Process server criminally charged for 'slapped' lawsuit gets civil rights case OK
A last-minute decision to have his wife and nephew take cellphone videos as he served a police brutality lawsuit outside a Louisiana courthouse may have saved Douglas Dendinger from a hefty prison term.
Now Dendinger is hoping the videos will also play a significant role in his ongoing federal civil rights suit over the criminal charges he once faced concerning the incident.
Former Bogalusa police officer Chad Cassard said he had literally been “slapped” in the chest with the lawsuit by Dendinger outside the Washington Parish Courthouse in 2012. Two prosecutors who happened to be at the scene supported Cassard’s account, and Dendinger was charged with battery, witness intimidation and obstruction of justice, the New Orleans Advocate reports. An earlier WWL story provides additional details.
However, the video evidence showed Dendinger never touched Cassard, the newspaper reports. Dendinger’s defense lawyers successfully argued that the 22nd Judicial District Attorney’s office was conflicted out, because prosecutors in the office were witnesses, and the state attorney general’s office took over the case and dismissed it.
The two now-former prosecutors, Julie Knight and Leigh Anne Wall, and then-DA Walter Reed, who was also named as a defendant in Dendinger’s subsequent civil rights suit, claimed immunity and got some counts dismissed. But U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan ruled earlier this month that the New Orleans case could proceed against Reed concerning his alleged role in overseeing the malicious prosecution and against Knight and Wall for claimed false witness statements.
Attorney Rick Simmons represents Reed. He says the ex-DA was not personally involved in the criminal case against Dendinger and was named as a defendant in the civil rights case Dendinger brought simply because Reed headed the DA’s office at the time, the Advocate reports. “They’ll have a heavy burden of proof to show personal involvement,” Simmons said of Dendinger and his counsel.
Both a lawyer for Knight and Wall’s supervisor at her new job at the Louisiana District Attorneys Association expressed confidence in the abilities of the women as lawyers and said simply filing a civil lawsuit is no proof of wrongdoing.
“She’s a good person, a good lawyer and she didn’t do anything wrong,” said attorney David Paddison of Knight.
See also:
New Orleans Advocate: “Another process server claims intimidation by Tammany DA’s office”
