Former sheriff’s deputy sues Nye County, claims wrongful termination
A former Nye County sheriff's deputy alleges he was wrongfully arrested in 2009 and maliciously prosecuted for years after a woman accused him of assaulting her.
The former deputy, William Tidmarsh, filed a civil rights lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court against Nye County, the Nye County sheriff's office, former Sheriff Tony DeMeo and several sheriff's office employees involved in the investigation.
"The defendants knew, or should have known, of officer Tidmarsh's absolute innocence at the very beginning of this process," the lawsuit alleges.
No one at the Nye County sheriff's office or district attorney's office responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
DeMeo said law enforcement officers are neither judges nor jurors.
"We do not determine the innocence of an individual," he said Wednesday.
DeMeo said officers base their arrests on probable cause, and a justice of the peace determined that probable cause existed for Tidmarsh's arrest. The former sheriff said he terminated Tidmarsh in September 2009 for violating department policies and procedures, and an outside arbitrator also upheld that decision.
Tidmarsh, then 41, was on duty when he gave a woman a ride home from a Pahrump bar on Feb. 8, 2009. The woman, who had been drinking, alleged a lewd incident occurred while they were en route to her home.
After his arrest, Tidmarsh was booked into the Nye County jail on charges of open and gross lewdness, second-degree kidnapping, battery, and oppression under color of office.
Tidmarsh "was wrongfully terminated by virtue of an adverse internal affairs hearing, largely based on these false charges, without which he would have never been the subject of termination," the lawsuit alleges.
According to the lawsuit, Tidmarsh was fired on Oct. 13, 2013, and prosecutors dismissed the criminal charges two days later.
The lawsuit accuses the individual defendants of violating Tidmarsh's due process rights "by conducting a constitutionally inadequate, unreasonable investigation, by allowing evidence to be destroyed, by willfully ignoring evidence that made a conviction an impossibility, and applying undue pressure to implicate the plaintiff and maintain these baseless charges for years, all in the face of overwhelmingly exculpatory evidence."
Las Vegas attorneys Cal Potter III, C.J. Potter IV and C. Conrad Claus are representing Tidmarsh in the civil case.
Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Find her on Twitter: @CarriGeer
