Opinion
Civil Action No. 04-3804.
February 25, 2005
MEMORANDUM
Delaware County, its district attorney, county detectives, and seven individual members of the two offices ask this Court to dismiss the civil rights action Nicholas Yarris brought after his release from death row. Yarris claims he spent 22 years in prison for a murder he did not commit because the county, its prosecutors and its detectives obscured evidence pointing to the actual killer, manufactured evidence and thwarted Yarris's demands for DNA testing. For the reasons that follow, we dismiss the claim against one individual, now deceased, and deny the Motion to Dismiss in all other respects.
In a motion to dismiss, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, Yarris. Christopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 406 (2002).
This case stems from the December 16, 1981, kidnaping, rape and murder of Linda Mae Craig. Craig was kidnaped after she left her job at the Tri-State Mall in Delaware. Her body was found the following morning in a church parking lot in Chichester Township, Delaware County.
Four days later, Nicholas Yarris assaulted a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer's weapon discharged during the fight and Yarris was charged with attempted murder and incarcerated in the Delaware County Prison. While in prison, Yarris learned of the murder of Linda Craig. Yarris told Delaware County Criminal Investigators, Randolph Martin and David Pfeifer he had information about the Craig murder. He told the investigators a fellow addict, who died from a drug overdose, admitted to raping and murdering Craig. In fact, Yarris was wrong and it was the addict's brother who had died from an overdose. When Martin and Pfeifer determined the addict was alive, they returned Yarris to solitary confinement and told him he better come up with a better story, or they would think he had done it.
After a failed suicide attempt and a brief hospital stay, Yarris was returned to solitary confinement. He was placed in a cell with a broken window, without clothes, or a blanket. In order to get out of his freezing cell, Yarris offered to tell the investigators more about the murder. He spoke with prison guard Gerald Murphy. According to Murphy, Yarris admitted to raping Craig, but said another man murdered her. Yarris was charged with the second degree murder, rape, kidnaping and robbery of Linda Craig.
Before proceeding to trial for the Craig murder, Yarris was tried for the attempted murder of a police officer, the crime for which he was originally incarcerated. The jury found Yarris not guilty. After the verdict, Barry Gross, the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, yelled and spat at Yarris, telling him he would never leave the county alive.
On June 24, 1982, Yarris's trial for the murder of Linda Craig began. At jury selection Barry Gross replaced assistant district attorney William Ryan. Gross sought the death penalty.
At trial, Defendants introduced a picture of the victim's car which showed a pair of men's leather gloves. Unbeknownst to Yarris, the gloves in the picture belonged to the killer. The Defendants never informed Yarris the gloves existed and made no record of the killer's gloves found in the victim's car. Yarris claims Defendants concealed the gloves in a separate file and destroyed all records relating to them when they realized the gloves were too small to fit Yarris. A jail-house informant also testified against Yarris at trial. The informant, who was incarcerated for burglarizing District Attorney Ryan's house, testified Yarris confessed his guilt while the two served in the Delaware County Prison. Yarris claims the informant received a reduced sentence and was allowed visits with his wife in exchange for this testimony.
Yarris was found guilty and sentenced to death. Yarris appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court citing withholding and destruction of evidence. His conviction was affirmed in October, 1988.
In March of 1988, Yarris requested testing of the physical evidence by newly developed DNA techniques. The District Attorney's Office informed him that all evidence had been destroyed except two stained slides. The slides were found of insufficient quantity for DNA testing. Yarris reviewed the trial transcripts and discovered two additional slides of physical evidence, held by National Medical Associates. Assistant District Attorney McAndrews dispatched investigators Pfeifer and Davidson (deceased) to retrieve the evidence. The investigators obtained the evidence, but rather than turn it over for testing they kept it in a paper bag under their desks. The evidence was not in a controlled environment and so it spoiled, rendering it useless for DNA testing.
Yarris continued to look for additional physical evidence for DNA testing, despite being told all other evidence had been destroyed. Ultimately clothing and other evidence found at the scene of the crime, including the killer's gloves, were discovered misfiled. Yarris asked for an enhanced form of DNA testing on the newly discovered physical evidence to be conducted by the founder of the method. The District Attorney's Office agreed to the testing, but only if it was conducted by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, a facility which was not recognized as competent in the enhanced testing method. The physical evidence was tested and the test results were again inconclusive.
On January 10, 1997, Yarris filed a PCRA petition. The PCRA court denied the peition on the merits on June 19, 1998. On May, 21, 1999, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, sua sponte, held Yarris's petition was time-barred. Yarris filed a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in October,1999, which considered exhaustion of state claims and agreed to review Yarris's habeas claims. Yarris v. Horn, 230 F. Supp. 2d 577, 582 (E.D. Pa. 2002).
Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9541, et seq. This was Yarris's second PCRA petition. The first petition was filed on December 16, 1996.
A first PCRA petition by a prisoner whose judgment of sentence became final on or before the effective date of the amendments to the PCRA, January 16, 1996, was deemed timely only if it was filed within one year of the effective date of the act. Section 3(1) of the Act of Nov. 17, 1995 (Spec.Sess. No. 1), P.L. 1118, No. 32; Commonwealth v. Peterkin, 554 Pa. 547, 722 A.2d 638, 641 (1998). Yarris's conviction became final in October, 1988. His first PCRA petition was part of a tangled procedural web woven from 1983 to 1989. Yarris had until January 16, 1997 to file any PCRA petition unless he could successfully argue one of the three exceptions to the time-bar: official interference, new facts which were undiscoverable, or a new constitutional right. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(3)(i)-(iii). Even though Yarris's second PCRA petition was filed within the amendment's time limit, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court could find no exception which applied to make it timely.
The court ordered a full evidentary hearing on Yarris's claims and obtained Yarris's state court records. On April 4, 2003 enhanced DNA testing determined Yarris was not the habitual user of the gloves found in the victim's car. On July 2, 2003 enhanced DNA testing determined the semen stains from the victim's clothing and the genetic material found under the victim's fingernails did not match Yarris's DNA profile, but did match the profile of the habitual user of the gloves. Yarris filed a Motion for Release pending his final adjudication of his habeas petition on July 28, 2003. At a August 19, 2003 hearing on Yarris's Motion for Release the DNA test results were confirmed and the court ordered a new trial for Yarris within two weeks, or Yarris would be set free. The parties filed a joint petition in the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County requesting Yarris's judgments of convictions be vacated, with a 90 day time period for the Commonwealth to decide whether to retry Yarris. On September 3, 2003, the Honorable William R. Toal, Jr. entered an Order vacating Yarris's guilty verdicts and judgments of sentence and ordered a new trial to be scheduled within 90 days. After requesting an extension on the decision to retry, the District Attorney dropped all charges against Yarris on December 9, 2003. Yarris was finally released from prison on January 16, 2004, after 22 years on death row.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of a rule 12(b)(6) motion is to test the legal sufficiency of the complaint. Holder v. City of Allentown, 987 F.2d 188, 194 (3d Cir. 1993). When considering a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12b(6), the court must accept all well pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to plaintiff. Christopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 406 (2002); Jordan v. Fox, Rothschild, O'Brien Frankel, 20 F.3d 1250, 1261 (3d Cir. 1994). The court must consider only the facts alleged in the complaint and its attachments, without reference to other items in the record. Id. The court may not dismiss the complaint unless the plaintiffs can prove no set of facts which would entitle them to relief. Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46 (1957).
"Prosecutors are subject to varying levels of official immunity." Kulwicki v. Dawson, 969 F.2d 1454, 1463 (3d Cir. 1992). Prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity when their actions are performed in a "quasi-judicial" role. Id. (citing Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430 (1976)). Quasi-judicial activity includes "activity taken while in court, such as the presentation of evidence or legal argument, as well as selected out-of-court behavior `intimately associated with the judicial phases' of litigation." Id. (citing Imbler, 424 U.S. at 430). The scope of absolute immunity, is limited to the prosecutor's role as advocate. Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 273 (1993). "The official seeking absolute immunity bears the burden of showing that such immunity is justified for the function in question." Id. at 269.
"A prosecutor's administrative duties and those investigatory functions that do not relate to an advocate's preparation for the initiation of a prosecution or for judicial proceedings are not entitled to absolute immunity." Id. A prosecutor acting in an investigative oradministrative capacity is protected only by qualified immunity. Kulwicki, 969 F.2d at 1463. The Supreme Court explained,
[t]here is a difference between the advocate's role in evaluating evidence and interviewing witnesses as he prepares for trial, on the one hand, and the detective's role in searching for the clues and corroboration that might give him probable cause to recommend that a suspect be arrested, on the other hand. When a prosecutor performs the investigative functions normally performed by a detective or police officer, it is neither appropriate nor justifiable that, for the same act, immunity should protect the one and not the other.Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273. (citations omitted).
Government officials performing discretionary functions are generally entitled to qualified immunity. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982); Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 609 (1999). To determine if a government official is protected by qualified immunity, the court "must first determine whether the plaintiff has alleged the deprivation of an actual constitutional right. . . ." Wilson, 526 U.S. at 609. If so, the court must "proceed to determine whether that right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation." Id.
"The fate of an official with qualified immunity depends upon the circumstances and motivations of his actions, as established by the evidence at trial." Imbler, 424 U.S. at 419. Qualified immunity is defeated "if an official knew or reasonably should have known that the action he took within his sphere of official responsibility would violate the constitutional rights of the plaintiff, or if he took the action with the malicious intention to cause a deprivation of constitutional rights or other injury." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 815(citations omitted).
Yarris claims Assistant District Attorney Defandants Gross, Ryan and McAndrews are not entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity because they acted in an investigatory or administrative manner when they participated in and oversaw the criminal investigation of the crime. Yarris alleges Defendants used torture and physical coercion to extract incriminating statements, obtained a false statement from a jailhouse informant, failed to preserve exculpatory evidence, expunged and purposefully concealed a pair of black gloves found at the scene of the crime that allegedly belonging to the murderer, and allowed DNA evidence to be mishandled.
At this stage of the proceedings, Yarris's claims are sufficient to overcome Defendants entitlement to absolute prosecutorial immunity and are sufficient to survive a Motion to Dismiss. Yarris claims the Criminal Investigator Defendants, Martin, Pfeifer and Siti intentionally destroyed evidence by retaining exculpatory DNA evidence in a paper bag under a desk, used impermissible interrogation techniques and coercion to obtain false statements, inflicted serious physical injuries and prosecuted Yarris without probable cause after they determined the killer's gloves would not fit him. If Yarris's claims are true, the Defendants knew their conduct violated Yarris's constitutional rights and they are not entitled to qualified immunity.
Accordingly, the court entered an Order on January 21, 2005 dismissing Plaintiff's Fifth Amendment claim as to all Defendants, dismissing Plaintiff's claims against Clifton Minsall, and denying Defendants' Motion to Dismiss with regard to all other matters.