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.
