause of action for [police] cover-up,” the Tenth
Circuit had not endorsed this cause of action Id. at 1557. Further, Wilson
explained that even the Fifth Circuit, which first articulated the access-to-courts
claim, had since limited these claims to cases alleging interference with the filing
of the complaint. Id., citing Foster v. City of Lake Jackson, 28 F.3d 425, 430 (5th
Cir. 1994). Wilson thus strongly suggests that a police cover-up does not give rise
to a constitutional claim of denial of access to courts in this Circuit.
Wilson, however, was decided before the Supreme Court had mandated that
the clearly established inquiry be disaggregated from the constitutional violation
question in qualified immunity cases. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201. It is
therefore possible to read Wilson as simply holding that, at the time, the conduct
did not violate any rights that were clearly established in this Circuit. See id. at
1557 (“Even assuming such a duty exists, defendants are entitled to qualified
immunity” and “[w]e conclude that [cases finding a cause of action] do not
comprise the ‘great weight of authority’ necessary for a clearly established duty
based on the alleged cover-up . . . .”).
Even assuming that Wilson does not foreclose recognition of the access to
courts cause of action here, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Christopher v.
20
Harbury, 536 U.S. 403 (2002), requires dismissal of Plaintiff’s claim on a
narrower ground. Plaintiff Harbury brought a Bivens action against a number of
federal officials for misleading her regarding the whereabouts of her husband, a
Guatemalan dissident. Id. at 406. According to the allegations, the husband had
been detained, tortured, and executed by Guatemalan army personnel acting at the
direction, and with the support, of the CIA. Id. at 406-07. Plaintiff claimed that
the officials’ deception prevented her from bringing a lawsuit against the United
States, which could have saved her husband’s life. Id. at 409-10.
Rather than addressing whether Plaintiff’s allegation stated a constitutional
cause of action, the Supreme Court assumed that an “access-to-the-courts” claim
existed, and then proceeded to discuss the elements of this assumed claim. Id. at
412-22. The Court divided access-to-the courts claims into two categories. Id. at
413. The first, termed “forward looking claims,” are cases where official action
frustrates a plaintiff’s ability to bring a suit at the present time. Id. Classic
examples include suits claiming that the denial of law library privileges prevents
prisoners from effectively filing claims of alleged prison abuse. Id. The second
class, termed “backwards looking claims,” arise when plaintiffs allege that a
specific claim “cannot be tried (or tried with all the evidence) [because past
official action] caused the loss or inadequate settlement of a meritorious case.”
Id. 413-14. In this way, the official action is said to have “‘rendered hollow [the
21
plaintiff’s] right to seek redress’” in the courts. Id. at 414, quoting Bell v.
Milwaukee, 746 F.2d 1205, 1261 (7th Cir. 1984) (brackets in original). At least
some courts have conceptualized this harm as a denial of access to the courts.
See, e.g., Ryland v. Shapiro, 708 F.2d 967, 971-73 (5th Cir. 1983); Bell, 746 F.2d
at 1260-61.
The Supreme Court was careful not to endorse the validity of these
backwards looking claims. Rather, in the course of describing various forms of
access-to-courts cases decided in the lower courts, the Supreme Court dropped a
footnote stating: “[s]uch cases have been decided in the Courts of Appeals; we
assume without deciding the correctness of the decisions.” Harbury, 536 U.S. at
414 n.9 (citations omitted). Harbury did not cite any Tenth Circuit precedents.
536 U.S. at 413 n.7 & n.8.
While Harbury was careful not to endorse the backwards looking claim, it
held that an element of any backwards looking claim is for the complaint to
“identify a remedy that may be awarded as recompense but not otherwise
available in some suit that may yet be brought.” 536 U.S. at 415. The Court’s
rationale was that there is “no point in spending time and money to establish the
facts constituting denial of access when a plaintiff would end up just as well off
after litigating a simpler case without the denial-of-access element.” Id.
Under this standard Plaintiff’s claim must fail. The only remedy that could
22
conceivably be awarded to Plaintiff as a result of the alleged police misconduct
would be damages for the loss of her civil tort claim against the assailants; but
this is precisely the same element of damage she sought and obtained in her suit
against the four football players and OSU. Far from being barred from bringing
such an action, Plaintiff pursued her claims and reached a monetary settlement
with the four football players and OSU. She thus had access to the courts, and
obtained a remedy. Plaintiff has not specifically alleged, or presented evidence,
that the settlement amount was inadequate on account of the government’s actions
so as to deny her meaningful relief. At several points in her appellate briefs, she
alludes to such a claim. See, e.g., Pl. Br. 29. (“[T]he question is not merely
whether Ms. Jennings could still maintain and prosecution and [sic] action, but
also whether or not her ability to receive appropriate compensation has been
compromised by the destruction of evidence having a non-speculative value to the
case.”); Pl. Br. 30 (none of defendant’s arguments “suggests that Ms. Jennings’
ability to secure adequate relief was not materially impaired by the destruction of
evidence.”). But her complaint contains no such allegation, and the record
contains no evidence on the point. Moreover, in light of the confidentiality of
Plaintiff’s settlement, there is no way such a claim could be evaluated.
Thus, even assuming the legal viability of a backwards looking denial-of-
access claim, Plaintiff’s case fails under the standards set forth in Harbury. The
23
district court properly dismissed this claim.
C. Equal Protection
Finally, Plaintiff argues that Detective Buzzard’s treatment of her case
violated the Equal Protection Clause. She frames her argument as follows:
Plaintiff’s evidence shows that she was singled out due to
some bias on the part of the defendant. In particular, Plaintiff,
out of 50 rape victims, was the only one asked to sign a waiver
of prosecution. Not only is this the only case in which a
waiver is sought, the lead investigator lied to secure the waiver
and then lied to the District Attorney regarding Plaintiff’s
statements. There is no other instance in which the lead
investigator lied regarding statements made by the rape victim.
Of course, there is not “any legitimate state objective”
justifying the waiver or these lies.
App. 408 (citations, ellipses and quotation marks omitted).
Plaintiff does not claim that the unequal treatment of her claim was due to
her membership in any protected class or racial or gender group. Rather, she
asserts that she suffered discrimination as a “class-of-one.” In Bartell v. Aurora
Pub. Sch., 263 F.3d 1143, 1148-49 (10th Cir. 2001), this Court held that “Equal
Protection affords protection to an individual injured by intentional or purposeful
discrimination without identification of a class.” Id. (citation and quotation marks
omitted). Bartell relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in Village of
Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562 (2000) (per curiam), which held that
plaintiffs need not allege that they were part of a suspect class to state an equal
protection claim. Bartell, 263 F.3d at 1149, citing Olech, 528 U.S. at 565.
24
Olech involved property owners who wished to be connected to the
municipal water supply. Although the municipality typically required a fifteen-
foot easement for this service, it demanded thirty-three feet from the plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs claimed that the demand for the additional easement was “irrational and
wholly arbitrary.” Id. at 563. In a short per curiam opinion, the Court affirmed
the class-of-one theory, finding that the purpose of equal protection “is to secure
every person within the State’s jurisdiction against intentional and arbitrary
discrimination .” Id. at 564, quoting Sioux City Bridge Co. v. Dakota County, 260
U.S. 441, 445 (1923) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court stated that
“[t]hese allegations [of irrational and wholly arbitrary treatment], quite apart from
the Village’s subjective motivation, are sufficient to state a claim for relief under
traditional equal protection analysis.” Olech, 528 U.S. at 565.
In a two-paragraph concurrence, Justice Breyer expressed concern that
Olech would transform ordinary violations of state or local law into constitutional
cases. See id. at 565-66. The concurrence noted that because zoning decisions
almost always treat one landowner differently than another, “one might claim that,
when the city’s zoning authority takes an action that fails to conform to a city
zoning regulation, it lacks ‘rational basis.’” Id. at 565. Justice Breyer concurred
in the judgment because the plaintiff’s claims were actionable specifically
because they alleged that city officials took “vindictive action” acting with
25
“illegitimate animus” and “ill will.” Id., quoting Olech v. Village of Willowbrook,
160 F.3d 386, 388 (7th Cir. 1998).
In the wake of Olech, the lower courts have struggled to define the
contours of class-of-one cases. 4 All have recognized that, unless carefully
circumscribed, the concept of a class-of-one equal protection claim could
effectively provide a federal cause of action for review of almost every executive
and administrative decision made by state actors. It is always possible for persons
aggrieved by government action to allege, and almost always possible to produce
evidence, that they were treated differently from others, with regard to everything
from zoning to licensing to speeding to tax evaluation. It would become the task
of federal courts and juries, then, to inquire into the grounds for differential
treatment and to decide whether those grounds were sufficiently reasonable to
satisfy equal protection review. This would constitute the federal courts as
4
Commentators have similarly noted this confusion. See e.g., Robert C.
Farrell, Class, Equal Protection and Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 78 Wash.
L. Rev. 367 (2003); Hortensia S. Carreira, Protecting the “Class of One,” 36 Real
Prop. Prob. Tr. J. 331 (2001); J. Michael McGuinness, The Rising Tide of Equal
Protection: Willowbrook and the New Non-Arbitrariness Standard, 11 Geo.
Mason U. Civ. Rts. L.J. 263 (2001); J. Michael McGuinness, The Impact of
Village of Willowbrook v. Olech on Disparate Treatment Claims, 17 Touro L.
Rev. 595 (2001); Paul D. Wilson, What Hath Olech Wrought? The Equal
Protection Clause in Recent Land-Use Damages Litigation, 33 Urb. Law. 729
(2001); Timothy Zick, Angry White Males: The Equal Protection Clause and
“Classes of One,” 89 Ky. L. J. 69 (2000-2001); Erwin Chemerinsky, Suing The
Government for Arbitrary Actions, 36 Trial 89 (May 2000).
26
general-purpose second-guessers of the reasonableness of broad areas of state and
local decisionmaking: a role that is both ill-suited to the federal courts and
offensive to state and local autonomy in our federal system.
To make matters worse, a certain degree of randomness and irrationality
necessarily “abounds at the bottom rung of law enforcement,” Bell v. Duperrault,
367 F.3d 703, 712 (7th Cir. 2004) (Posner, J., concurring), and in other areas of
state and local decisionmaking, as well. A police officer may allow a car
traveling 20 m.p.h. over the speed limit to fly right by, while stopping to ticket a
car traveling only 15 m.p.h. above the limit. A public university may admit one
applicant and deny another with seemingly identical credentials. The IRS may
audit one taxpayer and not another with an identical, or more suspicious, profile.
An insistence that all government officials be able to provide articulable
reasonable grounds for every difference in treatment would open almost every
low-level decision to attack, and play havoc with the daily operation of
government.
Some courts, taking the lead of Justice Breyer, have attempted to cabin the
reach of class-of-one equal protection cases by demanding that plaintiffs present
evidence not merely of arbitrariness but of malice or ill-will against the plaintiff.
Discovery House, Inc. v. Consol. City of Indianapolis, 319 F.3d 277, 283 (7th Cir.
2003) (adopting Justice Breyer’s concurrence as the holding of Olech; noting that
27
the malice requirement “is a very significant burden” put in place to ensure that
federal courts do not become “zoning boards of appeal”); Harlen Assoc. v. Inc.
Vill. of Mineola, 273 F.3d 494, 499-500 (2d. Cir. 2001) (personal animus is an
element of a class-of-one case); Williams v. Pryor, 240 F.3d 944, 951 (11th Cir.
2001) (explaining Olech as “holding that plaintiff stated constitutional Equal
Protection Clause cause of action by alleging that village acted irrationally,
wholly arbitrarily, and out of malice toward plaintiff”). 5 This Circuit seems to
have adopted a similar approach. Bartell dismissed the class-of-one claim
because plaintiff provided “no concrete evidence of a ‘campaign of official
harassment directed against him out of sheer malice.’” 263 F.3d at 1149, quoting
Esmail v. McCrane, 53 F.3d 176, 179 (7th Cir. 1995).
Under such a standard, Plaintiff could not prevail. She does not allege that
the defendants bore any particular ill will or malice against her; rather, the
gravamen of her claim is that Detective Buzzard was seeking to protect the OSU
football program from the adverse publicity and other consequences of the rape
prosecution of four of its players. Presumably, any other person accusing OSU
athletes of a heinous crime would receive similar treatment. Thus, it might be
5
But see Bell v. Duperrault, 367 F.3d 703, 712-13 (7th Cir. 2004) (Posner,
J., concurring) (“[P]ersonal ill will is not the essential criterion of a meritorious
class-of-one suit. It is enough if the plaintiff can prove that the defendant is
treating similarly situated people differently for improper (normally personal)
reasons, whether his motive is hatred or greed.”).
28
more accurate to say this is not a case of discrimination against a “class of one,”
but a case of discrimination in favor of a powerful and popular local institution.
It is not clear that the precedent of Olech can be stretched to cover such a case.
But we do not rest our decision on that ground. The more important
shortcoming in Plaintiff’s equal protection case is that she has failed to identify
any specific actions of the defendants that both were wholly arbitrary and lacking
in legitimate justification and also had a concrete effect on her rights. The
ultimate decisions not to prosecute the football players and to release the rape kit
were made not by defendants Buzzard or Little, but by District Attorney Hudson,
who is not a defendant. Plaintiff makes no allegation that Hudson’s actions were
discriminatory or wholly arbitrary. According to undisputed evidence in the
record, Hudson’s office routinely prosecuted other OSU athletes, including at
least one other OSU football player for rape at or around the time of the Jennings
incident [1452]. His decision not to prosecute in this case was made, in addition
to other reasons, on the basis that Plaintiff had chosen to waive prosecution.
Although her initial waiver may have been tainted by Officer Buzzard’s improper
behavior, Plaintiff makes no claim that her second interview, conducted by
Officer Woodward, was improper, or that the second waiver was illegitimately
extracted. Her decision to sign the waiver the second time was motivated
primarily by her fear of the media attention and public scrutiny likely to ensue as
29
a result of the court proceedings.
Plaintiff’s allegations of discrimination are directed not at the decisions by
the ultimate decisionmaker, but at various actions of Officer Buzzard, including
his use of the prosecution waiver form in Plaintiff’s case (the only time he did so
in fifty rape prosecutions) and his alleged “lies” both to Plaintiff to secure the
waiver and then to the district attorney. App. 408. The problem is that these
actions by Officer Buzzard, even assuming they are every bit as improper,
arbitrary, and discriminatory as Plaintiff alleges, were not final decisions; they
were only steps in a process leading toward a final decision. Even assuming that
Detective Buzzard’s administration of the waiver form and “lies” to her during
interrogation had the effect of inducing her to waive prosecution, Plaintiff
revoked that waiver within twenty-four hours and was reinterviewed, properly, by
another officer. And in light of her second waiver, as well as District Attorney
Hudson’s access to the entire investigative file, there was ample basis for
Hudson’s decision not to prosecute, independent of Detective Buzzard’s
mischaracterizations of Plaintiff’s testimony in his report. Indeed, Plaintiff does
not contend otherwise. A plaintiff may not base an equal protection challenge to
intermediate steps in a decisionmaking process, where the ultimate result was not
discriminatory. That is sufficient to distinguish Olech, where the decision that
was the subject of the litigation was a final action by the final decisionmaker.
30
In Burns v. Bd. of County Comm’rs of Jackson County, 330 F.3d 1275
(10th Cir. 2003), the plaintiff, Burns, was fired from his job as a county
employee. He was afforded post-termination process by a county board which
sustained the county’s action on a 2-1 vote. In an equal protection claim brought
under § 1983, Burns alleged that the board’s determination to sustain the
termination was biased and racially motivated, because one of the voting members
had called him a “no good Indian.” The Court credited the remark for summary
judgment purposes, but nevertheless found that Burns failed to state an equal
protection violation, because he “ha[d] not shown that the outcome of the hearing
would have been different had [the allegedly racist commissioner] recused from
voting.” Id. at 1284. The county prevailed on summary judgement because the
plaintiff failed to come “forward with any evidence that the outcome would have
been different had [the allegedly racist commissioner] abstained from voting.” Id.
at 1285.
Similar logic applies here. Even assuming that Detective Buzzard favored
the football team and discriminated against Plaintiff, he represented but one link
in the chain of events. Ultimately the decision not to prosecute was made by
District Attorney Hudson, and Plaintiff does not contend that Hudson’s actions
were discriminatory or wholly arbitrary. As in Burns, she presented no evidence
that the ultimate decisions would have been different if Detective Buzzard had not
31
treated her in a discriminatory fashion.
There is a second defect in Plaintiff’s equal protection claim: she failed to
make an adequate showing that similarly situated persons were treated differently.
See Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 739 (1985) (the Equal
Protection Clause is “essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated
should be treated alike”). It is this comparative element that distinguishes the
Equal Protection Clause from the Due Process Clause. See Ross v. Moffitt, 417
U.S. 600, 609 (1974) (“‘Due process’ emphasizes fairness between the State and
the individual dealing with the State, regardless of how other individuals in the
same situation may be treated. ‘Equal protection,’on the other hand, emphasizes
disparity in treatment by a State between classes of individuals whose situations
are arguably indistinguishable.”). This element is especially important in class-of-
one cases. See Payne v. Huntington Union Free Sch. Dist., 219 F. Supp. 2d 273
(E.D.N.Y. 2002) (finding that no one else was similarly situated to the wife of
school superintendent, since only the superintendent supervises all other school
district employees); McDonald’s Corp. v. Norton Shores, 102 F. Supp. 2d 431,
438 (E.D. Mich. 2000) (regarding adverse zoning decision, McDonald’s was not
similarly situated to other fast food restaurants on the same street).
Traditional equal protection law deals with groups unified by the
characteristic alleged to be the root of the discrimination. In the classic case of
32
racial discrimination, it is appropriate to assume, at least at the outset, that
disadvantageous treatment is a function of systematic discrimination owing to the
shared racial characteristic. For example, if local officials deny permits to all 200
Chinese applicants for licenses to operate laundries in wooden buildings, while
granting permits to all but one out of 80 Caucasian applicants, it raises the
presumption of an equal protection violation. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356
(1886). Similarly, if 100 people are arrested at a riot, a quarter of them from out-
of-state, but of those prosecuted eighteen out of twenty are from out-of-state, it
likewise raises the presumption of an equal protection violation. See Armstrong,
517 U.S. at 464-66. The sample size is large enough to raise a concern that the
disfavored class was selected not because they were the most culpable, but
because of their membership in the class. The government would properly bear
the burden of demonstrating that the disparate treatment was a function of a
legitimate government purpose.
Looking only at one individual, however, there is no way to know whether
the difference in treatment was occasioned by legitimate or illegitimate
considerations without a comprehensive and largely subjective canvassing of all
possible relevant factors. It is therefore imperative for the class-of-one plaintiff
to provide a specific and detailed account of the nature of the preferred treatment
of the favored class. This consideration has been elegantly expressed by the
33
District of Massachusetts. Responding to plaintiff’s Olech-styled claim
challenging a zoning decision, the court held:
It might be suggested that all applicants should be considered
“similarly situated” simply because they had all made requests
for waivers of the dead-end street length regulation. But that is
so broad a definition of “similarly situated” that it is not useful
for equal protection analysis; it could be applied to any group
of applicants where, looking back, one could see that there had
been some who succeeded and some who failed. For example,
high school students whose applications to a particular college
were rejected could allege that they were being treated
differently from the “similarly situated” fellow students whose
applications were accepted. In the example, one would want to
know a good deal more about the merits of individual
applicants before deciding who was similarly situated to
whom.
Lakeside Builders, Inc. v. Planning Bd. of the Town of Franklin, 2002 WL
31655250, *3 (D. Mass. Mar. 21, 2002) (citations omitted; emphasis added).
Inevitably, the degree to which others are viewed as similarly situated
depends substantially on the facts and context of the case. Plaintiffs will have an
easier time stating a claim where there are few variables in play and the set of
potentially similarly situated individuals is well-defined. This is the key to
understanding Olech. There, the village asked for a standard fifteen-foot
easement from everyone (other than the Olechs) who had requested a hookup to
the municipal water supply, without regard to differences in cost or circumstance.
When the village demanded a larger easement from the Olechs, with no apparent
legitimate reason for the difference, the Court was willing to recognize an equal
34
protection claim.
When multiple variables are in play, however, the difference in treatment
can be the product of a number of considerations, conscious or otherwise, many
of them legitimate. That is why the Supreme Court has imposed a substantially
more “demanding” pleading burden on plaintiffs bringing claims of selective law
enforcement. Armstrong v. United States, 517 U.S. 456, 463-64 (1995). Because
the exercise of prosecutorial discretion implicates a host of variables from the
relative culpability of the defendants to the optimal deployment of prosecutorial
resources, it is correspondingly more difficult to bring an equal protection claim
than in the classic case of discrimination against a suspect claim. Id. (describing
the pleading requirement for selective prosecution equal protection claims as “a
significant barrier to the litigation of insubstantial claims”); see also Marshall v.
Columbia Lea Reg. Hosp., 345 F.3d 1157, 1167-68 (10th Cir. 2003) (analogizing
§ 1983 equal protection claims to selective enforcement claims in the criminal
context; relying on Armstrong to supply substantive standards). These burdens
are occasioned by the multifarious nature of enforcement and prosecution
decisions which touch on “[s]uch factors as the strength of the case, the
prosecution’s general deterrence value, the Government’s enforcement priorities,
and the case’s relationship to the Government’s overall enforcement plan[. These
concerns] are not readily susceptible to the kind of analysis the courts are
35
competent to undertake.” Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 465, quoting Wayte v. United
States, 470 U.S. 598, 607 (1985).
Plaintiff contends that Detective Buzzard denied her equal protection when
he failed to investigate the alleged rape with the same intensity and
comprehensiveness as afforded to other rape victims. Further violations allegedly
occurred when Detective Buzzard veered from his usual practice in asking
Plaintiff to sign the waiver form. This raises what might be called a reverse-
selective enforcement claim. While the typical claim is that law enforcement
focused too many prosecutorial resources on a specific defendant, Plaintiff claims
that too few resources were devoted to her case. But no matter which way the
complaint is stated, the same policy considerations are implicated. In each case,
the multiplicity of relevant (nondiscriminatory) variables requires plaintiff to
provide compelling evidence of other similarly situated persons who were in fact
treated differently. Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 465-67.
For this reason, Plaintiff cannot overcome summary judgment. Nowhere in
the over 550 pages of evidence submitted by Plaintiff to the district court does she
supply any information regarding the allegedly similarly situated rape victims.
What were the relative strengths of those cases? In how many was the victim’s
consent a central issue? Did other victims admit to being drunk? Did the rapes
occur in a party setting? Did any other victim state that she would have trouble
36
identifying the perpetrators? Were the other cases serial rapes where the victim
admitted that she would have probably consented to sex with at least one of the
suspects? Did any of the other victims sign waiver forms? Did any of them sign a
second time, after being reinterviewed by a more supportive police officer?
Without answers to questions such as these, neither this Court nor a jury could
meaningfully compare Plaintiff’s treatment to that of other rape victims. After all,
as plaintiff, she bears the burden of proof on this issue after discovery. “[T]he
plain language of Rule 56(c) mandates the entry of summary judgment . . . against
a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an
element essential to that party’s case, and on which that party will bear the burden
of proof at trial.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, (1986).
We wish to emphasize that we in no way condone or excuse the failure of
police to conduct an adequate investigation of such a crime. The State of
Oklahoma has enacted legislation designed to ensure that victims of rape, domestic
violence, and sodomy receive a respectful hearing and have a right to request
prosecution. Primary responsibility for law enforcement rests with the city and the
state. Today, we hold only that the United States Constitution does not provide a
cause of action on the legal theories invoked by the Plaintiff.
For the forgoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary
judgment to all defendants.
37
Jennings v. City of Stillwater
Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Date filed: 2004-09-14
Citations: 383 F.3d 1199
Copy CitationsCombined Opinion