Background
Corey Kendig was acquitted by a jury of criminal homicide and other charges following a shooting death. Kendig subsequently sued Trooper Nicholas Stolar for false arrest and imprisonment, claiming the trooper omitted exculpatory self-defense facts from the affidavit used to secure an arrest warrant. The District Court granted summary judgment to Stolar based on qualified immunity.
The court’s reasoning
The Third Circuit clarified that while officers are not required to investigate affirmative defenses, they cannot ignore known facts that conclusively establish a defense like self-defense which negates the requisite mental state of the charged crime. However, the court found that the law was not clearly established at the time of the incident, as there was no controlling precedent in the Third Circuit or a robust consensus among sister circuits requiring such disclosure in affidavits.
An officer is not required to evaluate the merits of every potential affirmative defense before filing charges or making an arrest. But when the officer gathers information bearing on the validity of the affirmative defense of self-defense, which he conclusively knows negates the requisite mental state of the charged offense or excuses the offending conduct, he must provide that information to the magistrate so that the probable cause determination remains with the magistrate judge, not the officer.
Opinion at page 21
What it means going forward
Police officers in the Third Circuit are now on notice that they must include known facts supporting self-defense in probable cause affidocuments when those facts clearly negate the mental state of the charged offense, though they remain shielded from liability for past conduct under qualified immunity.