CHICAGO — A federal appeals panel trashed constitutional challenges to a Chicago city policy, allowing the city to either sell or destroy unclaimed property seized from people detained in jail for 30 days.
Three men filed a class action complaint challenging a Chicago city code provision governing property surrendered at the time of booking into the Cook County Jail. For items unclaimed by the detainee or an authorized representative, the city would either sell or destroy the items.
Blake Conyers, Lamar Ewing and Kevin Flint argued the policy violates Fourth, Fifth and 14th amendment rights of detainees, as well as state law. After U.S. District Judge John Tharp denied their complaint, they brought the issue to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood wrote the panel’s opinion, issued Aug. 18; Judges Frank Easterbrook and Thomas Kirsch concurred.
According to the panel, the plaintiffs didn’t challenge the city’s right to seize and inventory property, only the 30-day policy established in 2007. Since then, the Cook County Sheriff has allowed detainees to keep outerwear, American currency of $500 or less, a metal ring, glasses and medications, shoelaces, belts, keys, court documents and credit, debit or government identification cards.
Each man detailed what they surrendered during their arrest: Conyers gave an earring, a bracelet and two cell phones. Ewing submitted his wallet, library and debit cards and two phones. Flint gave a phone and ring with a small stone. From December 2011 to December 2013, which encompassed each man’s arrest, the city issued written instructions on reclaiming property, but none did so within 30 days.
Tharp granted the city’s motion for summary judgment based on answering three questions in the city’s favor, finding a Chicago Police Department website satisfied due process obligations, that county jail detainees had access to the internet during the class period and that the city established the site was active during that timeframe.
Before Tharp ruled, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 2019 opinion in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pa., in which it established “a property owner has a claim for a violation of the Takings Clause as soon as a government takes his property for public use without paying for it.” That led the plaintiffs to seek reconsideration of dismissal under that clause, but Tharp said there wasn’t sufficient evidence that destruction of the property was for “public use.”
The panel said Tharp correctly rejected the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment theory and more thoroughly examined whether the policy violated due process or the takings clause.
“Nothing compels the city to hold property forever,” Wood wrote. “At the other end of the spectrum, we can assume that a statutory declaration of abandonment after only one day would be untenable. But where, between a day and forever, does the Constitution draw the line?”
The panel said the city’s clear property retention policy, along with reclamation instructions, establish an interest in the practical matter of storage and that disposition isn’t punitive. With respect to due process, the panel noted Tharp allowed discovery on that issue allowing the city to establish it sufficiently told people how to reclaim their items.
Eventually the dispute became more about whether the city could prove the website it used to establish its position was actually online during the class period, with Tharp and the panel relying on the testimony of Michael Mealer, who was commander of the CPD’s Evidence and Recovered Property division at the time.
With that resolved, the panel also sided with the city on the matter of detainee access to the internet, noting Deputy Director of Inmate Services John Mueller testified about the process of how someone in lockup can request internet access through a correctional rehabilitation worker.
“The plaintiffs here did not show that they were unable to find out the details of the property-recovery process that were disclosed on the CPD’s webpage,” Wood wrote. “Nor did they offer enough to counteract Mueller’s description of the role that the CRWs played to facilitate that access. Plaintiffs had the burden of proof on this issue, and so it was their responsibility to show why the system the Sheriff was using was constitutionally inadequate. After independently reviewing the facts presented at summary judgment, as we must, we conclude that plaintiffs did not meet that burden.”
Wood closed by saying the panel didn’t intend to imply the lawsuit was “meritless or frivolous” and acknowledged 30 days is brief, especially if a detainee must go through an intermediary. But without finding a legal basis that obligates the city to hold property for longer, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment claims must fail, Wood said.
The plaintiffs have been represented in the action by attorneys Kenneth and Joel Flaxman, of Kenneth N. Flaxman P.C.,of Chicago.
The city has been represented by attorney Allan T. Slagel, and others with the firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, of Chicago.