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“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”
“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

Seattle man left homeless after crack bust by cop later fired for dishonesty wants state to pay up


A Seattle man who lost it all after his arrest by a King County sheriff’s deputy later fired for dishonesty may now be among the first of Washington’s wrongly convicted to get back a piece of what was taken from him.
James Simmons was a well-paid IT contractor in November 2006 when King County Deputy James Schrimpsher arrested him on suspicions he’d seen Simmons dealing cocaine at a University District bus stop. A King County jury subsequently convicted the 53-year-old of dealing cocaine.
Three months later, Schrimpsher – who’d been assigned to police King County Metro buses – was fired for dishonesty related to another U-District drug arrest. Schrimpsher is now a detective with the Algona Police Department; speaking Thursday, Schrimpsher said he stands by "every arrest" he made as a deputy.
Schrimpsher’s dishonesty cost him a job. The ex-deputy’s testimony cost Simmons that and more.
Jailed for a year, Simmons lost his security clearance and, with it, his work. The felony drug conviction ruined friendships and set him on a path that ultimately ended with him homeless on Seattle’s streets.
“My family and friends cut me out of their lives and I lost my ability to be a productive member of society,” Simmons said in a letter to the court. “I am currently homeless and have repeatedly been denied employment because the record in this case continues to appear on background searches. …
“I would like to be able to rebuild the life that was taken from me.”
Having spent 30 years working steadily in information technology, Simmons, now 53, found himself homeless and unable to find an employer willing to hire him because of his criminal record.
Simmons has since been exonerated following a series of appeals. Now, he may become one of the first former inmates wrongly convicted in Washington to be paid for his hard time under a new state law.
Enacted in May after winning unanimous approval from the Legislature, the law allows exonerated ex-cons to collect $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated and $25,000 for each year under Department of Corrections supervision, as well as attorney fees and, in some cases, college tuition waivers. The amount paid by the state jumps to $100,000 a year if the inmate was housed on death row.
On signing the law, Gov. Jay Inslee acknowledged that money cannot make up for the time and honor lost to a bad conviction.
“While the impact on the person and his or her family cannot be quantified, some measure of compensation will help those wrongly convicted get back on their feet,” Inlsee said in a statement on signing the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act.
The law does not afford convicts a new opportunity to fight criminal convictions; only men and women who’ve seen their convictions thrown out or reversed on retrial may sue for payment. Washington was the 28th state to enact such a law, which has also been instituted in the District of Columbia.
A state Attorney General's Office spokeswoman said Simmons is the third former inmate to sue under the new law.
Convicted by a King County jury in August 2007, Simmons was exonerated in early 2010 after serving a year in custody. 
Filing charges in 2006, King County prosecutors claimed Schrimpsher spotted Simmons selling crack cocaine at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday at a University District bus stop.
Schrimpsher said he saw Simmons hand cocaine to a man, who then paid a woman standing nearby. Schrimpsher forced Simmons to the ground in a violent arrest that saw Schrimpsher punch Simmons in the head and use pepper spray against him; Simmons was shocked with a stun gun at least three times during the arrest.
The deputy would later claim that Simmons, who had not been convicted of any crime previously, tried to grab his duty pistol during the struggle and bit him. Schrimpsher also said he collected 4.3 grams of crack tossed out by Simmons during the arrest.
Prior to his arrest, Simmons was employed as an information technology auditor and was working on contract in Seattle. His attorney, Yohannes Sium, said in court papers that Simmons was earning $90 an hour for his work when he was arrested. Simmons claimed he was simply waiting for a bus near the corner of Northeast 45th Street and 11th Avenue Northeast when Schrimpsher accosted him.
Charged with assaulting a police officer and dealing cocaine, Simmons was convicted of the second offense and, on Sept. 21, 2007, sentenced to a year in prison. By then, he’d served more than six months in King County Jail.
Schrimpsher was fired two months later after then-King County Sheriff Sue Rahr found he and his partner lied about another University District drug arrest. At the time, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman – John Urquhart, who has since been elected sheriff – remarked that “if you lie, cheat or steal, you’re gonna get fired.
Speaking by phone Thursday, Schrimpsher denied any wrongdoing in that arrest or any other. He said he was fired for violating the King County Sheriff’s Office dishonesty policy when asked about an internal investigation.
“To be honest with you, I’m better off,” Schrimpsher said from his Algona office.  “I’ve moved on. I’m in a happier place.”
Having served his time and probation, Simmons sued in December 2009, asking that his conviction be overturned, in part because his attorney wasn’t told of Schrimpsher’s history of dishonesty. Through the appeal, attorney Christopher Morales faulted the prosecution for failing to tell Simmons’ public defender the deputy was under investigation for lying.
“Without the information from the sheriff’s office, Mr. Simmons was reduced to asserting his word, the word of a criminal defendant, against an officer of the law,” Morales said in the 2009 action. “Had the jury been informed that the King County Sheriff’s Office also had reason to doubt Deputy Schrimpsher’s truthfulness, the case would have gone differently.”
In the most recent lawsuit, Sium said Schrimpsher was working as an evidence supervisor in Phelps County, Mo., in 2003 when it was discovered that evidence was missing in hundreds of investigations there. Schrimpsher said he left the department in 2001. 
Then a detective with the Phelps County Sheriff’s Department, Schrimpsher was alleged to have miraculously recovered evidence – a small baggie of cocaine – the day before a trial after the drugs had gone missing for nearly four years, Sium said in court papers.
Schrimpsher said his name was simply mentioned in an court case filed in Missouri, and that he was not accused of any wrongdoing related to the evidence handling. The detective said he left that department in good standing before going to work for a federal law enforcement agency.
Writing the court in 2009, Simmons said he had been searching for work without success since he was released from prison. Most employers would not consider him, or fired him after learning of his criminal conviction.
The King County Prosecutor’s Office did not admit fault but declined to fight the request for dismissal “in the interest of justice.” Superior Court Judge Greg Canova dismissed the case with prejudice in January 2010.
While the conviction has been vacated, the charges are still publicly accessible and the case has not been sealed. In statements to the court, Simmons said the mere existence of the charges – dismissed or not – has prevented him from obtaining work or stable housing.
“I can no longer utilize my skillset … to support myself any longer, and now find myself being reduced to having to sleep in the shelters and the streets of the city of Seattle,” Simmons said in court papers.

Simmons has asked to be paid in accordance with the new law, which would see him compensated for his time in prison and on probation. The state Attorney General’s Office has not yet responded to the lawsuit, which was filed late last month in King County Superior Court.