MIDLAND, Texas —
The “Midland Christian Five” responded Friday to the City of Midland’s motion to dismiss their amended lawsuit.
Jared Lee, Dana Ellis, Matthew Counts, Gregory McClendon and Barry Russell initially filed the lawsuit in August of last year, claiming the city and three Midland Police Department officers severely damaged their reputations.
This all stemmed from their arrests for allegedly failing to report a sexual assault involving the school's baseball team. They were no-billed by a grand jury, meaning they did not believe there was enough evidence to indict and go to trial at the time.
After the city filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in October, the five amended their lawsuit in December. A judge then denied the city's request to dismiss it. Midland and the three officers filed another motion to dismiss the amended lawsuit in January.
The MCS employees’ response Friday doubled down on defending the lawsuit, saying the employees were falsely arrested by “vindictive officers, with the support of a vindictive department.”
The document claims officers lied to obtain warrants, not for prosecution, but just to humiliate the educators with a perp walk. The response also claims the chief approved the warrants knowing they were false.
The plaintiffs pointed out several reasons they believe they could have reasonably thought no indecency with a child occurred at all.
They also pointed out things they called mistakes in the warrant affidavit, and even provided a version they called a “corrected affidavit."
They said the “corrected affidavit” would not provide reasonable cause to believe an aggravated sexual assault on a freshman player had even occurred, or that anyone tried to conceal an incident from authorities.
The document closed out by explaining how two of the officers should not be protected by qualified immunity because they assisted in preparing the affidavits.
A judge will now decide to either grant or deny the motion to dismiss, though no deadline for that decision has been set.
NewsWest 9 will continue to follow this story and provide updates as they become available.
You can read the full plaintiff response below.
