Opinion & Order Plaintiff, Jeffrey Demosthene, brings this civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. §1983 and New York state law against the City of New York (“the City”) and several members of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”): Detective Kevin Goodspeed, Detective Anthony Puleo, Lieutenant Dennis Klein, Detective John Roberts, Sergeant Bryan Pierre, and Detective Gary Haber. Plaintiff alleges that the defendants coerced two individuals into falsely implicating him in the 2013 murder of Najee Simmons, leading to his indictment by a grand jury and his subsequent arrest and prosecution. In January 2019, I granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the federal claims against them, but I gave plaintiff leave to replead his malicious prosecution claim with greater factual specificity. Defendants now move to dismiss plaintiff’s second amended complaint for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). For the following reasons, I deny the defendants’ motion except as to those claims brought against defendant Klein; all other claims and defendants remain in this action, and the parties must now proceed to discovery.BACKGROUNDThe following facts are taken from the allegations in plaintiff’s second amended complaint, see SAC, ECF No. 38. For the purpose of this motion, they are accepted as true, and I draw all reasonable inferences in plaintiff’s favor. See, e.g., Taylor v. Vt. Dep’t of Educ., 313 F.3d 768, 776 (2d Cir. 2002).On August 31, 2013, Najee Simmons was murdered in Queens, New York. See SAC 28. Several months later, on February 4, 2014, plaintiff was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and one count of murder in the second degree. Id.
19, 98-101. Plaintiff asserts that he “did not commit any murder [and] was not in possession of any weapon.” Id. 102. He alleges that his arrest and prosecution were the result of a coordinated campaign orchestrated by the defendant officers to coerce witnesses into identifying plaintiff as the person responsible for Simmons’s murder.According to plaintiff, the defendants’ efforts to frame him began immediately after the shooting. On August 31, 2013, two of the defendants, Detective Roberts and Detective Haber, obtained and reviewed surveillance footage that had been recovered from a convenience store. See id. 42. The video showed several people “congregat[ing] in front of the store” around the time of the shooting, and the defendant officers recognized plaintiff as one of the people in the video. Id.
