Acquitted man sues 'Cold Justice' producers and sheriff over claimed malicious murder prosecution
Acquitted earlier this year in the 1981 murder of his ex-wife, an Ohio man has filed a federal civil rights suit over a true-crime television show.
In portraying the case in August 2014, TNT’s Cold Justice put him in a false light, Steven Noffsinger contends. The suit says that the show failed to inform viewers about other suspects, Noffsinger’s cooperation with authorities and the fact that “the state of Ohio determined not to pursue the matter with the evidence it had in 1981, which was more than the evidence presented in the production,” reports Courthouse News.
Much of the evidence collected in 1981 and 1982 had been destroyed or lost by the time that Cold Justice began investigating the case, Noffsinger alleges, but that didn’t deter those in charge of producing the show from pointing the finger at him. They even told the Paulding County sheriff’s department that the show would not air unless Noffsinger was indicted, the suit says.
Defendants in the Cleveland case include production companies, several individuals who worked on the Cold Justice investigation, the sheriff and two deputies. All the individual defendants acted with malice and with the intent of getting publicity, Noffsinger alleges.
TNT didn’t respond to a request for comment Courthouse News says and the article doesn’t include any comment from individual defendants.
One of the hosts of the show, Kelly Siegler, was formerly a prosecutor in Texas. She is one of the named defendants in the suit, according to Courthouse News. Last month, a judge threw out a murder conviction and ordered a retrial, saying that Siegler had withheld exculpatory evidence as the prosecutor in that case.
Related coverage:
WANE: “Arrest made in 1981 murder case”
Times Bulletin: “Area man charged with murder of ex-wife in ‘cold case’ “
Toledo Blade: “Defiance man, 59, acquitted in murder case”
Paulding Progress: “Jury acquits Noffsinger”
