Point Reyes Light -- August 27, 1998
Forest Knolls man sues Civic Center for conspiracy
Having triumphed in a border dispute with the county Open Space District, beaten the rap on dubious drug charges, and challenged a red-tag notice on his Stinson Beach vacation rental, Forest Knolls resident Jerry Knight last week slapped the Civic Center with a $5 million lawsuit for allegedly plotting a conspiracy against him.
Accused in the conspiracy are Sheriff Bob Doyle, Open Space District Director Fran Brigman, Open Space planner Ron Miska, plus members of the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force and Department of Public Works for repeatedly entangling Knight and his wife in what they consider groundless disputes that shattered their law-abiding lives.
"It's been an orchestrated attempt to take our property," said Knight, 52, a self-employed contractor and Vietnam veteran who has spent the better part of the last five years trading angry letters and barbed phone conversations with various county workers over a variety of issues.
The Knights say their troubles with the county began when the Open Space District received adjoining land in 1991, then ordered the couple to stop using an access road dividing the two properties. The Knights had regularly used the road for unloading firewood and having their septic system pumped.
Faced with a lawsuit by the Knights, the Open Space District relented early last year, offering the couple a permanent easement over the road. Four days later, in response to reports that Jerry Knight harassed visitors hiking past his house to Open Space District property, County Counsel Tom Hendricks warned him the county would "have the Sheriff take appropriate action" if trouble persisted.
Knight maintains he never threatened anybody who uses Sinaloa Avenue to enter the Open Space preserve beyond his home. He further maintains, however, that a subsequent Major Crime Task Force raid on his house resulted from the County Counsel's warnings.
In that raid, a Sheriff's deputy, while responding to a false burglar alarm while the couple was on vacation, entered the Knights' house last August 4 looking for intruders. After a thorough search, he discovered about 25 marijuana plants growing behind a bathroom closet.
When the county Task Force returned with a search warrant that afternoon, Knight says, they ransacked his house and seized his and his wife's personal effects, including some garden variety poppy flowers bought at a San Rafael nursery.
Knight was charged with marijuana cultivation and - once the poppies were processed into opiates at a Santa Rosa crime lab - possession of codeine and morphine.
County prosecutors dropped the marijuana charges after the Knights produced evidence their stash was for medicinal purposes. After then-Deputy District Attorney Paula Kamena received a poppy bouquet from the Knights through the mail, prosecutors decided to drop the opiates charges, too.
No longer facing a felony drug sentence, Knight said he and his wife went to their Stinson Beach vacation rental home to celebrate his freedom. Upon arriving there, he said, they found the house had been red-tagged for what Knight described as minimal storm damage.
The chronology of these events, said the Knights' attorney, Carl Shapiro, marks a concerted effort to deny the couple their civil rights. "You have these things following one after another," Shapiro says. "It seems to me you have a hard time disavowing the chain."
County Counsel Patrick Faulkner thoroughly denies the conspiracy charges, calling them an "absurd conclusion."
Undersheriff Dennis Finnegan, who leads the Major Crimes Task Force, declined to discuss a pending lawsuit.
The Knights, however, refuse to remain silent about their ongoing feud with the county and their lawsuit. "They tried to incarcerate me on manufactured evidence," Jerry Knight said. "They violated our rights and threatened our freedom. It's for everyone we're doing this."
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