Harrisville’s Kerry Maw was charged with bank robbery in Ogden on June 4, 2019, but prosecutors dropped a second degree robbery charge against him on June 26, 2019. (Courtesy Kerry Maw)
SALT LAKE CITY – A man from Utah says it is clear he wasn’t the one who robbed a bank two years ago, but police arrested him anyway in a case that was set after they found the right suspect .
Now Kerry is suing Jason Maw the two Ogden detectives, who he says arrived at his home in June 2019 without a warrant after a police chief in another town Maw knew identified him as a suspect, according to the am The Salt Lake City lawsuit filed in federal court Friday.
Maw claims the detectives violated his due process, illegally searched and detained him, and either provided false information or omitted important details from an affidavit. He is seeking damages in court for emotional distress, legal fees, loss of job as a home inspector, and humiliation, among others.
After someone got away with about $ 5,000 in cash from a Wells Fargo bank in Ogden on June 4, 2019, Harrisville Police Chief Max Jackson, now retired, spoke to the Ogden Police Department and found Maw on a Photo taken by bank security officials showed resemblance to the man’s footage, the lawsuit said. Ogden police agreed, and concluded that the suspect wore black-rimmed glasses, similar to those Maw wore, and that part of the cartilage on the suspect’s ear known as tragus was similar to Maws.
But Maw, 50, says he disagrees with key descriptions of the suspect, who is six feet tall, over 60, and has noticeable wrinkles on his face. He claims police took no steps to investigate, such as searching a government vehicle database to find someone whose vehicle matched the type of green Dodge truck the robber allegedly drove away in.
The officers “unreasonably closed their eyes to the facts” and ignored evidence, wrote Maw’s attorney in the lawsuit, claiming that a “reasonable detective would conclude that the physical characteristics of the plaintiff other than that he is a white man Clearly the various lines are missing and lack wrinkles on the suspect’s face and unusual shape of the suspect. “
Police eventually arrested another man, Anthony Thomas Murdzak, after parking a suitable truck in front of his Logan home. He later pleaded guilty to the robbery-related charges and another one that occurred later that month, and helped police track him down.
Maw claims his ex-wife told Jackson she thought Maw was the suspect.
Police failed to say how Jackson knew Maw, citing “sensitive personal information” and security concerns. Maw previously said that they knew each other from church.
He claims it was after dark on June 4, 2019 when his dogs started barking and he saw the beams of several flashlights criss-crossing the yard, so he was “scared” and hid in the basement. The police pounded hard on the door, told him to open it and arrested him at gunpoint with no warrant, he says, even though no one was injured in the robbery and no gun was involved.
He spent the night in jail before getting out.
A Maw attorney didn’t send a message back Wednesday and attempts to contact the detectives have been unsuccessful.
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