Ninth Circuit Remands California Prisoner’s Case in which No Contest Plea Was Admitted as Evidence of Guilt
by Michael Thompson
In August of 2016, Jerry Lee King was involved in an altercation with guards at the Kern Valley State Prison in California. According to King, he was attacked by the guards while in restraints. He was then placed in Administrative Segregation and found guilty at a subsequent disciplinary hearing of assaulting the guards. After King exhausted the administrative remedies, he filed a pro se §1983 complaint. One year after the incident—and correspondingly, several months after he filed his suit—the Kern County prosecutor issued two charges that arose from the incident.
The charges took two years to resolve. The result was a nolo contendere plea. While standing in front of the judge, King brought up the issue of how the plea would affect his lawsuit. He first asked for clarification that his plea would not hinder it, to which the judge replied, “It shouldn’t,” but added he did not “have any control over the civil case.” Again, King noted, “I don’t want [my plea] to affect my civil case in any way.” After some discussion, King’s attorney offered that a plea under People v. West is intended so that it will not impact a civil suit. People v. West is a California precedent that allows a defendant to continue to assert their innocence by not admitting to any factual basis for the plea. That his plea was under People v. West was stipulated by the prosecution. [See: People v. West, 477 P.2d 409 (1970).]
The defendants in King’s §1983 case, nevertheless, immediately moved to have his civil complaint dismissed, claiming that it was barred under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994). They argued that his conviction in the criminal case and his position in the §1983 case were irreconcilable.
Furthermore, they pointed to an unpublished decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in which the court ruled that a nolo contendere plea prevented the criminal defendant from suing the city because the lawsuit would contradict the basis of the criminal proceedings. After being rebuffed by the sitting magistrate judge who soon after retired, the civil defendants successfully tried again under the new judge. King appealed to the Court.
The Ninth Circuit found two issues to consider: whether his plea was admissible under the Federal Rule of Evidence 410(a) to show he had committed the criminal act, and if so, was the suit barred under Heck. As the Court found the conviction was inadmissible, it never reached the second question. But, to do so, it had to disagree with the Sixth Circuit in Walker v. Schaeffer. [See:Walker v. Schaeffer, 854 F. 2d 138 (1988).] Rule 410(a), the Court said, was revised precisely to prevent the kind of misinterpretation encountered in Walker. The rule explicitly denotes that a nolo contendere plea is not admissible against the criminal defendant in a civil case. Under Nguyen, they said, nolo pleas are “first, and foremost, not a plea of actual guilt.” [See:United States v. Nguyen, 465 F.3d 1128 (9th. 2006).]
The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the district court’s decision that had found King’s §1983 cases barred under Heck. See: King v. Villegas, 156 F.4th 979 (9th Cir. 2025).
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Related legal case
King v. Villegas
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 156 F.4th 979 (9th Cir. 2025) |
| Level | Court of Appeals |