Cranberry rape victim's suit revived

By Brian Bowling

A federal appeals court Monday revived a Butler County woman's lawsuit against a Cranberry police detective who charged her with falsely reporting a crime after she was robbed and raped at gunpoint.

The Tribune-Review usually does not reveal the names of accusers in sexual assault cases, but Sara R. Reedy asked in 2005 to be identified so she could clear her name of any stigma from the criminal charges.

She was attacked on July 14, 2004, while working alone as a cashier at the JG Gulf Station in Cranberry. Detective Frank Evanson said Reedy made up the attack to cover her own theft of about $600 from the store. He charged her with falsely reporting a crime, theft and receiving stolen property.

Reedy spent five days in jail before she could post bail and was a month away from trial when police in Jefferson County in 2005 arrested Wilbur Cyrus Brown II as he sexually assaulted a store clerk.

Brown confessed to the attack on Reedy and to another attack that occurred three months later in Cranberry at the Landmark North Office Building. Butler County prosecutors dropped the charges against Reedy on Sept. 1, 2005.

A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that evidence shows Evanson was the lead investigator of that second attack and knew the description of the assailant and the assault matched the description Reedy gave.

Evanson knew, before filing his charges against Reedy, that DNA from the Landmark assault connected the assailant to a series of rapes being investigated by a state police task force, the ruling said.

U.S. District Judge David Cercone, in a March 31, 2009, ruling, granted Evanson "qualified immunity" for his actions and dismissed the lawsuit. The appeals court said a jury, rather than the judge, should determine whether Evanson had probable cause for his charges or whether he knew he was violating Reedy's constitutional rights when he charged and arrested her.

Cercone said Evanson knowingly or recklessly included false statements in his arrest affidavit while omitting relevant information that would have prevented him from obtaining an arrest warrant, but the judge ruled that a "corrected" affidavit still established probable cause for the charges against Reedy.

The appeals judges disagreed. Cercone interpreted every fact in the light most favorable to Evanson when federal law requires him, in a summary judgment motion, to consider in the light most favorable to Reedy, the ruling said.

"Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Reedy, no reasonably competent officer could have concluded at the time of Reedy's arrest that there was probable cause for the arrest," the ruling said.

The appeals court sent the case back to Cercone so it can proceed to trial. A lawyer for Evanson couldn't be reached for comment.