The FBI has agreed to pay $100,000 and issue a letter of regret to an environmental activist who was mistakenly jailed as a suspect in a string of arsons and vandalism at four SUV dealerships in the San Gabriel Valley in 2003, his lawyers said Monday.
Josh Connole, who spent four days behind bars before being freed, sued the FBI, contending his civil rights had been violated and his reputation destroyed.
The attacks, carried out in the name of the radical Earth Liberation Front, destroyed or damaged more than 125 SUVs. A Caltech graduate student, William Cottrell, was later convicted and sentenced to prison in the case.
Had Connole's suit gone to trial, the FBI would have been up against testimony from a former federal prosecutor who said she warned an FBI supervisor that his agents had no probable cause to arrest Connole.
The 27-year-old Connole, who now lives in Oregon, said Monday he was pleased with the settlement and hoped it would send a message to the law enforcement community that "you can't throw people's civil rights out the window in the name of fighting terrorism."
Connole's attorneys, William Paparian and John Burton, said the $100,000 payment was arrived at following negotiations mediated by a U.S. magistrate judge in Los Angeles. They said the FBI agreed to issue a letter of regret but that the language was still being worked out.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Patrick, who represented the FBI in the talks, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
In a deposition in September, former Assistant U.S. Atty. Beverly Reid O'Connell, now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, recalled receiving an urgent phone call during the early hours of Sept. 12, 2003, three weeks after the attacks, from FBI senior supervisor Edward Ochotorena, seeking a green light to arrest Connole.
Connole, who was under 24-hour surveillance at the time, had just driven to the Pomona police headquarters to report that he was being followed by strange men in unmarked cars.
"We have a situation going on out here. We have officer safety issues. I'm going to arrest him," O'Connell quoted Ochotorena as telling her.
"You don't have probable cause to arrest him. I'm not giving you our authority and you better document it," O'Connell said she told the agent.
O'Connell said their conversation was heated. "I was yelling at him," she said.
