On Friday, Sept. 18, attorneys for Jordan D. Coleman, 44, of Pe Ell, filed a federal lawsuit on his behalf against Lewis County, three officers of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and two members of the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office.
Coleman alleges that they conspired to falsely accuse and wrongly convict him of sexually assaulting a minor.
He was arrested in March 2021 and charged in Lewis County Superior Court with four counts of second-degree rape, a class A felony with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and up to $50,000 in fines, and one count of unlawful imprisonment.
“Jordan Coleman was branded a child molester and jailed for more than two years of his life, based on false accusations and the government hiding evidence,” attorney David B. Owens said in a news release.
Owens is part of civil rights law firm Loevy + Loevy and the Civil Rights and Justice Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law.
“The government had evidence and information Coleman was innocent, but they still chose to turn a good man’s life into a nightmare,” Owens said.
The lawsuit alleges Coleman’s plight began in 2020, arising in part from his own efforts to protect a then 15-year-old minor referred to as M.J.J.M. in court documents.
According to the news release, Coleman reported that a man who was having illegal sexual relations with M.J.J.M and intervened to stop it, testifying for the prosecution in the criminal proceedings.
According to Coleman and his attorney, it was after that when M.J.J.M. falsely accused Coleman of rape and other sexual misconduct against her.
“It would have been obvious to any reasonable investigator that, while serious, the allegations M.J.J.M. made against Coleman were untrue,” the lawsuit states.
According to the complaint, investigators uncovered information demonstrating the allegations were unfounded.
“But — for reasons hard to imagine — they elected to keep this evidence a secret, and instead built a case against Mr. Coleman based on their own false reporting and fabricated statements,” the news release stated. “Despite his innocence, Mr. Coleman was convicted at trial. But he never gave up hope, and never stopped insisting on his innocence. Shortly after his conviction, his lawyers discovered evidence favorable to his case that had been hidden by the government, and evidence of other egregious misconduct that made the criminal proceedings unfair.”
Coleman was then released, according to the news release.
The charges were dismissed by former Lewis County Superior Court Judge James Lawler in September 2023, according to court documents.
“By this time, however, the damage had been done,” the law firm’s news release states. “Mr. Coleman had spent nearly three years battling the accusations that he was a child rapist, including more than two years imprisoned in Lewis County Jail. His mental and physical health suffered, as did the reputation and relationships of both himself and his loved ones.”
According to the release, the federal lawsuit follows a claim Coleman made against the state under the Wrongly Convicted Person’s Act asserting his innocence.
That statute was recently amended in 2026 following Coleman’s own testimony before the Washington Legislature concerning the need for additional reentry support for the wrongfully convicted in Washington state, according to the news release.
A full copy of the complaint can be read here: https://www.loevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Coleman-Complaint.pdf
