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SALT LAKE CITY — A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed against a prosecutor and county attorney's office that charged an Orem man convicted and later exonerated in his wife's death.
In a 152-page civil rights lawsuit filed in July 2017, Conrad Truman, 36, claimed law enforcement in Orem arrested, investigated and incarcerated him based on "misleading, false and outright fabricated evidence," alleging that he murdered his wife, Heidy Truman, 25, and then lied to police about killing her.
He is seeking unspecified damages, claiming violation of his constitutional rights, emotional distress, suffering, humiliation and other financial losses.
Orem City, the Orem City Police Department, individual police officers, Utah County Deputy Prosecutor Craig Johnson and the Utah County Attorney's Office were named in the lawsuit.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Ted Stewart granted a motion to dismiss Johnson and the Utah County Attorney's Office as defendants in Truman's lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, Truman alleged Johnson "approved or gave advice in preparing affidavits that contained false information or omissions" and "prepared and filed an arrest warrant," among other allegations.
Stewart dismissed Johnson from the lawsuit because the claims against him were barred by his immunity as a prosecutor, according to court documents.
Other claims against Johnson and the county attorney's office were dismissed because Truman did not meet the legal standard to establish a claim against them, Stewart wrote.
Truman was acquitted in February 2017 when the charges were put before a jury a second time.
A previous jury in 2014 convicted Truman of murdering his wife in their Orem home. He maintained throughout the first trial and at his sentencing that he was innocent. The conviction was overturned in August after Truman argued inaccurate crime scene evidence taken by police influenced the verdict.
Truman's lawsuit alleges that multiple police officers, who had been in the Truman home numerous times throughout the investigation, should have realized that measurements of the scene — listed in police reports as 13.9 feet rather than 139 inches — were incorrect, but that the flawed information was presented at trial, regardless.
Following the first jury trial, Truman was sentenced in February 2015 to serve 15 years to life in prison. When his conviction was overturned, 4th District Judge Samuel McVey declined to reduce Truman's $1 million bail and he remained in custody until he was exonerated in 2017.
