PHOENIX — The woman, who multiple judges found was wrongly charged with negligent homicide for the traffic death of Officer Paul Rutherford, is set to sue the City of Phoenix for malicious prosecution.
Nubia Rodriguez filed an official notice of claim on March 15, a week ahead of the four-year anniversary of the accident.
“The Phoenix Police Department would not accept that Officer Rutherford’s decisions and actions caused his death,” according to the claim. “Instead, the Phoenix Police Department made Nubia Public Enemy Number One. It turned her into a scapegoat for Officer Rutherford’s death, stopping at nothing short of making sure she was convicted of homicide.”
A Phoenix spokesperson confirmed the city has received the notice of claim but declined to comment.
On March 21, 2019, Rodriguez hit Rutherford in the two-way turn lane on Indian School Road near 75th Avenue.
Rutherford, who wasn’t wearing a safety vest, was working a traffic accident when he suddenly ran into traffic without looking both ways.
Body camera video shows Rodriguez was hysterical at the scene, screaming “why did he do that?”
“It’s been a heartbreaking situation just from day one,” Rodriguez told ABC15 during an interview. “I mourn and cry for this man that lost his life even though I never met him.”
For a year and a half, Rodriguez said she didn’t hear anything from police after the day of the accident. Then, a letter came in the mail that informed her a grand jury indicted her with negligent homicide.
“It looked like junk mail,” she said. “I just essentially lost it.”
Rodriguez said she sees this as a tragic incident that deeply impacted many lives.
“I don’t want to take away that an accident happened, someone lost their life,” she said. “But again, we go back to how many victims had consequences from what happened because of this and there’s just very many.”
Rodriguez said one of the hardest parts was talking to her 10-year-old daughter about who would take care of her if she went to prison.
She also was a therapeutic foster mother, and Rodriguez said the criminal charges caused her to lose custody of a 9-year-old special needs child in her care who she was in the process of adopting.
The foster child was taken away on her birthday.
“We literally had 15, 20 minutes to pack all her stuff. She’s crying,” said Rodriguez, recounting that day. “All on her birthday. My daughter is hysterical. We’re all hysterical. We all are crying. My family is just so upset."
Attorney Larry Wulkan is the civil attorney for Rodriguez.
“It comes down to right and wrong. It’s right to prosecute criminals and wrong to set up people to be criminals,” he told ABC15 in an interview.
The notice of claim outlines many issues in the case brought by police and prosecutors. It also lists multiple “false statements” that Phoenix Detective Michael Davidson told the grand jury when securing the indictment.
The claim also emphasizes that Phoenix Police and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office did not show the grand jury business security video that captured Rutherford suddenly dart out into traffic without looking both ways.
“I can’t even make this stuff up," Rodriguez said. “That video is really the reason I was able to back the claim of what actually took place.”
It took two years for the criminal case to fully unravel.
In the summer of 2022, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Ryan-Touhill ruled that police and prosecutors initially presented grand jurors with evidence and testimony that was misleading and designed to distract from the true facts of the case.
The case was then sent to a new judge for a preliminary hearing to decide whether charges should have ever been brought.
After a three-day hearing, Judge Joseph Kreamer tossed the case for good.
“What matters is, he appeared from a place he shouldn’t have been to a regular driver,” Kreamer said when making his ruling. “Whether he was an officer or not, he ran out in front of her.”
The hearing included stunning testimony from one of Phoenix’s traffic reconstruction experts.
Det. Greggory Gibbs said under cross-examination that there was internal anger directed at him because he included a critical line in his final report that stated Rutherford shared blame in the crash because he failed to look both ways.
That specific fact was not presented by police or prosecutors to the grand jury.
The notice of claim is filed only against Phoenix and not the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
“The City of Phoenix started this malicious prosecution. The City of Phoenix doubled down on this malicious prosecution by hiding evidence from a grand jury,” Wulkan said.
It’s also much more difficult to successfully sue prosecutors, who have “absolute immunity” in civil cases for their conduct.
Wulkan said if the city doesn’t settle the case, they will file a federal lawsuit and make a connection between Rodriguez’s prosecution and Phoenix’s collusion with prosecutors to falsely charge protesters as gang members in 2020.
“We will draw a strong connection between her prosecution and the malicious prosecution of the protesters,” he said. “Both for political gain. Both of innocent people. But of which were unjust.”
For Rodriguez, this case is about accountability.
“I don’t like attention. You can ask anyone who really knows me, I shy away from it. But this conversation needs to happen,” she said. “Because just how it happened to me, and the freedom they took to paint a picture of something that really wasn’t, is really scary.”
Contact ABC15 Chief Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@ABC15.com.
