Jorge Rivera-Guadalupe v. City of Harrisburg

                                       PRECEDENTIAL

        UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
             FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
                ________________

                Nos. 21-1246 & 23-1792
                  ________________


            JORGE RIVERA-GUADALUPE

                            v.

    CITY OF HARRISBURG, d/b/a Bureau of Police;
JACOB PIERCE, in his individual and official capacity as a
  Detective with the City of Harrisburg, Bureau of Police;
DAUPHIN COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE;
  ESQ. MICHAEL SPROW, in his individual and official
                          capacity
 as the First Assistant District Attorney with the Dauphin
                           County
                 District Attorney’s Office


             City of Harrisburg and Jacob Pierce,
                             Appellants in No. 21-1246

                     Jacob Pierce,
                            Appellant in No. 23-1792
                   _______________

     On Appeal from the United States District Court
           for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
                  (D.C. No. 1-19-cv-01400)
            District Judge: Hon. Sylvia H. Rambo
                      ________________

                 Argued on March 14, 2022

 Before: JORDAN, KRAUSE, and PORTER, Circuit Judges

            (Opinion filed: December 24, 2024)


Kimberly A. Boyer-Cohen [ARGUED]
Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin
2000 Market Street, Suite 2300
Philadelphia, PA 19103

             Counsel for Appellants


Leticia C. Chavez-Freed [ARGUED]
Chavez-Freed Law Office
2600 N. 3rd Street, 2nd Floor
Harrisburg, PA 17110

Frank J. Lavery, Jr.
Lavery Law
225 Market Street, Suite 304
Harrisburg, PA 17101

             Counsel for Appellees




                               2
                      ________________

                 OPINION OF THE COURT
                    ________________


KRAUSE, Circuit Judge.
       We deny officers qualified immunity for violating
clearly established constitutional rights—not for their failure to
read tea leaves. This past year, the Supreme Court held in
Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon that “the presence of probable
cause for one charge does not automatically defeat a Fourth
Amendment malicious-prosecution claim alleging the absence
of probable cause for another charge.” 

, 561
(2024). But was that right clearly established when Detective
Jacob Pierce, the Appellant in this case, arrested Appellee
Jorge Rivera-Guadalupe in 2017? No, we conclude, because
although we anticipated the holding of Chiaverini nearly
twenty years ago in Johnson v. Knorr, 

 (3d Cir.
2007), tension between Johnson and Wright v. City of
Philadelphia, 

 (3d Cir. 2005), continued to
produce confusion within our circuit that persisted until
Chiaverini. Accordingly, we will reverse the District Court’s
denial of qualified immunity and remand with instruction to
dismiss on that basis.




                                3
    I.    Background1
       In May of 2017, Rivera-Guadalupe was living in a one-
room unit in a rooming house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
This was not a pleasant dwelling. In his complaint, he called
it “a noisy place” where “visitors were always coming and
going; drugs and alcohol were rampant; and people often
congregated in the hallways.” App. 67. So, when unknown
people mugged and robbed Rivera-Guadalupe on May 21, his
close friend, Christopher Valkosak, came to stay with him at
the rooming house the next day in case trouble returned.
       Return it did. Around eleven o’clock the next evening,
Valkosak was standing in the doorway of Rivera-Guadalupe’s
unit, facing the exterior hallway, when, in his telling, two
strangers suddenly appeared. One of the men—“a dark-
skinned male in a black hoodie”—shot Valkosak in the
stomach. App. 68. According to Valkosak, Rivera-Guadalupe
then fetched a gun from under his mattress and left the room,
presumably to chase the shooter.
       Det. Pierce was assigned as the crime’s lead
investigator. The day after the shooting, he interviewed a
neighbor who lived down the hall from Rivera-Guadalupe and
had witnessed the incident. The neighbor told Det. Pierce that
a tall Black male dressed in black had been standing in the
hallway outside of Rivera-Guadalupe’s apartment talking to
Valkosak when they began to argue and Valkosak tried to

1
  The Court accepts the facts pleaded by Rivera-Guadalupe as
true and draws all reasonable inferences in his favor. See
Zimmerman v. Corbett, 

, 417–18 (3d Cir. 2017).




                              4
punch the man. At that point, according to the neighbor, the
man shot Valkosak and fled the rooming house through its rear
door.
       The same day he conducted that interview, Det. Pierce
applied for and obtained a warrant to search Rivera-
Guadalupe’s room. In his application, Det. Pierce included the
neighbor’s description of the shooter as a Black male but
omitted various details the neighbor gave about Rivera-
Guadalupe himself that were inconsistent with the description
of the shooter, including that Rivera-Guadalupe is short, of
Puerto Rican descent, and walks with a limp. During the
search of Rivera-Guadalupe’s room, Det. Pierce found
marijuana, a knife, and IDs belonging to Valkosak and Rivera-
Guadalupe, though not a gun. He arrested Rivera-Guadalupe
soon after on the basis of that evidence.
        At the preliminary hearing, the Assistant District
Attorney called three witnesses: Valkosak, Det. Pierce, and
Valkosak’s roommate, who did not live in Rivera-Guadalupe’s
building and was not there during the shooting. Although Det.
Pierce had received a tip a few days earlier that the shooter was
a different person, it does not appear he mentioned that call.2
Neither did the prosecution call the neighbor whom Det. Pierce
had interviewed. After hearing what testimony was presented,
the judge found probable cause to hold Rivera-Guadalupe over
for trial and continued his detention.



2
 The record does not indicate the tip’s source, nor whether Det.
Pierce followed up on it.




                               5
       The DA’s Office charged Rivera-Guadalupe with nine
offenses, including attempted homicide and possession of
marijuana. But at the outset of trial, it dropped five of those
charges and proceeded to trial on just two firearms charges and
the charges of robbery and theft by unlawful taking. The jury
eventually acquitted Rivera-Guadalupe of all four. By that
time, however, Rivera-Guadalupe had been incarcerated for
over eighteen months—from May 26, 2017, through December
11, 2018.
       Rivera-Guadalupe timely filed suit in the Middle
District of Pennsylvania against a number of defendants,
including Det. Pierce, in his individual and official capacities,
for malicious prosecution, in violation of 

3
  In addition to claims against Det. Pierce, Rivera-Guadalupe
filed suit against the City of Harrisburg d/b/a Bureau of Police,
the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office, and the
Dauphin County First Assistant District Attorney in his
personal and professional capacity, alleging malicious
prosecution in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendments of the Constitution, in violation of § 1983, in
violation of state law, and that their policies violated Monell v.
Dep’t of Social Services of the City of New York, 

(1978). The District Court concluded that Rivera-Guadalupe
failed to state a claim against the District Attorney, and
dismissed the Monell claims with prejudice for all defendants
because, in briefing the motion to dismiss, Rivera-Guadalupe
stated his intent to withdraw those claims.




                                6
While the other defendants were successful in moving to
dismiss, Det. Pierce was not so fortunate.
        Seeking dismissal on the basis of qualified immunity,
Det. Pierce contended that there was no constitutional
violation, or at least not one that was clearly established.4 Even
if there was not probable cause for some of the charges against
Rivera-Guadalupe, he argued, a claim of malicious prosecution
was not sustainable where at least one charge was supported
by probable cause. As support for this position, he cited to

4
  The District Court first denied Det. Pierce qualified immunity
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(g)(2) because he
failed to raise the defense in his first motion to dismiss. It
nevertheless addressed the substance of Det. Pierce’s
arguments “for the sake of streamlining the process of this
lawsuit,” App. 279, and, applying our decision in Johnson,
determined that Det. Pierce was not entitled to qualified
immunity. On interlocutory appeal of that order, we remanded
for the limited purpose of clarifying the disposition of Pierce’s
motion to dismiss, as the District Court had addressed the
motion’s merits despite concluding that it was barred by Rule
12(g)(2). On remand, the District Court ordered Det. Pierce to
renew his qualified immunity claim by filing a motion for
judgment on the pleadings, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(c). See Oliver v. Roquet, 

, 188 n.3
(3d Cir. 2017) (“[A] defense omitted from an earlier motion
may nonetheless be raised in a motion for judgment on the
pleadings.”); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(2). He did so, and
the District Court’s order denying his 12(c) motion is now
before us.




                                7
Wright v. City of Philadelphia, where we had held that
“[p]robable cause need only exist as to any offense that could
be charged under the circumstances,” 

 (citations
omitted), to defeat a false arrest claim and then had summarily
concluded that this same rationale “disposes of [plaintiff’s]
malicious prosecution claims,” 

.
       The District Court declined to dismiss the malicious
prosecution charge against Det. Pierce, reasoning that Johnson
v. Knorr, decided a few years later, made sufficiently clear that
the “any-crime” rule of Wright applied only to false arrest
claims and not to malicious prosecution claims. It therefore
held that Det. Pierce was not entitled to qualified immunity and
that Rivera-Guadalupe was entitled to move forward to trial.
Det. Pierce timely appealed.
    II.   Discussion5
        Though the burden of asserting a qualified immunity
defense is on the law enforcement officer, Thomas v. Indep.
Twp., 

, 293 (3d Cir. 2006), those officers are
entitled to immunity under § 1983 “unless the plaintiff shows
that the officer violated ‘clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have

5
  The District Court had jurisdiction under 

.
We have jurisdiction over the denial of qualified immunity
under 

 and the collateral order doctrine.
Mammaro v. N.J. Div. of Child Prot. & Permanency, 

 (3d Cir. 2016). We review the denial of a motion for
judgment on the pleadings de novo. Zimmerman, 

.




                               8
known.’” Lozano v. New Jersey, 

 (3d Cir.
2021) (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 

 (2015) (per
curiam)). Thus, qualified immunity does not apply when the
facts, taken in the light most favorable to the party claiming
injury, show that the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional
right, 

 and, as an additional condition, when the right at
issue— “define[d] . . . at the appropriate level of specificity,”
Peroza-Benitez v. Smith, 

 (3d Cir. 2021)
(quoting Sharp v. Johnson, 

 (3d Cir.
2012))—was “clearly established,” Lozano, 

. We
may address these questions in the order we deem appropriate,
Pearson v. Callahan, 

 (2009), and a negative
answer on either inquiry entitles a defendant to qualified
immunity. Peroza-Benitez, 

.
        Here, the parties dispute whether the existence of
probable cause for some of the charges insulated Det. Pierce
from suit for malicious prosecution. We therefore define the
right at issue as the right to be prosecuted only for charges that
are each supported by probable cause. And because the
determination whether that right was “clearly established” at
the relevant time will resolve this case, that is where our
analysis begins and ends.
       A.     Johnson Did Not Clearly Establish the Right in
              Question
        A right is clearly established where, “at the time of the
challenged conduct, the contours of [that] right are sufficiently
clear that every reasonable official would have understood that
what he is doing violates that right.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 

, 741 (2011) (cleaned up). There need not be an




                                9
analogous case “directly on point, but existing precedent must
have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond
debate.” Id. The question for us, then, is whether the tension
between our pronouncements in Wright and in Johnson put the
right to be prosecuted only on charges that are each supported
by probable cause “beyond debate” at the time of Rivera-
Guadalupe’s prosecution. As explained below, they did not.
We summarize those two cases before describing the debate
that they generated.
        In Wright, police officers who had investigated
plaintiff’s claim that she was sexually assaulted while
intoxicated dismissed her claims as unfounded. Instead, they
brought charges against her for “breaking into” the house
where she was attacked immediately after it occurred to
retrieve her personal belongings and collect items she thought
would help the police identify her assailants. The Philadelphia
Police Internal Affairs Division determined that those officers
“conducted a less than proper/thorough investigation” of the
allegations. Wright, 

. The charges against the
plaintiff were dismissed, and her assailants eventually brought
to justice.
        When Wright brought claims against the officers for
false arrest and malicious prosecution under § 1983, we held
that she failed to state a claim for false arrest because there was
probable cause to believe she violated the law by breaking and
entering, and, applying our precedent in Barna v. City of Perth
Amboy, 

 (3d Cir. 1994), we said “[p]robable cause
need only exist as to any offense that could be charged under
the circumstances” to defeat a false-arrest claim. 

 at 602
(citing Barna, 

). Then, in a brief final paragraph,




                                10
we added that “[e]ven though our discussion of probable cause
was limited to the criminal trespass claim [for false arrest], it
disposes of her malicious prosecution claims with respect to all
of the charges brought against her.” Id. at 604. Citing no
precedent, we stated that “[t]o prevail on [a malicious
prosecution] claim, [the plaintiff] must show that the officers
lacked probable cause to arrest her,” id., and we therefore
reversed the District Court’s denial of summary judgment
based on qualified immunity for both the false arrest and
malicious prosecution claims.
       In Johnson, two years later, we reversed the district
court’s summary judgment in favor of a parole officer who had
argued, based on Wright, that the presence of probable cause
for some charges precluded the plaintiff’s § 1983 claim for
malicious prosecution. Johnson, 

. We rejected
the proposition that Wright “establish[ed] legal precedent of
such broad application that it would ‘insulate’ law enforcement
officers from liability for malicious prosecution in all cases in
which they had probable cause for the arrest of the plaintiff on
any one charge.” 

. Unlike malicious prosecution, we
explained, false arrest “covers damages only for the time of
detention until the issuance of process or arraignment, and not
more,” 

 at 82 (quoting Montgomery v. De Simone, 

 (3d Cir. 1998)), so additional charges that lack
probable cause place only a “limited” additional burden against
the arrestee, whereas adding unjustified charges to a bill of
indictment “almost surely will place an additional burden on
the defendant,” id. at 84. We thus clarified that Wright did not
permit officers to “tack on more serious, unfounded charges
for which there was not probable cause . . . for the initiation of




                               11
criminal proceedings merely because there was probable cause
for the arrest on any charge.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).
        We also viewed Wright as factually distinguishable
when it came to the officers’ involvement in bringing charges.
In Wright, the officer had only prepared an affidavit of
probable cause for the plaintiff’s arrest and was not involved
with the prosecution. By contrast, the plaintiff in Johnson
alleged that the parole agent’s fabricated allegations “le[d] to
the initiation of criminal proceedings.” Id. Because the agent’s
“involvement in both the arrest and the initiation of criminal
proceedings against Johnson was more extensive [than in
Wright] and lasted beyond . . . the arrest itself,” we declined to
apply Wright and held that Johnson could proceed with his
malicious prosecution claim, even though there was probable
cause to arrest him on at least one of the charges. Id.
        Here, examining this precedent, the District Court
determined that, under Johnson, the right at issue was clearly
established by the time of Rivera-Guadalupe’s prosecution.
After explicating the factual and legal distinctions between the
cases, the District Court concluded every reasonable officer
would have understood at that point that “the law has never
opened the door for the government to charge someone with a
laundry list of crimes simply because they have probable cause
for one crime.” App. 33. Although we had acknowledged in
our en banc opinion in Kossler v. Crisanti, 

(3d Cir. 2009) (en banc), that there was “considerable tension
. . . between our treatment of the probable cause element in
[Wright]” and in Johnson, the District Court dismissed “the
tension between the two [as] merely specious” and our
observation as merely dictum, App. 31, 34. “An issue being




                               12
complex,” it concluded, “is not the same as it being
ambiguous.” App. 32.6
        We agree with the District Court’s assessment that
Wright and Johnson are ultimately distinguishable. See infra
Section II.B. But a judge’s ability to discern boundaries
between cases in the quietude of chambers does not necessarily
translate to what “every reasonable official would [have
understood]” in conducting an arrest or prosecution. al-Kidd,
563 U.S. at 741 (cleaned up). Rather, the relevant precedent
“must have placed the . . . constitutional question beyond
debate.” Id. And though we attempted to clarify in Johnson
that the “any-crime” rule was applicable to false arrests claims,
but not malicious prosecution claims, it did not have that
crystallizing effect.
       Quite the opposite.     In Kossler, we not only
acknowledged the “considerable tension” between Wright and
Johnson. 

. We also said that “the precedential
status of Wright is not diminished,” acknowledged its
malicious prosecution analysis was “difficult to reconcile”

6
 Although this opinion concerns the District Court’s denial of
Det. Pierce’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, we quote
here from the District Court’s memorandum opinion regarding
Det. Pierce’s motion to dismiss because it discussed Wright
and Johnson in greater depth. See Mem. on Mot. for J. on the
Pleadings at 20, Rivera-Guadalupe v. City of Harrisburg, No.
1:19-CV-1400 (M.D. Pa. Mar. 27, 2023), ECF No. 84 (“In its
previous decision, the court recounted these cases in some
depth and will not repeat its review here.”).




                               13
with Johnson, and explained their tension not as illustrating the
different rules applicable to false arrest and malicious
prosecution, but as “illustrat[ing] that the analysis of malicious
prosecution claims involving multiple charges is a fact-
intensive one.” 

. Yet even as we attempted to
reconcile Wright and Johnson as involving different “fact-
based inquir[ies],” 

 we also noted that “assuming arguendo
that [they] are in unavoidable conflict,” Wright, as the earlier
of the two, “must control for purposes of analyzing the
probable cause element,” 

 at 194 n.8.
        Several years later, in Dempsey v. Bucknell University,

 (3d Cir. 2016), we tried again to detangle these
cases, citing to Johnson and explaining that “although false
arrest . . . claims will necessarily fail if probable cause existed
for any one of the crimes charged against the arrestee,” it was
still the case that “‘probable cause on one charge does not
foreclose a malicious prosecution cause of action’ based on
additional charges for which there was no probable cause.” 

at 477 (quoting Johnson, 

). But we did not
explicitly distinguish Barna and Wright from Johnson or
address our footnote in Kossler. Perhaps it is not surprising,
therefore, that confusion persisted in various forums.
       For one, the debate continued among the district courts
in our circuit. See, e.g., DeLade v. Cargan, No. 3:16-CV-
00415, 

, at *15–16 (M.D. Pa. Mar. 27, 2019)
(adopting Magistrate Judge’s recommendation to grant
summary judgment on malicious prosecution claim based on
Barna and Wright’s holdings that probable cause need only
exist as to one of several charged offenses); Tate v. Hasara,
No. 14-4609, 

, at *8 n.12 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 16,




                                14
2017) (granting summary judgment on malicious prosecution
claim in view of the “considerable tension” between Wright
and Johnson and Kossler’s instruction “that to the extent the
cases ‘are in unavoidable conflict,’ Wright, the earlier-decided
case, would control” (quoting Kossler, 564 F.3d at 193–94 &
n.8)); Davis v. Graber, No. 14-1416, 

, at *1
& n.1 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 18, 2017) (concluding that because
Kossler “acknowledged the preeminence of” Wright, the law
was at least “murky” and “that murkiness [] stands at least for
the proposition” that the rule of Johnson was not “clearly
established”).
        It also manifested itself in some of our own non-
precedential opinions.7 Compare, e.g., Harvard v. Cesnalis,

, 199 n.3 (3d Cir. 2020) (“probable cause on one
charge ‘does not foreclose a malicious prosecution cause of
action’ as to a separate charge which lacks probable cause”
(quoting Johnson, 

)), with Simonson v. Borough
of Taylor, 

, 740 n.7 (3d Cir. 2020) (explaining
that probable cause on at least one charge defeats a malicious
prosecution claim when the charges were brought
simultaneously and arose from the same incident), and Batiz v.
Brown, 

, 142–43 (3d Cir. 2017) (explaining
that the Johnson rule applies only when “the additional charges
for which there might not have been probable cause . . .
resulted in additional restrictions on his liberty beyond those
attributable to the prosecution on the . . . charges for which

7
  Our non-precedential opinions are referenced here only to
provide additional evidence that confusion about the
distinctions between Wright and Johnson persisted.




                              15
there was probable cause” (alterations in original) (citation
omitted)).
       In the meantime, other Courts of Appeals came to
different conclusions, ultimately necessitating the Supreme
Court’s intervention in Chiaverini. Disagreement emerged
even before the events at issue in this case. Compare Posr v.
Doherty, 

 (2d Cir. 1991) (rejecting application
of the any-crime rule to malicious prosecution cases), with
Grider v. City of Auburn, 

, 1256–57 (11th Cir.
2010) (suggesting in dictum that the any-crime rule applies to
malicious prosecution). In 2020, however, the Eleventh
Circuit rejected its earlier dictum and held that the any-crime
rule is inapplicable in the malicious prosecution context,
Williams v. Aguirre, 

, 1159–62 (11th Cir. 2020),
while the Sixth Circuit took the opposite course and held
“there’s no principled reason for treating a Fourth Amendment
malicious-prosecution claim differently than a Fourth
Amendment false-arrest claim,” Howse v. Hodous, 

 (6th Cir. 2020).
       Considering the combination of confusion within our
own circuit and the other Courts of Appeals, we cannot say that
the bounds of the any-crime rule were “beyond debate” when
Det. Pierce arrested Rivera-Guadalupe in 2017. The Supreme
Court has observed that “[i]f judges [themselves] disagree on
a constitutional question, it is unfair to subject police to money
damages for picking the losing side of the controversy.”
Reichle v. Howards, 

, 669–70 (2012) (quoting
Wilson v. Layne, 

 (1999)). And while not
dispositive, “a split among the Federal Circuits”—even one
that developed only “[b]etween the time of the events of this




                               16
case and [the Supreme Court’s decision resolving it]”—
provides additional evidence of ambiguity. Layne, 

; see also Rivera v. Monko, 

 (3d Cir. 2022)
(observing that even “[a] two-court circuit split demonstrates
that no ‘robust consensus’ exists”). Though Chiaverini has
now made crystal clear that the any-crime rule does not pertain
to malicious prosecution claims, that ambiguity existed in the
timeframe relevant here.
       Because the right that Rivera-Guadalupe seeks to
vindicate in his malicious prosecution suit was not clearly
established at the relevant time, the District Court erred in
denying Det. Pierce qualified immunity.
      B.     The Any-Crime Rule Still Applies to False
             Arrest Claims
       To end what has proven to be a years-long muddle and
for the avoidance of doubt in the wake of Chiaverini, we take
this opportunity to clarify that the any-crime rule of Wright
governs claims for false arrest, whereas Johnson—and now
Chiaverini— states the rule for malicious-prosecution claims.
       Although both claims arise out of the Fourth
Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable seizures, the
seizures they concern are different in substance and duration.
As the Supreme Court has explained, claims for false arrest
challenge “detention without legal process,” Wallace v. Kato,

 (2007), while malicious prosecution
involves seizure “pursuant to legal process,” Thompson v.
Clark, 

 (2022); see also Heck v. Humphrey, 

 (1994) (“[U]nlike the related cause of action for
false arrest or imprisonment, [malicious prosecution] permits




                              17
damages for confinement imposed pursuant to legal process.”).
And a person arrested may be constitutionally detained without
a warrant only for a short period before she must be presented
to a neutral magistrate for a determination of probable cause,
Cnty. of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 

 (1991),
whereas a person held pursuant to legal process may be
subjected to far longer detention, and each charge she faces
“almost surely will place an additional burden on the
defendant,” Johnson, 477 F3.d at 84.
        In recognition of these distinct burdens, the majority of
our sister circuits to address the question held—even before
Chiaverini—that the any-crime rule applies only to false arrest,
and not malicious prosecution claims. See, e.g., Aguirre, 965
F.3d at 1159–62; Doherty, 

; see also Holmes v.
Vill. of Hoffman Estates, 

, 682–83 (7th Cir. 2007)
(adopting the same rule in the context of a state-law malicious-
prosecution claim). Though there were some outliers that
perceived “no principled reason for treating a Fourth
Amendment malicious-prosecution claim differently than a
Fourth Amendment false-arrest claim,” Hodous, 

, Chiaverini has now put the debate to rest, once and for all,
602 U.S. at 561.
   III.   Conclusion
      For the foregoing reasons, we will reverse the District
Court’s denial of qualified immunity and remand for
proceedings consistent with this opinion.




                               18