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Assault, weapons and drug charges have been dismissed for the second time against a Utah man who recently was awarded $275,000 in a civil case where jurors found a West Valley City police officer violated his civil rights.
On Oct. 26, 2012, West Valley City police officers — including then-Neighborhood Narcotics Unit Lt. John Coyle and Detective Sean McCarthy — searched a home where Terry and Brandy Christiansen were living. A physical fight took place between Coyle and Terry Christiansen, and the couple alleged in court papers that at some point McCarthy touched Brandy Christiansen inappropriately under the guise of looking for drugs.
Terry and Brandy Christiansen were both arrested after the search. Terry Christiansen was charged with aggravated assault, possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, attempted obstruction of justice and failure to stop at command of law enforcement. He spent six months behind bars before the case was dropped against him the first time. Brandy Christiansen spend a few days in custody and no charges were ever filed against her.
The charges against the husband were originally dropped in 2013, one of 120 cases tossed in the controversial disbanding of the WVC Neighborhood Narcotics Unit. A 2013 investigation revealed unit officers were too slow to book evidence, failed to file police reports after displaying their guns, and placed GPS tracking devices on suspects' cars without first gaining a court order to do so, among other problems.
Prosecutors re-examined and re-filed the case a year later, and West Valley City police officers arrested Terry Christiansen outside an attorney's office in downtown Salt Lake City in April 2014 after he had completed a deposition in the civil case he and his wife had filed against the police six months prior.
But two weeks ago, 3rd District Judge Richard McKelvie dismissed the case a second time at the request of prosecutors.
Jeffrey Hall, chief deputy attorney at the Salt Lake District Attorney's Office, said Monday that after hearing new evidence in the civil case, criminal prosecutors felt it was their ethical duty to dismiss the case.
"Things just became clearer," Hall said. "There were some additional details that we learned during the civil trial that caused us to believe that we no longer had a reasonable likelihood [of conviction] at trial, especially considering the outcome of the civil trial."
Terry Christiansen's attorney, Jon Williams, said Monday that the dismissal showed that District Attorney Sim Gill and his office are "willing to make tough decisions."
"In this instance, his decision to dismiss charges implicitly demonstrates a respect for the federal jury's determination," Williams said, "and hopefully heralds an end to a sordid chapter of the former narcotic unit of West Valley City."
Last month, a federal jury found that Coyle and McCarthy violated the Christiansen's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure, though they did not find that the officers used excessive force or violated the couple's right to be free from unreasonable search, as the couple alleged in their lawsuit.
Jurors found that Coyle must pay $25,000 to Terry Christiansen for compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages. McCarthy must pay Brandy Christiansen $5,000 in compensatory damages and another $5,000 in punitive damages, according to court records.
The Christiansens claim Coyle slammed the husband's head into walls, knocked his teeth loose and held him in a choke hold until he was unconscious. West Valley City officials said shortly after the verdict that they plan to appeal.
Attorneys say the police officers went to the home because of a tip that there was marijuana in the home. Police say that while speaking to Coyle, Terry Christiansen pulled a vial out of his waistband, ran toward the back of the home and tried to flush the vial down the toilet. A struggle ensued at that point, and the man sliced Coyle's thumb with a knife, charges allege. An officer later took the drugs out of the toilet, according to police, and the substance field-tested positive for methamphetamine.
The Christiansens' civil attorney, David Gammill, alleged in his closing argument that a vial of meth was not found that day, and that the police somehow planted the drugs into the case file at some point after the Christiansens were arrested. He argued that the proof was in the drug weight: An officer testified that the product inside a bag weighed 4.0 grams at the scene, but when it was later weighed out of the bag at the state crime lab, it weighed 4.8 grams — 20 percent heavier than what police initially reported.
Blake Hamilton, who represented the two officers named in the suit, argued at trial that the Christiansens were looking for a payday in the midst of fall-out of the narcotics unit, and pegged the problems of the drug unit on Shaun Cowley, who shot and killed 21-year-old Danielle Willard in November 2012.