Aug 25, 2005 3 min read

An hour of reckoning is now approaching for the Fayette County legal system, with Michael J. Cavanagh’s filing of a federal civil rights suit against two adult probation officers, their supervisor, a judge and the county, arising from the apparent snatch-and-run tactics used to apprehend Cavanagh two years ago just so he could begin serving a short prison sentence for automobile insurance fraud. If events went down as Cavanagh has detailed, one or more people in the jurisprudential chain of command goofed up big time, and the legal outcome could give another black eye to a county already bruised and battered by such scandals. The financial penalty could also be hefty, which isn’t good news for the current county commissioners, any applicable insurance carrier or ultimately the taxpayers.

While the impending trial in federal court in Pittsburgh will putty in any knowledge gaps, such as who ordered what and when, no one has officially denied Cavanagh’s account of his apprehension. And that is that he agreed to meet the two adult probation officers in the parking lot of a well-traveled Morgantown, W.Va., retail center, to sign some papers pertaining to when he would report to the Fayette County Prison to start serving his sentence.

Instead, according to Cavanagh’s account, one of those officers tackled and injured him, he was muscled into the back of their caged vehicle, and he was driven straight to prison. If that account holds up in court, Cavanagh can probably start counting his money right now, because those officers had absolutely no jurisdiction in the state of West Virginia. If they did as Cavanagh says – and the circumstantial evidence appears pretty strong, because he got into prison somehow and no one’s denied his version of events – normal extradition procedures were utterly ignored.

The germane issue isn’t about whether or not you like Cavanagh, whether you feel he was framed or deserved his sentence, or whether you think the former state representative candidate gets in the news too often. It’s about whether the legal system overstepped its bounds, perhaps in an act of being overzealous, and basically trampled on the fundamental rights he was entitled to as a citizen.

Think of it in reverse: When was the last time you heard of a West Virginia law enforcement officer, of any stripe or affiliation, venturing into Fayette County to shanghai someone back across the state border, for any reason? That stuff doesn’t happen in reverse because, plain and simple, it’s illegal. You have to go through a process, which involves letting officers in the host state do any snatching up of wanted persons, then holding an extradition hearing if needed.

Topping this all off is the fact that Cavanagh wasn’t hiding out 25 miles away, in some remote mountain enclave, in an attempt to duck the law. He had a business interest there but says he came home to Uniontown and to his wife every day. The whole thing seems to have been totally avoidable.

The cowboy mentality might make for some good cop movies. But in real life, playing Dirty Harry usually translates into some pretty messy consequences.