Attorney asks for dismissal of lawsuit
An attorney representing Fayette County, its former chief prosecutor and an assistant district attorney wants a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by a man who was acquitted of rape. Earlier this year, Stanley Ohler Sr., 35, of Connellsville asked for $1.5 million in damages, claiming police wrongly arrested him, and prosecutors should have known to throw out the case.
Ohler took the case to trial, and was acquitted on all charges related to the alleged July 11, 2007, rape.
He claimed that Assistant District Attorney Phyllis A. Jin, who prosecuted the case, and former district attorney Nancy D. Vernon, should have dismissed the case. Vernon was district attorney when the case was tried in 2008, and is now a judge.
“The claims against these defendants arise out of the prosecutors filing criminal charges against Mr. Ohler, and ultimately prosecuting him. Even though the plaintiff was ultimately acquitted, he cannot pursue this claim against the prosecutors,” attorney Marie M. Jones wrote in the motion, filed Tuesday.
Prosecutors, she argued, are immune from suit.
Police alleged that Ohler came to the woman’s home in Bullskin Township and repeatedly raped her.
He was charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault and indecent assault.
At trial, his attorney presented two witnesses who testified that the woman who made the allegations against Ohler threatened to have him jailed if he did not do certain things she wanted.
He was acquitted of all charges.
Ohler filed the lawsuit from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy in Frackville, where he is serving a sentence of six to 12 years in the unrelated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl.
In that case, he was convicted of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault and statutory sexual assault in 2008.
That assault occurred in 2002, but it took several years to make an arrest in the case.
A magistrate judge will rule at a later date.