The following excerpt is from Southerland v. City of New York, Docket No. 07-4449-cv (L), Docket No. 07-4450-cv (CON) (2nd Cir. 2012):
We reached a similar conclusion in Russo v. City of Bridgeport, 479 F.3d 196 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 552 U.S. 818 (2007). There we made clear that the constitutional "right to be free from prolonged detention caused by law enforcement officials' mishandling or suppression of exculpatory evidence," id. at 211, was a species of the right to be free from unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment, not a substantive due process right under the Fourteenth Amendment, see id. at 208-09. In then proceeding to undertake a qualified-immunity inquiry, we cautioned that our "clarification [of the law was] of no consequence to the question of whether the right was clearly established [at the time of the relevant events], because the proper inquiry is whether the right itself -- rather than its
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source -- is clearly established." Id. at 212 (collecting cases; emphases in original).
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