BUFFALO — A 22-year-old Salamanca man convicted last year of misdemeanor assault in a 2013 incident has filed a civil rights lawsuit against Salamanca police in U.S. District Court.
Bryce Stahlman was sentenced to a year in the county jail after his conviction by a jury on a charge of third-degree assault. His father, Bradley Stahlman, a co-defendant in the 2013 case, was acquitted of all charges in the case.
Both had been charged with three felonies for allegedly assaulting a man in front of an East State Street residence on Dec. 29, 2013. The victim was in Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo for a month suffering brain trauma.
Buffalo civil rights attorney Matthew Albert, who represented Bryce Stahlman in the criminal trial, filed a federal complaint in Federal District Court in Buffalo on Jan. 17, charging three Salamanca police officers with civil rights violations. The Stahlmans are Native American.
Albert said the federal complaint charges Officers Rhonda Bush, Cale Benjamin and Adam Carlson with numerous civil rights violations for what he described as “unlawful and malicious police conduct” in the investigation.
In the complaint, Stahlman alleges that while on his way to work on Jan. 17, 2014, he was pulled over at gunpoint and unlawfully taken into custody for questioning. Albert said “police had absolutely no legal basis to just ‘kidnap’ someone off the street.”
“This is not the movies,” Albert said. “Police can’t just grab a 19-year-old off the street, point a gun at his head while he is on his way to work, and take him down to the station for questioning. There is the Constitution in America and individuals have rights. However, too often in Salamanca, the cops treat the art of law enforcement like a game of cowboys versus Indians.”
Albert said Assistant District Attorney Amber Kerling “routinely referred to the Stahlman’s as savages in various forms of the word” during the trial.
While he cannot sue the District Attorney’s Office, “police have a lesser form of immunity” which Albert contends allows civil rights litigants such as Stahlman to recover damages.
Contacted at a training seminar in New York City late Friday, Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori P. Rieman said Bryce Stahlman had been convicted on third-degree assault and sentenced to a year in the county jail.
“I think he tried to sue us, too,” Reiman replied by email to a question. “It is completely frivolous as he was convicted, by a jury, of assault in the third degree and was sentenced to one year.”
The Stahlmans were both found not guilty of first-degree assault, second-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment.
Albert said the complaint was filed because of violations of Bryce Stahlman’s Fourth Amendment and by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Bryce Stahlman said in the complaint that police stopped his vehicle and took him in handcuffs to the police station for questioning. Bush took him into the interrogation room about 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2014, where she began to ask him about the Dec. 29, 2013, incident. When he asked to see his lawyer, he was initially denied, Bryce Stahlman said, adding that when he was subsequently released, he was not given a ride back to his vehicle.
In the complaint, Albert alleges police violated Stahlman’s Fourth Amendment rights for unreasonable seizure, false arrest and false imprisonment. He was unlawfully arrested without probable cause, the complaint states.
Bryce Stahlman is seeking punitive damages against the officers in their official capacity and individually.
