Prosecutors in Colorado Springs stand accused of retaliating against a man who sought to publicly criticize their decision to press charges against him.
A civil rights lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court names 4th Judicial District Attorney Dan May, May’s Senior Deputy DA Sharon Flaherty, and an investigator in the office.
The plaintiff, Mark Alba, was acting as his own defense lawyer in a criminal case stemming from a 2015 run-in he had with an armored truck worker he accused of pointing a gun at him. The DA’s office chose to prosecute Alba instead with attempting to influence the detective in the case and false reporting. He said he was innocent of those charges. 
Alba refused to accept a plea offer from Flaherty, the prosecutor in his case. In a 2016 phone conversation, he told her he’d give her a day to drop the criminal charges against him. If she didn’t, he said he’d contact the news media and his congressman alleging prosecutorial misconduct.
Flaherty can be heard in a recording she made of the 2016 phone call asking Alba if he was threatening her. “…(Y)ou’re talking about destroying my career,” she told him.
Alba calmly answered that it was no a threat, but rather his free-speech right to speak out against what he saw as injustice and corruption by her and her office. He told Flaherty she was destroying her own career by pursuing unfounded charges against him.
“I’m not threatening to do anything. I mean, I have the right to, to get the public to know exactly what’s on with the dirty goings-on inside the City of Colorado Springs. It’s not a threat. It’s my right to do it. I’m not threatening you with violence or anything like that. I’m just giving you a heads up of what I’m going to do.”
With the help of DA’s investigator David Guest, to whom she said she felt threatened, Flaherty then had Alba arrested for threatening a public official. Alba spent five days in jail before posting bond, and then a year fighting the second set of criminal charges. In January of this year, a judge threw out the case, citing Alba’s rights to criticize the DA’s office. In April, a jury found Alba not guilty in the original case involving the armored car worker.
His federal lawsuit accuses Flaherty and Guest – as well as May, the elected DA for whom they work – of misusing their authority by prosecuting him out of retaliation. His lawsuit says they violated his 1st Amendment and other civil rights, and that May failed to properly train his employees against whom several allegations of prosecutorial misconduct have been lodged. They’re cited in Alba’s lawsuit.
May’s office prosecutes cases in El Paso and Teller counties.
As of this posting, none of the plaintiffs has returned inquiries for comment. Nor has Lee Richards, the DA’s office’s spokeswoman.
Photos provided by the 4th Judicial District and the law firm of Frank & Salahuddin LLC.
This lawsuit has merit, and I hope he wins. This was clearly retaliation in violation of the man’s rights. His FIRST amendment rights, the one that makes us AMERICAN. This DA needs to be REMOVED from her position. This is HER OWN fault. She could have just dropped what was apparently a foolish case to begin with, instead, she escalated it and made it about HER career. She should have to go start a new one, she is clearly not morally capable of doing the one she has now.
CAN this DA. She is a danger to justice in this state and clearly doesn’t know the limits of her job’s power.
Sue that woman. she is not fit to be a DA. She thinks she is above the law. It’s too bad it’s not legal to punch her in the face.
It shows a lack of ethics when an office like the DA’s is used to persecute or retaliate against a citizen just because they don’t like “anyone” standing up to them. Abuse of power is why our founding fathers wrote the constitution: to protect the common citizens from abuse of power.