Joliet police officer wins part of federal appeal in privacy lawsuit case

A federal appeals court reversed the dismissal of a Joliet police officer’s claim that a detective intruded on her privacy by intentionally accessing a nude photo on her cellphone.

The ruling was delivered on Wednesday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. The ruling followed an April 3 court hearing where the Will County search warrant for the officer’s phone was sharply criticized by U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas Kirsch.

Concerns were raised at the same hearing by U.S. Circuit Judge Amy St. Eve regarding the Joliet Police Department’s security of sensitive phone evidence.

The privacy intrusion lawsuit from Joliet Police Officer Cassandra Socha was dismissed last year by U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso. In Alonso’s summary judgment ruling, he determined Socha lacked enough evidence to support her claims against the City of Joliet or retired Joliet police Sgt. Ed Grizzle.

Grizzle applied for the search warrant for Socha’s phone as part of an investigation into allegations that she sent a single harassing text message to a witness who testified at the 2017 trial of Socha’s fiancé, Joliet Police Officer Nicholas Crowley.

At the trial, Will County Chief Judge Dan Kennedy found Crowley not guilty of recklessly firing his gun during a domestic dispute involving Socha.

The investigation of Socha’s text message resulted in no charges.

The federal appeals court affirmed Alonso’s dismissal of Socha’s constitutional violation claims against Grizzle. The court found Grizzle committed no misconduct in applying for the search warrant for Socha’s phone and he was shielded by a legal doctrine called qualified immunity.

However, the federal appeals court determined a jury could weigh Socha’s claims against the city and effectively, Joliet Police Detective Donald McKinney, who is not named as a defendant in the original case.

“[Socha] has presented enough evidence for a jury to reject the city’s position that [McKinney] was authorized and acted inadvertently, creating a genuine dispute of material fact that renders summary judgment on this claim inappropriate,” the federal appeals ruling said.

As a result, the federal appeals court sent Socha’s lawsuit case back to Alonso’s courtroom for further proceedings. Socha’s claims against the city could either go to trial or lead to a settlement.

The city’s attorneys have contended that McKinney was undergoing training through the Cellebrite software program that analyzes cellphone data when he accessed her photo by accident.

Andrew O’Donnell, one of the city’s attorneys, said there’s no “admissible evidence” that McKinney intentionally pried into Socha’s nude images. He also claimed there’s no evidence to “show what McKinney was doing was unauthorized.”

Yet St. Eve questioned why a trainee like McKinney was able to access Socha’s phone in the first place. She also asked why the city did not have a “better lock and key method” for something as sensitive as her phone.

“It seems like there should have been greater protection,” St. Eve said at the April 3 hearing.

We don’t search apartment buildings looking for drugs in a single apartment, okay? That is an over broad search warrant.

—  Thomas Kirsch, circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

At the same hearing, Kirsch said what happened to Socha was “terrible.”

“I can’t believe a judge signed this warrant to say, ‘You can search the entire contents of someone’s phone to look for one text message.’ And then McKinney just happens to be searching around in Cellebrite. …And guess what? He happens upon the naked pictures that everybody is talking about in the police department. It’s weird. It’s troubling, right?” Kirsch said.

Socha’s attorney, Hall Adams, told the federal appeals court that there’s “evidence in the record that this [search] warrant was shopped.”

The first judge presented with the search warrant was Will County Judge Dave Carlson. But Carlson didn’t want to sign it, according to Grizzle’s deposition.

Grizzle could not answer why Carlson made that decision.

“[Carlson] didn’t refuse. He said I’m not going to deny it, I’m not going to approve it, and if you like, you can go see another judge. That’s the way he left it,” Grizzle said in his deposition.

After that, Grizzle went to Will County Judge Sarah Jones, who did sign the warrant criticized by Kirsch at the April 3 hearing.

“We don’t search apartment buildings looking for drugs in a single apartment, okay? That is an over broad search warrant,” Kirsch said.

Kirsch said investigators were “searching for a single text message that by the way you already have.”

The federal appeals court ruling reminded law enforcement such as the Joliet Police Department of their “obligation to be specific and explain why there is probable cause to search every part of a cell phone they seek to search.”

U.S. Circuit Judge John Lee asked O’Donnell whether there was any testimony that McKinney received permission from either an assigned investigator or investigation supervisor to access Socha’s electronic files, in accordance with departmental policy.

“There is not,” O’Donnell said.