Exonerated By a Fingerprint, ID Theft Victim Sues Over Criminal Ordeal

Tallie Gainer III didn't have any criminal record. A college graduate, a youth pastor and a happily married father of four children, he wasn't a likely suspect in a bad-check case.

But after his wallet was stolen at a Denny's not far from his Florida home, Gainer suddenly found himself on the wrong side of the law, identified as the suspect in a felony case from photographs and a witness, writes the St. Petersburg Times in a lengthy article last year. It took months to clear his name, with the entire experience costing Gainer some $60,000, he told the newspaper at that time.

Now he has filed a false-arrest suit against the Pasco County Sheriff's Department seeking damages, the Times reports today.

Gainer had reported his wallet stolen, and a seemingly fraudulent charge on a credit card was made soon afterward. But what finally cleared Gainer in the bad-check case and led to the dismissal of the charges was a fingerprint, the earlier Times article explains. After months of delay, authorities compared his fingerprints to the fingerprint made, at a bank telller's request, by a person who cashed a bad check using Gainer's identification. They didn't match.

"What if the print wasn't on the check?" says Gainer's lawyer, John Trevena. "He would have been convicted."