Judge nixes wrongful prosecution suit

Judge nixes wrongful prosecution suit

Jan 24, 2006 | Local News

The News-Register staff

A federal judge has ruled in favor of police, prosecutors and jailers in dismissing a wrongful prosecution lawsuit filed by a young man twice-acquitted by juries on sex-abuse charges.

Judge Michael Mosman found they were entitled to qualified immunity for their roles in a pair of 2003 sex abuse cases brought against Tim Warrens, then a 16-year-old Newberg resident.

Warrens, now 21 and living in Nevada, claimed a pair of Newberg detectives and a Washington County prosecutor wrongly fingered him for abuse actually inflicted by the girl's father, minister David Gilmore. He submitted that broader, more aggressive and more open-minded investigation should have made that evident.

In addition to detectives Ken Summers and Sherry McQuistion and prosecutor Greg Olson, he named the Newberg Police Department and Yamhill County Jail.

Warrens was acquitted in 2003 following successive trials in Yamhill and Washington counties, possible because incidents of abuse allegedly occurred on both sides of the county line. But he had been held on a lofty $750,000 bail for a lengthy period while awaiting his day in court.

Gilmore was later charged and convicted of sexually abusing another daughter multiple times in Yamhill and Marion counties. In September, a Yamhill County judge sentenced him to 11 years in prison and a Marion County jail added 19 more, the terms to run consecutively.

Following his acquittal by the two juries that considered his case, Warrens filed suit in U.S. District Court in Portland.

But Mosman ruled that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability in civil suits so long as their conduct doesn't clearly violate a person's constitutional rights. While Warrens was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, they acted in a good faith belief in his guilt, the judge decided.