A Union City man is suing the city of Chattahoochee Hills and two of the city’s police detectives for wrongful arrest.
Eric Johnson, 20, filed the civil complaint Thursday in Fulton County State Court, claiming that the police detectives, James D. Melton and Sydney A. Brown, engaged in a “constitutionally deficient investigation” that violated Johnson’s Fourth Amendment right to protection against unlawful seizure.
The detectives arrested Johnson on Aug. 27, 2009, accusing him of being part of a home invasion in which a woman was shot in the face and her infant brutally beaten.
Johnson told police he had only dropped off his friend Antoine Wimes and another teen he didn’t know, Donivan McCoy, near the scene of the crime as a favor to Wimes, but had no idea what the two planned.
But 10 days after the incident, Johnson was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, aggravated battery, armed robbery and cruelty to a child. He remained in jail for 100 days on charges the Fulton County District Attorney’s office later refused to indict him on.
“When Brown swore out the arrest warrants for Johnson, he intentionally misrepresented material facts – including that Johnson actually transported Wimes and McCoy to the residence located at 7555 Barns Road,” the lawsuit alleges. “Those material misrepresentations caused the municipal judge to execute the warrants for Johnson’s arrest.”
Mayor Don Hayes was informed of the lawsuit on Friday, but said he was unable to discuss it before talking to the city attorney. City attorney Rick Lindsey declined comment because he had not viewed the complaint when an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter called Friday morning.
When Johnson learned of the Aug. 17 incident, the then-18-year-old called police on his own to tell them he had dropped off Wimes and McCoy near the home where the invasion took place. Johnson said that was more than two hours before the home invasion.
Johnson told the Fulton County police officer who interviewed him in person later that night that he didn’t know McCoy, had no idea where Wimes and McCoy were going when he dropped them off, and had no further contact with them after he left them.
Hours after they were dropped off somewhere on Barnes Road, Wimes and McCoy went to the home of Shanequa “Nikki” Neely and her 10-month-old baby, J. K. Neely.
There, Wimes allegedly shot Neely and robbed her, and slammed little J.K. repeatedly against a wall.
Wimes was out on bond on a murder charge at the time of the incident and had cut the monitoring device from his ankle, according to authorities.
Police immediately arrested McCoy, who implicated Wimes in the incident – as did Neely. Neither Neely nor McCoy mentioned Johnson when telling police about the home invasion.
Wimes remains in the Fulton County jail without bond, and McCoy has been released.
When Brown and Melton contacted Johnson after his first police interview, Johnson’s mother refused to let him be interviewed again without a lawyer present.
“Chattahoochee [Hills] police officers knowingly arrested him without probable cause and then maliciously prosecuted him in retaliation for his decision not to provide another face-to-face interview,” Johnson’s attorney, Mawuli Mel Davis, alleged in a statement released early Friday.
Brown has since resigned from the police department, Hayes said, and Melton was terminated for an unrelated issue.
Then-police chief Damon Jones, who is mentioned extensively throughout the lawsuit, resigned last year and was replaced in November by Chief Lewis Harper.
Johnson was released Dec. 4, 2009, on $55,000 bond. The district attorney’s office on May 21, 2010, found that there was no probable cause to charge him.
The lawsuit asks that the city of Chattahoochee Hills be held liable for the actions of the detectives. The lawsuit accuses Melton and Brown of failing to identify objective evidence, failing to consider the presence or absence of corroborating evidence in reaching a probable cause determination, and failing to conduct a thorough investigation that considers alternative theories other than the possible guilt of a potential suspect prior to seeking an arrest warrant.
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