CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The county’s former “Top OVI Cop” was indicted by a grand jury Friday with felony perjury and other charges that accuse him of lying in a police report and on the witness stand about an April drunken-driving arrest captured on cellphone video.

North Royalton police officer Steven Zahursky is also charged with tampering with evidence and falsification related to the April 6 arrest of 22-year-old Austin Smith-Skinner, according to John Ricotta, a defense lawyer who served as a special prosecutor on the case.

Ricotta told cleveland.com he presented the case to the grand jury Friday morning and that Smith-Skinner’s video was crucial evidence in the case.

“This case would have gone by the wayside absent that video,” he said.

Lawyer Marcus Sidoti said Smith-Skinner has hired him to file a civil rights lawsuit against Zahursky and the city of North Royalton over the arrest. Sidoti said he has already begun negotiations with the city to discuss settling the case before he files a formal complaint.

“I hope it sends a message,” Sidoti said of Friday’s indictment.

Charges against Smith-Skinner were dropped after Parma Municipal Court Judge Timothy Gilligan wrote in an Oct. 24 order that cellphone video Smith-Skinner recorded during field sobriety tests stood “in shocking and chilling contrast” to what Zahursky wrote in his report, and then testified to during an October hearing.

“Such dishonesty stains the badge of all courageous police officers dedicated to protect and serve,” Gilligan wrote.

Zahursky stopped Smith-Skinner about 1:30 a.m. for tinted windows and making an illegal U-turn, according to his report. Zahurksy wrote in his report that he smelled alcohol in Smith-Skinner’s car and suspected he had been drinking, so he launched a field-sobriety test.

Zahursky wrote 27 times in his report that Smith-Skinner slurred a response. He also wrote that Smith-Skinner swayed and raised his hands to a “cross-like height” during two of the tests. He arrested the 22-year-old and hauled him off to jail, and charged him with failure to comply, resisting arrest, drunken driving, fleeing and eluding charge. He was also cited for tinted windows and no rear illumination light on his license plate.

Smith-Skinner’s defense lawyer, Anthony Manning, challenged the arrest in court and argued that the cellphone video showed Zahursky had no reason to suspect Smith-Skinner was drunk. Gilligan held a hearing on the motion Oct. 22, where Zahursky and Smith-Skinner each testified.

Zahursky attested to the facts in his report on the stand, and said again that Smith-Skinner was slurring heavily and raised his arms during the tests. Smith-Skinner then got on the stand and Manning played the video.

Gilligan called Zahursky back up to the stand after he saw the video, and asked for it to be played again. The judge told the officer to say “stop” whenever the video showed Smith-Skinner swayed or raised his hands during the tests, court records say.

Zahursky remained silent, because the video showed Smith-Skinner never made those motions, Gilligan wrote.

“In fact, the video evidence revealed that the 22-year-old Defendant performed this test in what this Court could only describe as a flawless fashion,” he wrote.

“There is no question that the stop, continued detention, and subsequent arrest of the defendant resulted in a substantial intrusion upon the defendant’s constitutionally protected liberty interest in direct violation of his Civil Rights and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,” Gilligan wrote.

North Royalton police do not have dash or body cameras. Without Smith-Skinner’s cellphone video, Zahursky’s report would have been the only official record of the arrest.

Smith-Skinner lost his job as an insurance salesman after his arrest because he could not drive for several weeks, Sidoti said.

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