Civil Rights – Court Doubts Probable Cause for Drug Arrest

Smith v. Munday (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-032-17, 31 pp.) (Gregory, J.) No. 15-1092, Feb. 3, 2017; USDC at Statesville, N.C. (Voorhees, J.) 4th Cir.

Holding: The 4th Circuit reverses summary judgment in this civil rights suit for defendant police officer who arrested plaintiff “April Smith” for selling crack cocaine, leading to her detention for 80 days before the criminal charges were dropped; even ignoring whether plaintiff’s weight, at either 160 pounds or 200 pounds, qualified as “skinny,” a criminal history, common gender and unfortunately common name is not enough to establish probable cause.

Confidential Informant

Police had information from a confidential informant who, on March 10, 2009, purchased cocaine from a black female named April Smith, who was described as “skinny.” At some point during the next nine months, a defendant officer, Jason Munday, scanned police databases for residents of Lincoln County named April Smith with criminal records. He then stumbled upon April Yvette Smith, plaintiff, a black woman who lived in Lincoln County and had been convicted of selling crack cocaine in 1993, 1997 and 2005. His search revealed at least two other April Smiths with criminal records. Defendant officer had no indication that the woman who sold crack cocaine in March 2009 had a criminal record, or was even a Lincoln County resident. Plaintiff alleges she weighed 160 pounds when arrested, and had weighed 200 pounds in March 2009. The record reflects no further attempt by defendant to investigate Smith or connect her to the crime.

Nevertheless, nine months after the sale, Munday applied for and received an arrest warrant. Plaintiff was arrested in her home, 11 miles away from the site of the drug sale. She was held in custody for approximately 80 days, facing the threat of prosecution. The local prosecutor then requested that the charges be dismissed.

Probable Cause

The sole question at issue is whether there was probable cause to arrest Smith.

Defendant Munday had no evidence about Smith’s conduct, let alone whether she was a participant in, connected to, or even physically present near the drug sale in question. His only information about her was that she had previously been convicted for selling drugs years past, that she was a black woman, and that she was “near” the site of the drug sale because her home address was 11 miles away. If this amount of evidence were sufficient for probable cause, then officers would have probable cause to obtain arrest warrants for any local residents who fit the generic description of the day – be it “black woman,” “black man,” or otherwise – so long as they had a criminal history and an unfortunately common name. Such scant evidence barely meets the threshold of “mere suspicion,” let alone the threshold of probable cause.

We hold that Munday violated Smith’s Fourth Amendment rights when he applied for an arrest warrant that wholly lacked probable cause. The district court had previously found that Smith’s state-law claims against all of the individual officers, and negligent-supervision and pattern-or-practice theories of liability against the police chief and City of Lincolnton failed because no constitutional violation occurred. Because this reversal implicates those rulings, we remand to the district court so it can examine its prior determinations in the first instance.

Qualified immunity does not apply where the warrant application is so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence unreasonable.

We affirm dismissal of plaintiff’s false arrest claim, as the district court properly characterized her claim as one for malicious prosecution.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded.

Concurrence & Dissent

Agee, J., concurring & dissenting: The majority holds that the arrest warrant was not supported by probable cause and that Munday is not entitled to qualified immunity. I disagree. The record evidence reflects that reasonable minds could disagree as to whether probable cause exists; therefore, Munday is entitled to qualified immunity. I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to reverse the district court’s judgment in favor of Munday, but concur in affirming the district court as to additional claims.