Grant Rodgers

grodgers@dmreg.com

A judge has vacated the drug possession conviction of an Iowa man who spent 32 days in jail after being arrested by two Des Moines police officers who are accused of planting meth on him.

District Associate Judge Gregory Brandt signed an order Monday wiping away a methamphetamine possession conviction for Kyle Jacob Weldon, 23. The exoneration comes after a prosecutor filed a motion Thursday admitting the case was based on "improperly obtained evidence and misconduct by law enforcement."

The wrongful conviction division in the Office of the State Public Defender handled the case on Weldon's behalf following the December resignations of senior police officers Joshua Judge and Tyson Teut, who left the department days after administrators learned of the tainted case. Polk County Attorney John Sarcone confirmed Monday that it was Weldon's case that sparked an investigation of Judge and Teut, and said the meth that led to his conviction was planted on him.

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Erica Nichols Cook, the director of the wrongful conviction division, said the unit would be ready to investigate other suspicious cases involving the two Des Moines officers. Cook took over the division in December, and Weldon's case marks its first successful exoneration.

"While we are pleased that our division was able to assist in vacating Mr. Weldon's wrongful conviction, our work is by no means complete," Cook said in a statement. "There are more questions to be answered about the conduct of the officers involved in this case, such as whether they engaged in other misconduct or planted evidence in other cases."

Cook said that Weldon is currently requesting privacy and would not speak with a journalist "in order to protect his legal rights going forward." Weldon did not return a phone message that a reporter left with a woman who identified herself as his mother.

Nationally, exonerations in misdemeanor cases happen far less often than they do in more serious felony cases involving murder or sex abuse. Of the 1,966 cases currently on the National Registry of Exonerations, only 72 since 1999 involved convictions on misdemeanor charges — many of them tied to drug dealing or possession.

The rate of misdemeanor exonerations is so low in part because groups like the Innocence Project have to focus resources on wrongfully convicted defendants who are serving long prison sentences, said Samuel Gross, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who edits the registry. But misdemeanor counts nationwide are particularly problematic to wrongful conviction experts because so many defendants forgo trials and plead guilty in cases that receive less scrutiny from judges and prosecutors, he said.

"The way we treat misdemeanors is really in some ways the leading disgrace in the criminal justice system because it affects so many people," he said. "Millions and millions a year, and we basically don’t do any fact-finding in misdemeanors. It’s what the police say.”

Even if it doesn't carry a long prison sentence, a misdemeanor drug possession offense can still affect a person's housing or job prospects, Gross said. Weldon wrote in an application for a court-appointed attorney the day after his arrest that he had a job and earned $200 a month. But in another filing one month later Weldon wrote that he was unemployed.

Weldon was arrested by both officers in Des Moines outside a Grand Avenue apartment complex on Jan. 1, 2015. According to the now-discredited criminal complaint written by Teut, he had a small, clear container with methamphetamine inside his front right pants pocket when he was arrested. At the time, Weldon was already being sought for arrest on two separate warrants out of Marion and Monroe counties for theft and a probation violation, according to court records.

Weldon pleaded guilty to an aggravated misdemeanor charge of possession of a controlled substance one month after the arrest. Brandt ordered the Knoxville man to spend 31 days in jail and gave him credit for already serving that amount. The judge also revoked his driver's license, and prosecutors later sought $1,875 in reimbursement from him for the time he spent in the Polk County Jail.

But in his Monday order, Brandt ordered the drug conviction to be vacated and for the record to be expunged from Iowa Department of Public Safety records and the National Crime Information Center database that is maintained by the FBI.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is reviewing cases handled by the two officers to determine whether there are any other problematic arrests, Sarcone said.

“This is the only one where there was something, so far, that would indicate that they did something," he said. "If something else happens, we’ll look at those as well. I don’t want anybody having criminal consequences because someone engaged in that type of conduct. No one in law enforcement supports that.”

Prosecutors will also decide whether criminal charges should be brought against Judge and Teut once the DCI's review is completed, Sarcone said.

Sgt. Ryan Doty, a spokesman for the Des Moines department, said Monday that no other officers have been implicated in the investigation. He declined to speak about how police officials became aware of the misconduct.

"In real-life policing, this kind of thing doesn’t happen here," he said. “It’s shocking, and it’s an isolated incident. It’s those two officers.”

The state's wrongful conviction unit was established in October 2015 after the FBI admitted that its experts had given flawed testimony in cases across the country involving hair analysis.

"We created the wrongful conviction division in order to correct injustices like this case presents," State Public Defender Adam Gregg said in a statement. "It is never acceptable to plant evidence on a person, ever."