Rick Aleman v. Village of Hanover Park

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-3523
RICK ALEMAN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
VILLAGE OF HANOVER PARK, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 07 C 5049—Elaine E. Bucklo, Judge.
ARGUED SEPTEMBER 26, 2011—DECIDED NOVEMBER 21, 2011
Before CUDAHY, POSNER, and WOOD, Circuit Judges.
POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff in this suit under
42 U.S.C. § 1983 appeals from the grant of summary
judgment in favor of the defendants—two Illinois state
police officers (Gerard Fallon and Joseph Micci), three
police officers of the Village of Hanover Park, Illinois
(Todd Carlson, Carol Lussky, and Eric Villanueva), and the
Village itself. The suit, which seeks damages, charges
the individual defendants with having twice falsely

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2 No. 10-3523
arrested the plaintiff, Rick Aleman, in violation of the
Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable
seizures, and having questioned him in violation of the
Miranda rule, eliciting spurious evidence that led to his
second arrest and an indictment for murder. There are
also supplemental claims under Illinois law, but only
one—malicious prosecution—remains in the case; the
district judge dismissed the others as barred by the ap-
plicable statute of limitations, and Aleman doesn’t chal-
lenge those dismissals.
We also won’t have to discuss the Village’s liability. The
Village was not implicated in the alleged misbehavior of
its officers and cannot in a section 1983 suit be held
liable just by virtue of having been the officers’ employer.
Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 691
(1978). So without further ado we affirm the district
court’s grant of summary judgment in its favor.
We shall state the facts as favorably to the plaintiff as
the record permits, as we are required to do when
deciding an appeal from a grant of summary judgment
in favor of the defendants. We don’t vouch for the truth
of the facts that the plaintiff alleges, though there
doesn’t seem to be much doubt that his main factual
allegations are true.
Aleman provided day care in his home. His day-care
service was only five months old when the events out of
which this case arises took place. But there is no conten-
tion that he lacked the requisite competence. He had
five children of his own, ranging in age from 3 to 15; and
several of the younger ones were in his day care along

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No. 10-3523 3
with three other children, one of whom was an 11-month-
old named Joshua Schrik. We’ll see that Aleman knew
how to perform CPR on infants.
On the morning of September 9, 2005, Joshua’s mother,
Danielle Schrik, dropped off Joshua at Aleman’s home
for his third day of day care. During the first two days
Joshua had been lethargic and feverish. On September 9
he was much worse. Shortly after arriving he began
gasping for air, then collapsed; the alarmed Aleman
picked him up and, because the infant was showing no
signs of life, shook him gently in an effort to elicit a
response. There was none. After performing CPR with no
effect except to bring fluids out of Joshua’s nose and
mouth, Aleman called 911. An ambulance arrived and
took the child to a hospital.
Police officers arrived at Aleman’s home about when
the ambulance did and questioned him. One of them,
Officer Lussky (a defendant), asked him and his wife
to come down to the police station. They did so.
Aleman was placed in an interrogation room. Forty-five
minutes later, no interrogation having taken place, he
asked Lussky whether he could leave and come back in
an hour. She said no; he was under arrest—and the
arrest activated his Miranda rights. Oregon v. Mathiason,
429 U.S. 492, 494-95 (1977) (per curiam).
More than five hours later, Officers Micci and Villanueva
(two other defendants) entered the interrogation room
in which Aleman was being detained and Micci
told him he’d talked to several people about what had
happened to Joshua and that Aleman had “the most

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4 No. 10-3523
information.” Aleman said he wanted to call his lawyer.
Micci responded by beginning to fill out a waiver of
Miranda rights for Aleman to sign, and minutes later
said to him “before I talk to you I would like this [the
waiver] signed” but that Aleman could call his lawyer
first. Aleman called and during the phone conversation
Villanueva picked up the phone and spoke to the
lawyer, who told him that Aleman was invoking his right
to remain silent. That did not count as an invocation
of Aleman’s Miranda rights, however; the Supreme
Court has held that they can be invoked only by the
person being questioned. Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412,
433 n. 4 (1986).
After the phone call ended, Micci asked Aleman, “How
we doing?” and Aleman replied, “Not good. I called him
and he told me not to do this right now.” Aleman added
that he was tired and wanted to go home, but Micci
responded: “If I don’t get to talk to you, you’re not going
home.” He also told him that if he talked to the two
officers he could “help [him]self out” and “clear this up.”
Aleman asked whether he could speak to his lawyer
again and the officers said he could. In this call Aleman
told the lawyer “I wish you were here” and “I need your
help . . . . I can’t help myself in here.” Aleman was permit-
ted to make additional calls, and reached his mother and
a friend after failing to reach his wife, but eventually
the officers said: “Hang up the phone, Rick, and have a
seat. And I ask that you don’t use the phone until we
decide what we’re gonna do.” Aleman responded:
“I talked to my lawyer, you know, and I tried to talk him

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No. 10-3523 5
into doing it, and he told me to go ahead . . . . I really
don’t have a problem doing it.” (If that’s indeed what
the lawyer said—his end of the conversation was not
recorded—he violated Justice Jackson’s dictum that “any
lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no
uncertain terms to make no statement to police under
any circumstances.” Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 59 (1949)
(separate opinion).) Micci followed up by again asking
Aleman to sign the waiver. He did so and the
officers then questioned him for four hours.
During the interrogation Micci repeatedly told Aleman
that he’d talked to three doctors and all had told him
that Joshua had been shaken in such a way that he
would have become unresponsive (unconscious) immedi-
ately, meaning that Aleman’s shaking must have caused
Joshua’s injury, since Joshua was sluggish but conscious
when he arrived at Aleman’s home that morning. This
account of what the doctors had said was a lie, but it
elicited from Aleman the statement that “I know in my
heart that if the only way to cause [the injuries] is to
shake that baby, then, when I shook that baby, I hurt
that baby . . . . I admit it. I did shake the baby too hard.”
Yet intermittently throughout the protracted interroga-
tion he continued to deny, and express disbelief, that
he could have caused the injury.
Partly on the basis of his supposed “confession,” Aleman
was charged with aggravated battery of a child. Officer
Carlson (another defendant, of whom more shortly)
prepared the charge, Villanueva signed the criminal
complaint, and at the subsequent bond hearing the prose-

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6 No. 10-3523
cutors, repeating what the officers had told them, told
the judge that Aleman had confessed to violently
shaking Joshua and causing his injuries.
Joshua died on September 13. The charge against
Aleman was upped to first-degree murder and he was
rearrested on September 15 and later indicted. He made
bail, as he had done after his original arrest. Oddly, we’ve
been unable to determine with certainty how long he
spent in jail. At his deposition he said a month; at
oral argument his lawyer said eight or nine days. But
the length of time that Aleman was in jail, while
relevant to the amount of damages that he might be able
to obtain if he wins this case, is irrelevant to this appeal.
The case against him quickly disintegrated. A pros-
ecutor viewing the videotape of the interrogation by
Micci and Villanueva decided that it was “more exculpa-
tory than inculpatory,” and that it also raised issues
under Miranda. The doctors who had examined Joshua,
and diagnosed him with subdural hematoma (bleeding
in the brain, usually the result of a head injury), eventually
decided that the infant’s sluggish and feverish condi-
tion for several days before September 9 could have been
caused by a violent shaking or by a blow to the head,
and that Joshua’s collapse on September 9 could have
been the delayed effect of this earlier trauma rather than
of anything Aleman had done—in fact Aleman’s mild
shaking of Joshua was the proper initiation of CPR. U.S.
National Library of Medicine, Medline Plus, “CPR - infant,”
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000011.htm
(visited November 16, 2011), summarizing M.F. Hazinski,
R. Samson & S. Schexnayder, “2010 Handbook of Emer-

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No. 10-3523 7
gency Cardiovascular Care for Healthcare Providers”
(American Heart Association 2010).
This explanation was accepted by an experienced
investigator employed by the Illinois Department of
Children and Family Services, Michael Booker, who
had discovered that Joshua’s mother was a violent
person with a criminal record. She was known to have
beaten and violently shaken Joshua and had been heard
to make threats to kill him. Although the medical profes-
sion once thought that there is no interim between
trauma and collapse in shaken-baby syndrome, the med-
ical profession now believes (and apparently believed in
2005—Booker certainly believed this) that there can be
an interim in which the child would be conscious, but
probably lethargic or fussy or feverish or have difficulty
sleeping or eating. See Emily Bazelon, “Shaken-Baby
Syndrome Faces New Questions in Court,” New York
Times Magazine, Feb. 6, 2011, p. MM30; State v. Edmunds,
746 N.W.2d 590, 596 (Wis. App. 2008); Kristy B. Arbogast,
Susan S. Margulies & Cindy W. Christian, “Initial Neuro-
logic Presentation in Young Children Sustaining Inflicted
and Unintentional Fatal Head Injuries,” 116 Pediatrics
180 (2005). Thus one of the doctors who treated Joshua
after his collapse explained that when he told the police
that Joshua would not have been alert and functioning
after the injury, he meant that Joshua would not have
been behaving like a normal 11-month-old, not that
he would have been unconscious.
Aleman was never tried. On November 13, 2006—more
than a year after his arrests and Joshua’s death—the

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8 No. 10-3523
charges against him were dismissed. Danielle Schrik,
the mother, was never charged.
Carlson, who played the central role in screwing up
the investigation (quite possibly deliberately, as we’re
about to see), had been dispatched to the hospital im-
mediately after Joshua was taken there on September 9,
to interview Joshua’s family and the doctors who
were caring for him. He asked Danielle whether she
had ever struck Joshua and she said no, although she
acknowledged that he’d had a fever in the days leading
up to his collapse. This should have been a warning that
his collapse on September 9 might have been caused
by a blow or a shaking several days earlier that had first
manifested itself in his fever and lethargy, as Booker
recognized when he learned of the fever. Nevertheless
Carlson decided he would investigate Danielle Schrik
no further. From his subsequent conduct in attempting
to protect her from questioning by Booker and
in holding her hand and sobbing with her at Joshua’s
funeral, a reasonable jury might infer that he was
sexually attracted to her and for that reason wanted to
keep the investigation focused on Aleman.
When Booker, the expert on child abuse, learned of
Carlson’s decision to terminate the investigation of
Danielle, he was disturbed and on September 13, the day
of Joshua’s death, interviewed Danielle in Carlson’s
presence. She acknowledged some of her criminal back-
ground, which included crimes of violence, but not all of
it. According to statements by her mother and her boy-
friend, Danielle had broken her mother’s jaw and threat-
ened to kill her and Joshua; she had had physical fights

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No. 10-3523 9
with Joshua’s father and been arrested and charged
with battery during one of those fights; and her mother
had seen her shake Joshua frequently and the
mother’s boyfriend had had to protect the child from
Danielle.
Carlson told Danielle not to speak to Booker or any
other investigator, and when Booker repeatedly tried to
call her after the initial interview there was never a re-
sponse.
At Joshua’s autopsy on September 14, which both
Booker and Carlson attended, the pathologist opined,
according to Booker’s notes, that it was “highly unlikely”
that Joshua’s injuries had been caused by Aleman, since
the symptoms Joshua had displayed in the days before
his collapse were consistent with his already having a
subdural hematoma. But later that day Carlson returned
to the pathologist’s office alone and told her that Joshua
had been “behaving normally” when he arrived at
Aleman’s house on the ninth and indeed was “up and
running around.” These lies caused her to change her
opinion and she told the prosecutor that the injury to
Joshua’s head had occurred while he was in Aleman’s
care. On the basis of this misinformation the prosecutor
approved charging Aleman with murder, and Carlson
signed the criminal complaint and arrested him. After
eventually learning the truth, the pathologist reinstated
her original opinion of the cause of Joshua’s hematoma
and subsequent death.
The district judge was correct to rule that the arrest
of Aleman on the morning of September 9 when he

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10 No. 10-3523
was told he couldn’t leave the police station was sup-
ported by probable cause. It was natural for the police
to suspect him, as he was the last person to have had
custody of Joshua and admitted having shaken him. By
the time he was arrested the hospital had informed
the police that they’d diagnosed Joshua’s hematoma
and believed him to be a victim of shaken-baby syn-
drome. Police interviewed the doctors, who told
them, misleadingly (as they all later admitted), that the
injury had been freshly caused—the doctor who used
the term “fresh” later explained that “fresh” meant
“within about a week,” but the police quite naturally
interpreted it to mean “today.” And immediately after
Joshua was taken away in the ambulance, Aleman had
been heard to say “at least twice that he did not want to
go to jail for the rest of his life and did not want to be
unable to see his children.” The fact that Carlson’s in-
terview of Joshua’s mother had been perfunctory and
that he may already have been trying to protect her for
reasons of “lust” (as Aleman’s brief puts it) is irrelevant;
the test for probable cause abstracts from the state of
mind of the arresting officer. Whren v. United States, 517
U.S. 806, 812-13 (1996).
The second arrest, the arrest for murder, is a different
matter. Had Carlson not lied to the pathologist and
obstructed Booker’s efforts to investigate Danielle, the
prosecutor would have had no basis for charging
Aleman with murder or any other crime, and so Aleman
would not have been rearrested. For without Carl-
son’s obstruction of justice the pathologist’s evaluation
would have tended to exonerate Aleman, and Booker’s
investigation of Danielle would have identified her as

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No. 10-3523 11
far more likely to have been Joshua’s killer than Aleman.
And without improper tactics by the police at Aleman’s
interrogation (discussed next), there would have been
no “confession” to provide evidence of his guilt. In
sum, the police lacked probable cause to arrest Aleman
the second time, and so that arrest violated the Fourth
Amendment. Sroga v. Weiglen, 649 F.3d 604 (7th Cir. 2011).
So clear is the absence of probable cause that Carlson
cannot take shelter in the doctrine of qualified immunity,
which provides a defense if a reasonable officer could
have mistakenly believed that probable cause existed.
Wollin v. Gondert, 192 F.3d 616, 621 (7th Cir. 1999). A
reasonable officer knowing what Carlson knew would
not have thought that Aleman was probably Joshua’s
killer.
Whether the interrogation of Aleman violated Miranda
is a separate question. The district judge ruled that it
did not because the officers might reasonably have be-
lieved that Aleman had waived his Miranda rights.
If and when Aleman invoked his right to counsel, Micci
and Villanueva were required to stop questioning him.
“[W]hen an accused has invoked his right to have
counsel present during custodial interrogation, a valid
waiver of that right cannot be established by showing
only that he responded to further police-initiated custodial
interrogation even if he has been advised of his rights. We
further hold that an accused . . ., having expressed his
desire to deal with the police only through counsel, is not
subject to further interrogation by the authorities until
counsel has been made available to him, unless the
accused himself initiates further communication, ex-

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12 No. 10-3523
changes, or conversations with the police.” Edwards v.
Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484-85 (1981) (emphasis added;
footnote omitted); see also Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S.
436, 474 (1966); Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 458-
59 (1994).
Aleman indicated a desire for the assistance of counsel
twice, and only after responding to further police-
initiated custodial interrogation did he agree to be ques-
tioned. He said first “I gotta call my guy” (his lawyer)
and after speaking to him reported that the lawyer had
told him not to speak to the police—yet Micci continued
to urge him to sign a Miranda waiver. Aleman invoked
his right to counsel the second time when he asked to
call his lawyer again. He might have done so a third time,
but was prevented when Micci or Villanueva told him
to hang up and added, “I ask that you don’t use the
phone again until we decide what we’re gonna do.”
When a suspect invokes his right to counsel, the police
may not recommence questioning unless the suspect’s
lawyer is present or the suspect initiates the conversa-
tion himself. Minnick v. Mississippi, 498 U.S. 146, 151-52
(1990).
Instead of shutting up after Aleman sought his lawyer’s
aid, the officers, exploiting his distraught state, badgered
him to waive his Miranda rights, as in Minnick v. Missis-
sippi, supra, 498 U.S. at 148-52, Smith v. Illinois, 469 U.S. 91,
92-93, 98-99 (1984) (per curiam), and United States v. Lee,
413 F.3d 622, 624, 627 (7th Cir. 2005). In Minnick the
police left off questioning the suspect after he asked to
speak to his lawyer, and allowed him to consult with the
lawyer. But then a police officer came by and questioned

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No. 10-3523 13
him outside the lawyer’s presence, and the Supreme
Court ruled that this was a violation of Miranda and
Edwards because it was not true that “the protection
[conferred by] Edwards terminates once counsel has
consulted with the suspect. In context, the requirement
that counsel be ‘made available’ to the accused refers to
more than an opportunity to consult with an attorney
outside the interrogation room.” 498 U.S. at 151-52.
The defendants argue that Aleman’s invocation of his
right to counsel was ambiguous and therefore ineffectual,
as in Davis v. United States, supra, 512 U.S. at 459. But
invocation just requires a “statement that can reasonably
be construed to be an expression of a desire for the assis-
tance of an attorney,” id., and we have held that there
was no ambiguity when a suspect said, “I think I should
call my lawyer.” United States v. Lee, supra, 413 F.3d at
626; see also Lord v. Duckworth, 29 F.3d 1216, 1219-21 (7th
Cir. 1994). It’s true that “am I going to be able to get an
attorney?” was held ambiguous and hence ineffectual
in United States v. Shabaz, 579 F.3d 815, 819 (7th Cir. 2009)
(emphasis in original), but this case is closer to Lee than
to Shabaz. Anyway the defendants’ argument comes too
late; they forfeited it by failing to make it in the
district court.
The Miranda rule is intended to backstop the right
conferred by the Fifth Amendment not to be compelled
to incriminate oneself, by excluding from the de-
fendant’s trial the confession that the violation enabled
the police to elicit when upon arresting they questioned
him. Aleman was never tried. But the statement he
made to the officers who questioned him was used against

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14 No. 10-3523
him in a criminal proceeding—it was an indispensable
ground of his indictment for murder, and thus made
the violation of Miranda actionable in a suit under sec-
tion 1983. Sornberger v. City of Knoxville, 434 F.3d 1006, 1026-
27 (7th Cir. 2006); see also Stoot v. City of Everett, 582
F.3d 910, 925 (9th Cir. 2009); Higazy v. Templeton, 505 F.3d
161, 173 (2d Cir. 2007).
There is more that was wrong with the interroga-
tion than a violation of Miranda. Miranda has been said
to distract judges from the propriety of the interrogation
that follows a waiver of Miranda rights. See William J.
Stuntz, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice 235 (2011).
This case is an illustration. Micci induced Aleman’s
“confession” by lying to him about the medical reports.
The lies convinced Aleman that he must have been the
cause of Joshua’s shaken-baby syndrome because, ac-
cording to Micci, the doctors had excluded any other
possibility. (They had not.) The key statement in
Aleman’s “confession” was that “if the only way to cause
[the injuries] is to shake that baby, then, when I shook
that baby, I hurt that baby.” The crucial word is “if.” By
lying about the medical reports, Micci changed “if”
to “because” and thereby forced on Aleman a
premise that led inexorably to the conclusion that
he must have been responsible for Joshua’s death; the
lie if believed foreclosed any other conclusion.
Courts have been reluctant to deem trickery by the
police a basis for excluding a confession on the ground
that the tricks made the confession coerced and thus
involuntary. See Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 739 (1969);

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No. 10-3523 15
Holland v. McGinnis, 963 F.2d 1044, 1050-52 (7th Cir. 1992);
United States v. Velasquez, 885 F.2d 1076, 1088-89 (3d Cir.
1989); State v. Kelekolio, 849 P.2d 58, 71-74 (Haw. 1993). In
United States v. Rutledge, 900 F.2d 1127, 1130-31 (7th
Cir. 1990), a police officer’s statement to a suspect could
be interpreted as promising “a net benefit from spilling
the beans,” and we said that “if this was the promise, it
is unlikely that the officer intended to keep it; and if he
did not, then the statement was fraudulent. But it was
the sort of minor fraud that the cases allow. Far from
making the police a fiduciary of the suspect, the law
permits the police to pressure and cajole, conceal material
facts, and actively mislead—all up to limits not exceeded
here” (emphasis in original). The confession must be
excluded only “if the government feeds the defendant
false information that seriously distorts his choice, [for
example] by promising him that if he confesses he will
be set free”—in other words, only if “the false state-
ment destroyed the information that he required for
a rational choice.” Id. at 1129-30.
In this case a false statement did destroy the
information required for a rational choice. Not being a
medical expert, Aleman could not contradict what was
represented to him as settled medical opinion. He had
shaken Joshua, albeit gently; but if medical opinion
excluded any other possible cause of the child’s death,
then, gentle as the shaking was, and innocently in-
tended, it must have been the cause of death. Aleman
had no rational basis, given his ignorance of medical
science, to deny that he had to have been the cause.

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16 No. 10-3523
The question of coercion is separate from that of relia-
bility. A coerced confession is inadmissible (and this
apart from Miranda) even if amply and convincingly
corroborated. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 540-41
(1961); Johnson v. Trigg, 28 F.3d 639, 641 (7th Cir. 1994);
Parker v. Allen, 565 F.3d 1258, 1280 (11th Cir. 2009). But
a trick that is as likely to induce a false as a true
confession renders a confession inadmissible because of
its unreliability even if its voluntariness is conceded. See,
e.g., Johnson v. Trigg, supra, 28 F.3d at 641. If a question
has only two answers—A and B—and you tell the re-
spondent that the answer is not A, and he has no basis
for doubting you, then he is compelled by logic to “con-
fess” that the answer is B. That was the vise the police
placed Aleman in. They told him the only possible
cause of Joshua’s injuries was that he’d been shaken
right before he collapsed; not being an expert in shaken-
baby syndrome, Aleman could not deny the officers’
false representation of medical opinion. And since he
was the only person to have shaken Joshua immediately
before Joshua’s collapse, it was a logical necessity that
he had been responsible for the child’s death. Q.E.D. A
confession so induced is worthless as evidence, and as
a premise for an arrest. Crowe v. County of San Diego, 608
F.3d 406, 433 (9th Cir. 2010); Wilkins v. DeReyes, 528 F.3d
790, 800-01 (10th Cir. 2008).
We turn finally to the charge of malicious prosecution,
governed by Illinois law as expounded in such cases as
Swick v. Liautaud, 662 N.E.2d 1238, 1242 (Ill. 1996); Porter v.
City of Chicago, 912 N.E.2d 1262, 1265 (Ill. App. 2009),

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No. 10-3523 17
and Gonzalez v. City of Elgin, 578 F.3d 526, 541-42 (7th
Cir. 2009).
Villanueva cannot be said to have lacked probable
cause in preparing the charge of aggravated battery
merely because he based the charge in part on the worth-
less “confession” that he and Micci (the latter the lead
interrogator) had extracted from Aleman. There was
sufficient other evidence at this early point in the inves-
tigation to charge aggravated battery. And Illinois
law requires to show malicious prosecution proof not
only of lack of probable cause but also of “malice,” which
means in this context that the officer who initi-
ated the prosecution had “any motive other than that of
bringing a guilty party to justice.” Carbaugh v. Peat, 189
N.E.2d 14, 19 (Ill. App. 1963); see also Rodgers v. Peoples
Gas, Light & Coke Co., 733 N.E.2d 835, 842 (Ill. App.
2000); Mack v. First Security Bank, 511 N.E.2d 714, 717
(Ill. App. 1987); Robinson v. Econ-O-Corporation, Inc., 379
N.E.2d 923, 925 (Ill. App. 1978). Rodgers and Mack permit
an inference of malice to be drawn from an absence
of probable cause. But the events that demolished
probable cause to charge Aleman—Booker’s questioning
of Danielle Schrik and the pathologist’s statement that
it was highly unlikely that Joshua’s hematoma had
been caused by something that happened on September 9
rather than earlier—took place after Villanueva sub-
mitted the charge of battery.
Only Carlson is charged with malicious prosecution
of the murder charge, for which probable cause had
evaporated. A reasonable jury could find that Carlson

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18 No. 10-3523
by this point thought Joshua’s mother probably the mur-
derer and was trying to protect her by throwing the
mantle of guilt on Aleman, or at least that he wanted to
spare her the anxiety of being a suspect and, not inciden-
tally, get in her good graces by doing so, by terminating
the investigation of her and pinning the murder on
Aleman. (If you want to exonerate one suspect, it helps
to have another.) Such motives could not be thought
proper.
We cannot find any evidence of misconduct on the
part of Officer Fallon (another defendant), who partici-
pated in the arrest of Aleman for murder pursuant to
the warrant based on Carlson’s representations; nothing
in the warrant would have alerted Fallon to its invalid-
ity. Nor can we find evidence of misconduct by Lussky;
the first arrest—the only act Aleman challenges in which
she participated—was supported by probable cause.
In summary, we affirm the dismissal of all claims
against Lussky, Fallon, and the Village; the first false-
arrest claim; and the malicious prosecution claim
against Villanueva. But we reverse the dismissal of the
claim of unlawful interrogation against Micci and
Villanueva, of the second false-arrest claim against
Carlson, and of the claim against Carlson of malicious
prosecution for murder, and we remand the case for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART,
and REMANDED.
11-21-11

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