Charles Kakembo Sessanga v. City of DeSoto Police Department, et al.

Whether a district court may dismiss a pro se § 1983 complaint with prejudice at the pre-service screening stage under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2) for fail­ ure to plead facts that are exclusively within the State’s possession, thereby denying the plaintiff any opportunity for discovery — a rule that conflicts with Leatherman v. Tarrant County, 507 U.S. 163 (1993), and with the decisions of the Second, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits, which hold that civil-rights plaintiffs cannot be required to plead evidence they cannot ac­ cess without discovery.

Whether the independent-intermediary doc­ trine bars a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecu­ tion claim when the plaintiff alleges that investigators withheld exculpatory evidence, ignored readily avail­ able witnesses, and presented a misleading narrative to the prosecutor — conduct that, under this Court’s decisions in Malley v. Briggs, Kalina v. Fletcher, Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, and Manuel v. City of Joliet, de­ feats the presumption of independent judgment and removes prosecutorial immunity for investigative acts.

Whether a prosecutor’s offer of a reduced mis­ demeanor plea deal in a case charged as a felony may be considered evidence of a lack of probable cause when evaluating a § 1983 claim alleging that the charging decision was tainted by omissions and misrepre se ntations.