Williams v. Walters, No. 13-3497 (8th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseWilliams was an Alexander police officer under chief Walters. There was animosity between them, stemming from Williams’s support of the mayor. Walters stated that he had Williams “in his cross hairs” and relieved Walters of duty. The city reinstated Walters. The city’s bookkeeper later discovered that Williams had cashed two payroll checks covering the same period without realizing that a check he found was the check that he had reported lost and had had replaced. The mayor found that it was unintentional error; the city council agreed. Williams returned the money. Williams borrowed police lights from a county deputy that were the deputy’s personal property and were marked with his name. Williams informed Walters that he had borrowed the lights. At Walters’s instruction, another officer retrieved the lights from Williams and installed them on Walters’s patrol car. A magistrate issued a warrant for Williams’s arrest, based on Walters’s affidavit, based on those incidents. Williams was arrested for theft and spent a day in jail. The prosecutor dismissed the charges. Williams sued Walters and the city under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The district court dismissed claims against the city, but denied summary judgment and qualified immunity for Walters. The Eighth Circuit affirmed.
Court Description: Civil case - Civil rights. A reasonable jury could find that defendant violated plaintiff's rights when he caused plaintiff to be arrested for theft of city property; there was not probable cause to believe plaintiff had deprived the city of its property in connection with a payroll check incident, and a reasonable jury could find that plaintiff's constitutional rights were violated when he was arrested for theft based on cashing a duplicate payroll check; defendant was not entitled to qualified immunity as a reasonable official would understand that including false information in and omitting relevant information from an arrest warrant affidavit in an attempt to punish plaintiff for supporting defendant's political opponent would constitute a violation of clearly established constitutional rights; the district court's denial of defendant's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity is affirmed, and defendant's appeal of the court's rulings on state-law claims is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
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