Tenth Circuit Martinez v. Carson 11-2095

Decision here.

   Employees of the New Mexico DOC were participating in a task force with members of the Rio Rancho Police Department, patrolling a high-crime area at night (who lets DOC employees go on patrol?  No offense to them, they're good at what they do, but what they do isn't that).  The DOC employee saw three guys standing in the dark outside an apartment building (actually, one of them was crouched down), and so they conducted a high-risk stop.  

   Yep.  I hope there's more, but as far as the court record knows these three guys were gunpointed, searched, and handcuffed for being in a dark area.  At night.  The DOC employees then turned the "suspects" over to members of the police department, who arrested them for something (the decision doesn't tell us what).  The "suspects" eventually sued both the DOC employees and the police officers, since this whole arrest was based on a stop which was not based on probable cause.  Of course, everyone tried to claim qualified immunity, and of course it didn't work.

   The cops ended up settling with the plaintiffs, but the DOC employees took it to trial.  And lost (each of the plaintiffs won $5k, half of which was punitive damages).  One of the issues that came up in the trial was whether or not the DOC employees could be held liable for the continued unlawful detention at the hands of the police department, or only for the first few minutes of unlawful detention before they transferred custody of the "suspects" to the police.  The trial court had only held the DOC guys accountable for their own actions, and after winning the trial the plaintiffs appealed that portion of the verdict.

   The tenth circuit held that if it hadn't been for the illegal actions of the DOC employees, the "suspects" would not have been subsequently illegally detained by the police, and that the DOCS guys really should have known that.  The case was remanded for a new trial limited to the issue of how much of the later illegal detention the DOC guys were responsible for, meaning that even though they've already lost they could still be even more liable.

   So if you make an illegal stop, consider yourself to have potentially bought whatever happens to the person you stop after that (even if you turn them over to someone else).