KEVIN O’HANLON, The Associated Press
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A judge has dismissed a lawsuit by former death-row inmate Jeremy Sheets, who sued Omaha police for their role in his 1997 murder conviction.
Stating that police had probable cause to arrest Sheets, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon dismissed Sheets’ claims that accused investigators of framing him for the 1992 murder of Kenyatta Bush, a 17-year-old Omaha honor student.
Sheets spent three years on death row before a Nebraska Supreme Court ruling freed him in 2001.
The state’s high court ruled that prosecutors should not have been able to use the taped confession of co-defendant Adam Barnett during Sheets’ trial. Barnett killed himself in jail, making it impossible for Sheets’ attorney to cross-examine him.
Douglas County prosecutors did not file new charges against Sheets, citing a lack of evidence.
Sheets became the first person released from Nebraska’s death row in 88 years after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the Nebraska decision.
Sheets claims investigators pressured Barnett to confess to a crime he didn’t commit and fed him information about the crime before taping his confession.
Bush was kidnapped outside Omaha North High School on her way to class Sept. 23, 1992. Her throat was slashed and her body was dumped in a wooded area north of Omaha.
The crime went unsolved until 1996, when police got a tip that Sheets and Barnett reportedly were tied to the case.
Bataillon ruled Tuesday that there was probable cause to arrest Sheets.
“The officers had, at the least, arguable probable cause to conclude that Sheets had committed, or was somehow involved in, the murder,” Bataillon said. “The officers were presented with a credible confession to a brutal crime. In considering the totality of the circumstances, Sheets has not shown that Barnett’s statements were not voluntary.”
Bataillon also said investigators had “qualified immunity” -- which protects public officials from lawsuits stemming from the lawful performance of their job.
“Only a showing of reckless or intentional failure to investigate other leads will amount to a constitutional violation,” Bataillon said.
Barnett told police that he and Sheets, after a night of dropping acid, decided to rape a black woman to get revenge on black men who date white women. He said Sheets stabbed Bush after she lost consciousness.
Barnett gave his statement to police as part of a plea agreement to escape a possible death sentence.
In his 1997 trial, Sheets denied that he hated blacks or had any involvement in Bush’s killing.
Sheets, who now lives in Colorado, was being represented two Scottsbluff attorneys, Maren Chaloupka, and her father, Robert Chaloupka.
Maren Chaloupka said she would appeal the ruling to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Across this country, citizens have been sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit, which is an act of terror against them,” she said. “We believe that Jeremy Sheets was one of those citizens. But it is extremely difficult to make the system answer for four years on death row.”
The U.S. Supreme Court “has made rulings that protect the system from accountability for a wrongful conviction and death sentence,” Chaloupka said.
Sheets sued for emotional pain and suffering, punitive and other damages. The suit did not specify a dollar amount.