Lawsuits Dropped Setting The Record Straight
The McCallister Law Firm in Kansas City, Mo was responsible for helping a many who served five years in prison and helped him win $16M in a highly controversial case. See the details below.
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Missouri Lawyers Weekly, Volume 22, Number 36, September 8, 2008, Angela Riley
Acquitted man wins $16M in civil rights lawsuit,
He served five years in prison before his release
A man who served five years in prison before he was acquitted of molesting his adopted daughter was awarded $16 million by a federal jury in a suit against his ex-wife and a Lee’s Summit police officer.
Theodore W. White Jr. was convicted in Jackson County Circuit Court in 1999 for molesting his daughter between 1995 and 1998. After his first trial, information was revealed that his ex-wife, Tina, and the lead detective on the sex abuse allegations, Richard McKinley, were romantically involved. This information allowed White to appeal the Jury’s verdict. Tina is now married to McKinley.
“One of Tina’s coworkers was the whistleblower on the affair,” said White’s attorney, Michael Kanovitz, of Loevy & Loevy. “He called the prosecutors and the judge to let them know of the couple’s relationship. But then it became a question of whether the prosecutors knew then [after the trial] of the full extent of the affair or before.”
Testimony from the prosecutor’s office, the Lee’s Summit police department and from the couple did not resolve how much the office knew or didn’t know during the trial. Their testimony didn’t match, Kanovitz said.
“It became a case of hot potato, where they tried to put the blame on one another,” he said.
On appeal to Western District Court of Appeals, the case was remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings because of the new evidence. White’s second trial ended with a hung jury. The jury was split 11-1 in White’s favor.
“After the trial, many of the jurors were so emotionally ripped up by the fact that they thought [White] was innocent and still in jail, that they held town hall meetings to raise money for his defense.” Kanovitz said. “Many sat in on his third trial to show support. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
On his third trial in February 2005, White was acquitted of all the charges. He filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri against the McKinleys, the city of Lee’s Summit and the city’s former police chief a month later.
The suit against the city and the police chief was later dropped after a settlement was reached that the city would pay any damages resulting from the lawsuit.
“We argued that [the city’s and police department’s] own policies and procedures contributed to [White’s] constitutional violations,” said plaintiff attorney Brian McCallister, of The McCallister Law Firm. “We believed that the city was complicit, and larger actions should have been taken to discipline McKinley. He only received a written reprimand.”
More … Read the rest of the article directly on the McCallister Law Firm website