Conditional Dismissals After Diversionary Programs Are Not “Favorable Terminations” for § 1983 Malicious Prosecution When the Dismissal Reflects a Compromise

1. Introduction

Chapdelaine v. Desjardin (2d Cir. July 2, 2026) is a Second Circuit decision addressing three recurring issues in civil-rights litigation arising from arrests: (1) what qualifies as a “favorable termination” for a Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after the Supreme Court’s decision in Thompson v. Clark; (2) when internal police discipline and internal affairs findings may be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 403; and (3) the rigor of preservation requirements for Rule 50 motions challenging a jury verdict.

The plaintiff, Darlene Chapdelaine, sued Connecticut State Troopers Robert L. Desjardin and Jason N. Deojay, alleging (among other claims) malicious prosecution and excessive force stemming from her Thanksgiving Day 2018 arrest. After nearly five years of criminal pendency, the Connecticut Superior Court dismissed her charges after she completed a one-day supervised diversionary program. In the federal civil case, the district court (Shea, J.) dismissed her malicious prosecution claims for lack of favorable termination, excluded most evidence about Desjardin’s discipline/internal affairs findings, and—after a defense verdict—denied Chapdelaine’s post-verdict request for judgment as a matter of law. The Second Circuit affirmed across the board.

2. Summary of the Opinion

• Malicious prosecution (favorable termination): The court held that, on these facts, dismissal of charges conditioned on completion of a diversionary program was not a “favorable termination” for a § 1983 Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim because it reflected a court-ordered compromise with an explained, negotiated basis for dismissal—akin in principle to compromise dispositions discussed in Carruthers v. Colton.
• Evidence of discipline/internal affairs: The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding evidence of Desjardin’s apparent suspension and most internal affairs findings under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 due to the risk of confusing/misleading the jury into equating regulatory violations with constitutional excessive force.
• Post-verdict challenges (Rule 50): The jury’s defense verdict on excessive force was supported by sufficient evidence viewed in the defendants’ favor, and Chapdelaine waived judgment-as-a-matter-of-law challenges to other claims by failing to raise them in a timely, properly grounded pre-verdict motion.

3. Analysis

3.1 Precedents Cited

The opinion is notably precedent-driven on standards of review, favorable termination, evidentiary discretion, and trial-motion preservation. Key authorities and their roles are summarized below.

A. Standards of review and procedural posture

• Ortiz v. Stambach and Roth v. Armistice Cap., LLC: The panel used these cases to frame how facts are viewed on appeal—in the prevailing party’s favor after trial (Ortiz) and in the non-movant’s favor on summary judgment (Roth). This matters because Chapdelaine’s appeal mixed trial and pretrial rulings, requiring different lenses for factual inferences.
• Willey v. Kirkpatrick and Alberty v. Hunter: These cases supported de novo review of summary judgment, including when a district court acts sua sponte under Rule 56(f). The panel treated the district court’s post-dismissal text order as functionally a Rule 56 disposition and applied de novo review regardless of whether it was “extension” or “new” sua sponte summary judgment.
• Younger v. Harris: Though not central on appeal, Younger explains the district court’s earlier stay of federal excessive force claims while state criminal proceedings were pending—illustrating the interplay between ongoing prosecutions and § 1983 litigation.

B. Malicious prosecution and “favorable termination”

• Alberty v. Hunter: Provided the articulation of Connecticut malicious prosecution elements as used in § 1983 litigation, including the “terminated in favor of the plaintiff” requirement.
• Thompson v. Clark: The Supreme Court held that a plaintiff need only show that the prosecution ended “without a conviction,” rejecting the requirement of an “affirmative indication of innocence.” The Second Circuit here treated Thompson as eliminating one barrier, but not as converting every non-conviction disposition into a favorable termination.
• Carruthers v. Colton: This was the opinion’s most important Second Circuit comparator. Carruthers applied Thompson in the context of plea bargaining and held that dismissals resulting from a calculated compromise do not satisfy favorable termination because the bargain itself “provides an explanation” for dismissal. Chapdelaine extends Carruthers’s logic beyond guilty-plea contexts to a diversionary-program conditional dismissal, emphasizing “compromise” over “conviction/no conviction” formalism.

C. Evidence exclusion and trial management

• Qorrolli v. Metro. Dental Assocs. and Tereshchenko v. Karimi: These framed the deferential abuse-of-discretion standard for evidentiary rulings and the requirement that exclusion must affect a substantial right to warrant reversal.
• The court’s analysis centered on Federal Rule of Evidence 403 (though defendants also argued Rule 404(b)). The panel affirmed because the district court reasonably concluded that internal affairs findings about policy compliance risked misleading jurors into treating departmental policy violations as constitutional violations.

D. Post-verdict motions and preservation

• Brady v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.: Provided the high bar for granting judgment as a matter of law—requiring either a complete absence of evidence supporting the verdict or overwhelmingly one-sided proof.
• Kirsch v. Fleet St., Ltd.: Supplied the crucial preservation rule: a post-verdict Rule 50(b) motion can only renew grounds raised in a pre-verdict Rule 50(a) motion; appellate sufficiency review is generally unavailable for issues not preserved, absent “manifest injustice.”

E. Excessive force framework

• Mickle v. Morin, Matusak v. Daminski, and Calamia v. City of New York: These provided the objective-reasonableness standard for force during arrest and the caution that not every push or shove is unconstitutional. The panel relied on these principles while deferring to the jury’s credibility resolutions.
• Curley v. Village of Suffern and Anderson v. Branen (with district authority Addona v. D'Andrea): These supported the proposition that failure-to-intervene liability cannot stand where the jury finds no underlying excessive force.

3.2 Legal Reasoning

A. The core holding: diversionary-program dismissal as a non-favorable termination (on these facts)

The opinion’s doctrinal contribution is its careful narrowing of how Thompson v. Clark operates in the real world of criminal case resolution. Thompson removed the “affirmative indication of innocence” requirement. But the Second Circuit emphasized that Thompson did not eliminate the favorable-termination element or its purposes (avoiding parallel litigation, avoiding inconsistency with criminal adjudications, and preventing collateral attacks).

The panel treated Chapdelaine’s dismissal as the product of an explained compromise: the Superior Court dismissed after (i) extensive pendency, (ii) Chapdelaine’s treatment efforts, and (iii) her agreement to complete a one-day supervised diversionary program, over a prosecutor’s objection. That explanation for dismissal—embedded in the on-the-record proceedings—functioned like the explanation supplied by a plea bargain in Carruthers v. Colton.

Two aspects of the court’s reasoning are particularly important:

1. Focus on “compromise” rather than “guilt admission”: The court acknowledged Chapdelaine did not plead guilty, but held that the critical feature was that the case ended through a conditioned exchange (program completion for dismissal), not prosecutorial abandonment or unexplained dismissal.
2. Express limitation: The court explicitly declined to adopt a categorical rule that diversionary-program dismissals can never be favorable terminations; instead, it held only that “on the specific facts of this case” the conditional dismissal was not favorable. This leaves room for future plaintiffs to argue favorable termination where diversionary dispositions are not meaningfully compromise-like (e.g., if dismissal is functionally unilateral, unconditioned, or unsupported by an exchange).

B. Evidence of discipline/internal affairs: constitutional torts vs. regulatory compliance

The district court assumed (and the Second Circuit accepted) that the internal affairs materials were likely admissible over a hearsay objection as public/business records. The decisive question was Rule 403: whether their probative value was substantially outweighed by confusion/misleading risks.

The panel affirmed the exclusion because:

• Internal policies and “Administrative and Operations Manual” violations are not coextensive with the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard.
• Introducing sustained findings (attitude/demeanor, medical aid timing, etc.) risked jurors treating discipline as a quasi-adjudication of civil liability.
• The district court’s tailored approach—allowing the MVR-activation finding to come in and allowing other parts for impeachment where appropriate—supported the conclusion that the judge weighed probative value rather than reflexively excluding damaging evidence.

C. The jury verdict and Rule 50: credibility contests are for juries

The panel’s sufficiency review followed orthodox Rule 50 principles: when the case turns on competing narratives, appellate courts do not re-weigh credibility. Applying Ortiz v. Stambach and Brady v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the court credited the evidentiary basis the jury could accept—testimony that Chapdelaine “charged,” resisted, and “let herself fall,” along with video context—rather than testimony the jury was free to reject.

On the remaining claims, the court enforced Kirsch v. Fleet St., Ltd. strictly: Chapdelaine made a pre-verdict motion only on excessive force and affirmatively declined to move on other claims when prompted by the trial judge. That procedural choice limited appellate review absent manifest injustice, which the panel did not find.

3.3 Impact

A. Post-Thompson clarification: “no conviction” is necessary, but not always sufficient

The decision reinforces a nuanced post-Thompson equilibrium in the Second Circuit: plaintiffs are no longer required to prove “affirmative innocence,” but they still must show that the termination is not the product of a compromise that supplies an alternative explanation for dismissal. By extending Carruthers v. Colton beyond guilty-plea bargains to diversionary-program dismissals, the court provides defendants a stronger basis to argue that certain “dismissals” are not “favorable terminations” when they result from an exchange.

B. Diversionary programs: fact-sensitive litigation likely

The court’s express non-categorical disclaimer invites future litigation over the boundary line: when does a diversionary dismissal reflect a compromise sufficient to defeat favorable termination, and when does it resemble prosecutorial abandonment or court dismissal “without providing a reason” (language drawn from Thompson and echoed in Carruthers)? Expect litigants to focus on: (i) whether participation was conditioned, negotiated, or contested; (ii) whether there was an on-the-record explanation tied to the exchange; (iii) whether the defendant accepted obligations analogous to a bargained-for benefit.

C. Internal affairs evidence: careful Rule 403 tailoring is likely to be upheld

The decision underscores that appellate courts will rarely disturb trial judges’ Rule 403 balancing when the judge articulates a coherent confusion/misleading rationale and admits narrower subsets (e.g., the MVR finding) as a compromise. For practitioners, it suggests that internal affairs findings may be more viable for: (i) impeachment, (ii) narrow, directly relevant points (like missing video), than as broad “liability by discipline” evidence.

D. Preservation lessons: pro se status does not relax Rule 50 requirements

The waiver holding—especially where the trial judge invited a broader motion and the plaintiff declined—highlights that litigants must preserve sufficiency arguments claim-by-claim. This is a particularly important reminder in multi-claim civil-rights trials where verdict forms and jury instructions subdivide constitutional and state tort theories.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

“Favorable termination”

A malicious prosecution plaintiff must show that the criminal case ended in a way that supports suing over having been prosecuted. After Thompson v. Clark, you do not need a court statement that you were “innocent”; but if the case ended because you accepted a deal (a compromise), the termination may not be considered “favorable.”

Diversionary program / supervised diversion

A court-supervised alternative to traditional prosecution where a defendant completes conditions (classes, treatment, probation-like supervision) and then receives a dismissal. In this case, the dismissal was conditioned on completion of a one-day program and was explained on the record—features the Second Circuit treated as compromise-like.

Rule 403 (excluding relevant evidence)

Even relevant evidence may be excluded if it is likely to confuse the jury, unfairly prejudice a party, or mislead jurors into deciding the case on an improper basis. Here, the concern was jurors equating “policy violations” with “constitutional violations.”

Judgment as a matter of law (Rule 50)

A request that the judge override the jury because no reasonable jury could decide the way it did. A key procedural rule is preservation: you generally must make the motion before the case goes to the jury, and you can only renew the same grounds after the verdict.

Younger v. Harris (abstention/stay)

A doctrine discouraging federal courts from interfering with ongoing state criminal prosecutions. It often results in staying federal civil-rights claims until the state case ends.

5. Conclusion

Chapdelaine v. Desjardin affirms three practical propositions with significant doctrinal and litigation consequences in the Second Circuit: (1) post-Thompson v. Clark, not every non-conviction disposition is a favorable termination—where dismissal follows a diversionary-program exchange with an articulated rationale, it may be treated as a compromise defeating favorable termination (consistent with, and extending the logic of, Carruthers v. Colton); (2) internal affairs and discipline evidence remains vulnerable to Rule 403 exclusion when it risks substituting departmental standards for constitutional standards; and (3) sufficiency challenges live and die by preservation under Kirsch v. Fleet St., Ltd., with credibility contests remaining the jury’s province.