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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by family members of late Blanding doctor James Redd alleging that government agents violated their constitutional rights when raiding the home over artifacts looted from federal and tribal lands.
Monday's dismissal does not affect a companion case related to Redd's suicide the day after his arrest in 2009. That wrongful-death case, alleging negligence and unnecessary force by the armed officers that conducted the raid, is scheduled for a hearing Thursday in U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart's Salt Lake City courtroom.
Stewart dismissed the constitutional claims against individual agents, including Bureau of Land Management Special Agent Dan Love, a key officer in the case that convicted Jeanne Redd for illegal trafficking of American Indian artifacts. In part, Stewart's ruling hinged on the family's inability to pinpoint individuals responsible for planning or carrying out what they alleged were unconstitutional actions.
The case was known as a Bivens action, named for a precedent that established when government agents may be sued.
"The Supreme Court has firmly established that a plaintiff in a Bivens action 'must plead that each government-official defendant, through the officials' own individual actions, has violated the Constitution,'" Stewart wrote. He found that the Redds had not done so on the claims of unreasonable search and seizure, excessive force, unlawful detention or denial of due process.
The plaintiffs may yet file an amended complaint if they produce claims about each individual's specific violation.
Montana attorney Edward Moriarity filed the case on the family's behalf, along with the upcoming wrongful-death case. He said in his filings that more than 80 officers executed warrants while wearing flak jackets and, in some cases, bearing assault rifles in Blanding. He alleged James Redd was "manhandled and handcuffed" and interrogated in his garage for four hours after the agents arrived at 6:40 a.m.
He also alleged the government used an undercover operative, collector Ted Gardiner, to buy artifacts at inflated prices in order put the crimes into felony territory.
Gardiner, who also committed suicide before the cases were adjudicated, helped the government arrest two dozen traffickers in the Four Corners region.
Efforts to reach attorneys for the Redds and the government were unsuccessful Tuesday afternoon. The U.S. attorney's office for Utah, which prosecuted the artifacts cases, recused itself and left the lawsuits to Justice Department attorneys in Washington.