An Arapahoe County jury awarded a man the $1 he requested in a lawsuit over what he claimed was an illegal search of his car by an Aurora police officer in 2021, when the officer pulled him over for not having license plates.

Christopher Mosley sued under the Colorado law passed in June 2020 that eliminated qualified immunity for law enforcement officers. Qualified immunity protects government employees from lawsuits against them personally unless they violate a clearly established right. An attorney for Mosley said in a statement the trial is the first in Colorado under the law.

“Accountability has to go both ways,” Mosley said in a statement provided by his attorney, Adam Frank. “If someone breaks the law, they get in trouble. When the police break the law, the same thing needs to apply. This was about fairness.”

Mosley’s lawsuit against Aurora Ofc. Brendan Daves alleged Daves stopped him on April 25, 2021 because Mosley’s car did not have license plates. Daves then patted him down and searched his car without a warrant, according to he lawsuit, despite not having any probable cause to believe Mosley had anything illegal inside.

Daves also patted down a woman with Mosley in the car, and accused Mosley of giving him a fake name, according to the lawsuit.

When Daves searched the car he found a handgun in the center console, which Mosley could not have legally because of previous felony convictions, according to a filing by Daves’ attorneys. Daves arrested him for possession of a weapon by a previous offender, and searched the car again after finding the gun.

Attorneys for Daves characterized Daves’ initial search of the car as a “protective sweep” intended to make sure it didn’t have weapons in it before he allowed Mosley to return to the car. According to one of Daves’ court filings, the officer believed he had reasonable suspicion for patting down Mosley and conducting the “sweep” of his car because Mosley did not pull over right away when Daves turned his lights on, did not have any kind of identification with him and acted nervous while he spoke to the officer. Mosley told Daves he had just bought the car, but the title was not in his name, according to court documents.

When Daves ran Mosley’s name, it came back as “Christopher Wooten,” according to Daves’ filing. Mosley reportedly told him his mother’s maiden name was Wooten but took his father’s last name of Mosley.

Daves’ filing denies he racially profiled Mosley when pulling them over, saying he did not know Mosley was Black until he approached the car.

Aurora spokesperson Ryan Luby said in a statement the city attorneys plan to appeal the verdict. He wrote the the officers involved did not have an opportunity to testify about their training or the legal standard applicable to the search in Mosley’s case.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge Elizabeth Volz denied a motion by Mosley’s attorneys for summary judgment in March. Summary judgment is intended for situations in which parties don’t dispute any facts of a case. Volz wrote there were factual disputes about the characterization of Daves’ search of the car, “as whether at the time Defendant conducted the search of Plaintiff’s vehicle, Defendant had fulfilled the requirements of a protective search or other exception to the warrant requirement which would have allowed Defendant to search Plaintiff’s vehicle.”

The jury deliberated for less than two hours before finding in Mosley’s favor on July 26, according to a news release from his attorney. The Aurora Police Department did not discipline Daves after Mosley filed a complaint, according to the lawsuit.

“Mr. Mosley acknowledges his case was not the case of the century, but that is precisely the point: a person should not have to suffer a horrific injury at the hands of the police before they have a recourse,” said Adam Frank, Mosley’s attorney, in a news release.