Grant County settles Vargas civil rights lawsuit

GRANT COUNTY — Grant County settled a lawsuit with a Quincy man for $250,000, after he was kept in jail for seven months.

Felipe Vargas sued the county and his first public defender, Tom Earl, for violating his civil rights in U.S. District Court in Spokane, according to court records. He claims the county’s policies denied him the right to effective counsel.

The county’s insurance company negotiated a settlement to end the federal lawsuit at the end of December.

Vargas claimed his rights were violated when he was arrested and held in the Grant County Jail for seven months, after a victim recanted the accusation of being molested.

His girlfriend’s children reported he touched them in a “sexually motivated way” on Nov. 5, 2003, while Vargas was living in Quincy, according to a criminal complaint.

The next day Vargas was charged in Grant County Superior Court with child molestation in first degree, child molestation in the second degree and indecent liberties.

When Vargas came back from having dinner with his girlfriend, they found the girls weren’t at home, according to Vargas’ attorney. They found a handwritten note stating the children were at the Quincy police station. When they arrived at the station, Vargas was arrested.

“The accusations against Felipe Vargas were completely false,” the complaint states. “At the time they were made, (Vargas) lived with Delfina Velasquez and her two daughters … Her daughters resented his presence, so a friend of (one of the girls) suggested a solution: They should simply accuse (Vargas) of child molestation.”

Soon after making the accusation, one of the girls admitted she and her sister made up the story, according to the complaint. She told her mother, family friends, the prosecuting attorney’s victim-witness coordinator and the Quincy police.

After she recanted her story, it took seven months before Vargas was released from jail, according to the complaint.

Three attorneys represented him during the time he was in jail, including Thomas Earl, who was disbarred during the time he was Vargas’ attorney.

Earl was assigned to the case, but he never met with Vargas outside of the court room, according to court records.

During the criminal case proceedings, Earl was being investigated by the Washington State Bar Association. He was accused of failing to provide adequate representation as a public defender.

He reported handling 550 criminal cases a year, which meant he could only spend about 30 minutes on each case, according to Vargas’ attorney, George Ahrend.

The county was aware of the bar association’s investigation, but didn’t do anything to address the situation, according to the complaint. 

Once Garth Dano, Vargas’s last criminal defense attorney, was able to investigate the situation, he discovered the victim withdrew the accusations, according to the complaint. The charges were dismissed on Aug. 31, 2004.

During the time he was in jail, Vargas lost his job at the J. R. Simplot food-processing facility in Quincy, according to the complaint.

While the county settled with Vargas, his civil case against Earl remains scheduled in U.S. District Court in Spokane for Jan. 26. Dano said similar cases have resulted in judgments of about $1 million per year the victim spent in prison.

Vargas’ attorneys are seeking punitive damages to deter people from doing the same thing. Ahrend said the firm hired an expert who determined defendants in Grant County were twice as likely to plead guilty when Tom Earl was a public defender.

“Over the time he was the public defender, he collected about $1.5 million,” Ahrend said. “Our position is that he didn’t earn that fee.”