ASHEVILLE -More than a year and a half after he was strip-searched in a gas station bathroom, Marcus Hyatt has filed a federal lawsuit against the current and former Buncombe County sheriffs and six deputies, alleging they violated his civil rights.
Hyatt and Ashley Barrett, who was his girlfriend when the incident occurred,accuse sheriff's deputies of unlawful search and seizure and of violating their rights to due process. They've requested a jury trial and are seekingcompensatory and punitive damages.
The pair'sattorney, John Sutton, wrote in thesuit filed Aug. 27 that the deputies "manufactured reasons" to detain, intimidate and harass Hyatt and Barrett in searches based on "falsified and racial biases" rather than reasonable facts.
The sheriff's officedeclined to comment on the lawsuit. An attorney for the county did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A county spokeswomandid not immediately answer which of the deputies being sued arestill employed with the sheriff's office.
Detained for four hours after a traffic stop
The searches in question occurred on Jan. 20, 2018.Hyatt and friend Brandon Pickens were leaving Barrett's Candler home inPickens’ car when deputy J.D. Lambert pulledthe men over.
Lambert said Pickens failed to signal a lane change. The lawsuit asserts that the deputy“failed to operate either his body worn camera or dashboard camera to substantiate said claims.” It alleges Lambert made thestop unlawfully “as a precursor to detain, search and harass the African American occupants of the vehicle.”
Deputies said a drug dog alerted on Pickens' car, which they searched while detainingHyatt and Pickens for almost four hours.In that time, Hyatt was injured by being left handcuffed in uncomfortable positions, the lawsuit asserts.
Strip-searched in the Smokey Park Highway Fastop
In the meantime, deputies sought a warrant to "search the person"of both Pickens and Hyatt, whoserecords included several drug felonies and onemisdemeanor drug charge, respectively.
But the lawsuit accuses the officers of relying on “racist and/or falsified bias to formulate the basis for detaining, searching and in general harassing” Hyatt. It states that the deputies obtained the body cavity search warrant through “false and misleading statements.”
Deputies strip searched Hyatt and Pickens in the Smokey Park Highway Fastop bathroom. The suit says deputies searched Hyatt roughly, causing him injury.
Both men were ultimatelyreleasedwithout criminal charges.
'Ultimately coerced into consenting'
Shortly before Hyatt and Pickens were released, two deputies left to intercept Barrett, who was leaving her house on the way to pick up her son from a family member’s house in Sylva.
Deputy Katherine Lewis pulled Barrett over on the basis that her insurance had expired. When Lewis asked if deputies could search her car, Barrett initially declined. She was then “detained, lied to several times and ultimately coerced into consenting,” according to the suit.
“They threatened her with arrest. They threatened her car with seizure,” Sutton wrote. “They threatened her children with involvement from Department of Social Services, they made racial remarks about Hyatt.”
When the search of her car turned up nothing, Barrett said deputies asked her to return with them to her house and consent to a residence search. Again, she initially declined, but later consented.
While at her house, Lewis told Barrett, “that’s what they (African American males) do, they shack up with white girls, so they can sell drugs out of their house,” the lawsuit states, calling the statement “racist on its face.”
Barrett was not arrested, nor was she charged with a crime following the search.
'No footage' from much of the incident
A few months later, Sutton initiated a legal battle on Hyatt's behalf to obtain all body camera footage of the stop. He was granted accesson Aug. 13, 2018 to all body camerafootage of Hyatt'sstopalong with footage from "the traffic stop of Ashley Barrett."
However, where he was expecting to see at least20 hours of footage— around four hours from each of the deputies involved— Sutton found fewer than two.
"There is a substantial amount of incident time that there exists no footage," Sutton told the Citizen Times in an email.
In the lawsuit,the attorney accuses former Sheriff Van Duncan of having two contradicting body camera policies:an official policy and one that was “understood by the deputies involved with the drug task force."
The suit states the inconsistent policies "festered an atmosphere of dishonest, contrived and manufactured basis for the unlawful detainment, harassment and arrests of citizens, particularly those of the African American race."
Who are the defendants?
Duncan served as Buncombe County sheriff from 2006 until December 2018, when the current sheriff, Quentin Miller, took office.
The Citizen Times was not able to reach Duncan for comment.
The defendants in Hyatt and Barrett’s lawsuit are:
- Sheriff Quentin Miller
- Former Sheriff Van Duncan
- J.D. Lambert
- Jeff May
- Katherine Lewis
- Christopher Stockton
- Darrell Saucier
- Steven J. Hendricks
- Western Surety Co.
Miller is being sued “in his official capacity” as sheriff, though he was not in office at the time the searches occurred. Sutton said in an email that there is "no allegation that (Miller) was involved in this incident."
