A man found to be wrongly convicted of manslaughter filed a federal lawsuit Monday against agencies including the Oregon State Police and the city of Coquille, claiming they suppressed and falsified evidence that would have proven him innocent.
Nicholas McGuffin was convicted of manslaughter in 2011, after being accused of killing his girlfriend, 15-year-old Leah Freeman, in 2000.
He spent nine years of his 10-year sentence in prison before his charges were dismissed in 2019, following a finding by an Oregon court that the Oregon State Police lab had failed to report DNA evidence revealing another man was at the crime scene.
In the civil rights lawsuit, McGuffin’s attorneys in a news release state the former chief of the Coquille Police Department “led a team of inexperienced investigators on a quest to implicate McGuffin, made up blood evidence that did not exist, falsely reported that McGuffin cleaned his car to destroy evidence and buried evidence that corroborated McGuffin’s alibi.”
Related: Charges Dismissed For Oregon Man With Overturned Manslaughter Conviction
“Leah’s abduction and murder was the ‘crime of the century’ for the small town of Coquille,” Janis Puracal, one of McGuffin’s attorneys, said in a statement. “The police and prosecution were under enormous pressure to solve the case, and they cracked under that pressure. They created false evidence and sent an innocent man to prison for nine years.”
The lawsuit states that McGuffin was harassed and intimidated for years before his arrest by law enforcement. Court documents state that due to his wrongful conviction, he was forced to miss most of his daughter’s childhood. She was three years old when McGuffin was convicted.
McGuffin was also forced to leave his position as an Executive Banquet Chef “at one of the most highly regarded restaurants in Coos County,” the lawsuit states; all of this causing McGuffin “extreme physical and psychological pain and suffering.”
The lawsuit states the Oregon State Police, the cities of Coos Bay and Coquille, and other agencies and people violated McGuffin’s civil rights in a myriad of ways, including violating his 14th Amendment rights, failing to disclose exculpatory evidence and intentionally causing him emotional distress.
The lawsuit is requesting a jury trial, as well as awards of economic, non-economic and punitive damages for McGuffin.
