Federal judge dismissed majority of defendants from Connellsville man’s unlawful prosecution suit
A federal judge has dismissed some of the defendants in a lawsuit filed by a Connellsville man over his drug-related arrest and incarceration.
On Tuesday, Fayette County, the disbanded county drug task force, former district attorneys Nancy Vernon and Jack Heneks Jr., former deputy prosecutors J.W. Eddy and Mark Brooks, the county prison board, the prison and its former warden, Brian Miller, were dismissed from a lawsuit filed by Anthony Kyle Keffer. A judge ruled each of those defendants were entitled to immunity from suit.
The suit also names the city of Connellsville and former Connellsville City police officer Ryan Reese, who arrested Keefer and accused him of selling 10 Oxycontin pills to a confidential informant in 2009.
A jury found Keffer guilty in 2010, and he was sentenced to serve 27 to 54 months in prison, but a judge found on appeal that Keffer’s constitutional rights were violated during the trial and granted him a new one.
During the 2014 retrial, it was learned that the pills in evidence were destroyed by the district attorney’s office after initial appeals were denied. Jurors at the time could not reach a verdict, and a mistrial was declared.
Keffer claimed that Reese used fabricated and falsified evidence to arrest him and prosecute him. He additionally alleged misconduct by county prosecutors deprived him of his rights, and claimed he was housed in an “constitutionally deficient, unsafe facility” when he was in the Fayette County Prison.
Keffer claimed Vernon failed to properly conduct a diligent investigation into the validity of the charges filed by Reese, but U.S. District Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan found Vernon, then district attorney, was working within the scope of her duties when initiating and pursuing a criminal prosecution.
Lenihan added that Eddy was also entitled to immunity from suit. Keffer accused him of improperly offering expert testimony concerning the identification of evidence.
Lenihan found the method was “clearly a prosecutorial function that occurred during the judicial process.” Heneks, also a former district attorney, filed an appeals brief in the case that Keffer claimed was to defraud the court, and failed to supervise the drug task force.
Like the others, Lenihan found she could not infer that Heneks “was acting under color of state law at the time of the alleged constitutional violation, because he would have had no personal involvement in the development of policy or practice relating to training or supervision.”
Brooks was also granted prosecutorial immunity. Keffer accused him of amending charges after the statute of limitations had run out and knowing exculpatory evidence was destroyed and concealed.
Lenihan found that Keffer did not allege Brooks was the one who destroyed the evidence, did not identify who at the district attorney’s office destroyed the evidence, did not assert when the evidence was destroyed and did not assert that Brooks knowingly failed to stop its removal or destruction.
Concerning Keffer’s complaints about the prison, Lenihan found his claims were initiated more than two years after his release, and were barred by the statute of limitations in the case.
She also denied Keffer’s request to force the county to fix the aging lockup, noting isn’t legally entitled to ask for such an injunction once he is released from prison.
“Courts have consistently held that an inmate does not have standing to sue on behalf of other prisoners,” Lenihan wrote.