United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit ____________ FILED March 3, 2025 No. 24-60314 ____________ Lyle W. Cayce Clerk Desmond D. Green,

Plaintiff—Appellee,

versus Jacquelyn Thomas, Detective,

Defendant—Appellant. ______________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi USDC No. 3:23-CV-126 ______________________________ Before Higginbotham, Willett, and Ho, Circuit Judges. Don. R. Willett, Circuit Judge: * This is a qualified immunity case about a man wrongfully accused of murder. Detective Jacquelyn Thomas took a statement from a jailhouse informant who was under the influence of illicit drugs. That statement implicated Desmond Green in an ongoing murder case. Green alleges that Detective Thomas then manipulated a photo lineup with the informant and withheld crucial exonerating evidence from the grand jury. As a result,

_____________________ * Judge Ho concurs in the judgment. Case: 24-60314 Document: 54-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 03/03/2025

No. 24-60314

Green—an innocent man—spent nearly two years in jail before the informant recanted his statement and admitted he was “just high” and “try[ing] to . . . get out of jail.” Green sued Detective Thomas for violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the district court denied Detective Thomas qualified immunity at the motion-to-dismiss stage. We AFFIRM in part and REVERSE in part. I In February 2020, someone shot and killed Nicolas Robertson in Jackson, Mississippi. Two months later, law enforcement arrested Samuel Jennings for burglary and grand larceny. Once Jennings was jailed, he provided a handwritten, signed statement about the Robertson murder to Jackson Police Department Detective Jacquelyn Thomas. In that statement, Jennings wrote that Green confessed in front of him that he shot Robertson and, with assistance from others, moved Robertson’s body. Although Green said he didn’t know Robertson and was not involved, a grand jury indicted Green for capital murder in July 2020. Green was subsequently arrested and detained in Raymond Detention Center, operated by Hinds County. In March 2022—nearly two years after the indictment and arrest— Jennings recanted his statement to Detective Thomas. Jennings admitted he had consumed methamphetamine in the one to two hours prior to his April 2020 statement to Detective Thomas; he did “not know why he said [] Green was involved in the capital murder”; he was in the hospital on the day Robertson was killed; and he had “no knowledge of what happened to” Robertson. He also swore he “made a false statement” about Green, he picked a different photo in the lineup than the detective pointed to, and he was “[j]ust high and try [sic] to help myself get out of jail.”

2 Case: 24-60314 Document: 54-1 Page: 3 Date Filed: 03/03/2025

No. 24-60314

On April 21, 2022, after the prosecutor moved to “remand,” the presiding judge dismissed the case. Green was released from jail