Bledsoe v. Jefferson Cnty.

• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Kansas
• Writing for the Court: Daniel D. Crabtree, United States District Judge
• Citation: Bledsoe v. Jefferson Cnty., 275 F.Supp.3d 1240 (D. Kan. 2017)
• Decision Date: 04 August 2017
• Docket Number: Case No. 16–2296–DDC–GLR
• Parties: Floyd S. BLEDSOE, Plaintiff, v. JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS, Randy Carreno, Troy Frost, Orin Turner, Robert Poppa, Roy Dunnaway, Jim Vanderbilt, George Johnson, Jim Woords, Terry Morgan, Michael Hayes, Jeffrey Herrig, and Unknown Officers of the Jefferson County Police Department and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Defendants.

275 F.Supp.3d 1240

Floyd S. BLEDSOE, Plaintiff,

v.JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS, Randy Carreno, Troy Frost, Orin Turner, Robert Poppa, Roy Dunnaway, Jim Vanderbilt, George Johnson, Jim Woords, Terry Morgan, Michael Hayes, Jeffrey Herrig, and Unknown Officers of the Jefferson County Police Department and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Defendants.

Case No. 16–2296–DDC–GLR

United States District Court, D. Kansas.

Signed August 4, 2017

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

David E. Rogers, Foulston Siefkin LLP, Wichita, KS, Toby Crouse, Foulston Siefkin LLP, Overland Park, KS, Kevin D. Case, Patric S. Linden, Case Linden, PC, Kansas City, MO, Carrie A. Barney, Shon D. Qualseth, Office of Attorney General, Thomas G. Lemon, Vincent M. Cox, Cavanaugh, Biggs & Lemon, PA, Topeka, KS, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Daniel D. Crabtree, United States District JudgeThis matter comes before the court on defendants Michael Hayes, Jim Vanderbilt, Terry Morgan, Jim Woods, and George Johnson's separate Motions to Dismiss (Docs. 76, 80, 83, 85, 86) plaintiff Floyd Bledsoe's First Amended Complaint (Doc. 75). For reasons explained below, the court denies defendants' Motions.

I. Background

The following facts are taken from plaintiff's First Amended Complaint (Doc. 75). Because the current dismissal motions rely on Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), the court must accept the 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)). The court emphasizes that this standard controls the facts at this stage of the case. In short, the court expresses no opinion on whether they represent the true facts.

This lawsuit follows plaintiff's wrongful conviction for sexual abuse and murder of a fourteen-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 their 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 the 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 Sherriff's Department and 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. Defendants Robert Poppa² and Roy Dunnaway ³ attended this meeting, as well as others including defendant officer Jim Woods.⁴ Through Mr. Hayes, Tom informed these defendants that he had murdered Camille and that he knew the location of her body. Tom also revealed other details about Camille's murder, including that he had shot her in the head and moved her body to bury it in a trash dump. Tom and Mr. Hayes took Mr. Poppa, Mr. Woods, Mr. Dunnaway, and others, to his parents' property where he 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. The 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, the 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 Jim Vanderbilt,⁵ and other unknown defendants, met to devise a plan to fabricate Tom's testimony. The lead detective on Camille's murder case, Randy Carreno from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, had focused his investigation on plaintiff even after Tom turned himself in. Mr. Hayes, Mr. Carreno, and other defendants conspired to obtain 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 on his recantation. 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.

Defendants Terry Morgan, Jim Woods, and George Johnson worked as law enforcement officers for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation ("KBI") at this time. Mr. Morgan, Mr. Woods, and Mr. Johnson (collectively, the "KBI defendant officers") were integral and active participants in the investigation of Camille's death. The KBI defendant officers gathered physical evidence, executed search warrants, photographed the crime scene and victim, conducted and reviewed polygraph examinations and interviews, completed police reports, and directed Mr. Carreno to interview certain witnesses.

Mr. Johnson⁶ administered polygraph examinations to both Tom and plaintiff on November 12, 1999. At some point during his examination, Tom recanted his confession with the story that Mr. Hayes and others had coached him to give. During the examination, Tom exhibited deception on this question: "Did you kill Camille Arffmann?"

Overcome with guilt following the examination, Tom confessed again to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Vanderbilt, and other defendants, 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. Mr. Dunnaway and other defendants arrested plaintiff, and they continued to use Tom's fabricated statements to frame plaintiff. Specifically, Mr. Carreno and other defendant officers 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. Additionally, defendants coached Tom to provide false explanations for how he had known so many details about Camille's death. Tom's false account became the prosecution's central piece of evidence against plaintiff.

C. The trial

At trial, the defendant officers⁷ withheld evidence of Tom's guilt from plaintiff's defense. For example, Mr. Woods and other defendant officers withheld Tom's detailed description about how he had tried to have sex with Camille in his truck and shot her when she laughed at him. The defendant officers also withheld evidence of Tom's history of pursuing young girls and that he had made sexual advances on Camille just a few weeks before her murder. The defendant officers also withheld Tom's statements to them on the night he turned himself in, where he described Camille's wounds and the location of her body. The defendant officers also withheld information about Tom's activities between November 8 and November 12, 1999, including his statements during the polygraph examination.

Additionally, the defendant officers suppressed physical evidence of Tom's guilt. This evidence included the shovel that Tom had used to bury Camille's body and other physical evidence taken from Tom's truck. In furtherance of the conspiracy to frame plaintiff, Mr. Morgan and other defendant officers never conducted a rigorous forensic examination of Tom's bedroom or home. Instead, Mr. Morgan and other defendants recovered evidence like Tom's weapons and ammunition by letting Tom's father turn them in. Meanwhile, the defendant officers subjected plaintiff's home and vehicle to thorough examinations.

The prosecution also generated false evidence against plaintiff. Mr. Johnson reported to Mr. Vanderbilt that plaintiff had exhibited deception during the polygraph examination, and that Tom had exhibited...