By Robert Snell, Beth LeBlanc
The Detroit News
DETROIT — A former Detroit Police officer was awarded more than $58 million Tuesday following a civil trial involving allegations that a Michigan State Police lieutenant violated his constitutional rights during an abandoned criminal investigation.
The 2019 investigation and prosecution, which involved allegations of the sexual assault of a minor, were spurred in part by an assistant attorney general who was later charged with misconduct and disbarred.
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The award capped a nearly decade-long ordeal for former DPD Officer Sean MacMaster, who started sobbing upon hearing the size of the verdict after a nearly three-week trial in front of U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy in Detroit and deliberations that spanned parts of three days. The Detroit News revealed last month that Michigan State Police offered $800,000 to settle the case and avoid a trial, which MacMaster rejected.
The civil trial against Michigan State Police Lt. David Busacca involved allegations that he altered a police report and omitted information in warrant requests, which led to search and arrest warrants issued without probable cause.
“When you abuse your power, you get held responsible,” MacMaster’s lawyer, Josh Blanchard , told The News. “Accountability is a real thing.”
The verdict Tuesday included $33.4 million for lost wages, pain and suffering, harm to his reputation, and attorney fees and $25 million in punitive damages. It was not immediately clear whether there would be an appeal.
Eight-figure verdicts, or larger, are not unprecedented in federal court in Detroit . Jurors awarded Versata Software, Inc. almost $105 million in a breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation case against Ford Motor Co. in 2022. U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman, however, later reduced the award for breach of contract claims to $3 and erased $22.4 million in trade secret misappropriation damages.
There was no immediate comment from Michigan State Police and the Michigan Attorney General’s Office.
As of January, Busacca served as a post commander at Michigan State Police , according to the department.
State Rep. Jay DeBoyer, a Clay Township Republican who leads the House Oversight Committee, was unfamiliar with the case but his committee has focused some of its attention on the Michigan State Police in recent weeks.
“I’m going to obviously become more familiar with this case and understand how we got here, to the point where we could be that liable,” DeBoyer said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much of the verdict would be the responsibility of the state of Michigan, which employed Busacca and, at one time, former Assistant Attorney General Brian Kolodziej.
Former Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe testified at trial on Oakland County’s initial investigation of the allegations against MacMaster, which ended with the office concluding there was no crime, and his shock when state police charged MacMaster without ever requesting the county’s file on the case.“This was the biggest travesty of justice I’ve seen in my 44-plus year career,” McCabe said Tuesday of the state’s investigation and prosecution of MacMaster.
Murphy ruled in January that there was enough evidence for a jury to conclude that Busacca altered a police report and omitted information. The judge also concluded that allegations of “malicious prosecution” and “civil conspiracy” against Busacca could proceed to trial.
Earlier decisions by the judge also allowed MacMaster to pursue similar allegations at trial against Kolodziej and MacMaster’s ex-wife, Johanna MacMaster.
“For Sean, it’s been almost a decade of those guys, Busacca and Kolodziej, continuing to cast this cloud of suspicion and innuendo over him,” Blanchard said. “It’s cost him jobs. It cost him his reputation. Today’s verdict is vindication that he didn’t do anything wrong.”
The case dates to at least 2019 when Sean MacMaster and his stepfather, Larry Orr, were charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a minor after an investigation by Busacca and Kolodziej, who was working in Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office at the time.
Later in 2019, Nessel dropped the charges against the two men and reversed a plea in another case after Kolodziej was found to have had a sexual relationship with a sexual assault victim in Mount Pleasant.
Sean MacMaster filed the lawsuit in 2021 in federal court, claiming investigators from the Michigan State Police and Nessel’s office conspired with Johanna MacMaster to bring the charges against him. He argued Busacca violated his Fourth Amendment right — which guarantees an individual’s right to be free from search and seizure without probable cause — by swearing to warrants that had insufficient information in them.
The allegations against Sean MacMaster and Orr had been investigated before, in 2012, by the Oakland County Sheriff’s office, county prosecutors and Child Protective Services, all of whom found no evidence of sexual abuse.
Johanna MacMaster enlisted Kolodziej’s help in pursuing charges against them in 2018, while Kolodziej was still a Macomb County prosecutor, according to Murphy’s January ruling. She continued her contact with Kolodziej when he joined the attorney general’s office later that year.
Kolodziej “began moving the case forward” in the attorney general’s office but was unable to prosecute it himself because it was outside his purview so it was assigned to a different assistant attorney general. Despite his lack of involvement in the case, Kolodziej contacted Busacca, a state police trooper with whom he was friends, to help with the investigation, according to the January opinion.
Busacca had some concerns about the case, according to Murphy’s decision, because of its complexity and the fact that Oakland County had already investigated. But he still proceeded to investigate.
In 2019, Kolodziej drafted a search warrant for the Orr home and Busacca swore to it in front of an Oakland County judge, but the affidavit excluded several types of possibly exculpatory information, according to Murphy’s January order.
If those omissions were included in the report, it is unlikely an Oakland County judge would have found probable cause to issue a warrant, Murphy wrote.
After the Orr home was searched, Murphy wrote, Busacca “altered a months-old police report to hide Kolodziej’s involvement in the case.”
Days after, in May 2019, Busacca swore out an arrest warrant for Sean MacMaster that again left out exculpatory evidence, Murphy wrote. MacMaster was arrested and spent several months in jail, a large portion of which was spent in solitary confinement.
Kolodziej resigned abruptly from the attorney general’s office in September 2019 after admitting to having a sexual relationship with a sexual assault victim in a separate case he was handling.
The state dropped charges against Orr and Sean MacMaster in November 2019 after an internal investigation into Kolodziej’s conduct.
Sean MacMaster and Johanna MacMaster reached a settlement agreement in April and she was dismissed from the case in May, according to court records. The terms of the settlement are confidential, said Daniel Bernard, an attorney for Johanna MacMaster.
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