Wrongful-incarceration case suffers legal blow

ST. LOUIS -- A man who spent two months jailed in St. Louis on charges for another man has suffered a legal blow.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a federal judge Friday tossed out the bulk of Cedric Wright's lawsuit against St. Louis police officials, officers, employees and the Board of Police Commissioners, as well as officials and employees of the sheriff's office and the city division of corrections.

Police arrested Wright in August 2011 on charges of stealing beer and a bag of chips. Officers thought he was a man wanted on warrants named Corey D. Leonard. Wright was jailed for two months, even though he documented his identity and despite the fact that Leonard was already locked up.

In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Fleissig noted a fingerprint check would have revealed the error. But she found "no reasonable officer would have known failing to investigate further would violate the Fourth Amendment," given that Wright was a listed alias for Leonard, the men's resemblance to each other and the fact he asserted only at his initial arrest that he was not Leonard. The Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

Wright's attorney, James Hacking, said he was "disappointed" but "respected" the ruling.

Maggie Crane, spokeswoman for Mayor Francis Slay, said: "We're not perfect. But, the SLMPD and the Division of Corrections try very hard to get it right every time."

Fleissig, however, retained a single count against a sheriff's deputy, writing that the deputy was "clearly negligent" in failing to pass along a copy of a judge's order regarding Wright. She noted that the deputy returned Wright to jail, "without any further action or comment," after a judge found that Wright was not the proper defendant and ordered his release.

She said that the deputy was "deliberately indifferent" to Wright's right to be released, but she said that there was no evidence the deputy's department or jail officials or staff also were indifferent.

Fleissig also decided there was no evidence of a "widespread pattern of similar unconstitutional misconduct" by police, although Hacking and a former colleague found 82 people who, they claim, spent a combined total of 1,397 days in jail from 2007 through mid-2013.

The judge said that was "not pervasive" in light of the tens of thousands of arrests each year, and that many of the situations differed from Wright's.

But, Fleissig added, "With the notoriety of the present case, the landscape might be different, and future cases of misidentification under similar circumstances might warrant a different result."

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com