Maybe this guy can get a job at United when this deeply saddening case is over. 
 A reputable Apollo engineer's 74-year old widow fell on hard times and tries 
to sell a legal memento for $2000 to help with the mounting medical and child 
expenses (as a single grandmother who lost her daughter also) and then is 
abused by bureaucrats at NASA.  Original article from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/14/humiliating-sting-operation-against-elderly-widow-of-apollo-engineer-draws-court-rebuke/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_2_na&utm_term=.43e1a6b38f82


NASA ‘sting’ operation against 74-year-old widow of Apollo engineer draws court 
rebuke
By Fred Barbash April 14 at 4:34 AM

Joann Davis of Lake Elsinore, Calif., in 2011. (Sarah Burge/The 
Press-Enterprise via AP)

Agents of the U.S. government are entitled to immunity from lawsuits for what 
they do in the line of duty, as long as they do it right, in accord with the 
Constitution.

But what one NASA investigator did to Joann Davis, a financially distressed 
widow of an engineer on the Apollo program who was trying to raise a little 
money, was too much for a federal court of appeals to stomach. And on Thursday, 
the judges let her suit against him go forward.

Here’s what happened, as described in an opinion issued by a panel of the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena.

Robert Davis was, by all accounts, a brilliant engineer, employed by North 
American Rockwell as manager of NASA’s Apollo 11 program.

When he left, he took with him two mementos: One “contained a rice-grain-sized 
fragment of lunar material, or ‘moonrock;’ the other contained a small piece of 
the Apollo 11 heat shield.”

According to “family lore,” Neil Armstrong gave the paperweights to Davis in 
recognition of his service to NASA.

Robert Davis died in 1986. His widow, Joann, who later remarried, fell on hard 
times in 2011. Her son had become ill, requiring over 20 surgeries. Her 
youngest daughter died, and she found herself raising several grandchildren in 
her 70s.

In need of money, she thought of selling the paperweights, only to find that 
auction houses were uninterested.

She then contacted NASA for help in finding a buyer for what she described as 
“2 rare Apollo 11 space artifacts.”

Her innocent email inquiry produced a wholly unanticipated result when it 
arrived in the NASA bureaucracy. It wound up not in the hands of some kindly 
space veteran but in the office of NASA’s Inspector General at the Kennedy 
Space Center in Florida.

There, an agent smelled a crime. Perhaps, he thought, she was trying to unload 
purloined government property, a crime.
NASA ‘sting’ operation draws court rebuke
Embed Share
Play Video3:00
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena allowed a suit 
against a NASA investigator to go forward. The NASA investigator conducted a 
"sting" operation against a 74-year-old widow of a Apollo engineer, who was 
attempting to sell moonrock and a piece of the Apollo 11 heat shield. (United 
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit)

The IG’s office launched an investigation, getting a “confidential source” to 
call Davis pretending to be a broker. He called himself “Jeff.”

Jeff pretended to have previously worked at NASA and promised to help her sell 
the paperweights.

The two exchanged seven phone calls, during which Davis expressed concern that 
NASA would confiscate the paperweights unless she could prove they were a gift. 
She explained, according to court documents, that she wanted “to do things 
legally” because she was “just not an illegal person.”

Jeff said he was a legal person too, but reminded her that the sale of a moon 
rock “can’t be done publicly.”

After the phone calls, Norman Conley, a criminal investigator in the IG’s 
office, obtained a warrant stating that Davis was “in possession of contraband.”

They then planned a sting operation on the 74-year-old woman.

Jeff arranged to meet with Davis on May 19, 2011, at a Denny’s Restaurant in 
Lake Elsinore, Calif., for purposes, she was led to believe, of finalizing the 
sale of the paperweights.

Davis went with her second husband, Paul Cilley.

Greeting Davis, who is 4-foot-11, were three armed federal agents, with three 
Riverside County Sheriff’s officials present but not visible, apparently as 
backup.

The court opinion described what happened next:

    Davis placed the paperweights on the table. Jeff said he thought the heat 
shield was worth about $2,000. Shortly thereafter, Conley announced himself as 
a “special agent,” and another officer’s hand reached over Davis, grabbed her 
hand, and took the moon rock paperweight. Simultaneously, a different officer 
grabbed Cilley by the back of the neck and restrained him by holding his arm 
behind his back in a bent-over position. Then, an officer grabbed Davis by the 
arm, pulling her from the booth. At this time, Davis claims that she felt like 
she was beginning to lose control of her bladder. One of the officers took her 
purse … Four officers escorted them to the restaurant parking lot for 
questioning after patting them down to ensure that neither was armed.

She kept telling the officers she needed to use the bathroom. Undeterred, they 
continued walking her to the parking lot for interrogation, however, the court 
said. She then “urinated in her clothing.”

She was soaked in urine, visibly, the court said. Still, they continued 
interrogating her in the restaurant parking lot for between an hour and a half 
and two hours. They read her Miranda rights, ultimately allowed her to leave 
and referred the case to the U.S. attorney in Orlando.

There never was a crime, of course. She didn’t steal the artifacts. Ultimately, 
the investigation was closed when the prosecutor in Orlando declined to bring a 
case.

In 2013, Davis and Cilley sued the government and Conley, seeking damages for a 
violation of their constitutional rights. Conley claimed “qualified immunity” 
from the suit, legally available to federal agents unless they violate “clearly 
established” constitutional rights, in this case, Davis’s Fourth Amendment 
right against unreasonable search and seizure. A district court rejected the 
claim and he appealed.

A very small piece of moon rock taken from Davis during a sting operation. 
(U.S. District Court for the Central District of California via AP)

On Thursday, the appeals court ruled against him. He might be entitled to 
qualified immunity, had his actions been reasonable, wrote Chief Judge Sidney 
Thomas for the panel. But they weren’t.

“Conley knew that Davis was a slight, elderly woman … less than five feet 
tall,” Thomas wrote. He knew she lost control of her bladder and “was wearing 
visibly wet pants.” He knew she was unarmed and he knew she had “not concealed 
possession of the paperweights, but rather had reached out to NASA for help in 
selling” them. And he knew from the phone conversations that she wanted to sell 
the paperweights “in a legal manner.”

“Despite all of this knowledge, Conley did not inform Davis that her possession 
of the paperweights was illegal or ask her to surrender them to NASA. Instead, 
he organized a sting operation involving six armed officers to forcibly seize a 
lucite paperweight containing a moon rock the size of a rice grain from an 
elderly grandmother.

Conley “had no law enforcement interest in detaining Davis for two hours while 
she stood wearing urine-soaked pants in a restaurant’s parking lot during the 
lunch rush,” the court wrote.

The detention was “unreasonable … unreasonably prolonged and unnecessarily 
degrading.”

The future of Davis’s suit is uncertain. A federal court found against her in 
her separate suit against the government itself, according to the San Francisco 
Chronicle,

John Rubiner, an attorney for Conley, told 5KPIX in San Francisco that he was 
examining the ruling and had not decided what to do next. He said that a trial 
court considering her case against the government determined that Conley had 
asked Davis if she wished to use the bathroom to clean up and whether she 
wanted to speak with him at her home, but she declined.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the trial court dismissed the suit 
against the government on the grounds that Davis had given “free and voluntary” 
consent to the agent’s questioning in the parking lot and was not in custody 
while being questioned.

Davis’s lawyer, Peter Schlueter, told the Chronicle his client can sue for an 
abusive interrogation even if she was not in formal custody, however.
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