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Stewart v. District Attorney for the Eighteenth Circuit Court District for the State of Mississippi8/23/2005
rities who was advised of this fact. According to Riley, upon learning of this discrepancy, he checked the files on Gary Stewart which were being maintained in the district attorney's office, yet he did not discover that the Gary Stewart that they were looking for was white and not black.
. It is beyond my comprehension how the majority can conclude on these facts that the failure on the part of the district attorney's office to discover the picture in its file may indicate only a slight degree of negligence and that the actions of the district attorney's office were objectively reasonable. It seems quite obvious to me that the district attorney's office was not only guilty of negligence but was guilty of gross negligence and a reckless indifference to Stewart's right not to be deprived of his liberty without proper due process.
. It is also significant that even though the district attorney's office was placed on notice immediately upon Stewart's arrest that it may have nabbed the wrong man, it was also content to allow the charges to linger against Stewart for a least five days after the district attorney's office had finally located in its office the picture of the white male. Its explanation was that since Stewart had a hearing coming up five days later, it just decided to wait until then. The majority glosses over this fact as unimportant in the overall scheme of things. I guess in the view of the majority it was okay to force Stewart to make another trip from New Orleans to Laurel, Mississippi to get done what the district attorney's office could have and should have done without any further action on Stewart's part.
. Illegal detention by way of false arrest and imprisonment is a tort of constitutional dimensions if the circumstances indicate that the failure to act on exculpatory information is more than simple negligence. Sanchez v. Swyden, 139 F. 3d 464, 469 (5th Cir. 1998).
. The majority suggests that, at best, there was only slight negligence on the part of the district attorney's office because the picture was obtained during a previous administration, and a new administration was in place when Stewart was arrested. Such explanation is not enough. When Stewart was first arrested in Louisiana on February 24, 2000, he protested that he was not the one who had committed the offenses. Similarly, when he was transported from Louisiana to Laurel Mississippi, he protested that he was not the one who had committed the charged crimes. In fact, Stewart stated that he had never been to Mississippi.
. As already mentioned, the very night that Stewart was arrested the chief investigator for the district attorney's office was told that the birth date of the arrested Stewart did not match the birth date of the Stewart who was the subject of the indictment. This discrepancy was certainly enough to prompt a thorough investigation by the district attorney's office and the sheriff's office to determine if they had the right man. That did not happen until a month later and not until after Stewart had bonded out of jail and presented proof via his employment records that he was at work in New Orleans when the checks were written in Laurel, Mississippi.
. Again, the majority apparently dismisses as insignificant the fact that the birth date of the arrested Stewart and the birth date of the Stewart in the indictment were different. In apparently concluding that the discrepancy regarding the birth dates was insignificant, the majority favorably quotes the chief investigator for the district attorney's office: "But that's not uncommon for us. I can go through the jail roster and pick up the same guy in there with dozens of dates of birth." While t
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