Two police detectives in Hartford, Connecticut, have been hit with a civil rights lawsuit claiming they deliberately excluded evidence from an arrest warrant application and misled witnesses to try to pin a cold homicide case on the wrong man.

Ramon Charles Smith claims in a Monday federal complaint that his civil rights were violated during a "cold case" investigation of a 2007 homicide when Hartford police detectives Andrew T. Jacobson and R. Kevin Salkeld misstated facts in an arrest warrant affidavit. For example, Smith alleges the detectives omitted that Smith was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of the killing and, therefore, could not have been at the crime scene.

Murder and firearms charges against Smith were dismissed in 2024, according to the complaint.

"On the date of the homicide, March 25, 2007, plaintiff was on parole with regular reporting and on a monitoring bracelet. This monitor restricted plaintiff to his home and would have alarmed if he left his home," the complaint states. It later adds: "Defendants did not put this exculpatory evidence in their arrest warrant affidavit. Defendants were aware of this and purposely did not put this evidence in their affidavit or obtain this exculpatory evidence."

Jacobson and Salkeld were working as cold case detectives in 2015 when they were assigned to investigate the death of Joshua McCleland, who was shot and killed in March 2007, according to the lawsuit.

Police in 2007 were unable to identify a suspect though a number of witnesses had said the shooter had short hair and wore a grey New York Giants basketball jersey with the number 56 on it, according to the lawsuit.

The FBI also launched its own investigation after Jimel Frank, who had a past felony conviction, provided a statement to federal investigators in April 2015 claiming he had information about McCleland's killing and Smith's purported involvement, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint does not specify when or why the FBI began investigating the McCleland's death, or why Frank spoke to agents.

Detectives arrested Smith in October 2021, nearly 14 years after the killing, charging him with murder, as well as possession of a firearm, according to the complaint. It says Jacobson and Salkeld authored an arrest warrant affidavit that said Frank and his attorney provided Jacobson and Salkeld with a sworn statement months after speaking with the FBI.

The statement included a detailed account of the scene and claimed that Smith and McCleland had been incarcerated together at a juvenile justice facility in 2006, and that the two had an unspecified "beef" as a result, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges, however, that Jacobson and Salkeld knew that Frank's statements were false, and that information provided to the FBI directly contradicted the signed statement they had.

Frank told the FBI initially he had seen Smith with the weapon and said Smith confessed to shooting McCleland, according to the complaint. The signed statement, however, said Frank met with Smith following the shooting, and there was no reference to the weapon being present, according to the complaint.

Jacobson and Salkeld used the signed statement as part of the arrest warrant affidavit while omitting references to the FBI Investigation and the contradictory information provided by Frank, according to the complaint.

The detectives also omitted other critical information in their documents, including that Smith, who lived on the same street as the shooting, was under house arrest for an unrelated offense and was wearing an ankle monitor that would have sounded an alarm if he left his house, according to the complaint.

The affidavit also omitted that detectives deliberately used an older photo in their investigation — showing five witnesses a 2014 booking photo of Smith with short hair that was more aligned with the suspect description in McCleland's shooting, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit claims deprivation of federal civil rights through actions including false arrest, false imprisonment, infliction of emotional distress and malicious prosecution.

Neither side immediately responded to requests for comment.

Smith is represented by James S. Brewer of James S. Brewer Attorney at Law.

Counsel for the government and counsel for the detectives were not immediately available.

The case is Smith v. Jacobson et al., case number 3:25-cv-01533, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

--Editing by Amy French.