By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 9/7/2026
Category: Criminal Courts / Prosecutor Accountability / Police Accountability
NEW YORK CITY, NY – A federal judge has dismissed a civil-rights lawsuit in which Albany defense attorney Jasper L. Mills III accused a former district attorney, prosecutors and a New York State Police investigator of abusing the legal process to force him out of a murder case and damage his career.
U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino rejected the federal claims in a 43-page decision issued September 2. According to the Times Union, the court found that the claims failed for reasons including lack of standing, immunity and failure to state a legally sufficient claim. The judge also denied Mills permission to file another amended complaint.
The ruling closes this federal case at the trial-court level. It does not decide Mills’ separate pending criminal charges, and it does not establish that every factual allegation in his complaint was false.
Mills had sought more than $9 million. His complaint alleged that former Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares, several assistant district attorneys and a State Police investigator withheld information from judges, arranged unconstitutional searches of defendants’ cells at the Albany County jail and tried to remove Mills from active criminal cases.
The court found legal defects in those claims. The Times Union reported that Mills conceded his malicious-prosecution theory because the related criminal proceeding had not ended in his favor. D’Agostino also found that the people named in his abuse-of-process claim were not involved in his later indictment, and that his complaint did not identify a specific denial of due process.
Mills also alleged racial discrimination. The judge found that the complaint did not plead facts supporting an inference that race drove the defendants’ conduct. Her ruling addressed whether the complaint met federal pleading standards, not whether every disputed event surrounding the investigation occurred exactly as one side described it.
The underlying dispute grew out of the prosecution of four people charged in the January 2021 killing of Shanita Thomas, who was pregnant with her third child, and the wounding of four others at an Albany party. Mills represented one defendant before leaving the case.
Prosecutors said a confidential witness’s identity circulated in messages and on social media after defense lawyers received a witness disclosure. The New York Attorney General later charged Mills with five crimes, including witness intimidation and witness tampering. The office alleged that disclosure of protected witness information led to threats and a knife attack against a cooperating witness in federal prison.
Those are allegations. Mills has pleaded not guilty, and the state bears the burden of proving every criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
The federal dismissal matters because it separates two tracks that can easily blur in public view. Mills’ attempt to hold prosecutors and police accountable through a civil lawsuit has been rejected. His own criminal prosecution remains unresolved.
The murder case connected to the dispute has been transferred to the Schenectady County District Attorney’s Office. Trial is tentatively expected in October, nearly six years after Thomas was killed. For her family and the surviving victims, that delay is the most concrete measure of how long accountability has taken.
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