D’Andre Glaspy tried to save the life of his girlfriend’s son—but racial bias in King Co. Sheriff’s Dept. led to his arrest and five-year imprisonment, new lawsuit alleges.
SEATTLE — D’Andre “Dre” Glaspy, 33, spent five years in county jail before being acquitted in the 2017 death of his partner TeAnna Ausler’s two-year-old baby “MHA.” On Friday, Mr. Glaspy filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging both the King County Sheriff’s Department and the King County Medical Examiner’s Office with racial bias and dishonest reporting, and asking a federal jury to rule on damages related to violations of his civil rights.
“In the wake of an unspeakable family tragedy, County officials looked at Dre and saw only a homicide suspect, not the grieving father-figure he actually was,” says attorney David B. Owens, partner in the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy and Assistant Professor and Director of the Civil Rights and Justice Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law. “The rush to judgment, followed by biased reporting, truly upended Dre’s life, both in the five years he spent imprisoned and beyond.”
Over one terrible week in the winter of 2017, MHA—to whom Mr. Glaspy was a loving and caring father-figure—grew progressively sicker from what turned out to be a viral infection. On the morning of December 3, while preparing to give MHA a bath, Mr. Glaspy discovered him passed out and began immediately to render first aid, calling 911. The 911 dispatcher guided him through CPR, but MHA died from the underlying viral infection that had been building for days.
The King County Sheriff’s Department handled the investigation, and—according to the complaint—right from the beginning they treated Mr. Glaspy as a homicide suspect, rather than a grief-stricken parent. Sheriff’s deputies aggressively questioned Mr. Glaspy and Ms. Ausler, using abusive interrogation tactics despite their fragile emotional state. The suit alleges that law enforcement deliberately mischaracterized their observations about Mr. Glaspy’s manner and the couple’s living environment, and they mischaracterized mournful statements by Mr. Glaspy as some sort of confession of guilt. These distortions of the truth continued with the work performed by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, which wrongfully interpreted MHA’s medical condition as evidence of abuse.
“No reasonable person would have thought that [Mr. Glaspy] killed M.H.,” the complaint says, but the investigators, “reflecting racial bias against a large Black man, accused Plaintiff of homicide and conducted their investigation into M.H.’s death with reckless disregard for the truth and aimed at falsely generating the notion that M.H. died due to child abuse inflicted by Plaintiff.”
Mr. Glaspy was arrested and charged with Second Degree Murder. He was imprisoned for five years in King County Jail awaiting trial. In 2023, he finally had his day in court, and was acquitted on all charges. Mr. Glaspy was represented at the criminal trial by Michael Schuler and Anna Samuel, both then-public defenders who advocated tirelessly on Mr. Glaspy’s behalf.
Among other allegations of misconduct, the complaint alleges that King County knew that they had fabricated evidence, including in their own reports, but failed to disclose those dishonest acts to either the prosecutors or to Mr. Glaspy’s attorneys.
“During the time between arrest and acquittal, the Defendants knew they had targeted Plaintiff due to racial bias against Black men—and tropes about Black men engaging in intimate partner violence and child abuse—to conclude and assert that Plaintiff committed a homicide when he had not.”
According to the complaint, King County has a history of such racially biased reporting. For example, the King County chief medical examiner, Richard Haruff, “has repeatedly included false contributing causes of death on autopsy reports things that are not contributing, and done so in a manner indicative of racial bias or a bias toward providing opinions that will aid criminal prosecution even when the factual basis is lacking.”
The lawsuit names as defendants six King County sheriff’s deputies, the chief medical examiner Mr. Haruff, an associate medical examiner, Nicole Yarid, King County, and the City of SeaTac. It asks a federal jury to rule on damages related to 12 counts of violations of Mr. Glaspy’s civil rights under state law and the U.S. constitution, including denial of equal protection, malicious prosecution, and civil conspiracy.
In addition to Professor Owens, clinic students Jasmin Bolte, Eli Cooper-West, Caroline Guess, and Ian Seabrooks contributed to bringing this suit.