Bledsoe v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm'rs of the Cnty. of Jefferson

• Citation: 501 F.Supp.3d 1059
• Decision Date: 18 November 2020
• Docket Number: Case No. 16-2296-DDC-JPO
• Parties: Floyd S. BLEDSOE, Plaintiff, v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF JEFFERSON, KANSAS, Randy Carreno, Troy Frost, Robert Poppa, Jim Vanderbilt, George Johnson, Jim Woods, Terry Morgan, Michael Hayes, Jeffrey Herrig in his individual and official capacity, and Unknown Officers of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Kansas

501 F.Supp.3d 1059

Floyd S. BLEDSOE, Plaintiff,

v.BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF JEFFERSON, KANSAS, Randy Carreno, Troy Frost, Robert Poppa, Jim Vanderbilt, George Johnson, Jim Woods, Terry Morgan, Michael Hayes, Jeffrey Herrig in his individual and official capacity, and Unknown Officers of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Defendants.

Case No. 16-2296-DDC-JPO

United States District Court, D. Kansas.

Signed November 18, 2020

Dionne M. Scherff, Joseph, Hollander & Craft, LLC, Overland Park, KS, Jonathan Loevy, Pro Hac Vice, Joshua L. Loevy, Russell Ainsworth, Pro Hac Vice, Ruth Brown, Pro Hac Vice, Theresa Kleinhaus, Pro Hac Vice, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.

David E. Rogers, Michael J. Norton, Kelsey N. Frobisher, Foulston Siefkin LLP, Wichita, KS, Eric Turner, Foulston Siefkin LLP, Toby Crouse, Crouse, LLC, Overland Park, KS, for Defendants Jefferson County, Kansas, Board of Commissioners, Randy Carreno, Troy Frost, Robert Poppa, Jeffrey Herrig.

Kevin D. Case, Patric S. Linden, Case Linden, PC, Kansas City, MO, for Defendant Jim Vanderbilt.

Shon D. Qualseth, Office of Attorney General, Topeka, KS, for Defendants George Johnson, Jim Woods, Terry Morgan.

Thomas G. Lemon, Vincent M. Cox, Cavanaugh, Biggs & Lemon, PA, Topeka, KS, for Defendant Michael Hayes.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Daniel D. Crabtree, United States District Judge

This matter comes before the court on defendants Board of County Commissioners of the County of Jefferson, Kansas ("Jefferson County"); Jeffrey Herrig, in his individual and official capacity; Randy Carreno; Troy Frost; and Robert Poppa's (collectively, the "Jefferson County defendants") Motion to Dismiss Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 144). Plaintiff Floyd S. Bledsoe has filed a Response (Doc. 151) and the Jefferson County defendants have replied (Doc. 152). For reasons explained below, the court grants in part and denies in part the Jefferson County defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.

I. Factual Background

The following facts are taken from plaintiff's Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 141). Because defendants’ Motion to Dismiss relies on Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), the court must accept the well-pleaded facts as true and view them in the light most favorable to plaintiff. See Ramirez v. Dep't of Corr. , 222 F.3d 1238, 1240 (10th Cir. 2000) (explaining that, on a motion to dismiss, the court must "accept the well-pleaded allegations of the complaint as true and construe them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff" (citation omitted)). This lawsuit follows plaintiff's wrongful conviction for sexual abuse and murder of a 14-year-old girl named Camille Arfmann. A state court jury convicted plaintiff in April 2000, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Plaintiff was released from prison in 2015 after DNA testing exonerated him and, instead, identified his brother, Thomas Bledsoe ("Tom"), as the likely wrongdoer.

A. Camille's Murder

In November 1999, plaintiff was 23 years old and married to his wife, Heidi. The couple had two young sons, and plaintiff worked as a farmhand at a dairy farm in McLouth, Kansas. The couple invited Heidi's younger sister, Camille, to live with them in hopes of improving her school attendance. Plaintiff's older brother, Tom, then 25 years old, lived nearby with his parents. Tom had little social life, and he suffered from some intellectual limitations and partial deafness. Tom had a history of abnormal sexual behavior that included pursuit of young girls, though he was an active member of a Sunday school group for children at the Countryside Baptist Church.

On November 5, 1999, Camille took the bus home from school. She arrived at plaintiff's home around 4:20 p.m. Her friend Robin Meyer stopped by to visit at 5:00 p.m., but Camille was not there. Plaintiff and Heidi reported Camille's disappearance to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and they spent the next 48 hours trying to find Camille. They stopped the search on November 7, 1999, after Tom confessed that he had murdered Camille.

Tom's parents arranged for defense attorney defendant Michael Hayes¹ to represent Tom. Later that evening, Tom and Mr. Hayes met with personnel at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department ("Sheriff's Department"). Roy Dunnaway,² then the Sheriff of Jefferson County, defendant Robert Poppa³ (who worked as a law enforcement officer in the Sheriff's Department), and Jim Woods⁴ (who worked as a law enforcement officer for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation ("KBI")) attended this meeting, as did other unknown defendants. Through Mr. Hayes, Tom informed these defendants that he had murdered Camille and that he knew where to find her body. Tom or Mr. Hayes also revealed other details about Camille's murder, including that Tom had shot her in the head and moved her body to bury it in a trash dump. Tom and Mr. Hayes took these defendants to his parents’ property where Tom had been living. They found Camille's body underneath a foot of dirt, plywood, and garbage that included an X-rated movie and t-shirt that read: Countryside Baptist Church. The wounds on Camille's body matched Tom's description of her murder. Defendants found three of four missing bullet casings at Camille's burial site.

The coroner recovered semen from inside Camille's vagina, but he was unable to determine whether Camille had been sexually abused. Mr. Hayes surrendered the murder weapon—Tom's newly purchased Jennings 9mm firearm—to the police officers. Tom was charged with Camille's murder and taken to the Jefferson County Jail. Despite the evidence against Tom, defendants planned to frame plaintiff for Camille's murder.

B. The plan to frame plaintiff

Several days after Tom's arrest, Mr. Hayes, along with Jefferson County prosecutor defendant Jim Vanderbilt⁵ and other unknown defendants, met to devise a plan to fabricate Tom's testimony. The lead detective on Camille's murder case, defendant Randy Carreno from the Sheriff's Department,⁶ had focused his investigation on plaintiff even after Tom had surrendered. Mr. Hayes, Mr. Carreno, and other defendants conspired to secure false statements from Tom which would pin Camille's murder on plaintiff. Allegedly, Mr. Hayes previously had helped Mr. Vanderbilt avoid exposure for misappropriating county funds. So, Mr. Vanderbilt was indebted to Mr. Hayes and became a willing ally in the plan to frame plaintiff.

The plan went like this: Tom would recant his confession and claim that he had run into plaintiff on Saturday, November 6, 1999, at a roadside intersection. Tom would say that plaintiff had confessed to Camille's murder and had given him extensive details about the crime. Then, Tom would say that plaintiff persuaded him to take the blame for the murder by threatening to expose his deviant sexual history—including viewing X-rated movies and attempting to have sex with a dog. Mr. Hayes, Mr. Vanderbilt, and other defendants planned and coached Tom about recanting his confession. Tom was manipulated easily. Shortly before Tom recanted his confession, Mr. Hayes told plaintiff something about how he planned to take Tom off the "hot seat" and replace him with plaintiff.

Defendant George Johnson,⁷ who worked as a law enforcement officer for the KBI, administered polygraph examinations to both Tom and plaintiff on November 12, 1999. At some point during his examination, Tom recanted his confession and replaced it with the story that Mr. Hayes and others had coached him to give. During his polygraph examination, Tom failed this question: "Did you shoot Zetta ARFMANN, between 5 and 8 Nov. ‘99?"⁸ Doc. 141 at ¶ 58.

Overcome with guilt following the examination, Tom confessed again to Sheriff Dunnaway, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Vanderbilt, and other defendants, admitting that he had murdered Camille. Mr. Johnson instructed Tom to continue lying to implicate plaintiff, and Tom acquiesced. Then, plaintiff took the polygraph examination and truthfully denied any involvement in Camille's murder.

That evening, Mr. Vanderbilt released Tom from jail and dropped the charges against him. Plaintiff alleges an agreement was reached for Tom's release, and this agreement was never disclosed to plaintiff. Sheriff Dunnaway and other defendants then arrested plaintiff, and they continued to use Tom's fabricated statements to frame plaintiff. Specifically, Mr. Carreno and other defendant officers knowingly and purposefully falsified Tom's statements about meeting plaintiff at the roadside intersection so that they fit the timeline for the period when they believed plaintiff lacked an alibi. Plaintiff alleges Mr. Carreno was with plaintiff during much of the day on Saturday, November 6 because they were searching for Camille together. And, these defendants knew the roadside meeting never had happened.

Additionally, defendants, including Mr. Carreno, coached Tom to provide false explanations about how he had known so many details about Camille's death. Tom's false account became the centerpiece of the prosecution's evidence against plaintiff.

Overall, various law enforcement officers were involved in investigating Camille's death, and plaintiff's subsequent prosecution and conviction. Defendants Randy Carreno, Troy Frost, Robert Poppa, and Jeffrey Herrig worked as law enforcement officers in the Sheriff's Department, along with two individuals no longer named as defendants—Sheriff Dunnaway and law enforcement officer Orin Turner—and other unknown defendant officers. The Second Amended Complaint refers to Mr. Herrig, Mr. Carreno, Mr. Frost, Mr. Poppa, and the unknown law enforcement officers from the Sheriff's Department named as defendants in this case as the "Jefferson County Defendant Officers." Doc. 141 at ¶ 17. Mr. Herrig was the Undersheriff at the time of the events. He reported to Sheriff Dunnaway, but Mr. Herrig oversaw the day to day operations at the Sheriff's Department (including supervising Mr. Carreno, Mr. Frost, Mr. Poppa, and other...