Trooper's sex charges dismissed

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Citing lack of evidence, Thurston County prosecutors have dismissed all charges against a state trooper accused of raping a Yelm woman during a traffic stop last year.

Yesterday's decision elated Trooper Jon Nelson and his attorney, who have consistently asserted that the accusations were maliciously false, and they say they expect a pending internal State Patrol review of the accusations to give Nelson back his badge.

But the announcement has outraged the young woman and her attorney, who have been waging a months-long media campaign against Nelson and the prosecutors who have been steadily downgrading their case since Nelson, 35, was jailed in February.

"I'm going to do anything in my power to get what I want, and I want justice to be served," said Misty Bryars. "Everything I'm saying is the truth, whether anybody believes me or not."

The story has been marked by twists since January, when Bryars, a 20-year-old strip-dancer, first made her allegations. She said Nelson used the power of his badge and gun to coerce her into having sex with him in her home off a dirt-and-gravel road on the outskirts of Yelm in mid-December.

Her attorney, James Egan of Seattle, has been representing her for free, using news releases and angry letters to try to keep the case alive.

Thurston County Prosecutor Ed Holm said his evidence against Nelson has been crumbling from the start.

"I can't tell you what I believe really happened," Holm said, "but it's my firm belief that we can't prove if it did occur. And that's what we do here -- we try to prove guilt. And if we can't prove it, we try not to waste our time."

Bryars went to detectives in January with a pair of her pants she said contained Nelson's DNA and a sample of what she said was Nelson's semen she had preserved.

She said Nelson had stopped her in her driveway off Mudd Run Road for a faulty license tag. He asked to use her phone, then ordered her to strip naked, Bryars said, and gestured toward his gun. She complied, she said, and they had sex.

"He held me down by the power of authority, by the power of his gun and his badge," Bryars later wrote in an explicitly detailed, 26-page account her lawyer distributed to the media.

The trooper was arrested and a second-degree rape charge filed Feb. 1. He was released on bail after a weekend in jail.

Prosecutors say their case started to unravel by the next week. A witness came forward, a boyfriend of one of Bryars' relatives, who told police Bryars was lying, with the intention of ruining Nelson and possibly suing the State Patrol for a large settlement. Holm said his office had other witnesses questioning Bryars' credibility.

Detectives persuaded Bryars' cousin to wear a hidden microphone, but the conversation with Bryars didn't reveal anything conclusive, Holm said.

Egan, Bryars' attorney, says the fact the authorities used the secret tape-recording shows they have been out to dismiss her claim all along.

"They're treating a victim in a rape case like she's the defendant," Egan said. "They're treating her like she's in the wrong."

But Holm said he had problems with the evidence. While the pants Bryars provided did test positive for semen, it was someone else's, not Nelson's, he said. The test of the substance Bryars said was a sample of Nelson's semen was inconclusive.

Tests were done by the State Patrol crime lab and an independent lab in California.

Gradually, prosecutors backed off the case. They replaced the rape charge with one of custodial sexual misconduct, a lesser felony that applies to police and jail guards who have consensual sex with someone in their custody.

Then they dropped an unlawful-imprisonment charge. Instead of the seven years in prison Nelson was originally facing, he was looking at a maximum of a year in jail if convicted.

Now the case is dead.

"We'll never know what happened, I guess," Holm said. "There are only two people who really know."

Nelson still faces an internal review, and he remains on paid leave, said Capt. Eric Robertson, a State Patrol spokesman.

"These types of things don't happen every day," Robertson said, "but the State Patrol has a long history of holding its employees accountable. We don't want anyone who is a criminal working for our agency any more than the public does."

But, Robertson added, "(Nelson) has a good track record with the agency."

Nelson, reached at his home, acknowledged he was relieved by Holm's decision but declined to comment further. His attorney, Michael Hanbey of Olympia, said Nelson is "happy as a clam and looks forward to going back to work."

Nelson admits being at Bryars' house that day - to use the phone, his attorney said. But the married trooper denies anything sexual about the encounter.

"It was a false accusation," Hanbey said, "and it's hard to know why someone would make it. It's also unfortunate for her that she felt she had to press it this far. It's very difficult because he's (Nelson's) an integral part of the Yelm community, and to falsely accuse someone of such a serious offense, as a police officer, it shatters you."

When Holm began downgrading the charges, Bryars and her lawyer went into high gear.

Egan sent out a statement by Bryars, detailing her allegations of sex, its effect on her and the reasons why she fears that her job as a stripper in a Tacoma club might unfairly bring her credibility into question.

And Egan publicly charged Holm and the police with conspiring to protect Nelson. He accused the crime lab of tampering with the DNA evidence, a charge denied by the State Patrol.

"They're trying to cover this up," Egan said, "and they're afraid of the negative publicity this will generate by the facts going to the jury and the public wondering why this wasn't charged as a rape."

Egan and Bryars said that they only wanted the chance for a jury to decide the case and that they never wanted to sue anyone.

But now, Bryars said, a suit may be her last opportunity to be heard.

"I didn't want it to be settled through money," she said. "I wanted it to be settled through justice. But if that's what I'll have to do, then that's what I'll do.

"I will speak in front of a million people and tell them what happened because I'm not lying at all."