What’s the Heck Doctrine in a Police Misconduct Claim?

On May 5, 2017, Francisco Duarte was in a public place in downtown Stockton, California.

At some point, he saw Stockton Police Officers Michael Gandy and Kevin Jaye Hachler detaining another person and walked over to get a better view of what was going on.  Gandy and Hachler claimed they told Mr. Duarte to stand back and move away, but Duarte claims he never heard such orders.  Before he knew it, Officers Gandy and Hachler forcefully took Duarte to the ground and later arrested him for resisting arrest.

During the arrest, officers claimed they told Duarte to put his hands behind his back, but Duarte claimed he could not do so because the weight of the two officers pinned his hands under him.

While Duarte was pinned to the ground, Officer Hachler then struck Duarte in the leg, breaking a bone in his leg while yelling “Stop resisting!  Stop resisting!”  Duarte claimed that Hachler hit him at least six time with the baton in the same spot on his leg.

Duarte was then taken to jail and later charged with willfully resisting, obstructing and delaying a police officer in violation of Penal Code § 148(a)(1).

About two months after his arrest, Duarte entered a “nolo contendere” or no contest plea and the judge then held the plea in abeyance, meaning he did not enter the conviction against Duarte.  The judge did not find him guilty of the charge to which he pleaded.

Six months later, after Duarte performed some community service and obeyed all laws for that time, the judge dismissed the case upon the request of the district attorney in the interest of justice (Penal Code § 1385).  This is a common form of diversion in California.

About two weeks later, Duarte filed a federal civil rights lawsuit under 28 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting claims of excessive force and false arrest against Officers Gandy and Hachler, the Stockton Chief of Police and a number of other Stockton Police Officers.

The United States District Court granted summary judgment in defendants’ favor and dismissed Duarte’s claims against the Stockton Police Department and the false arrest claims against the individual officers.  It found that the Stockton Police Department was not an individual and therefore a 1983 claim could not be made against it and dismissed the case against the individual officers under Heck v. Humphrey (1994) 512 U.S. 477.

Under Heck, a § 1983 claim must be dismissed if it would “necessarily require the plaintiff to prove the unlawfulness of his conviction.” Id., at 486.

Duarte then appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.  Duarte argued that the Heck doctrine did not apply to his § 1983 claim because he was never convicted, so Heck did not bar his claim.

Furthermore, Duarte argued that his claim against the Stockton Police Department was not barred either because longstanding precedent established that police departments are “persons” amenable to suit under § 1983.  See Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs. (1978) 436 U.S. 658, 701; Karim-Panahi v. L.A. Police Dep’t (9th Cir., 1988) 839 F. 2d 621, 624, n. 2.

The Ninth Circuit agreed with Duarte and reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded the case for further proceedings. 

The Ninth Circuit explained that Heck held that to recover damages for an allegedly unconstitutional conviction of imprisonment, plaintiff must prove that the conviction “had been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination or called into question by a federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.”

Thus, the Heck doctrine requires an actual conviction or judgment, not its functional equivalent and here, Duarte was not convicted because he never was found or proven guilty.  The charges were then dismissed, the opposite of a conviction.  Accordingly, Duarte’s claim should never have been dismissed under Heck.

We present this short summary because clients often seem skeptical when we tell them that they can still sue the police officer(s) if the underlying criminal case is handled through diversion and ultimately dismissed with no conviction ever being entered.

For more information about civil claims against the police, please click on the following articles: