Illegal search by Topeka police sent man to prison for 19 months, lawsuit says
A man spent 19 months in federal prison after he was illegally searched by two Topeka police officers as they arrested him for lurking and prowling in 2016, according to a lawsuit filed Friday against the city and the officers.
Topeka police officers Brandon Uhlrig and Zachary Goodman responded at 4 a.m. Dec. 24, 2016, to an alarm at Paisano’s Ristorante, an Italian restaurant. There, they found 23-year-old Henry McKnight Jr. asleep at the front door. They then left for an unrelated priority call.
When they returned 30 minutes later, according to the federal lawsuit filed in U.S. Court for the District of Kansas, the officers performed an illegal search of McKnight and found six .40-caliber bullets in a bag. Because of a previous felony conviction, the bullets landed him in prison.
Prosecutors later agreed there was no probable cause to arrest him and the case was dropped, court records show. But not before McKnight spent more than a year and a half in prison.
A Topeka police spokesman referred questions to the city’s media relations director, who said the City of Topeka does not comment on pending litigation.
On the morning of the arrest, the investigating officers found the handle of a damaged door at the restaurant had been broken. They also found a black .40-caliber pistol with an empty magazine on the ground nearby, according to court documents.
But the officers were unable to connect McKnight, an African American man, to the broken handle or pistol, according to the lawsuit. He was patted down for weapons, which did not turn up firearms, McKnight’s attorney said.
Then Uhlrig turned off his body camera to consult with a supervising officer who was not on the scene, a procedure that the lawsuit claimed was regularly followed by officers.
Officers are allowed to turn off their body worn cameras if it is necessary to discuss an issue with a supervisor in private, according to the department’s policy. An officer should verbally note on camera when he or she is turning off the device, the procedure states.
After talking with his boss, Uhlrig arrested McKnight for violating the city municipal code for “lurking and prowling.” The officers, according to the lawsuit, knew there was no evidence McKnight was lurking or prowling while he was asleep.
“The arrest was simply a pretext,” McKnight’s attorney, Pantaleon Florez Jr., wrote in the lawsuit.
It was during this arrest that the officers found the bag of bullets.
McKnight was prohibited from possessing a firearm because he was previously convicted of aggravated battery for a 2015 incident in in Shawnee County, according to court documents. Because of the search outside of the restaurant, he was later indicted for being a felon in possession of ammunition, records show.
As his case was pending, McKnight filed a motion to suppress all evidence about the bullets. At a hearing in August 2017, the officers intentionally gave misleading testimony to support the lurking and prowling charge, according to the lawsuit.
The motion to suppress was denied by U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree, who said the officer had probable cause to validly arrest McKnight for violating the prowling ordinance.
McKnight conditionally pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of ammunition and was sentenced to more than three years in prison and three years of supervised release.
But after he was sentenced, McKnight appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Federal prosecutors then agreed the officers lacked probable cause to arrest McKnight and asked that his motion to suppress be reversed, according to the lawsuit.
The indictment against McKnight was dismissed without prejudice Jan. 4. He was released days later, according to data kept by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
In the lawsuit, Florez said McKnight’s life was “completely and permanent disrupted” because of his incarceration.
The Star’s Jonathan Shorman, who also reports for the The Wichita Eagle, contributed to this story.
This story was originally published July 1, 2019 at 1:04 PM.
