Action under 42 USC § 1983 for withholding material & exculpatory information under Brady v Maryland & Giglio v United States; Whether Heck v Humphrey barred the claim. Whether the court could disregard the state court’s final judgment on the ground the state court did not follow its own procedures; Qualified immunity on the Brady claim; The “clearly established” prong; Moldowan v City of Warren; Defendant’s failure to properly raise a claim in his Rule 50(a) motion; Sykes v Anderson; Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU)

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] The court affirmed the jury verdict for plaintiff-Ansari that found defendant-police detective (Jimenez) violated Ansari’s constitutional rights by “withholding material and exculpatory information” under Brady and Giglio. Ansari was convicted of first-degree murder and AWIM, for which he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was later found to be innocent after an investigation by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office CIU. The CIU named another individual as the orchestrator of the shooting and its memo criticized Jimenez’s conduct during the investigation. It revealed that Jimenez feared that family he had in Mexico would be killed should he investigate the actual perpetrator. Ansari sued under § 1983, alleging that Jimenez violated his constitutional rights. The first trial ended in a mistrial, but the second trial resulted in a $10 million award for Ansari. On appeal, the court first held that the Heck bar did not apply to Ansari’s claim where he was seeking damages, and the procedural history showed that his “convictions and sentence have in fact been ‘invalidat[ed].’” The court noted that whether or not Ansari and the state court complied with Michigan’s “procedures for setting aside a judgment when overturning Ansari’s convictions and sentence[,]” Heck did not give it “license to disregard the state court’s final judgment on the ground that the state court failed to follow its own procedures.” It rejected Jimenez’s argument that the state court order was a “legal nullity” where no state appellate court has made such a determination. As to qualified immunity on the Brady claim, Jimenez acknowledged “Moldawan held in 2009 that police officers’ Brady-derived duties were ‘clearly established’ as far back as 1990.” And it noted it has held that its “‘cases do not require plaintiffs to identify a decision that addressed exactly the same type of Brady evidence.’” Further, Jimenez did not preserve his argument about “the particular ‘kind of information at issue’” because he did not raise it in his Rule 50(a) motion in the district court. Finally, he was not entitled to a new trial based on the district court not allowing certain pieces of evidence, his challenges to the verdict form and jury instructions, or his claim that “Ansari’s counsel made improper and inflammatory” closing arguments.