Second Circuit Finds Exoneree Does Not Need Direct Evidence That His Confession Was Coerced For Civil Claim to Move Forward

Imagine that a defendant is subjected to a coercive police interrogation and confesses to a crime. The defendant is thereafter convicted and serves years in prison before being exonerated. The defendant then brings an action based upon his confession being coerced, but is unable to testify to the details of the interrogation due to trauma. Can the claim still go forward in the absence of direct evidence? That was the question addressed by the Second Circuit in its recent opinion in Ortiz v. Stambach, 2025 WL 1350063 (2nd Cir. 2005).

In Ortiz, “[o]n November 11, 2004, two brothers, Nelson and Miguel Camacho, were murdered during an armed robbery in their home on Buffalo’s west side.” Thereafter,

On November 16, 2004, after being released from Buffalo General Hospital, [Josue] Ortiz attended the Camacho brothers’ funeral around noon with his cousin. Later that evening, Ortiz again flagged down a police car, stated that he feared for his life, and offered information about the Camacho murders. The patrol officers took Ortiz to the MCU station, where MCU Detective Stambach met Ortiz to question him. Upon his arrival at the station at around 7:15 pm and without being Mirandized, Ortiz was taken to an empty office and interviewed alone by Detective Stambach from around 7:25 p.m. to 8:05 p.m. Within those forty minutes, Detective Stambach, who speaks no Spanish, elicited Ortiz’s confession and detailed specifics of the crime which, according to Detective Stambach, only someone at the scene could have known. Detective Stambach testified that Ortiz “spoke broken English” and, although Ortiz understood him, “[Detective Stambach] was having problems communicating with him.”…According to Detective Stambach, “he wanted to ensure that the [Miranda] rights card was read to [Ortiz] in Spanish,” and called Officer Torres to translate….

At approximately 8:05 p.m., Officer Torres arrived at the office, at which point Detective Stambach and Ortiz moved from the office into the interview room with Torres, and, at approximately 8:30 p.m., Torres read Ortiz his Miranda rights in Spanish and Ortiz signed the Miranda card. Ortiz was given food at 8:40 pm, and signed a formal sworn written statement. According to Detective Stambach, he used his handwritten notes to prompt Ortiz during the post-Miranda questioning, which Torres translated to Ortiz. Each page of the typed statement was then initialed by Ortiz, Stambach, and Torres, indicating that each answer Ortiz provided therein was “accurate.”…

At trial, Detective Stambach testified that he did not coerce or trick Ortiz to elicit the confession, did not add any details to the confession, and that Ortiz showed no sign of mental health issues. He also denied any involvement in the investigation of the Camacho murders before he interviewed Ortiz and any awareness of Officers Lauber’s and Lonergan’s documented interactions with Ortiz.

Subsequently, after Ortiz was convicted of the murders,

In November 2012, as a result of a separate reinvestigation conducted by a task force of special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal prosecutors from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York, as well as members of the Buffalo Police Department and New York State Police, it was determined that Ortiz did not participate in the Camacho murders, and three other individuals were indicted by a federal grand jury for their participation in those murders. Those three individuals were subsequently convicted of the Camacho murders based upon their admitted and corroborated involvement in the murders.

Ortiz then brought a Section 1983 action, claiming, inter alia, that Detective Stambach fabricated and/or coerced his confession. In turn, Detective Stambach moved for judgment as a matter of law, claiming, inter alia, that Ortiz had no direct evidence to prove his claims. The Second Circuit rejected this claim, ruling as follows:

As a threshold matter, to the extent Detective Stambach asserts that Ortiz had to offer direct evidence to contradict Detective Stambach’s testimony regarding the confession, we reject that assertion as a matter of law. Ortiz testified that, because of his mental state at the time of the confession, he was unable to remember his interaction with Detective Stambach. However, the law does not require a plaintiff to prove that police officers fabricated evidence or engaged in bad faith through any particular type of evidence and, thus, a plaintiff may do so entirely through circumstantial evidence. Indeed, “[j]uries are frequently (and correctly) instructed, as they were here, that the law makes no distinction between the weight to be given to either direct or circumstantial evidence.”…We have repeatedly emphasized this fundamental legal rule even in the context of a criminal case, with its higher burden of proof….Thus, Ortiz’s inability to testify to what took place in his time alone with Detective Stambach, or to provide another form of direct evidence contradicting Detective Stambach’s testimony, did not oblige the jury to credit Detective Stambach’s version of events regarding the confession. 

Here, as the district court correctly determined in denying Detective Stambach’s JMOL motion, there was more than sufficient circumstantial evidence from which a rational jury could find that Detective Stambach’s testimony regarding the confession was not credible, and that he engaged in misconduct during the confession in order to fabricate evidence, such that the presumption of probable cause was overcome. Although Detective Stambach asserts that the “[d]istrict [c]ourt held that the parties’ stipulation [that Ortiz did not commit the murders] alone was sufficient to overcome the presumption of probable cause,” that assertion is incorrect. Appellant’s Br. at 40. Instead, the district court thoroughly enumerated the combination of circumstantial evidence, including, but not limited to, the stipulation, that allowed a rational jury to find misconduct by Detective Stambach that could overcome the presumption….

-CM