Kenneth Wadkins v. Kristyn Klingshirn

JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge. After a grand jury chose not to indict him for a 2021 homicide, Kenneth Wadkins sued Kristyn Klingshirn, the lead detective who filed the criminal complaint against him, for malicious prosecution. The district court granted summary judgment to Klingshirn on the basis that there was probable cause for the arrest and prosecution of Wadkins, without reaching other issues that were disputed between the parties. Because we conclude that Klingshirn is entitled to qualified immunity, even if probable cause was lacking, we AFFIRM.

I. BACKGROUND

On the evening of January 21, 2021, officers were dispatched in response to reports of gunfire and a man being shot in Fayette County, Kentucky. Officers arrived and found Wesley Brown lying outside of a private residence at 578 Breckenridge with a gunshot wound to his lower right back. He was transported to a local hospital and taken into surgery. Brown advised the officers that he had been shot from behind while walking down the street and did not know who shot him. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing people running behind a nearby residence and a dark-colored vehicle fleeing the scene as officers arrived. Officers collected several pieces of evidence from the scene, including four .45 caliber spent automatic shell casings lying on the sidewalk, a black cell phone that was found in between Brown’s legs, a digital scale found next to Brown, and a bag containing suspected narcotics found in a nearby backyard; they also collected $3,155 in cash from Brown’s person after he was transported to the hospital. Brown died at the hospital nearly two weeks later, on February 4.

Klingshirn and her team investigated Brown’s killing for nine months before she filed the criminal complaint against Wadkins on October 21, 2021. We recount the events of this investigation in detail, as its unfolding is crucial to the probable cause issue in Wadkins’s malicious prosecution suit.

A. The Beginning

In the first few weeks of the investigation, the officers received several tips. On January 28, they received a call from Brown’s sister¹1. Different documents in the record refer to Brown’s sister as either Lashonda or Vicenda (or Viceanda), including different versions of case file notes that attribute the January 28 call to both names. Based on our review of these documents, we find it more plausible that Brown had one sister, not two. regarding Wadkins. She explained that the two men had been in conflict because Brown had survived a previous shooting in 2007 or 2008,²2. Alternatively, Klingshirn places this shooting in 2010. and, although no one was ever arrested for that shooting, Brown believed Wadkins was the culprit. She also advised that Wadkins went by the name “Ghost.” On January 30, a Crime Stoppers tip advised that a Jamal “Sippi” Robinson was present at the scene when Brown was shot. On February 1, Klingshirn was contacted by Charlesetta Barnes, who was in a relationship with Roy Johnson, who lived at 580 Breckenridge, next door to where Brown was found. Barnes advised that Johnson’s residence was used for gambling, that someone named Ghost was present on the night of the shooting, and that Brown may have been present either to rob someone or was set up to be the victim of a robbery. According to a memorandum filed by Klingshirn on February 1, the information from Barnes “coincide[d] with information received from Ms. Lashonda Brown as well as other anonymous tips stating Buford Lyvers may have set Mr. Brown up by getting to the residence at 580 Breckenridge where Kenneth ‘Winston’ Walker shot him.” R. 32-6, Memo to Case File, PageID 180. The memorandum does not provide any more information about these anonymous tips or what specific information Klingshirn received from Ms. Brown.

On February 6, two days after Brown’s death, a 911 operator relayed to Klingshirn a tip from an anonymous caller advising that “Wesley” was killed by someone named Ghost. Then on February 11, another officer received an anonymous tip that someone named Winston was responsible for Brown’s murder, and that Winston had a brother named Taji Wadkins.

On February 23, Klingshirn received a call from a woman who identified herself as a family member of Lyvers and advised that Lyvers admitted to her that he was present at the shooting and believed that Wadkins was responsible. The family member was unable to provide any more information about the shooting, but she stated that “something didn’t feel right” and that she would call back if she heard anything else. Later that day, the same family member called back and identified herself as Stacey Lyvers. Ms. Lyvers reported during this second call that she had spoken with Brown’s niece, Aspen Barry, who relayed that, on the Monday after the shooting, a man approached her in front of a local market and stated, “I shot your Uncle.” Ms. Lyvers then relayed that she suspected the man who approached Barry was AJ King, so she showed Barry a photo of King, and Barry confirmed it was him. According to Klingshirn’s notes, Ms. Lyvers was unable to account for the apparent inconsistencies between this information and what she relayed during the earlier call.

The autopsy of Brown was completed on March 9. The autopsy report concluded that Brown died of a “[p]enetrating gunshot wound of the torso, indeterminate range, and complications thereof,” and it described the entrance trajectory of the bullet as “right to left and back to front.” R. 32-4, Final Diagnosis, PageID 177.

Also in the period of February through June 2021, Klingshirn filed a series of search warrants against Verizon and Google. The information returned by Verizon and Google indicated that devices registered to Lyvers and Wadkins were in the area on the night of the shooting.

B. The Lashonda Brown Interview

On May 5, Klingshirn conducted a lengthy interview with Brown’s sister, who clearly identified herself as Lashonda Brown. Lashonda relayed that she had been investigating the case herself but was unable to connect with Klingshirn for so long out of fear for her own safety (on this occasion, she set up the meeting with Klingshirn using her mother’s phone). On the call, Lashonda shared several pieces of information regarding the shooting. She first explained that her brother had been involved with a man named Arsenio Jackson, who was involved in another murder and was paying another person to cover it up; Lashonda said this murder was also in Lexington but did not know when it took place. Lashonda believed that Jackson and his associates arranged for Brown to be killed because “they thought my brother was gonna snitch on him,” or that Lashonda would do so, and “it was basically a statement kill to say if you don’t shut up, if you don’t keep your mouth shut, we will kill you.”

Lashonda said she was afraid to contact Klingshirn because she believed Jackson and his associates had been tracking and spying on her long before Brown was killed. She claimed they installed cameras in her home to spy on her and take photos that could be used against her; they bugged her phone and used it to listen to her conversations and track her location (she had not turned it on in months because of this); they had people follow her as she went about her daily life, which she knew because she regularly noticed cars sitting in “awkward” places for long periods of time; they posted photos of her and her home on social media, which she understood as implicit threats; and they followed her to Las Vegas on her most recent birthday. Lashonda was initially targeted, she explained, because her child’s late father used to be involved in bank robberies (though he was never convicted), and she reported him once before around 2015 or 2016. Lashonda emphasized that if Jackson and his associates heard her saying anything on her phone that they were tracking, “they will come for me, literally . . . . I’ve been followed and tracked for almost seven years straight.”

Lashonda mentioned that she had heard the shooter was Buford Lyvers’s nephew, Marlin Griffin, Jr., but she believed that Jackson and his associates were in fact using Griffin as a patsy. She cautioned Klingshirn to “be careful of who you think might be the shooter, because I think that sometimes they use that as a ruse to get you off of who really is the shooter.” Lashonda relayed similar advice to Klingshirn throughout the interview, including warning her that some of the anonymous tips the police may have received were not reliable because they were made by women who were working for Jackson.

Lashonda described an incident—the same one Klingshirn heard about from Stacey Lyvers—where two men approached her daughter, Aspen Barry, and confessed to the murder. According to Lashonda, they pulled up to Barry in a car, brandished a gun, and said, “we shot your uncle and we want your mother’s head.” Lashonda said the men in the car were AJ King, who had recently “beat” a murder charge, and an unnamed man from Michigan who she believed was the brother of Brown’s shooter. She also relayed that someone from Michigan had recently moved in next door to her; she believed he was part of Jackson’s tracking efforts.

In addition, Lashonda relayed a story of a visit she paid to her brother while he was in the hospital. Brown was on a ventilator and unable to speak, so, suspecting Lyvers, she asked Brown to blink if Lyvers was responsible; Brown blinked, but Lashonda did not interpret this response to mean Lyvers actually shot the bullet that struck Brown. She believed the actual shooter rigged his gun to silence the shot that killed her brother, even though Lyvers also fired his gun that night. As she explained in this exchange with Klingshirn,

Lashonda: I believe somebody else was there. I believe that they used—it’s not a silencer, but they wrap the gun with a bottle, and so you can’t hear the shot . . . The shots that Buford Lyvers ended up shooting that night were just . . . it made it look like he was the shooter but he really wasn’t. Someone was waiting for my brother. My brother was shot in the right flank of his back. And that means my brother didn’t see who shot him. Now, when he blinked I think he was trying to tell me Buford had something to do with it.

Klingshirn: But not the actual shooter?

LaShonda: Yes, ma’am. He couldn’t talk to me because he had the breathing apparatus in his mouth, so he couldn’t actually say you know, ‘Shonda, Buford was there, he knows.’ But that’s my . . . my gut feeling.” R. 35-8, Lashonda Brown Interview, 19:54–21:00. Lashonda believed that the real shooter was the brother of the man from Michigan who approached her daughter.

C. The Final Months: A Few More Tips and the Buford Lyvers Interview

On August 24, 2021, Officer Dustin Crane arrested Angela Lyons for an unrelated crime. During her arrest, Lyons stated that she wanted to give some information about Wesley Brown’s murder and relayed the following: her boyfriend, Clarence Engles, regularly rented his vehicle to a man named Ghost, who Lyons described as a Black male with a bald head; Ghost used the vehicle to drive around and commit crimes, and he regularly hangs out around Breckenridge Street, where he gambles in a driveway. After the arrest, Crane searched for “Ghost” in a police database and got a match for a Dontaevius Bowie, who had recently been released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter.

On September 2, police received an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers advising that Brown was set up to be killed by “Ghost.” The tip further advised that there were still bullet holes in the walls of 580 Breckenridge—but that the holes had been plastered and painted over by Ghost and his associates.

On October 6, an officer at Probation and Parole reached out to Detective Jeremy Adkins, who assisted Klingshirn on the case, stating that Buford Lyvers, upon arriving for his routine check-in, began crying and asked to speak with detectives about a homicide. Adkins went to speak with Lyvers, who, accompanied by a mentor, relayed the following story: On the night of January 21, Lyvers and Wadkins—who Lyvers had known since childhood and identified as “Ghost”— were at 580 Breckenridge to gamble. Lyvers had a semiautomatic handgun tucked into his waistband, and Wadkins was sitting next to him. Lyvers had just won a hand of poker and was shuffling the cards to deal the next hand when he received a text message from Brown asking to be let in through the front door. Lyvers replied that the door was unlocked. When Brown opened the door and entered the residence, Wadkins reached into Lyvers’s waistband, grabbed his gun, and shot Brown, who fell backwards and out of view. Lyvers and others fled “[a]s the shots were ringing out,” and he did not see where Wadkins went. When Adkins asked what happened to the gun, Lyvers advised that Wadkins “kept it.”

On October 21, officers executed a search warrant at 580 Breckenridge and found three bullet holes that appeared to have been plastered over in the living room. They found another bullet hole on the inside of the front door and scraped it to reveal a copper bullet. Later that day, Klingshirn filed the criminal complaint, which read,

The Affiant, Kristyn M Klingshirn, states that on 1/21/2021 at 19:00 in FAYETTE County, Kentucky, the above named defendant unlawfully: Committed the offense of Murder, KRS 507.020, On January 21, 2021 at 1900, the listed offender was at 580 Breckenridge when, with the intent to cause death to another person, caused the death of the victim, Wesley Brown when he shot him. During the course of the investigation the offender was identified by a cooperating witness who was present when the shooting occurred. The cooperating witness provided details of the incident which can be corroborated by evidence located at the scene. I also received multiple crime stoppers tips advising “Ghost” shot Mr. Brown and identifying “Ghost” as Kenneth Wadkins. A separate witness also identified Kenneth Wadkins as “Ghost”. The tips further advise 580 Breckenridge is used for gambling and Mr. Brown was set up. Utilizing Police resources, location data from a [sic.] electronic device also puts Kenneth Wadkins at the scene. R. 32-17, Crim. Complaint, PageID 201. Klingshirn then applied for an arrest warrant, which was signed on October 25. Wadkins was ultimately arrested on April 8, 2022.

On January 13, 2022, a few months before Wadkins’s arrest, Brown’s sister requested to speak with police again.³3. The notes to this interview identify the sister as “Viceanda.” Ms. Brown still believed that Arsenio Jackson arranged her brother’s killing and that Buford Lyvers was involved, and she again relayed the story of Brown blinking while on his deathbed in response to her question about Lyvers; she had since become convinced, though, that Lyvers was the one who shot Brown, and Jackson had paid him to do it. Ms. Brown then relayed the following theory: Brown was lured to 580 Breckenridge by a man known as “Do Wrong,” who had contacted Brown to buy drugs. When Brown arrived at the residence, he learned Do Wrong did not have enough money to pay. Roy Johnson, Lyvers, Wadkins, and possibly others were present. Lyvers and Wadkins began arguing and Lyvers dropped his handgun. When Brown started to walk out of the residence, he was shot in the back by Lyvers. When the on-duty detective inquired why Ms. Brown believed it was Lyvers who shot the gun, she responded that it “just didn’t make sense” that Wadkins would have done it.

Wadkins was arrested on April 8, 2022. He spent around two months in pretrial detention before a grand jury chose not to indict him, at which point he was released and the charges against him dropped. He maintains his innocence.

D. Wadkins’s Malicious Prosecution Suit

Wadkins filed a Section 1983 complaint against Klingshirn in the Eastern District of Kentucky, alleging malicious prosecution in violation of his Fourth Amendment Rights. Klingshirn moved for summary judgment following discovery, and the district court granted her motion, dismissing Wadkins’s claim. Wadkins timely appealed.

II. LEGAL STANDARD

Summary judgment is appropriate only when “the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A fact is material when it “might affect the outcome of the suit under the governing law,” and a dispute is genuine “if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). At the summary judgment stage, courts must view the record evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. See Chapman v. UAW Local 1005, 670 F.3d 677, 680 (6th Cir. 2012) (en banc). A district court’s summary judgment decision is reviewed de novo. McKay v. Federspiel, 823 F.3d 862, 866 (6th Cir. 2016).

III. ANALYSIS

There are four elements to a malicious prosecution claim under the Fourth Amendment: (1) that a “criminal prosecution was initiated against the plaintiff and that the defendant made, influenced, or participated in the decision to prosecute”; (2) “that there was a lack of probable cause for the criminal prosecution”; (3) that “the plaintiff suffered a deprivation of liberty” as a result of the criminal proceeding; and (4) “that the proceeding terminated in the plaintiff’s favor.” Cotton v. Hughes, 176 F.4th 886, 901–02 (6th Cir. 2026) (citation modified). Here, Klingshirn contended that she was entitled to summary judgment because no reasonable jury could find in Wadkins’s favor on the first two elements and that, even if her actions did violate his Fourth Amendment rights, she was entitled to qualified immunity. The district court reached only the probable cause issue, concluding that the arrest and prosecution of Wadkins were supported by probable cause based on the following facts: that Lashonda Brown indicated Wadkins went by “Ghost”; that Lashonda supplied a possible motive in the form of her brother’s belief that Wadkins had shot him previously; that other anonymous tips named “Ghost”; Lyvers’s eyewitness account, including his identification of Wadkins as “Ghost”; and the geolocation data placing one of Wadkins’s devices (either a phone or iPad) in the area on the night of the shooting.

A. Probable Cause

“Generally, probable cause exists when the police have ‘reasonably trustworthy information . . . sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense.’” Gardenhire v. Schubert, 205 F.3d 303, 315 (6th Cir. 2000) (quoting Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964)). An officer’s determination of probable cause should be “based upon the totality of the circumstances and must consider both the inculpatory and exculpatory evidence,” Jones v. Clark County, 959 F.3d 748, 757 (6th Cir. 2020) (citation modified), abrogated on other grounds by Thompson v. Clark, 596 U.S. 36 (2022); she may not “look only at the evidence of guilt while ignoring all exculpatory evidence,” Ouza v. City of Dearborn Heights, 969 F.3d 265, 279 (6th Cir. 2020). Typically, “once probable cause is established,” an officer may arrest a suspect; she “is under no duty to investigate further or to look for additional evidence which may exculpate the accused” before affecting the arrest. Jones, 959 F.3d at 757 (citation modified). In the malicious prosecution context, though, an officer can be liable if probable cause was lacking either for the arrest or for the “continued detention” of the plaintiff after arrest. Id. at 759. We have also recognized a rebuttable presumption that probable cause was satisfied in malicious prosecution cases where the plaintiff was indicted by a grand jury. See Lester v. Roberts, 986 F.3d 599, 608 (6th Cir. 2021).

Here, there is no presumption of probable cause because a grand jury chose not to indict Wadkins, see id., and the record contains several pieces of testamentary and documentary evidence that could cause a prudent person to doubt that he killed Brown. See Gardenhire, 205 F.3d at 315. Klingshirn was required to consider the totality of the circumstances presented by this evidence, including any exculpatory evidence, when making her probable cause determination. See Jones, 959 F.3d at 757. The inculpatory evidence against Wadkins included the geolocation data that placed a device associated with him in the area of 580 Breckenridge; but this evidence suggests that he may have been present at a residence where multiple men were reportedly playing poker and does not conclusively show that he committed a crime. The rest of the evidence against Wadkins consisted of various statements from witnesses and anonymous tipsters; there was no DNA or other physical evidence at the scene to implicate him, and no murder weapon was found. The investigation also revealed significant exculpatory evidence, including several alternate suspects. There was Buford Lyvers, at whose name Brown allegedly blinked while on his deathbed and who was named by numerous witnesses and tipsters; Dontaevius Bowie, who was listed in a police database as going by “Ghost” and had recently completed a manslaughter sentence; and AJ King, possibly accompanied by an unidentified man from Michigan, who allegedly approached Brown’s niece and took credit for his killing.

The witness statements of Brown’s sister and Lyvers merit special consideration. The district court relied particularly on the sister’s story regarding another shooting that Brown survived over a decade earlier, and for which he allegedly held Wadkins responsible, as a possible motive. But that evidence goes only so far. First, the record contains no corroborating evidence regarding this prior shooting. Second, there is nothing in the record to explain why this previous shooting, even assuming Wadkins was responsible, would supply a motive for Wadkins to shoot Brown again a decade later. Third, relying on Lashonda’s account of this previous shooting to establish probable cause would require one to disregard many of her other (contradictory) statements—including her statements from the May 5 interview that instead implicated Lyvers and Arsenio Jackson of being involved in a plot to murder Brown and cover it up, and AJ King and the man from Michigan (or his brother) of carrying out the shooting; as well as her later statement, in January 2022, expressing her belief that it was Lyvers who fired the shot that killed Brown. Just as an officer may not “look only at the evidence of guilt while ignoring all exculpatory evidence,” Ouza, 969 F.3d at 279, she cannot look only at the inculpatory details of a witness’s statement while overlooking the exculpatory ones. Finally, an officer’s probable cause determination should be grounded in “reasonably trustworthy information.” Gardenhire, 205 F.3d at 315 (citation modified). Lashonda’s statements included many serious and sometimes elaborate allegations, not only about Brown’s killing, but about herself having been tracked and followed closely for many years by Jackson and his associates, who would kill her if they ever found out she talked. On this record, a prudent officer would likely have hesitated to rely on Lashonda’s inconsistent statements to find there was probable cause to arrest Wadkins.

There are also objective reasons to doubt the trustworthiness of Lyvers, who was credited in the criminal complaint as “a cooperating witness who was present when the shooting occurred” and “provided details of the incident which can be corroborated by evidence located at the scene.” R. 32-17, PageID 201. We have instructed that “an eyewitness identification will constitute sufficient probable cause unless, at the time of the arrest, there is an apparent reason for the officer to believe that the eyewitness was lying, did not accurately describe what he had seen, or was in some fashion mistaken regarding his recollection of the confrontation.” Ouza, 969 F.3d at 282 (quoting Ahlers v. Schebil, 188 F.3d 365, 370 (6th Cir. 1999)) (citation modified). In this case, there were several reasons for a prudent officer to suspect Lyvers might be lying in his October 6 interview. He requested to speak with a detective in a case in which he was a suspect, after months of self-interested silence. By relaying the story that he did, Lyvers asserted his innocence of the killing while admitting he was present when it was committed—and even that it was committed using his gun. Not only did these circumstances surrounding Lyvers’s interview suggest his information might not be trustworthy, but key details of the story he relayed conflicted with other evidence. According to Lyvers, Wadkins leaned over during a poker game and—at the opportune moment, apparently without warning—grabbed Lyvers’s gun that was secured in his waistband to shoot Brown. Both the circumstances of this interview and some of its content might give “a prudent” officer reason to question whether Lyvers provided “reasonably trustworthy information.” Gardenhire, 205 F.3d at 315 (citation modified).

In addition, Lyvers’s account—in which Wadkins shot Brown face-to-face from inside the residence when Brown walked through the doorway—was inconsistent with other evidence regarding where and how the shot was fired. Namely, Brown gave a statement to police on the night of the shooting that he was shot from behind while walking on the sidewalk, which was consistent with the shell casings police found on the sidewalk at the scene, and the autopsy report later confirmed that the bullet entered Brown’s body through his back. This context might have also prompted a prudent officer to question whether the bullet holes in the walls and door of 580 Breckenridge were in fact related to this crime; with no murder weapon, there was no direct evidence to tie the copper bullet that police recovered from the door on October 21 to Brown’s killing, let alone to Wadkins personally. On this record, it appears close whether Klingshirn had probable cause. But we need not answer that question because we can resolve this case on qualified immunity grounds alone.

B. Qualified Immunity

The district court did not reach the issues of whether Klingshirn “made, influenced, or participated in the decision to prosecute,” Cotton, 176 F.4th at 901 (citation modified), or whether she was entitled to qualified immunity. But we may “affirm a decision of the district court on any grounds supported by the record, even if different from those relied on by the district court.” Garza v. Lansing Sch. Dist., 972 F.3d 853, 877 (6th Cir. 2020) (quoting Brown v. Tidwell, 169 F.3d 330, 332 (6th Cir. 1999) (per curiam)).

At summary judgment, a government official is entitled to qualified immunity “when, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the challenged conduct did not violate clearly established constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Gillman v. City of Troy, 126 F.4th 1152, 1158 (6th Cir. 2025) (citation modified). The Supreme Court has emphasized that courts should take care “not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality.” Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per curiam) (citation modified). Still, we have instructed that “[t]he operative inquiry is not whether a previous court faced perfectly analogous facts—it is ‘whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.’” Cahoo v. SAS Analytics Inc., 912 F.3d 887, 904 (6th Cir. 2019) (quoting Baynes v. Cleland, 799 F.3d 600, 610 (6th Cir. 2015)). Or as the Supreme Court put it recently, “[a] right is clearly established when it is sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.” Zorn v. Linton, 146 S. Ct. 926, 930 (2026) (per curiam) (citation modified).

On this record, it is not “sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood” there was no probable cause to arrest and prosecute Wadkins. Id. Regarding the probable cause issue, Wadkins relies on the principle that “[a]n eyewitness identification will constitute sufficient probable cause unless, at the time of the arrest, there is an apparent reason for the officer to believe that the eyewitness was lying, did not accurately describe what he had seen, or was in some fashion mistaken regarding his recollection of the confrontation.” Ahlers, 188 F.3d at 370 (citation modified). For the reasons we explained in the previous section, it was reasonably apparent that Lyvers had reasons to lie, and his testimony was in tension with other evidence including the autopsy report and Brown’s statements on the night of the shooting. Here, however, Wadkins has not shown that the standard we announced in Ahlers made it obvious that Klingshirn lacked probable cause because he has not addressed how a reasonable officer in her position should have understood the Lyvers interview in the context of this particular investigation, which included other evidence pointing in multiple directions, such as Lashonda Brown’s statements. While much of that other evidence was problematic, we are not convinced that “every reasonable official” would have concluded that Klingshirn lacked probable cause under clearly established law. Zorn, 146 S. Ct. at 930; see Williams v. City of Canton, 168 F.4th 933, 942 (6th Cir. 2026). Wadkins’s failure to overcome qualified immunity on this element is a sufficient basis to affirm the district court’s judgment, regardless of whether she “made, influenced, or participated in the decision to prosecute,” Cotton, 176 F.4th at 901 (citation modified), by making deliberately false or reckless statements in the criminal complaint.

Thus, we hold Klingshirn was entitled to qualified immunity.

IV. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM.