Appeals court dismisses Dugard lawsuit alleging federal parole failure
Phillip and Nancy Garrido are in prison for the abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard.
By Bay City News Service
A divided U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by kidnapping victim Jaycee Lee Dugard against the federal government for failing to supervise her captor when he was on parole from another kidnapping in the years before she was abducted.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said by a 2-1 vote that Dugard could not sue over the alleged failure to supervise Phillip Garrido in the three years before she was kidnapped in 1991 because she was not a “specifically identifiable victim” at the time.
Dugard’s lawsuit claimed that if federal parole officials had supervised Garrido properly, they would have revoked his parole and sent him back to prison for numerous instances of drug use and other violations, thus making him unable to kidnap her.
Dugard, now 35, was kidnapped at age 11 by Phillip and Nancy Garrido on the morning of June 10, 1991, as she walked to a school bus stop outside her home in Meyers.
