Jake Kidder Lawsuit: Michigan Car Wash Arrest Case
The jake kidder lawsuit is a civil rights case filed by Jason Lee Kidder, a Marysville, Michigan resident, against law enforcement officers and their employing agency following his arrest at a self-serve car wash in September 2024. Kidder alleges violations of his Fourth Amendment rights, including wrongful arrest, vehicle search without probable cause, illegal seizure, and excessive force. Simultaneously, he faces felony criminal charges in St. Clair Circuit Court that remain pending. On May 28, 2025, the Michigan Court of Appeals denied his application for leave to appeal the criminal proceedings. The civil lawsuit was ongoing as of mid-2026 with no settlement, no judgment, and no resolution.
Case Details at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Subject | Jason Lee Kidder, also known as Jake Kidder |
| Location | Marysville, St. Clair County, Michigan |
| Incident Date | September 2024 |
| Incident Location | Self-serve car wash, Marysville, Michigan |
| Civil Case Type | 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 civil rights lawsuit |
| Criminal Case | People of MI v. Jason Lee Kidder |
| Criminal Docket | LC No. 24-002233-FH, St. Clair Circuit Court |
| Appellate Docket | Docket No. 375604, Michigan Court of Appeals |
| Appellate Ruling | Application for leave to appeal DENIED, May 28, 2025 |
| Appellate Judges | Judge Michael J. Riordan, Judge Christopher M. Murray, Judge Anica Letica |
| Defense Attorneys | Michael A. Komorn, Paul J. Soderberg, Ashley Stone |
| Civil Lawsuit Status | Active, no settlement as of mid-2026 |
| Criminal Status | Pending, no resolution as of mid-2026 |
What Happened at the Car Wash: The Full Incident
In September 2024, Jake Kidder was washing his truck at a self-serve car wash in Marysville, Michigan. An off-duty police officer at a neighboring location observed Kidder receive what appeared to be an object from a man named Ronnie Heinz, who was sitting in a Cadillac nearby. The off-duty officer interpreted the exchange as a drug transaction and called for uniformed backup.
Kidder says the exchange was a cigarette. Ronnie Heinz, his coworker, confirmed to arriving officers that he had handed Kidder nothing and that the two were coworkers who had exchanged a greeting. Heinz invited officers to search him as well. He was neither searched nor further questioned.
When uniformed officers arrived, they stopped Kidder, asked him to keep his hands visible, and proceeded to search both his person and his truck. The search lasted over an hour. Officers dismantled portions of the truck’s interior, including the dashboard, looking for drugs. No drugs were found anywhere during the search.
Despite finding nothing, officers arrested Kidder. During the arrest, they forcibly removed him from his vehicle and handcuffed him. After being taken to jail, Kidder was subjected to a body cavity search. No drugs or contraband were found.
The St. Clair County District Attorney proceeded to file felony charges against Kidder regardless of the absence of any physical evidence of drugs. Kidder faces multiple counts of assaulting, battering, resisting, or obstructing a police officer and one count of possession of controlled substances. He denies all charges and maintains no drugs were ever in his possession.
Kidder shared the full body camera and surveillance footage on his YouTube channel in March 2025. The footage ignited significant public attention and national discussion about police conduct, Fourth Amendment rights, and the standards required for lawful search and seizure.
The Body Camera Issue: Muted Audio During Critical Moments
One of the most significant and disturbing elements of the jake kidder lawsuit is what the body camera footage reveals about officer conduct during the encounter.
Body camera footage shows officers muted their audio for approximately 20 minutes during one portion of the encounter and for an additional 10 minutes during another portion. These muting periods occurred at key moments in the confrontation, precisely when transparency about officer conduct and communication matters most.
A lawyer who reviewed the footage publicly pointed out that officers are generally required to keep body cameras active during enforcement encounters, and that muting audio during critical moments raises serious questions about compliance with department policy, evidence preservation obligations, and the integrity of the investigation.
In civil rights litigation, the existence of selectively muted body camera footage is a significant piece of evidence. It supports arguments that officers were aware their conduct would not withstand scrutiny and took active steps to limit the documentation of that conduct. Whether a court will draw that inference is a question for the factfinder, but the footage exists and is part of the evidentiary record.
The Fourth Amendment Legal Framework
The jake kidder lawsuit turns primarily on Fourth Amendment law, specifically the standards governing when police can lawfully stop, search, and arrest someone without a warrant.
The controlling legal standard for the type of stop that occurred in Marysville comes from the 1968 Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio. That decision established that police may conduct an investigative stop without a warrant if they have reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot, based on specific and articulable facts rather than a mere hunch or generalized suspicion.
Civil rights attorney John H. Bryan, who analyzed the case publicly, explained that the off-duty officer’s report of seeing an exchange that looked suspicious is, at best, secondhand information without independent corroboration. The coworker who allegedly made the exchange denied it occurred, confirmed his identity as Kidder’s coworker, and offered himself for search. Officers chose not to follow that corroboration path.
The Fourth Amendment issues in the civil lawsuit include several distinct claims.
The initial stop: Whether officers had reasonable suspicion sufficient to detain Kidder at all, given that the sole basis was an off-duty officer’s observation interpreted as suspicious without any corroborating evidence.
The vehicle search: Whether officers had probable cause to search Kidder’s truck. A fruitless search that turns up no evidence does not retroactively justify the search that preceded it. The legal question is whether probable cause existed at the time of the search, not whether it was later vindicated.
The arrest: Whether officers had probable cause to arrest Kidder, given that the search revealed no drugs, his coworker denied the drug exchange, and no independent corroboration of the off-duty officer’s observation existed.
The body cavity search: Whether the post-arrest body cavity search was constitutionally justified, which requires a higher standard than a routine search given its invasive nature.
Excessive force: Whether the manner in which officers removed Kidder from his vehicle and placed him under arrest constituted excessive force under the circumstances.
The Criminal Case: Felony Charges Without Physical Evidence
The criminal side of this matter operates separately from the civil lawsuit. Kidder faces felony charges in St. Clair Circuit Court under case LC No. 24-002233-FH. The charges include multiple counts of assaulting, battering, resisting, or obstructing a police officer and one count of possession of controlled substances.
The possession charge is notable because no drugs were found during the vehicle search or the body cavity search. Prosecutors apparently proceeded on the theory that drugs were present despite the absence of physical evidence. Kidder denies the drug charges entirely.
The resisting and obstruction charges are more common in cases where a defendant challenged officers during the encounter. During the more than one-hour confrontation at the car wash, Kidder loudly argued with officers, insisted he had done nothing wrong, and refused to cooperate with what he considered an illegal stop and search. Whether that conduct rises to the legal standard for criminal obstruction or resisting will be determined by the trial court.
The Michigan Court of Appeals Ruling: May 28, 2025
The defense team for Kidder, led by attorneys Michael A. Komorn and Paul J. Soderberg, filed an application for leave to appeal the criminal proceedings in the Michigan Court of Appeals under Docket No. 375604.
The application included a motion to waive fees and a motion for immediate consideration. The Court of Appeals granted those procedural motions. On the core application, however, the three-judge panel, consisting of Judge Michael J. Riordan, Judge Christopher M. Murray, and Judge Anica Letica, ruled decisively against Kidder.
The court’s order stated that the application for leave to appeal is DENIED for lack of merit in the grounds presented. A denial on lack of merit grounds is not a procedural dismissal. It is the appellate court’s determination that the legal arguments raised by the defense did not present a sufficient basis to reverse or reconsider the lower court’s findings. It is among the strongest forms of denial available to an appellate court and signals that the court reviewed the substance of the appeal and found it wanting.
The criminal case file under Docket No. 375604 has been archived in the Michigan Court of Appeals system as of early 2026, reflecting the conclusion of the appellate phase of the criminal proceedings. The underlying criminal charges in St. Clair Circuit Court remain pending at the trial level.
The Civil Lawsuit: Section 1983 Claims and What They Mean
Parallel to the criminal proceedings, Kidder filed a civil lawsuit against the officers and their employing law enforcement agency. The civil case is brought under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, the federal statute that provides a private right of action against state and local officials who violate a person’s constitutional rights under color of law.
Section 1983 litigation is the primary legal mechanism available to individuals whose constitutional rights are violated by government actors. It allows plaintiffs to sue in federal court for damages, injunctive relief, and attorney fees when a state or local official acts in a way that violates their federally protected rights.
The primary defense the officers will assert is qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields government officials from civil liability unless their conduct violated a clearly established constitutional right that a reasonable person would have known about at the time of the incident. Qualified immunity is one of the most contested doctrines in civil rights law. It has been the subject of significant criticism and ongoing legislative debate at both federal and state levels.
Whether the officers in the Kidder case can successfully assert qualified immunity will depend on whether the specific conduct they engaged in, stopping and searching an individual based solely on a secondhand off-duty officer’s unverified observation, was clearly prohibited under existing Fourth Amendment precedent at the time of the incident. If courts find that precedent did not clearly establish the unconstitutionality of their specific actions, the officers may be shielded from personal liability even if their conduct was wrong.
Civil rights cases under Section 1983 typically involve extended discovery periods, expert analysis of body camera footage and department policies, and dispositive motions focused on qualified immunity before any trial takes place. Cases of this type can take two to four years to reach resolution and may involve appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Michigan federal cases.
As of mid-2026, the jake kidder lawsuit civil case remains active with no reported settlement or final judgment.
Why This Case Has National Significance
The jake kidder case attracted national attention for reasons that extend beyond the specific facts of one arrest at a Michigan car wash.
The detail that Kidder’s truck displayed a Back the Blue sticker, indicating prior support for law enforcement, became a focal point in public discussion. People across the political spectrum who encountered the footage noted that if this could happen to someone who actively supported police, it could happen to anyone. That observation reached audiences who might otherwise dismiss police misconduct claims as politically motivated.
The racial dimension of the encounter was also noted widely. Ronnie Heinz, the man the off-duty officer initially flagged as suspicious, is Black. Kidder is white. The off-duty officer’s decision to interpret a routine interaction between a Black man and a white man as a drug transaction, without any additional evidence, raises questions about the role of racial bias in the initial call for backup. Heinz was never searched and was dismissed from the scene after confirming he was Kidder’s coworker, despite being the person originally identified as suspicious.
The body camera muting issue raised broader questions about accountability mechanisms in policing. If officers can selectively disable audio recording during enforcement encounters, the transparency purpose of body cameras is significantly undermined.
The decision to file felony drug charges despite the absence of any physical evidence of drugs is the element that generated the most public outrage. It demonstrates how the gap between what police are legally authorized to do and what consequences a citizen faces when challenging that authority can be vast and deeply consequential.
GoFundMe and Public Support
After the incident, Kidder launched a GoFundMe campaign to fund his legal defense beyond the court-appointed representation available to him. As of available reporting, the campaign raised slightly over one thousand dollars, which contributed to securing private legal counsel in addition to his appointed attorneys.
The campaign reflects the financial reality of defending against felony charges when you are a private individual without significant resources. Criminal defense at the felony level, particularly when challenging the legality of a stop and search, requires significant investment in legal time, expert witnesses, and investigative resources. The public crowdfunding effort was Kidder’s mechanism for accessing better representation than the system automatically provides.
2026 Status: Where Everything Stands
As of June 2026, here is the complete documented picture.
The criminal charges in St. Clair Circuit Court under case LC No. 24-002233-FH remain pending. No trial date has been publicly confirmed. No plea agreement has been reported.
The Michigan Court of Appeals definitively denied the criminal appeal under Docket No. 375604 on May 28, 2025. That phase of the proceedings is closed.
The civil Section 1983 lawsuit against the officers and their agency is active and proceeding through the federal litigation process. No settlement has been announced. No judgment has been entered. The case is expected to involve qualified immunity briefing, discovery, and potentially appeals before any final resolution.
The body camera footage remains publicly available through Kidder’s YouTube channel and has been referenced in national discussions about police accountability and Fourth Amendment rights.
Final Assessment
The jake kidder lawsuit raises legitimate and serious legal questions about Fourth Amendment protections, the standards for probable cause, the use and integrity of body cameras, and the decision to prosecute someone on felony charges when no physical evidence of the alleged crime was recovered. Whether Kidder ultimately prevails in the civil case will depend on how the court evaluates the officers’ conduct against existing Fourth Amendment precedent and whether qualified immunity applies. What is not in dispute is that the documented facts of this case, an hour-long search that found nothing, a body cavity search that found nothing, and felony charges filed anyway, represent exactly the kind of case that federal civil rights law was designed to address.