Fired officer sues Phoenix, prosecutors, women who accused him of sex assault — and Jarrett Maupin

He lost both his job as a Phoenix police officer and his good name based on what he claims were spurious allegations that he used the power of his position to sexually assault multiple women.

They were charges advanced, he said, by a department looking to clean up its reputation and a firebrand civil rights activist looking for publicity and money.

But earlier this year, Sean Peña was found not guilty of the charges that he sexually assaulted three women while on the job.

Peña has now gone from defendant to plaintiff.

This month, he filed a lawsuit against Phoenix Police Department leaders and employees who investigated the cases, prosecutors from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office who pressed the charges and the three women who accused him.

“It was like an atomic bomb dropped on my life,” Peña said in an interview with The Arizona Republic on Tuesday.

Peña, 28, said he realizes that some people may always believe he was guilty, despite the verdicts finding the opposite. The lawsuit, he said, was one way to get “vindication.”

“Just because the crime and the allegation was so heinous,” he said, “they figured they could get by without evidence.”

One of the accusers, Lisa Taylor, told The Republic on Tuesday that she wasn't yet served with the complaint. Despite the verdict, she maintained she was a victim of Peña’s.

“He actually sexually assaulted me,” she said.

Peña also is suing the Rev. Jarrett Maupin, who Peña believes shaped at least one of the women’s stories into a tale that was more incendiary.

Maupin held a news conference outside Phoenix police headquarters with one of the accusers and compared Peña to a notorious serial killer. He arranged for the woman to give an interview that shared graphic details of the alleged attack.

And Maupin profited from the situation, the complaint alleges.

Phoenix paid two of Peña’s accusers $425,000 each to settle their cases. Maupin, the complaint states, received a portion of those funds.

But Maupin denied taking any of either woman’s money.

“That is absolutely false,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

Maupin said he still believed the women’s accusations, despite the not-guilty verdicts. He said settlements with two of the women show that the city believed them, too.

Maupin said he had not yet seen the complaint, which he referred to as “make-believe from a disgruntled former police officer.”

Representatives for Phoenix and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office did not provide any comment on the case. Phoenix police did not respond to a request for comment.

David Dow, an attorney who represented two of the accusers, did not return an email seeking comment. He previously has represented people on whose behalf Maupin served as a public advocate.

The Republic was not able to reach the third accuser.

What the lawsuit alleges

The complaint, filed by attorney Sean Woods, calls the three accusers “malicious liars who were each highly motivated to make false accusations” against the former officer.

The complaint said the accusations from the three women “were demonstrably false, as would have been revealed by an even cursory investigation by the Phoenix Police Department or the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.”

Police and prosecutors, though, “pushed the investigation hastily and recklessly, and terminated (Peña’s) employment without just cause,” the complaint reads.

The civil lawsuit, filed Aug. 8, alleges a slew of wrongs: malicious prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

It names the three accusers — Cynthia Ramirez, Krystofer Lee and Lisa Gutierrez, who has since changed her last name.

The lawsuit names the Phoenix police detectives who investigated the crime. It names the county prosecutors who pressed the case. It names former Phoenix police Chief Jeri Williams and the current head of the department, interim Chief Michael Sullivan.

It names Maupin and his associate, Iesha Stanciel, who the complaint said brought Lee’s story to Maupin’s attention.

The lawsuit does not name a dollar figure sought. But it does mention the earnings Peña would have received had he continued his career as a police officer and retired with a pension.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office charged Peña with seven felony counts of sex crimes in 2020. The case went to trial in 2022. A jury found Peña not guilty of two of the charges that May, but could not reach a verdict on the remaining charges. After a second trial, a jury in August 2022 found Peña not guilty of the remaining five charges.

According to Peña’s complaint, the Phoenix Police Department was in league with prosecutors at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to burnish the police agency’s reputation.

Peña’s complaint claims Phoenix police were aware that the U.S. Department of Justice was set to investigate the department for civil rights violations. The department wished to show it was “taking action to root out ‘bad cops,’” the complaint reads. “To that end, Sean’s career was sacrificed.”

The Department of Justice announced a probe into the Phoenix Police Department in August 2021. Peña was initially criminally charged in June 2020.

3 women made allegations against officer

The three alleged incidents involving Peña occurred within a year’s time, between August 2018 and August 2019.

The initial allegation was reported right away and, within days, dismissed by an internal investigation.

The second incident wasn’t reported to police until four months after it was alleged to have happened and at the prompting of Maupin, the complaint claims.

The third incident wasn’t reported until nearly a year after it was alleged to have happened. It came after news reports that Peña was fired over the first two alleged incidents.

The complaint details problems with the women’s stories. Some of the specifics of the attacks changed over time, the complaint states. Some of the details, coupled with the close quarters of Peña’s patrol vehicle, make at least some versions of the attacks described by the two women physically impossible, the complaint states.

By the time of the trial, though, Peña said his reputation was already sullied.

"In the court of public opinion, I was already kind of strung up and hung as a serial rapist," he said. "But I did have my day in court and my attorneys did their job."

Peña graduated from Grand Canyon University and enrolled in the police academy. He became an officer in July 2017 and started patrolling the south Phoenix area. The officer, the complaint says, was “dedicated to fighting the fentanyl epidemic” in the area.

On Aug. 28, 2018, Peña and another officer investigated a suspicious vehicle at Sherman Park, the complaint says. In that car, Peña found Ramirez having sex with a man, the complaint says. Ramirez would later tell officers the two were doing “speedballs,” a mixture of opiates and methamphetamine, the complaint says.

Peña arrested Ramirez on a felony warrant out of Yavapai County. On the way to jail, according to the complaint, she was in tears and detailed why she couldn’t go to jail. She offered Peña oral sex if he were to let her go, an offer that Peña ignored, the complaint states.

At the jail, Ramirez told staff that Peña forced her to have oral sex with him while stopped at a railroad crossing. Police investigated. A swab of Ramirez’s mouth showed DNA that was possibly from the man in the car, the complaint says, but could not have been from Peña.

The city closed its investigation of Peña on Sept. 1, 2018, the complaint says. It would lie dormant until the second accusation.

More complaints made against officer

On June 1, 2019, Peña and another officer found a woman wandering the streets barefoot. Officers discovered the woman, Lee, had a warrant. They also found foil used for smoking fentanyl, according to the complaint.

Peña told Lee that if she showed him where her dealer lived, he would let her go.

After she pointed out the house, Lee asked Peña to drive her to a nearby intersection. Peña claims he then uncuffed her and let her walk away. Records show Peña’s car was parked for about 10 minutes. Lee later told police that Peña forced her to touch him.

Peña said Tuesday that those 10 minutes were spent talking with Lee about the dealer at his driver’s side door.

In August 2019, Peña had an encounter with a third woman, though she would not come forward with allegations he sexually abused her for more than a year.

Lisa Gutierrez called police because she said a friend of her fiance was using drugs and threatening her. Peña and another officer responded to the call. By the time they arrived, the friend was gone.

Peña, while later writing his report, wanted to know whether she wanted to press charges against the friend, the complaint says. Unable to reach her by phone, he drove toward her house and saw her walking back from a store. She told Peña that her fiance was a fentanyl dealer who physically abused her, according to the complaint. She asked that they meet later at a vacant lot where she could give him more details.

Gutierrez later alleged that Peña sexually assaulted her both at the stop in his car and at the vacant lot.

The complaint says that Lee went to Maupin, at Stanciel's urging, and said she had a story about abuse by a police officer. Maupin, the complaint said, told her she should file a police report to bolster any civil lawsuit against the department.

Lee did so, approaching an officer at a Circle K. That prompted a renewed look at the previously dismissed allegation from Ramirez.

On June 19, 2020, Peña was charged with sexual assault for his interactions with Ramirez and Lee.

“I absolutely knew I would be exonerated,” he said. But, he also knew it would take time.

Peña was fired on July 23, 2020.

That same day, the third accuser told a friend — a Tempe police detective — that Peña had also sexually assaulted her.

The complaint does not detail how, but Gutierrez ended up connecting with Maupin and would also hire Dow to represent her civilly.

In August, the charges against Peña were amended to include Gutierrez's allegations.

Maupin has history with cases involving police, racial justice

In the meantime, Lee pressed a civil case against Peña and Phoenix, filing it in November 2020. Days later, Lee stood with Maupin outside Phoenix police headquarters for a news conference.

Maupin also arranged for Lee to give an interview with the Phoenix New Times. In that article, Maupin was quoted as saying the women “were hunted down for no legal reason by a sexual predator and put through a physical and emotional gauntlet.”

In June 2021, Lee settled with Phoenix for $425,000. Within days, Gutierrez filed a lawsuit against Peña and the city. That December, she settled her lawsuit for $425,000.

She told The Republic she did not share those proceeds with Maupin, whom she claimed she never met.

Lee's whereabouts are unknown. A warrant was issued for her arrest on Thursday for a probation violation.

Maupin said Tuesday that he had not been in contact with Lee since the settlement.

“All the women wanted privacy and to move on with their lives and overcome the emotional trauma,” he said. “I’m not keeping tabs on them. I don’t think it’s right to do that.”

Maupin has inserted himself into cases involving race or police violence. At times, those he has represented say he has asked them for money.

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He also has an uneasy relationship with the truth.

Maupin pleaded guilty to a federal charge of perjury after making a false report to the FBI about former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. Maupin was seeking to unseat Gordon as mayor.

Months after Maupin pleaded guilty, a probation officer said Maupin appeared to be grooming the mother of a man shot by police. Maupin, the officer said, was asking the woman to set up a trust fund for a pending settlement and name him to it. Maupin denied that was the case.

Jury finds Peña not guilty

The jury in Peña’s second trial only took 30 minutes to deliberate.

Peña and his defense attorney, Josephine Hallam, fretted that it was so quick.

Hallam, in an interview on Tuesday, said she prepared Peña for a guilty verdict. He would be handcuffed immediately, so it was best he hand over his wallet and anything in his pockets. Peña handed those items to his pregnant wife, who sat in the front row.

Hallam said she told him: “Take a deep breath.” They held hands.

Peña still expected to be exonerated. But he was still nervous as the court clerk read the verdict.

“You come up to the end of the line, that’s a whole different story,” he said. “Everything is on this one moment.”

Peña and his attorney started crying as the not-guilty verdicts were read.

His child was born five months later.

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Reach Ruelas at 602-444-8473 or at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com. Follow the reporter at @ruelaswritings on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fired Phoenix Officer Sean Peña sues after assault charges acquittal