One year after he was freed from a Kansas prison in which he served 23 years after being wrongly convicted of a double murder, Lamonte McIntyre filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday contending that a Kansas City, Kansas detective framed him after McIntyre’s mother spurned the detective’s sexual advances.
The 59-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas on behalf of the wrongfully convicted man and his mother, Rose McIntyre, paints a broad picture of a department that tolerated widespread corruption with a former detective, Roger Golubski, at the center.
The lawsuit calls Golubski a “dirty cop who used the power of his badge to exploit vulnerable black women.” Department officials looked the other way, the lawsuit contends, because of Golubski’s success in closing cases. Despite the serious misconduct, Golubski was rewarded and rose up the ranks within the department, retiring as a captain, the lawsuit states.
As detective, the lawsuit states, Golubski was permitted to go through the streets of Kansas City, Kansas, using his badge to force those women to perform sexual acts and provide information, true or not, to close other cases.
“Many of the women were homeless or worked as prostitutes,” the lawsuit states. “For some women, Golubski promised favors connected with his position with the KCKPD in return for sex: for example, clearing a warrant, getting rid of a municipal charge, or asking the District Attorney to “go easy” on a family member facing charges. With others, Golubski was more forceful, obtaining sex through physical force or threats to arrest the woman or a member of her family if she did not engage in sexual acts.”
McIntyre was convicted based on the identification of two women who lived on the street where two men, Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing, were shot to death while their car was parked; both of them, the suit contends, were either coerced or misled into a false identification.
The lawsuit names, in addition to Golubski, eight other current and former Kansas City, Kansas detectives, and unnamed additional officers and supervisors in the department. “Although Golubski jealously guarded the identities of many of his informants, “ the lawsuit states, “supervisors and other detectives knew that Golubski had sexual relationships with these women and controlled them with the threat of arrest or other consequences.”
Cheryl Pilate, McIntyre’s lawyer who helped build the case that ended in his exoneration, is co-counsel on the civil lawsuit; Thursday she called the case against him a “great injustice,” but declined further comment. The complaint “speaks for itself,” she said.
McIntyre said by telephone on Thursday that the lawsuit offers him “justice and accountability.” For too long, he said, injustice was tolerated. “People in the position of power did not do anything about it.”
McIntyre, then 17, became a suspect after a series of officers descended on the murder scene in a poverty-ridden street in Kansas City, Kansas, where the two bodies were found in a parked car. Within hours, Golubski had obtained a statement from Ruby Mitchell, a resident on the street, who later testified she had recognized a man named “Lamonte” as the shotgun-armed man who walked up to the car and shot and killed Ewing and Quinn.
But her identification was confused: Golubski contended that Mitchell had recognized “Lamonte” as the man who dated her niece. It would turn out a different Lamonte, not McIntyre, had dated her niece.
Mitchell, the lawsuit contends, is among the women who “had previously been forced to provide sexual services to Golubski.”
The other witness who identified McIntyre contended for years that she had falsely named him under threat that her children would be taken away. That witness, Niko Quinn, had a sister, Stacey, who was a prostitute with a longstanding relationship with Golubski.
Injustice Watch detailed in three articles in October, 2017, its finding of an investigation that suggested McIntyre was innocent. Days later, a hearing on McIntyre’s claim of innocence was stopped short when the new Wyandotte County District Attorney, Mark Dupree, contended that the evidence presented at a post-conviction hearing supported the conclusion that a “manifest injustice” had occurred.
The lawsuit lists co-counsels to Pilate as attorneys Michael J. Abrams of Kansas City and Barry Scheck, along with members of Scheck’s firm in New York. Scheck is the co-founder of the Innocence Project.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
