Burdette Searcey, et al. v. James L. Dean, et al.

After twice reversing district-court judgments for Petitioners, the Eighth Circuit affirmed judgments of approximately 30 million dollars against them, finding that liability was supported under two substantivedue-process theories of liability applied to a 1989 murder investigation. Petitioners ask the Court to review: I. Whether in 1989 a law-enforcement officer violated a plaintiff ’s substantivedue-process rights merely by recklessly gathering “unreliable” evidence implicating the plaintiff in a crime (1) even if the prosecutor and defense counsel had access to all information needed to assess the reliability of the evidence gathered; and (2) even if the evidence gathered was never used at a plaintiff ’s criminal trial because the plaintiff voluntarily pleaded to charges. II. Whether in 1989 a law-enforcement officer violated a plaintiff ’s clearly established substantive-due-process right prohibiting the “manufacture of false evidence” by conducting an interview or interrogation during which false statements incriminating the plaintiff were made, even if the plaintiff voluntarily pleaded to charges. III. Whether a county can be liable for the decision of a sheriff, as final policymaker, to fail to stop a multi-suspect investigation when (1) the jury found that the sheriff