Federal judge dismisses former corrections officer’s suit
A federal judge has ruled in favor of Fayette County’s former prison warden and a former drug task force member in a civil suit lodged by a former corrections officer who claimed he was framed in a sting operation involving smuggled contraband.
In an opinion and order drafted by U.S. District Judge Terrence F. McVerry, the jurist granted summary judgment for former warden Larry Medlock and former county task froce member Thomas O’Barto, who were both involved in the arrest of Tim Hamborsky, a corrections officer for more than 20 years prior to his arrest in 2008.
Hamborsky was charged with drug-related offenses after he agreed to bring tobacco into the jail for inmate and jailhouse informant Erin Spade, and the smuggled package also turned out to contain Vicodin pills. Hamborsky claimed he knew the package contained tobacco, but he was unaware of the pills.
A jury acquitted Hamborsky of the charges in 2010, and through his attorney, John P. Smarto of Greensburg, he filed the federal complaint against Medlock and O’Barto, arguing they lacked probable cause to arrest him.
Marie Jones and Jeffrey Cohen, the Pittsburgh attorneys representing the defendants, made a motion to dismiss the case in November, arguing that Hamborsky could not prove he was arrested without probable cause and that the evidence failed to establish a conspiracy between Medlock and O’Barto to violate Hamborsky’s rights maliciously.
McVerry agreed with the defendants.
“The court cannot but conclude that there was probable cause for plaintiff’s prosecution,” he wrote. “At the time plaintiff was charged, O’Barto knew that plaintiff had discussed bringing some type of contraband into the prison for Spade; he knew that plaintiff had retrieved a bag from under the newspaper vending machine and brought it into the prison; and he discovered that the bag contained Vicodin which is a controlled substance under Pennsylvania law.”
“All together, these facts gave O’Barto an ample basis to charge plaintiff with possession with intent to deliver Vicodin, and furnishing Vicodin to a prisoner,” McVerry
wrote. “Furthermore, the fact that the charges arose out of a sting operation does not negate the existence of probable cause.”
The jurist reasoned that the purpose of a sting operation is to develop probable cause which may lead to an arrest. Hamborsky’s argument that he didn’t know there was Vicodin in the package does not equate to a lack of probable cause to arrest him, McVerry determined, because the Vicodin was in fact present and that was all O’Barto needed to make the arrest.
“Because O’Barto had probable cause to bring the charges against plaintiff, both his Fourth Amendment and his state-law malicious prosecution claims must fail,” McVerry concluded.