Jeffrey Knowles lost his apartment and his car and missed his son’s birth when he spent five months in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
Last week Knowles took the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office to trial, and a jury awarded him a $50,000 verdict for a malicious prosecution claim against the agency.
Authorities arrested 46-year-old Knowles in September 2009 after the manager at Kentucky Fried Chicken on Savannah Highway identified him in a photo lineup as the man who ambushed her with a sharp object as she unlocked the restaurant one Monday morning. Someone had called in an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers, and the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force picked up Knowles on an armed-robbery charge.
The Charleston man had served nearly 12 years in federal prison for an armed robbery of a Friedman’s Jewelers in Conway. Investigators spoke about a possible connection to other armed robberies around the same area as the fast-food restaurant holdup.
But Knowles insisted that this time they had the wrong man. He gave a written statement, according to his attorney, asking sheriff’s detective David Owen to check phone records, to speak with the man who walked with him in Hampton Park close to the time of the robbery and to his neighbor who saw him that morning. He also asked the detective to check the security camera at Burris Liquor Store, where Knowles had applied for a job that day.
Unable to afford a lawyer at the time, Knowles scrounged up enough money to pay a private investigator to check out his alibi.
That investigator, retired North Charleston police lieutenant Tommy Blackwood, then called attorney Mark Peper and asked him to take up Knowles’ cause.
“Two phone calls is all it took to get it dismissed,” Peper said.
Peper contends that not only did the sheriff’s detective fail to appropriately investigate Knowles’ alibi, but he presented the victim in the robbery with a lineup that suggested Knowles’ photo.
Peper filed a civil lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, offered to settle the case for $10,000 last month and, when the Sheriff’s Office declined the offer, headed to trial Aug. 1 in Charleston County circuit court.
After four days of testimony, the jury returned a $50,000 verdict on a claim of malicious prosecution, or intentionally bringing legal action without probable cause. The jury found in favor of the Sheriff’s Office on a false-arrest claim, meaning Knowles receives no damages for that claim.
Sheriff’s Maj. Jim Brady said investigators have not arrested anyone else in connection with the bank robbery. He said the Sheriff’s Office would review the case and referred comments to the agency’s attorney, Rick Corrigan.
Corrigan said the case is not over and that the judge still must hear post-trial motions, though he declined to elaborate on what those might be. Common post-trial motions include requests for a new trial or that the judge overrule or amend a jury’s verdict.
Corrigan defended the officer’s actions.
“Detective Owen did nothing but his job and did an excellent job protecting citizens of this county,” Corrigan said.
Peper said his client, who works for a local moving company, intends to use the money awarded to rebuild his credit and to make up for lost time with his family
http://liarcatchers.com/fraud_investigation.html
