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Ark. Cop Liable for Right Man, Wrong State Arrest?

The reasonable belief of an Arkansas police officer that he was making an arrest in Arkansas may not be enough to shield him from a civil-rights suit if he was physically in Oklahoma at the time, a federal judge has ruled.

The Benton County, Ark, sheriff's deputy is the remaining defendant in the case filed by the man he arrested at what he thought was an Arkansas address. He found Steve Engleman hiding in the home -– which is across the state line in Colcord, Okla.

“[I]f the arrest actually occurred in Oklahoma the plaintiff has asserted a violation of a constitutional right,” U.S. District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren concluded in allowing Engleman to proceed to trial on his Fourth Amendment claim.

Another judge had recommended that the case be summarily dismissed, finding no “genuine issues of material fact as to the reasonableness” of the arrest.

“It was not until the officers were attempting to arrest Engleman that there was any mention of the property being located in the State of Oklahoma,” U.S. Magistrate Judge James R. Marschewski said.

But Hendren rejected his colleague's report. “As the matter now stands,” he wrote in his opinion,

there is evidence from which the Court could conclude that the arrest occurred in Oklahoma and, therefore, that it was not authorized by applicable law. However, there is also evidence which might show that the arrest occurred in Arkansas since both an Arkansas address and an Arkansas phone number are associated with the premises on which Engleman was arrested.

According to a GPS map, the state line passes through the farm property of Engleman's father in such a way that the mailbox is in Siloam Springs, Ark. On Jan. 11, 2005, Engleman dialed 911 to report a prowler and the call was directed to Benton County police.

After arriving at the property, the deputy learned there was a warrant in Benton County for Engleman's arrest and took him into custody. Because Engleman was actually in Oklahoma at the time, his suit alleged, the arrest was extra-jurisdictional and illegal under Arkansas law.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed a case of extra-jurisdictional arrest in Abbott v. City of Crocker, 30 F.3d 994 (1994). Reversing a plaintiff's judgment, the court said the trial judge “erred in determining, as a matter of law, that the arrest in violation of state law necessarily also constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Hendren, however, quoted the dissenting opinion, which held that the law was “designed to protect individuals from police behavior that would otherwise be unreasonable” and that the arrest was, therefore, “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

Abbott recognized “the existence of some inconsistency in the rulings of the Circuit on this issue” and Hendren appeared to be inviting an appeal.

UPDATE ... Defense counsel filed an appeal of Judge Hendren's ruling April 27.

By Matthew Heller
4/17/07