Price v. Lucas

The Richland County Sheriff’s Office launched Operation Turnaround after a 2004 drug-related death and recruited Bray as a confidential informant to make undercover buys from suspected drug traffickers. DEA Agents joined the investigation and registered Bray as a DEA informant. On the basis of Bray’s controlled buys, they arrested and charged more than 20 individuals, including Webb and Price, with violating federal criminal drug laws. Later, Bray, in jail for an unrelated drug-related killing, disclosed that Lucas conspired with him to frame innocent individuals, including Webb and Price. The Department of Justice discovered that several targets, including Webb and Price, did not participate in the charged drug deals. Bray had used stand-ins to participate in the drug deals and then falsely identified each. Bray later testified that he acted on his own, but the government concluded that law-enforcement supported Bray’s false identifications by knowingly making false reports and testimony and by covering up. The district court dismissed civil rights claims by Webb and Price. The Sixth Circuit reversed a decision that Price lacked standing because he had pleaded guilty to other drug crimes and dismissal of specific malicious-prosecution, false-arrest, fabrication-of-evidence, and federal conspiracy claims. False-arrest and trespass claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act are time barred, but the court remanded state-law and remaining FTCA claims. View "Price v. Lucas" on Justia Law