RENO - Two Carson City sheriff's deputies were exonerated Friday in federal court of charges they violated a resident's civil rights when they arrested him in 1995.
A civil jury of three men and four women deliberated about four hours before reaching the verdict, which Deputy District Attorney Mark Forsberg termed "the best verdict we could get."
He said the jury ruled that the deputies "did not intentionally commit acts which violated the plaintiff's rights."
Carson City and Sheriff Rod Banister were also named as defendants in the original suit, but they were dismissed from the case Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Ed Reed, who ruled there wasn't enough evidence implicating them to support the charges.
The case centered on the attempt by Carson deputies to serve Lee Pisiewski with a temporary protective order evicting him from his wife's house in November 1995. The order was the result of domestic violence claims on her part as the couple was going through a divorce.
Pisiewski, an investigator for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, was arrested on obstruction charges and taken to the Carson City Jail.
He filed a civil rights suit saying Deputy Dan Duzan and Sgt. Fred Schoenfeldt had no cause to arrest him when they were supposed to serve him with the protective order.
His lawyer, Richard Staub, argued that Deputy Kurt Davis, who was at the scene to serve the papers, didn't think Pisiewski was delaying or obstructing the other officers. He said it took five or six minutes before Pisiewski came to the door, but that his client couldn't hear the knocking, the lawyer said.
"He was upstairs with the stereo running, the drier running," said Staub.
When he came out of the house, Duzan arrested him on Schoenfeldt's orders.
He also said Pisiewski couldn't be accused of violating the protective order at that point because he hadn't even been served with it. And he said his client wasn't delaying officers unreasonably before coming out.
Staub said the arrest was a "willful and malicious action" that violated Pisiewski's rights and left an unfair black mark on the record of an upstanding citizen who has served his community, including eight years on the Carson City Planning Commission.
Forsberg told jurors Pisiewski deliberately ignored deputies pounding on the door so hard that everyone in the neighborhood heard it. He said Pisiewski knew they were trying to serve the legal papers ordering him to leave his estranged wife alone and if he had accepted them quietly and promptly there would have been no arrest.
"He's telling you a lie," said Forsberg, pointing to times on the police dispatch log for the incident. "He was in there 15 minutes while they pounded on the door."
He said the actions of Duzan and Schoenfeldt were within reason given the circumstances and that the city should be exonerated of charges deputies violated any of Pisiewski's rights. Jurors agreed in their verdict.
