Opinion
Civil Action No. 3:04 CV 1723 (CFD).
August 3, 2006
RULING ON MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Plaintiff Albeiro Uribe brought this civil rights action against defendant David Cohen under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and has included Connecticut state law claims for malicious prosecution and false arrest. Cohen has moved for summary judgment. For the following reasons, his motion is granted.
Plaintiff appears not to have alleged state law claims in his complaint, but asserted them in his brief in opposition to the motion for summary judgment.
The following information is taken from the parties' Loc. Civ. R. Pro. 56(a)(1) and (2) statements of undisputed facts. It is undisputed unless otherwise indicated.
Uribe alleges that Cohen, the State's Attorney for the Judicial District of Stamford/Norwalk, pursued extradition proceedings against Uribe in violation of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution, and state common law.
Uribe, who is a citizen of Colombia, was unlawfully residing in the United States with his girlfriend and her daughter from a previous relationship. On March 9, 2001, a Connecticut Superior Court Judge issued an arrest warrant for Uribe on charges of two counts of Sexual Assault in the First Degree, and three counts of Sexual Assault in the Second Degree. The conduct charged in the warrant involved Uribe's alleged sexual assault of his girlfriend's twelve-year-old daughter. After obtaining the warrant, local law enforcement officers could not locate Uribe in Connecticut, and, based on information they obtained, determined that he had likely returned to Colombia.
Cohen, who was prosecuting the case against Uribe, initiated extradition proceedings in order to have him arrested in Colombia and returned to the United States. Cohen did so in accordance with the procedures used by the Connecticut State's Attorney's Office and the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ"). He first contacted the DOJ Office of International Affairs ("OIA"), and following OIA instructions, Cohen requested the provisional arrest of Uribe in Colombia as a fugitive. The DOJ made that request to Colombia through the U.S. Department of State ("State Department"). Uribe was provisionally arrested in Colombia in July 2002. In August 2002, Cohen submitted an affidavit to OIA in support of the Request for Extradition outlining the charges involved and the Connecticut criminal law that applied. That affidavit was part of a group of documents then sent to the State Department by OIA on September 5, 2002 to be presented to the Columbian government. The documents also included exhibits A through H to Cohen's affidavit. Those exhibits were copies of the pertinent Connecticut criminal statutes, the information that charged Uribe in the Superior Court, the arrest warrant, a sworn statement of the victim, a sworn confession by Uribe and four affidavits of investigating police officers.
Cohen filed a supplemental affidavit in January 2003 indicating that there was an error in his original affidavit in support of the extradition request. The error was that Cohen stated in his initial affidavit that the mandatory minimum period of incarceration for sexual assault in the first degree was five years, when Connecticut law provided one year. Although Uribe claimed in his complaint that was the basis for the later rejection of the extradition request by the Colombian Supreme Court, it is clear that the rejection was based on the absence of a finding of probable cause in the extradition documents; as indicated supra in the text. Uribe conceded this in his Loc. Civ. R. Pro. 56(a)(2) statement (¶ 15).
On September 3, 2003, the Colombian Supreme Court determined that the documents supporting the request for Uribe's extradition were defective because they lacked a signed finding of probable cause by the Connecticut judge who issued the original arrest warrant. According to Uribe's complaint here, he had been held in maximum security prison in Colombia since his arrest before this determination by the Colombian court. It is this arrest and period of detention in Colombia that Uribe challenges in this action.
II. Summary Judgment Standard
In a summary judgment motion, the burden is on the moving party to establish that there are no genuine issues of material fact in dispute and that it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56; Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 256 (1986); White v. ABCO Engineering Corp., 221 F.3d 293, 300 (2d Cir. 2000). The burden of showing that no genuine factual dispute exists rests upon the moving party. Carlton v. Mystic Transp., Inc., 202 F.3d 129, 133 (2d Cir. 2000) (citingGallo v. Prudential Residential Servs., Ltd. Partnership, 22 F.3d 1219, 1223 (2d Cir. 1994)). Once the moving party has met its burden, in order to defeat the motion the nonmoving party must "set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial," Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255, and present such evidence as would allow a jury to find in his favor. Graham v. Long Island R.R., 230 F.3d 34, 38 (2d Cir. 2000).
In assessing the record, the trial court must resolve all ambiguities and draw all inferences in favor of the party against whom summary judgment is sought. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255; Graham, 230 F.3d at 38. "This remedy that precludes a trial is properly granted only when no rational finder of fact could find in favor of the non-moving party." Carlton, 202 F.3d at 134. "When reasonable persons, applying the proper legal standards, could differ in their responses to the question" raised on the basis of the evidence presented, the question must be left to the jury. Sologub v. City of New York, 202 F.3d 175, 178 (2d Cir. 2000).
III. Discussion
Cohen has moved for summary judgment on numerous bases. Because the Court concludes that Cohen is protected from liability because of absolute prosecutorial immunity, it does not address his other arguments.
Prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity from liability under section 1983 for activity that is "intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process." Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430 (1976). In Imbler, the Supreme Court distinguished between the activities of prosecutors in their roles as advocates and their roles as administrators or investigators, and made clear that absolute immunity does not apply to prosecutors in those latter roles. Id. In making this distinction, courts apply a "functional approach . . . which looks to the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it." Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 269 (1993) (internal citations omitted). In Burns v. Reed the Supreme Court applied this "functional approach" to determine "whether the prosecutor's actions are closely associated with the judicial process" 500 U.S. 478, 495 (1991), when the conduct involved giving advice to the police during an investigation. In Burns, the prosecutor had advised the police to conduct an interview of a murder suspect while under hypnosis. The Supreme Court determined that when prosecutors give such investigative advice, they do not do so as an integral part of the judicial process, and that "it is incongruous to allow prosecutors to be absolutely immune from liability for giving advice to the police, but to allow police officers only qualified immunity for following the advice." Id. The Court held that prosecutors are entitled to qualified, not absolute immunity under those circumstances, stating that absolute prosecutorial immunity is appropriate "only for actions that are connected with the prosecutor's role in judicial proceedings, not for every litigation-inducing conduct." Id. at 494; see also, Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. at 270 (prosecutors are only protected by qualified immunity if absolute immunity is not warranted). In its latest clarification of the contours of absolute prosecutorial immunity, the Supreme Court held in Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118 (1997), that although the prosecutor there was protected by absolute immunity for filing an information and a motion for an arrest warrant in court, she was not entitled to such immunity for acting as a complaining witness by attesting to investigative facts in a "Certification for Determination of Probable Cause." 522 U.S. at 131.
As the U.S. Supreme Court has stated, when applying the functional approach to immunity analysis, the district court must:
[E]xamine the nature of the functions with which a particular official or class of officials has been lawfully entrusted, and . . . seek to evaluate the effect that exposure to particular forms of liability would likely have on the appropriate exercise of those functions. Officials who seek exemption from personal liability have the burden of showing that such an exemption is justified by overriding considerations of public policy.Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 224 (1988).
The Supreme Court did conclude in Burns that the same prosecutor's appearance in court to conduct a probable cause hearing was protected by absolute immunity. 500 U.S. at 487.
Cohen urges the Court here to conclude that he is entitled to absolute immunity because his initiation of the Request for Extradition was "an integral part of the judicial process." Uribe argues that absolute immunity does not apply because, like the situation in Kalina, Cohen provided an affidavit in support of the extradition request that provided factual information. Despite a lack of precedent in this circuit regarding absolute prosecutorial immunity for the initiation of an extradition process, after looking to courts in other jurisdictions considering the extradition process and the roles of prosecutors in it, and applying the functional approach required by Imbler and Buckley, the Court concludes that there is no genuine issue of material fact that Cohen is protected by absolute immunity in this case.
Almost every court that has addressed similar situations has determined that prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity from suits brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that the plaintiff's constitutional rights were violated as a result of the initiation of an extradition process. For example, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Dababnah v. Keller-Burnside that "absolute immunity attaches to [the prosecutor's] request for . . . extradition." 208 F.3d 467, 472 (4th Cir. 2000). Applying the functional approach, that court determined that "[i]nsuring that a defendant is present both for trial and for punishment is critical to a prosecutor's discharge of her duties. . . . Indeed, if a convicted defendant is not available for punishment, the prosecution itself would be rendered pointless." Id. The Tenth Circuit has similarly held that a prosecutor seeking an extradition order (called an "Order to Transport" in that case), was entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity because "nothing . . . indicates that the prosecutor stepped outside of his prosecutorial role in pursuing the "Order to Transport." Burrows v. Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, 38 Fed. Appx. 504, 506 (10th Cir. 2002). Numerous district courts have also held that prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity for the claims arising from the initiation of extradition proceedings. See e.g., Olagues v. Stafford, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4851, *19 (E.D.La. March 10, 2005) (relying on Dababnah to hold that "a prosecutor is entitled to absolute immunity since extradition is intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process." (internal citations omitted)); Campbell v. Sheehan, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2457, **3-4 (N.D.Ill. February 29, 1996) ("Applying this functional approach, the court finds that the act of pursuing extradition proceedings falls within the scope of those prosecutorial acts accorded immunity."); Larsen v. Early, 842 F. Supp. 1310, 1313 (D.Co. 1994) (holding that the prosecutors' "declination to extradite [the plaintiff] from Arizona was within their prosecutorial function as advocates for the State of Colorado because extradition is intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process." (internal citations omitted)); Cote v. Kontos, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1244 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 7, 1989) ("The state and county prosecutors who Mr. Cote claims participated in the illegal extradition scheme are also absolutely immune from liability.");Brooks v. Fitch, 534 F. Supp. 129, 132 (D.N.J 1981) ("[T]he decision to extradite and to issue an arrest warrant fall within the scope of absolute immunity.").
In Muhammad v. State of Louisiana, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana determined that for the prosecutors involved in the initiation of extradition proceedings, absolute immunity protected those who supervised and filed the application; however, applying Kalina, that court determined that absolute immunity did not protect the prosecutors who completed and filed the sworn affidavit as part of the application. 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15636, **15-17 (E.D.La. Oct. 19, 2000). That case is factually distinguishable from the situation here because in Muhammad the prosecutors who were denied absolute immunity signed a sworn statement "attesting to the truth the underlying facts upon which probable cause was based." 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15636, *20. Here, Cohen provided the legal and procedural background in his affidavit and included as exhibits the statements and affidavits of the fact witnesses. Although his affidavit did provide a brief summary of the facts and a conclusion that the evidence he attached to his affidavit indicated Uribe's guilt, it was the attached statements of the victim and Uribe as well as the affidavits of the police officers that supplied the factual basis for the charges against Uribe as well as the factual support for the extradition request.
Cohen's extradition affidavit complied with the detailed requirements set forth in the written OIA instructions for extradition requests. It provided the history of the case against Uribe in Connecticut, a description of Connecticut law and procedure relevant to that case, the penalties Uribe faced, and a brief summary of the facts of the case. Cohen's affidavit was also accompanied by sworn affidavits from the victim, the police officers who were involved in the initial investigation, and Uribe's confession. The OIA instructions specifically required the brief factual statement of the case by Cohen, but also required the attached statements and affidavits of the witnesses, victim, and the defendant. The OIA instructions provided that those supporting documents must "establish probable cause to believe that the fugitive committed each offense." Thus, the investigative facts which provided the basis for probable cause for Uribe's arrest were supported not by Cohen, but by the victim, the investigating officers, and Uribe. In this extradition application, Cohen's participation was not as an investigative fact witness, as in Kalina, but rather as a prosecutor providing information concerning the pertinent procedures and criminal statutes as well as the underlying evidence to the court — in this case, the Supreme Court of Colombia.
Cohen's affidavit specifically states that it was the attached affidavits of the witnesses that "establishes proof that Albeiro Uribe [committed the offense.]"
It is also undisputed that Cohen initiated the extradition proceedings in order to secure Uribe's presence for the prosecution of the charges pending against him in Connecticut. In the Second Circuit prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity for actions involved with the initiation of a prosecution. See, e.g., Tapp v. Champagne, 164 Fed. Appx. 106 (2d Cir. 2006),citing Bernard v. County of Suffolk, 356 F.3d 495, 503 (2d Cir. 2004). Securing the presence of a defendant is also an essential part of the initiation of a prosecution. "[T]he action of a prosecutor in ordering the transfer of a prisoner from federal into state custody to facilitate a state prosecution is another matter. It is often, as here, an integral component of initiating a prosecution, since without the presence of the prisoner in state custody, a trial cannot begin and the entire prosecution could be halted." Pinaud v. County of Suffolk, 1995 U.S. App. LEXIS 7755, **26-27 (2d Cir. 1995), citing Ehrlich v. Giuliani, 910 F.2d 1220, 1223 (4th Cir. 1990) ("One of the most important duties of a prosecutor pursuing a criminal proceeding is to ensure that defendants . . . are present at trial."). If a prosecutor is protected by absolute immunity for ordering the transfer of a prisoner from federal to state custody, a prosecutor should be similarly protected for requesting that a defendant be extradited from another country in order to face prosecution.
In Kalina, the Supreme Court stated that it is only when the prosecutor is "performing the traditional functions of an advocate," that he is entitled to absolute immunity. 522 U.S. at 131. Cohen's undisputed role in the attempted extradition meets this test, and he is entitled to that protection for his conduct.
IV. Conclusion
The defendant's motion for summary judgment [Doc. # 14] is GRANTED. Because it has disposed of the only federal claim before it, the Court declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff's remaining state law claims.See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3). Both the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court agree that when all federal claims are dismissed, the "state claims should be dismissed as well." Lanza v. Merrill Lynch Co., 154 F.3d 56, 61 (2d Cir. 1998) (quoting United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726 (1966)). Judgment is entered for the defendant and the clerk is ordered to close this case.
SO ORDERED.