This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A former nurse who was once accused of sexually abusing a patient has filed a lawsuit against the Roosevelt police detective who investigated him.
Joshua Platte Shumway alleges in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court that Detective Peter Butcher violated his civil rights by wrongfully arresting and imprisoning him, using their mutual Mormon faith to coerce a false confession and misleading a judge about the strength of the case against Shumway.
Shumway — who lodged the lawsuit against Butcher, Roosevelt police and the city itself — is asking for an unspecified amount of monetary damages.
Shumway, who now lives in Orem, was charged in December 2013 with sexual abuse, rape, sodomy and assault — accused of sexually abusing a patient in April 2013 who was staying overnight at the Uintah Basin Medical Center in Roosevelt after a hysterectomy.
The patient reported to police that during the night, a male nurse came into her room and sexually assaulted her five times, according to court records.
But Shumway's attorney, Terry Welch, wrote in the federal complaint that the victim never said she was assaulted by a "male nurse," but by a man wearing medical scrubs. The woman also reported that her assailant wore a name tag with the name "Green" on it, smelled like cigarette smoke, had a tattoo on his arm and a mole on his abdomen. None of those descriptions applied to Shumway, but Welch claimed in court papers that Butcher continued to investigate Shumway as his main suspect and misled a judge about the strength of the case in order to get an arrest warrant.
When he was arrested at his Salt Lake City apartment, Shumway was taken to a jail cell in Duchesne County and kept in isolation for two days, according to the lawsuit.
During that time, Butcher interrogated him, and "exploited" their shared beliefs in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the lawsuit claims.
"Butcher was extremely persistent in seeking a 'confession' in the religious sense, repeatedly asking Shumway to confess so as to be 'cleansed' and 'purified' by God," Welch wrote. "And to receive 'purification ... instead of indulging in something putrid.'"
Butcher referred to Shumway as "brother" — a common term used in the LDS Church — and made at least 50 references to their religion throughout the interrogation, the lawsuit claims.
The detective also told Shumway the case was "a slam dunk," according to the lawsuit, referring to non-existent DNA and semen evidence linking the nurse to the crime.
According to court papers filed in 8th District Court, Shumway never outright admitted to the crimes, but told Butcher that he "must have done it," and wrote a letter of apology to the victim at the detective's request.
No one with the Roosevelt Police Department was available for comment on Friday.
Last year, Judge Edwin Peterson ruled that these admissions would not be allowed at trial, citing coercive and manipulative investigation techniques. The judge also ruled that he would not allow the alleged victim to identify Shumway at trial because the identification process was tainted.
The patient was never shown a photo lineup, the judge wrote, and the first time she was asked to identify her assailant was during a preliminary hearing last year. Shumway was the only person seated at the defense table with a lawyer, "having obviously been charged with the crime," the judge wrote in June.
This ruling caused prosecutors to ask for the case to be dismissed in October. The charges were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.
But while he sat in the jail cell, Shumway was also visited by a representative of the Utah Department of Professional Licensing, who told him to sign papers giving up his nursing license because of the alleged crimes.
Shumway told The Tribune in October that he didn't think he had a choice in the matter, and was told he would get his license back if the case went away. His license had not been reinstated as of Friday.
Shumway said in October that he will try to get the license back "as a statement," but said he probably would not work as a nurse again.
No court dates have been set in the federal case.