Civil Rights
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Charges against the main suspect in the ricin-poisoned letters case were dropped on Tuesday, with authorities stating that the investigation has revealed new information.
The previously accused Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, of Corinth, Mississippi, was freed from custody hours before the charges were officially dropped, the Associated Press reports. Investigators are continuing to search for the real culprit.
When someone like Curtis is accused and then cleared by law enforcement in such a high-profile case, there are often legal options to pursue. These can potentially include:
But here's the catch: While any legal arrest must be supported by probable cause, that can often be a relatively low standard. The officers involved in the ricin case can likely avoid being sued for false arrest under Section 1983 if they had a reasonable belief that the evidence supporting probable cause was true.
As with false arrest, a wrongly accused suspect has to prove that the government officer had no reasonable belief that probable cause existed to bring the charges. Malice would also be very difficult to prove in the ricin case, unless there is some damning evidence that prosecutors told others that they were charging Curtis in order to hurt him.
This wouldn't be the first time a news organization settled with someone falsely accused. You may recall that in 1996, Richard Jewell was falsely accused of setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics. Jewell sued several news outlets for libel and then settled out of court.
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