An 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week allows a Garland County family's civil rights lawsuit against an Arkansas State Police investigator to proceed, but the family's attorney says the court made a broader statement about child removals.
Joe Churchwell said the court's affirmation of U.S. District Chief Judge P.K. Holmes III's denial of qualified immunity to Katherine Finnegan, a civilian investigator with the ASP's Crimes Against Children Division, marks a paradigm shift.
The state attorney general's office appealed the district court ruling last summer, putting Hal and Michelle Stanley's lawsuit on hold until the 8th Circuit ruled on the qualified immunity question. The legal doctrine protects government officials from civil liability if they are deemed to have performed their duties competently and reasonably.
The higher court's Aug. 10 order ruled Finnegan did not have a reasonable suspicion the Stanleys abused their seven minor children after she, Department of Human Services staff and medical personnel interviewed and examined the children during the execution of a search warrant at the family's Treasure Isle Road home on Jan. 12, 2015.
"We just told thousands of government agents in seven states that they can be sued if there isn't reasonable suspicion to remove the children at the time of removal," Churchwell said. "This was not clearly established before. I am extremely pleased and surprised they went that far.
"Even if we don't go any further with this case, with this decision we've changed the way they do business in the 8th Circuit as far as stealing kids."
The children were removed based on allegations of abuse the oldest minor child convinced adult neighbors and family acquaintances to report to authorities in 2014. According to court documents, the boy, then 16 years old, resented his mother and father's unconventional parenting methods, which included forbidding him from attending public school and limiting his interactions outside the home.
When a DHS investigator discredited the allegations after visiting the home that December, the boy told adult friends his parents had poisoned, burned, struck and bruised him and his siblings. The adults conveyed the claims to authorities, leading the Garland County Sheriff's Department to swear out a search warrant seeking a substance known as Miracle Mineral Solution.
The Stanleys were alleged to have forced their children to ingest the substance, which, according to court documents, an Arkansas Children's Hospital doctor said was dangerous based on an internet search.
The district and appeals courts said the allegations were disproved during the more than five hours authorities, supported by the Garland County Sheriff's Department's tactical response team, were at the family's home.
"Each child was examined in an ambulance by a doctor who found each child healthy and showing no symptoms of exposure to a toxic substance," the 8th Circuit's order said. "At the conclusion of the investigation, the DHS Division of Children and Family Services representatives concluded the children were happy, healthy and in no danger and declined to take them into DHS custody."
Court documents said Finnegan insisted on a 72-hour protective hold for the children despite the on-scene investigation disproving allegations of abuse, an insistence the lower and higher courts said removed the shield of qualified immunity.
Mike Wright, a sergeant with the sheriff's department at the time, removed the children at Finnegan's urging, according to court documents. Ralph Ohm, general counsel for the Arkansas Public Entities Risk Management Association, the organization that defends the county against civil claims, said Friday he plans to petition for qualified immunity for Wright and Under Sheriff Jason Lawrence, whom court documents said was one of more than 30 government agents who executed the search warrant.
The district court dismissed the Stanleys' claims against other state actors named as defendants on the basis of sovereign immunity and qualified immunity. Finnegan was granted qualified immunity on claims that she withheld evidence, testified falsely and interviewed the children without their parents' permission.
"As the district court concluded, it was clearly established at the time Finnegan acted that reasonable suspicion was required to remove the Stanley children from their home and their parents' custody," the 8th Circuit ruling said. "Like probable cause to arrest, reasonable suspicion to seize children must exist at the moment of the seizure, and an official is not free to disregard plainly exculpatory evidence when it undermines substantial inculpatory evidence that reasonable suspicion exists.
"The complaint also raises the inference that the decision to remove was motivated by a disagreement with the Stanleys' decision to home-school their children in an isolated environment."
An internal DHS email The Sentinel-Record reported on in October 2016 indicated the family's way of life motivated the removal of the children. A Division of Children and Family Services supervisor sent the email to other DCFS personnel the day after the seizure.
"It's apparent to me that this family has its own unique culture," the email said. "They home-school. They don't believe in modern medicine, and they use a legal vitamin to try and keep their children healthy and from all accounts it appeared that the children were very healthy.
"From reports, the search warrant did not find anything that would constitute the children being severely maltreated. It appears to me the only thing this family has done is not conform to modern society and how certain government officials feel they should be living."
Churchwell's oral argument to the 8th Circuit in April posited that the child welfare system's proclivity for removing children based on specious claims puts all parents who have angered their children in peril.
"It's a state agency with unchecked power who really believes they're saving children," he said. "When you seize a child, you run the risk of every petulant child picking up the phone and calling DCFS and having an investigator believe them."
Churchwell told the three-judge panel that on-the-record statements Finnegan and CACD Commander Ron Stayton made during the lengthy process the Stanleys undertook to clear their names from the state's child maltreatment registry showed the reflexive nature of maltreatment investigations.
He explained Finnegan and Stayton have said the onus is not on investigators to substantiate allegations, but on parents to appeal true findings of abuse or neglect regardless of the factual basis for their validity.
"Those are improvident statements," 8th Circuit Judge Leland Wollman said. "Maybe those people shouldn't be working in state government in any capacity."
An administrative law judge overturned the CACD's nine true findings of abuse against the Stanleys on grounds of insufficient evidence. The CACD chose not to defend the Stanleys' appeal of 12 true findings of educational neglect, removing the couple from the child maltreatment registry 21 months after their children were placed into protective custody.
The couple regained custody of all the children in March 2015. Full custody was not restored until a 60-day home placement trial concluded that June. During that time, a DCFS caseworker had access to the family's home for 20 hours a week.
Churchwell said he expects to win a judgment against Finnegan and the county, whether the case goes to trial or is decided from the bench as a matter of law.
"I expect the court to grant summary judgment for the violation of the civil rights of the Stanley family," he said. "Then the only question for a jury will be how much are they going to pay.
"I think we've won the case. You can dispute the facts, but when you do it goes to a jury. That's all right with me. You can't dispute what's on camera and a certified transcript from a hearing."
Local on 08/19/2018