A homeless man is suing a slew of local law enforcement officials for $150,000, claiming they have mistreated him and his property since he was arrested for burglary in Basalt last November.

The defendants named in the suit are Pitkin County Sheriff’s Deputy Paula Dent, the sheriff’s department, former deputy district attorney Gail Nichols, Colorado’s 9th District Attorney’s Office and the Pitkin County commissioners.

The plaintiff, arborist Matthew Franzen, is currently representing himself in the case.

Deputy Dent arrested Franzen after his employer accused him of stealing a computer hard drive and business files from him. Franzen was living at the employer’s home at the time. He claimed his boss owed him $1,200 and he was holding the property as collateral.

He spent four months in jail before the charges against him were dropped.

Franzen claims he was pressured by deputy district attorney Nichols, who was appointed as a district court judge by Gov. Bill Ritter over the summer, to plead guilty to a lesser crime or else stay in jail on a bond he could not afford to pay. “Gail Nichols used incarceration as a means to coerce Franzen into making a deal,” his complaint states.

He eventually took an agreement under which the charges against him would be dropped if he agreed to undergo anger management counseling. In court papers, Franzen claims he “accepted the deal under extreme duress.”

He accuses the DA, in part, of malicious prosecution and abuse of process.

“Four months in jail and no new information had been brought forward and yet all charges were dropped,” Franzen wrote in a letter to the court.

Franzen said in an interview yesterday that he has been unable to hire an attorney, in part, he believes, because he is targeting Judge Nichols. “I’ve been talking to lawyers,” he said. “But nobody wants to take the case because I’m going up against a judge.”

While he was jailed, Franzen’s pickup truck was impounded and, during that time, his lawsuit claims, the truck was damaged and rendered undriveable. Franzen further claims items in the car — including a laptop computer, a demo saw and a tent — also went missing.

He also alleges that he was harassed and abused while in custody at the jail, including one incident where he says a jailer slammed a door on his hand, causing a laceration that required six stitches.

After his release, Franzen says the sheriff’s department refused to give him tools he owned that had been recovered from his former boss. By the time they returned his tree maintenance tools to him, Franzen’s court papers state “the season was almost over and most of his jobs were lost.”

Pitkin County Undersheriff Joe DiSalvo said he was unaware of the suit and did not wish to comment on it.

Judge James Boyd, who oversaw Franzen’s criminal case, ordered the new action be moved out of this district.

Though he was exonerated in the burglary case, Franzen does have a criminal record that he says has been used to curtail his visitation rights with his two children he fathered with his ex-wife. He said the prosecution in the burglary case mischaracterized him as dangerous and unbalanced, and pointed out that he passed a competency evaluation that was ordered against his wishes by his own defense attorney.

andrew@aspendailynews.com