Lawsuit says nursing mom wrongly arrested, strip-searched

The woman was then strip-searched at the jail because she was named in a botched warrant. A lawsuit filed in federal court in Denver says Mercedes Archuleta endured "a nightmare" and suffered civil rights violations after a state trooper stopped her and her husband, who was driving, for a minor traffic violation on June 12. The suit says Archuleta, a 46-year-old mother of nine, was wrongly named in a Lakewood police warrant for misdemeanor harassment. It says the trooper discovered the warrant after illegally seizing her identification, pulled her from the car and handcuffed her before she could fasten her blouse. Archuleta was strip-searched at the Jefferson County jail, even though jail officials had already discovered she was not the person wanted in the warrant, the lawsuit says. Jefferson County sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Kelley and Lakewood police spokesman Steve Davis said they could not comment because they had not seen the lawsuit. State Patrol officials did not immediately return messages. The suit seeks an undetermined amount of money from the Lakewood detective who drew up the warrant, the trooper who arrested her, the jailer who ordered the strip search and Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink. The suit also asks that the jail's strip-search policy be declared unconstitutional. Tim Macdonald, the attorney handling the case for the ACLU, said Archuleta wound up on the arrest warrant because another woman who had been harassed at a store gave that name to an investigator. "Instead of investigating and taking necessary and appropriate actions to determine who they might have probable cause to arrest, they simply swore out an arrest warrant against our client, an innocent mom," Macdonald said. The ACLU said Lakewood officials have acknowledged the warrant never should have been issued on such a sketchy identification. Macdonald said the trooper pushed Archuleta against the car and frisked her while her children were crying in the back. He said she spent hours in the jail before her husband could post bail. The lawsuit identifies the Lakewood detective as Michelle Wagner, the jailer as D.L. Mandelko and the trooper as Shayne Butler.