In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216
BILLY CANNON,
Plaintiff‐Appellant,
v.
DEAN NEWPORT, et al.,
Defendants‐Appellees.
____________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Nos. 2:15‐cv‐01397‐PP & 2:15‐cv‐01370‐PP — Pamela Pepper, Judge.
____________________
SUBMITTED FEBRUARY 21, 2017 — DECIDED MARCH 3, 2017
____________________
Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and HAMILTON,
Circuit Judges.
POSNER, Circuit Judge. Billy Cannon appeals the dismissal
of two civil rights complaints, see 42 U.S.C. § 1983, that ac‐
cuse Milwaukee police, prosecutors, and judges of having
2 Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216
violated his constitutional rights during a series of investiga‐
tions and prosecutions.
In 2008 a state investigator obtained from a Wisconsin
court authorization to intercept calls made to and from a tel‐
ephone number being used by suspected drug traffickers.
That telephone number was not Cannon’s, but he says he
was intercepted during this wiretap. Then on March 17 of
the following year Milwaukee police obtained consent from
Cannon’s son to search the home where he lived with his fa‐
ther. The police found $14,000 in cash in the home, and ar‐
rested Cannon for drug and gun crimes on the basis of a re‐
port by a government informant that the informant had pur‐
chased cocaine, and borrowed a gun, from Cannon. The day
after his arrest the judge set bail for each of the crimes
charged at $2,500. Cannon posted the required bail but was
not released because the police filed another complaint,
charging him with a third crime—giving a gun to an unau‐
thorized person. Wis. Stat. § 941.29(4) (2007). A different
judge reviewed that complaint the next day, found probable
cause, and set bail at $2,500. Cannon did not post this addi‐
tional amount.
He appeared in court on March 20, and prosecutors filed
an amended criminal complaint covering all three charges,
leading to the judge’s raising Cannon’s bail to $250,000. He
eventually made bail, but in August was again arrested, this
time for bail jumping after he changed his residence without
notifying the police. He was jailed, but released a few days
later without being charged.
Cannon was finally tried in 2011, and though acquitted of
the drug charge pleaded guilty to illegal possession of the
gun (the second gun charge was dismissed) and was sen‐
Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216 3
tenced to two years in prison. Just before he’d pleaded guilty,
however, a warrant had been issued for his arrest on new
gun and drug charges. Two days later a state trooper
stopped him for a traffic violation and upon learning his
identity arrested him on the outstanding warrant. Four days
after that Cannon appeared for a probable cause hearing.
In 2013 Cannon got hold of what he calls “exculpatory”
material—copies of police reports and other documents re‐
lating to his March 2009 arrest—and on the basis of this doc‐
umentation filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the po‐
lice, prosecutors, and judges claiming that his prosecutions
in 2009 and 2011 had been the elements of a conspiracy to
violate his constitutional rights. That suit was dismissed as
premature, because appeals by him in both criminal cases
were pending. In 2014 he was convicted of the 2011 drug and
gun charges and sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment, a
term he is currently serving.
In November 2015 he filed the two suits, both also under
42 U.S.C. § 1983, that have given rise to the appeals before
us. In one, which focuses on the events of 2009, he claims
that Milwaukee police officers, prosecutors, and judges vio‐
lated his constitutional rights under the Fourth, Sixth,
Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution—
that the police had lacked probable cause when they arrested
him in March and August 2009, that he had been denied
counsel when the first two criminal complaints were re‐
viewed by two different judges before he appeared in court
on March 20, 2009, that the $250,000 bail set that day had
been excessive, and that the defendants had conspired mali‐
ciously to prosecute him. The district court dismissed the
complaint as barred by the six‐year statute of limitations ap‐
4 Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216
plicable to section 1983 claims in Wisconsin. Wis. Stat.
§ 893.53; Gray v. Lacke, 885 F.2d 399, 409 (7th Cir. 1989).
Cannon tries to sidestep the statute of limitations in three
ways. He argues that he was unaware of the violations of his
rights until he received the “exculpatory” material; that the
defendants’ actions from the time of his arrest in March 2009
until they released that material to him in June 2013 consti‐
tuted a “continuing violation” of his rights, amounting to a
“custom and policy” of unconstitutional behavior; and that a
plaintiff is not required to address in his complaint affirma‐
tive defenses to his claims.
The district judge was correct that Cannon’s claim that
the police falsely arrested him in violation of the Fourth
Amendment is time‐barred. A claim to have been arrested in
violation of the amendment accrues “at the time of (or ter‐
mination of) the violation.” Dominguez v. Hendley, 545 F.3d
585, 589 (7th Cir. 2008). Cannon was brought before a judge
three days after his March 2009 arrest, and his Fourth
Amendment claim accrued then because by virtue of the ar‐
rest he was now “detained pursuant to legal process.” Wal‐
lace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 397 (2007). And since any violation
of the Fourth Amendment caused by his August 2009 arrest
had ended when he was released on September 3, 2009,
without charges being filed, id. at 389–90; Harrington v. City
of Nashua, 610 F.3d 24, 28 (1st Cir. 2010), the latest he could
have sued concerning his two arrests were March 20, 2009,
and September 3, 2015, respectively.
His attempt to excuse his lateness is unpersuasive. Noth‐
ing in the material he attaches to his complaint reveals cir‐
cumstances of the arrests or of the charging and bail proce‐
dures that he wouldn’t have known at the time. Nor can he
Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216 5
“use a theory of a continuing civil conspiracy to recover for
individual overt acts that would themselves be time‐barred.”
Rosado v. Gonzalez, 832 F.3d 714, 718 (7th Cir. 2016). And
when a complaint reveals that the action is untimely, the
court can dismiss it. United States v. Lewis, 411 F.3d 838, 842
(7th Cir. 2005).
His claim that he was denied counsel in violation of the
Sixth Amendment when judges reviewed the first two crim‐
inal complaints against him has not yet accrued, because his
conviction has not been set aside. He is not allowed to seek
damages that would impugn a conviction, see Heck v.
Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486–87 (1994); Gilbert v. Cook, 512
F.3d 899, 900 (7th Cir. 2008), though his claim to have been
denied counsel at a critical stage in the litigation will, if vin‐
dicated, invalidate his conviction of the gun charge.
His claim of malicious prosecution of the drug charge, a
charge eliminated by his acquittal in 2011 and thus accruing
in that year, would be litigable as a constitutional claim only
if there were no adequate state tort remedy, but Wisconsin
law provides such a remedy. Strid v. Converse, 331 N.W.2d
350, 353–54 (Wis. 1983); Julian v. Hanna, 732 F.3d 842, 845
(7th Cir. 2013); Newsome v. McCabe, 256 F.3d 747, 750–51
(7th Cir. 2001). And anyway under both state and federal law
probable cause is a complete defense to malicious prosecu‐
tion, see Hart v. Mannina, 798 F.3d 578, 587 (7th Cir. 2015);
Strid v. Converse, supra, 331 N.W.2d at 354, and the police re‐
ports that he appended to his complaint leave no room for
doubt that there was probable cause to charge him with the
drug offense. See United States v. Sidwell, 440 F.3d 865, 869
(7th Cir. 2006).
6 Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216
His claim that the judge set excessive bail in violation of
the Eighth Amendment also fails, because the defendants
whom he sued are entitled to immunity, having acted either
as lawyers for the state or in a judicial capacity. Imbler v.
Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430–31 (1976); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S.
547, 553–55 (1967); Thomas v. City of Peoria, 580 F.3d 633, 638–
39 (7th Cir. 2009); Dawson v. Newman, 419 F.3d 656, 660–61
(7th Cir. 2005).
Cannon’s second complaint, which underlies appeal
No. 16‐3216, focuses on the 2008 wiretap application and the
resulting 2011 arrest. It makes three claims. The first is that
Wisconsin’s attorney general never authorized the 2008 wire‐
tap application and it was therefore void under both federal
and state law. See 18 U.S.C. § 2516(2); Wis. Stat. § 968.28. The
district court dismissed that claim because the wiretap order
that Cannon appended to his complaint contradicts his alle‐
gations by noting the attorney general’s prior approval of the
application. The second claim is that the state trooper used
the traffic violation as a pretext to stop him and execute the
outstanding warrant on the 2011 gun and drug charges,
which was not in the trooper’s physical possession. Moreo‐
ver, Cannon continues, the warrant must have been doctored
because the copies he obtained from the court and a sheriff’s
department are not identical. The district court rejected the
claim because his arrest was pursuant to a valid warrant, the
differences between the copies of the warrant being readily
explainable. The third claim is that too much time elapsed
before his probable cause hearing. The district court rejected
the claim because Cannon received a probable cause deter‐
mination before his arrest and was not entitled to another
determination after his arrest.
Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216 7
On appeal Cannon insists that his second complaint
states a Fourth Amendment claim by virtue of his allegation
that Wisconsin’s attorney general did not authorize investi‐
gators to wiretap the telephone calls of Cannon’s associate.
Yet the order he calls defective cites the prior approval of the
attorney general.
He further argues that his second complaint states a
Fourth Amendment claim arising from his 2011 arrest be‐
cause, he insists, the state trooper did not have a copy of the
warrant, which anyway was formatted incorrectly and may
even, he says, have been doctored. But the trooper didn’t
have to possess the warrant for the arrest to be valid.
See Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2060, 2062–63 (2016); Unit‐
ed States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 232 (1985); United States v.
Patrick, 842 F.3d 540, 542 (7th Cir. 2016); Atkins v. City of Chi‐
cago, 631 F.3d 823, 826–27 (7th Cir. 2011). Nor is there any
reason to believe that the warrant was doctored. One copy
was faxed to the sheriff’s office before Cannon’s arrest; the
other, which was filled out post‐arrest, noted that the war‐
rant had been executed by the trooper arresting him.
Last, Cannon contends that his second complaint pleads
a Fourth Amendment violation because he was in jail for
four days before being brought before a judge. But the judge
who issued the warrant had found probable cause before
Cannon was arrested; he was not entitled to another judicial
determination. See Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 142–43
(1979); cf. Holloway v. Delaware County Sheriff, 700 F.3d 1063,
1068 (7th Cir. 2012). Anyway he later received credit against
his sentence for those four days.
Because all his claims are barred, he has incurred four
strikes under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 28 U.S.C.
8 Nos. 16‐1339 & 16‐3216
§ 1915(g), one for each complaint and one for each appeal.
He therefore is no longer permitted to file a civil action or
appeal in any federal court without prepaying all fees, un‐
less he is in imminent danger of serious injury.
AFFIRMED.