United States Fifth Circuit

In an action alleging that defendant violated plaintiff's rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments when he manipulated a photographic lineup in an effort to procure a false identification from the victim in a rape case, a denial of defendant's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity is affirmed where: 1) knowing efforts to secure a false identification by fabricating evidence or otherwise unlawfully influencing witnesses constitutes a violation of the due process rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment; 2) a plaintiff need not undertake the impossible task of satisfying the Brathwaite test where an officer's intentional conduct was designed to artificially produce precisely the sort of witness certainty that otherwise justifies the admission of suggestive lineups and the criminal defendant has been exonerated in the meantime; 3) any reasonable official would know that framing an individual for a crime they did not commit by securing such an identification represents a constitutional violation; and 4) defendant's efforts to secure plaintiff's arrest notwithstanding the fact that defendant affirmatively knew he manufactured probable cause constituted a clearly established violation of plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights at the time of the arrest.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/18/2010
• Published 02/18/2010

Judges

• HAYNES, Circuit Judge:, Before STEWART, DENNIS, and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Fifth Circuit

Counsel