Sowards

MEMORANDUM **

Ray Sowards appeals from the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Sgt. Ron Gordon and the City of Milpitas, California in this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action. After Sowards was arrested, the police placed him in an interrogation room, read him his Miranda rights, and interviewed him. The police recorded this interrogation on videotape. Thereafter, Sgt. Gordon allowed Hoa Glassey, an attorney and alibi witness, to enter the room and left Glassey and Sowards alone together, telling them that Glassey could not act as Sowards’s lawyer because she was an alibi witness. Sowards alleges that the City and Sgt. Gordon violated his constitutional rights when Gordon videotaped Sowards and Glassey’s ensuing conversation. The remaining facts and procedural history are repeated herein only as necessary.

The district court held that the City and Sgt. Gordon were entitled to qualified immunity, which Sowards now challenges. To determine whether a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity we apply the two-part test established by Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 , 121 S.Ct. 2151 , 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). First, we examine “whether the [officers] violated [the plaintiffs]…