Ryan Pownall is a Philadelphia police officer who was terminated and criminally charged after fatally shooting David Jones following a dispute over Jones’ operation of a dirt bike. Terrance Freeman, who was riding in the back seat of Pownall’s police vehicle, witnessed the shooting. Jones was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The police recovered a stolen firearm and multiple live rounds from the ground near the site of the altercation.
The District Attorney’s Office investigated the shooting, and retained an expert, Gregory Warren, to prepare a report on whether Pownall’s use of force was justified. Warren concluded that it was, as Pownall shot Jones because he temporarily lost visual contact while clearing the misfired round, and that Jones’ own actions caused the shooting. District Attorney Lawrence Krasner presented the case to a grand jury, withholding Warren’s report until later ordered to produce it by a judge. Pownall’s criminal charges would later be dismissed, and he would also be reinstated with back pay by an arbitrator.
Pownall sued Krasner and the City of Philadelphia under section 1983 for violating his Fourth and 14th Amendment rights by arresting and prosecuting him without probable cause. The district court granted Krasner’s motion to dismiss on the basis of absolute prosecutorial immunity. Pownall appealed, arguing that Krasner and defendants should not be entitled to absolute immunity.
The Third Circuit disagreed. The Court noted the expansive protections of absolute immunity for prosecutors acting in their “advocacy” role, and cited cases finding that prosecutors were immune from liability with regard to their conduct coinciding with grand jury proceedings. For example, immunity was appropriate in another case where prosecutors were accused of “intentionally failing to call witnesses with knowledge of the events that the prosecutors believed would exculpate the defendant.” The only way Pownall could prevail was if Krasner acted not in his advocacy role, but in his “investigatory” role.
Pownall argued that Krasner coerced Freeman to modify his account prior to the grand jury proceeding, which was an investigatory act for which he did not enjoy absolute immunity. To argue this point, Pownall compared Warren’s report – which found that Freeman’s initial statement supported a conclusion that Pownall could not have known that Jones was unarmed at the time of the shooting – and Freeman’s later testimony at the grand jury proceeding that he saw Jones toss his gun. The Court determined that this was insufficient evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, and furthermore, any alleged pressuring of Freeman to change his story in this way would still fall under advocacy, which is covered by absolute immunity.
Pownall v. Krasner, No. 23-2049, 2024 WL 4164621 (3d Cir., 2024)