Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon
This case involves a dispute between Jascha Chiaverini and police officers from Napoleon, Ohio. The officers charged Chiaverini, a jewelry store owner, with three crimes: receiving stolen property, a misdemeanor; dealing in precious metals without a license, also a misdemeanor; and money laundering, a felony. After obtaining a warrant, the police arrested Chiaverini and detained him for three days. But county prosecutors later dropped the case. Chiaverini, believing that his arrest and detention were unjustified, sued the officers, alleging a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claim.
To prevail on this claim, he had to show that the officers brought criminal charges against him without probable cause, leading to an unreasonable seizure of his person. The district court granted summary judgment to the officers, and the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. The appeals court held that Chiaverini’s prosecution was supported by probable cause. In holding this, the court didn’t address whether the officers had probable cause to bring the money-laundering charge. In its view, there was probable cause to charge Chiaverini with the two misdemeanors. And so long as one charge was supported by probable cause, it thought a malicious-prosecution claim based on any other charge must fail.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the presence of probable cause for one charge in a criminal proceeding doesn’t categorically defeat a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claim relating to another, baseless charge. The high court noted the parties, and the U.S. as amicus curiae, all agree with this conclusion, which follows from both the Fourth Amendment and traditional common-law practice.
The Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case.
Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Samuel Alito Jr. joined. Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a dissenting opinion.
The dissenting justices assert they believe a “malicious prosecution claim cannot be based on the Fourth Amendment.” They noted they would have affirmed the dismissal of Chiaverini’s claim.
Delilah Diaz was stopped at a port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border. Border patrol officers searched the car that Diaz was driving and found more than 54 pounds of methamphetamine
hidden in the vehicle. Diaz was charged with importing methamphetamine. The charges required the government to prove that Diaz knowingly transported drugs. In her defense, Diaz claimed not to know that the drugs were hidden in the car.
To rebut Diaz’s claim, the government planned to call Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Andrew Flood as an expert witness to testify that drug traffickers generally don’t entrust large quantities of drugs to people who are unaware they are transporting them. Diaz objected in a pretrial motion under Federal Rule of Evidence 704(b), which provides that “[i]n a criminal case, an expert witness must not state an opinion about whether the defendant did or did not have a mental state or condition that constitutes an element of the crime charged or of a defense.”
The court ruled that Flood couldn’t testify in absolute terms about whether all couriers knowingly transport drugs, but could testify that most couriers know they are transporting drugs. At trial, Flood testified that most couriers know that they are transporting drugs. The jury found Diaz guilty, and Diaz appealed, challenging Flood’s testimony under Rule 704(b). The appeals court held that because Flood didn’t explicitly opine that Diaz knowingly transported methamphetamine, his testimony did not violate Rule 704(b).
The U.S. Supreme Court held that expert testimony that most people in a group have a particular mental state isn’t an opinion about the defendant and doesn’t violate Rule 704(b). It affirmed the ruling of the lower court.
Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel Alito Jr., Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Jackson also filed a concurring opinion. Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined.
In the dissenting opinion, Gorsuch wrote, “Prosecutors can now put an expert on the stand — someone who apparently has the convenient ability to read minds — and let him hold forth on what ‘most’ people like the defendant think when they commit a legally proscribed act.”
Congress generally taxes the income of American business entities in one of two ways. Some entities, such as S corporations and partnerships, are taxed on a pass-through basis, where the entity itself doesn’t pay taxes. Instead, the entity’s income is attributed to the shareholders or partners, who then pay taxes on that income even if the entity hasn’t distributed any money or property to them.
Other business entities do pay taxes directly on their income. Those entities’ shareholders ordinarily aren’t taxed on that income but are taxed when the entity distributes a dividend or when the shareholder sells shares.
Congress treats American-controlled foreign corporations as pass-through entities. Subpart F of the Internal Revenue Code attributes income of those business entities to American shareholders and taxes those shareholders on that income. But Subpart F applies only to a small portion of the foreign corporation’s income, mostly passive income. In 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. As relevant here, Congress imposed a one-time, backward-looking, pass-through tax on some American shareholders of American-controlled foreign corporations to address the trillions of dollars of undistributed income that had been accumulated by those foreign corporations over the years. Known as the Mandatory Repatriation Tax, the tax imposed a rate from 8 to 15.5% on the pro rata shares of American shareholders.
In this case, Charles Moore and Kathleen Moore invested in the American-controlled foreign corporation KisanKraft. From 2006 to 2017, KisanKraft generated a great deal of income but didn’t distribute that income to its American shareholders. At the end of the 2017 tax year, application of the new MRT resulted in a tax bill of $14,729 on the Moores’ pro rata share of KisanKraft’s accumulated income from 2006 to 2017. The Moores paid the tax and then sued for a refund, claiming, among other things, that the MRT violated the direct tax clause of the Constitution because, in their view, the MRT was an unapportioned direct tax on their shares of KisanKraft stock.
The district court dismissed the suit, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the MRT doesn’t exceed Congress’s constitutional authority.
The high court affirmed the lower court’s decision.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Jackson filed a concurring opinion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Justice Samuel Alito Jr. joined. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined.
The dissenting justices wrote they thought the Moores are right that under the 16th Amendment, incomes include only income realized by the taxpayer. The justices noted the amendment requires a distinction between “income” and the “source” from which that income is derived. ”And, the only way to draw such a distinction is with a realization requirement,” Thomas wrote.
In 2019, Sylvia Gonzalez ran for a seat on the city council of Castle Hills, a small town in southern Texas. While she was on the campaign trail, Gonzalez heard multiple complaints about City Manager Ryan Rapelye. As city manager, Rapelye was responsible for, among other things, enforcing the city’s laws and managing its budget.
Gonzalez was elected in May 2019. Her first act in office was to help gather signatures for a petition seeking Rapelye’s removal. Eventually, more than 300 residents signed the petition. The petition was introduced at the next city council meeting, where discussions grew heated after various residents rose to Rapelye’s defense and spoke against Gonzalez.
The mayor asked Gonzalez for the petition. Gonzalez said the mayor had it, which he denied. He then asked Gonzalez to check her binder, where she found the petition. Gonzalez claims that she “did not intentionally put the petition in her binder,” and that she was surprised to find it there.
The mayor brought this incident to the city police’s attention, and an investigation began.
Within a month, a private attorney tasked with leading the investigation concluded that Gonzalez had likely violated a Texas anti-tampering statute that, among other things, prohibits a person from intentionally removing a governmental record.
On the private attorney’s request, a local magistrate granted a warrant for Gonzalez’s arrest. When she heard the news, Gonzalez turned herself in and spent an evening in jail. The district attorney ultimately dismissed the charges. Gonzalez claimed this convinced her to step away from political life.
Gonzalez brought suit in federal district court against the mayor along with the police chief and the private attorney in their individual capacities.
Her complaint alleged that she was arrested in retaliation for her role in organizing the petition for Rapelye’s removal and that the defendants violated her First Amendment rights.
To bolster her claim, Gonzalez alleged that she had reviewed the past decade’s misdemeanor and felony data for the county and that her review had found that the Texas anti-tampering statute had never been used in the county “to criminally charge someone for trying to steal a nonbinding or expressive document.”
Gonzalez’s search turned up 215 felony indictments, and she characterized the typical indictment as involving “accusations of either using or making fake government identification documents.” Other felony indictments included ones for fake checks, hiding murder evidence or cheating on government exams.
Every misdemeanor case, according to Gonzalez, involved “fake social security numbers, driver’s licenses, [or] green cards.” Gonzalez pointed to this research as evidence that the defendants had engaged in a political vendetta by bringing a “sham charge” against her.
The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint. They argued that the presence of probable cause defeated Gonzalez’s retaliatory-arrest claims against them. The district court denied the defendants’ motion. Although Gonzalez conceded that probable cause supported her arrest, the court allowed her claim to advance after finding that it fell within an exception to the no-probable-cause rule that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in 2019 in Nieves v. Bartlett.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision on appeal. The appeals court thought that a plaintiff ’s claim could fall within the Nieves exception only if the plaintiff proffered comparative evidence of “otherwise similarly situated individuals who engaged in the same criminal conduct but were not arrested.” Gonzalez’s claim failed because she didn’t provide such evidence.
Because the Supreme Court agreed with Gonzalez’s first argument that the 5th Circuit took an overly cramped view of Nieves, it noted it didn’t need to reach her second. It vacated the judgment and remanded the case for the lower courts to assess whether Gonzalez’s evidence suffices to satisfy the Nieves exception.
Justice Samuel Alito Jr. concurred with the per curiam opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh also filed a concurring opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson with whom Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined, also concurred.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. ”I am not persuaded that an abuse-of-process claim is analogous to Gonzalez’s retaliatory-arrest claim,” he wrote. He went on to assert the court shouldn’t craft rules as a matter of policy and said he would “adhere to the only rule grounded in history: Probable cause defeats a retaliatory-arrest claim.”