Court tosses Jason Carter's lawsuit against Iowa detectives who accused him of killing mother
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Jason Carter, acquitted of murdering his mother in a highly publicized 2019 trail, has failed to show Iowa investigators were malicious or reckless in bringing the charge against him, a federal judge has ruled.
Shirley Carter was shot to death in her Marion County home in June 2015, and police accused her son in her killing. The case followed an unusual path through the courts.
Jason Carter believes he was the primary suspect from early in the investigation, but the first legal action came from his father and brother, who sued him in civil court, alleging wrongful death. The lawsuit went to trial in 2017, resulting in a $10 million judgment against Carter, and only after that did prosecutors file the criminal case.
In a 2019 trial moved to Council Bluffs because of the extensive pretrial publicity, Carter was found not guilty.
The murder and subsequent civil and criminal cases drew attention from true crime fans and were featured by A&E Network and "Dateline NBC," among others.
Carter subsequently filed lawsuits in state and federal court accusing investigators of ignoring alternative suspects, withholding evidence from his attorneys, and even working to turn his own family against him and use their civil lawsuit to advance their criminal investigation. The Iowa Supreme Court later dismissed the state case. The federal case also was dismissed at one point, then revived by a federal appellate court in 2021.
Now the case has been tossed out again after Chief District Judge Stephanie Rose found none of Carter's allegations, even if true, rose to the level of reckless or deliberate violation of his rights. The court handed down the 73-page decision Tuesday, more than a year after lawyers for the state and Marion County had filed their motions to dismiss and one day shy of five years since the not-guilty verdict.
Attorneys for Carter and Marion County did not respond to messages seeking comment. The Iowa Attorney General's Office declined to comment.
Allegations of sloppy, dishonest work by detectives
In court filings, Carter has described numerous tips, witnesses and pieces of evidence that DCI agent Mark Ludwick and Marion County sheriff's Deputy Reed Kious allegedly failed to pursue, disregarded or misrepresented, many of which reportedly pointed the blame at several other Marion County residents, some of whom were supposedly overheard admitting to being involved in Shirley Carter's slaying.
Jason Carter also alleged Ludwick was dishonest on multiple points, including claiming under oath to have pursued some investigative avenues when he had not, and that Ludwick failed to pursue evidence that would have disproven the theory that Carter killed his mother because of her knowledge that he had been involved in an extramarital affair.
More broadly, Carter claimed Ludwick engineered his family's civil suit and used it to unconstitutionally gather evidence for his criminal investigation. His father and brother came to believe he had committed the murder, Carter said, only because Ludwick falsely told them Carter had planted evidence at the scene. Carter accused investigators of feeding his family's lawyers questions to ask in depositions, and of providing evidence from the murder case that supported guilt, but none that would have helped clear him.
When Ludwick was compelled to turn over evidence to Carter's attorneys just before the criminal trial, the material handed over was incomplete, with some digital records missing or damaged, and did not include many emails and other materials Ludwick had pertaining to the case, Carter claimed.
Judge finds no 'clearly established' constitutional wrong
The defendants denied violating Carter's rights, and argued they were additionally protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine holding that government officials cannot be liable, even if they violate someone's constitutional rights, unless that violation was "clearly established" by prior case law at the time they did so.
Rose, in her order, found that the investigators had legal probable cause to arrest and charge Carter, and that they did not violate his rights by failing to include the many tips pointing toward other suspects in their warrant application. While Carter argued several prior cases established his right to insist police conduct a "reasonably thorough investigation," Rose found those cases involved widely different claims and circumstances and that evaluating which witnesses police do or do not choose to interview is, like prosecutorial discretion, "ill-suited to judicial review."
From 2021: Iowa Supreme Court upholds $10 million civil verdict against Jason Carter for his mother's death
Rose also found many of the tips that Carter described as pointing to his innocence, totaling 17 people with supposed direct involvement in the murder, are contradictory, implausible or rely on multiple levels of hearsay and rumor. None was borne out under further investigation, she said.
"Shirley was murdered in a town of less than 500 people. That many rumors about that murder have cropped up over the years, and that the murder has been fodder for gossip around the town is not surprising," Rose wrote. "... Shirley's murder remains unsolved to this day and — aggravating though it is to Jason — no stronger suspect than him has ever emerged."
As for claiming investigators took advantage of Carter's prior civil case, Rose rejected the "entirely novel claim" that police subpoenaed in a civil dispute are obligated to "provide evenhanded discovery" to both sides. Carter could have sought the same evidence from investigators for himself, both Rose and the Iowa Supreme Court have noted, but did not. She also rejected his claims against Kious, the deputy, of malicious prosecution and abuse of process.
"At best, the allegations contained in the (complaint) make out a claim for a negligent and subpar investigation," Rose wrote. "They do not support a deliberate intent or recklessness standard."
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Jason Carter, cleared of killing mother, loses suit vs. Iowa detectives
