Man Jailed Over Mistaken Identity Settles With County

Prince George's County has agreed to pay $215,000 to a black man who spent nearly three weeks in jail after a county police detective mistakenly named him in an arrest warrant, even though the real similarly named suspect was white and more than 15 years younger.

Attorneys for the county agreed Monday to pay the sum to settle a federal civil lawsuit filed by Daniel Anthony Miller, 39, of Spotsylvania County. The lawsuit, in which Miller alleged that the detective had violated his civil rights, was scheduled to begin yesterday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.

Miller said yesterday that the settlement did not satisfy him. "I don't feel justice was done," he said.

Miller noted that by the time he filed his lawsuit, John L. Dougans, the detective who obtained the arrest warrant naming him, had retired. Dougans was neither investigated nor disciplined by the police department.

No one from the county or the police department has ever apologized to him, Miller said. "If they make a mistake, they won't admit to it," he said. "It's business as usual."

Associate County Attorney Raj Kumar, who defended Dougans and the county, declined to comment, other than to say the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing. In court papers, Kumar argued that Dougans knew his suspect was white and that the arrest of Miller was caused by a computer database error.

Dougans, who lives in South Carolina, did not return a phone call.

The saga began July 23, 2002, when Jeff and Jessica Nichols returned to their Clinton home and found that someone had broken into their garage and stolen a landscaping lawn mower.

Neighbors told the couple that they'd seen a lawn mower on a wooden trailer being hauled by a green Jeep Cherokee, according to court records. The Nichols's knew that a young white man named Daniel Paul Miller owned a green Jeep Cherokee, and they reported to Dougans their suspicions that he stole the lawn mower, according to court records.

The lawn mower was recovered, but no one was arrested.

In January 2003, Dougans wrote a charging document and obtained an arrest warrant.

The charging document named Daniel Anthony Miller and contained his correct birth date, height and weight, but it incorrectly identified him as white.

Dougans wrote that a witness, Michael Moses, had given him the tag of the Jeep Cherokee used to steal the lawn mower. A database check on that tag number led to Daniel Anthony Miller, Dougans alleged.

But in an interview, Moses said he never gave Dougans a tag number. And Maryland State Police Sgt. Duane Lee testified in a deposition that the car tag database search Dougans described never occurred, according to an opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

On May 29, 2004, Daniel Anthony Miller was stopped by a Virginia State Police trooper for not having a front tag on his vehicle. A computer check showed that Miller was wanted on the lawn mower theft warrant, so the trooper arrested him. Miller was locked up for 19 days before an attorney he hired -- at a cost of more than $4,000 -- convinced a Prince George's prosecutor that he was innocent. The prosecutor had the charges dropped, and Miller was released.

Terrell N. Roberts III, Miller's civil attorney, said it is "mystifying'' that the detective never confirmed the identify of the person he charged by showing his photograph to the victims. "They knew the culprit and would have exonerated my client," Roberts said.