Massingale Asks $6 Million for Imprisonment

A Kentucky man has filed claims of $3 million each against the City and County of San Diego over his nine-month incarceration on suspicion of two murders for which another man has since been charged.

In his claim, Johnny Massingale Jr., 30, an illiterate transient, cites “mental suffering and loss of freedom.” Massingale stated that he was arrested by state troopers in Kentucky on March 17, 1984, partly on a murder warrant issued in connection with the May, 1979, slayings of Suzanne Jacobs, 31, and her 3-year-old son in Normal Heights. After Massingale confessed to the killings, he was extradited to San Diego.

Massingale was kept in County Jail until the San Diego County district attorney’s office dropped the charges in January, after the arrest of David A. Lucas, a 29-year-old Spring Valley carpet cleaner. In addition to being charged in the Jacobs deaths, Lucas faces murder counts in several other slayings.

While they are sympathetic to Massingale’s plight, city and county officials declined Tuesday to say whether the claim was valid.

“The fact that someone is incarcerated for an offense he did not commit does not necessarily mean there would be a valid claim,” Gene Gordon of the city attorney’s office said. “If there was probable cause on the part of the officers that a crime had been committed and that this individual was the perpetrator, then there would be no liability.”

The city and county have 45 days to respond to the claim. If, as expected, they reject the claim, Massingale will have six months to file suit.