Thirty-three people who say their lives were upended by former Florida deputy Zach Wester have reached a settlement in their federal lawsuits after Wester was convicted last May of planting meth on innocent drivers.
The plaintiffs, who alleged civil-rights violations by Wester and his former employer, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, and defendants agreed to resolve the cases after a nearly 10-hour settlement conference at the federal courthouse in Pensacola.
Terms of the settlement, namely how much the plaintiffs will receive, were not immediately released. The parties were instructed to prepare a joint motion for dismissal within 30 days.
The settlement reaffirmed the stories of Wester’s victims, who were stopped for often minor driving infractions only to be carted off to jail on bogus felony drug charges. Prosecutors ended up dropping charges in more than 100 cases that involved the ex-lawman.
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Tallahassee attorney Marie Mattox, who represented 27 of the plaintiffs, said her clients may never fully recover from their roadside encounters with Wester. Some lost their jobs, their spouses, their homes and their children as a result of the arrests.
“What happened to the plaintiffs was tragic and should never have happened to anyone,” Mattox said. “You’re supposed to be able to trust law enforcement. But this is a start to their recovery. It’s something that they can look at and say I successfully sued Zach Wester for what he did to me and was able to recover.”
U.S. Magistrate Judges Hope Cannon and Michael Frank presided over the settlement conference, a closed proceeding that began Tuesday morning and didn’t end until evening.
Present were all the plaintiffs and their lawyers along with attorneys for Wester, the Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Sheriffs Risk Management Fund, which will pay the settlement. Wester himself, who’s incarcerated in a Colorado prison, appeared via telephone.
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“It was a marathon,” Mattox said. “I was not hopeful when we went into mediation. But once we got into it, and I saw the efforts that had been made to resolve this by the magistrate judges and the level of involvement that they had, I was optimistic. Without their help and their skill, this case would not have resolved.”
Wester, 30, was found guilty at trial last year for racketeering, fabricating evidence, official misconduct, false imprisonment and possession of controlled drugs and substances. Though initially imprisoned in Florida, he was moved out of state over concerns about his personal safety and security.
The son of a prominent law-enforcement family, Wester got his first job as a deputy in 2015, working for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, though he left after less than a year amid allegations of sexual misconduct. He started working in 2016 at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, developing a reputation as an aggressive patrol deputy with an impressive number of drug arrests.
By summer 2018, prosecutors in Marianna began to get suspicious of Wester based in part on inconsistencies in his police reports and body-camera footage. One particularly damning body-cam video showed him with a plastic baggie in his hand before searching a woman’s pickup truck and arresting her for possession of methamphetamine.
He was suspended and later fired amid an internal investigation and the discovery of a trove of ready-to-plant drugs and paraphernalia stashed away in the trunk of his patrol car. He was arrested in 2019 after a lengthy investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
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The settlement doesn’t put a complete end to the Wester case. Several additional plaintiffs, including clients of Mattox, have pending lawsuits in state court, though those could soon head to settlement talks. Last month, the 1st District Court of Appeal denied his motion for oral arguments in his criminal appeal.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.
Tallahassee Democrat
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