LEXINGTON, Ky. – A federal judge has thrown out a Lexington man’s civil-rights lawsuit against a city homicide detective, ruling police had enough evidence to arrest him in a 2021 shooting even though a grand jury later declined to indict.
In a memorandum opinion signed Sept. 29, 2025, U.S. District Judge Gregory F. VanTatenhove granted summary judgment to Detective Kristyn Klingshirn, dismissing Kenneth Wadkins’ claim that she pursued him without probable cause in the killing of Wesley Brown. Wadkins was jailed for about two months after his 2022 arrest; he was released when a grand jury refused to charge him.
Wadkins alleged Klingshirn violated his Fourth Amendment rights by initiating a case built on false or misleading statements and by omitting facts pointing to other suspects. But the court found probable cause existed to arrest and to start criminal proceedings, citing multiple strands of information outlined in the detective’s complaint: an eyewitness who identified Wadkins by the street name “Ghost,” tips to Crime Stoppers naming “Ghost” as the shooter, the victim’s sister linking Wadkins to that nickname and a possible motive, and geofence data placing Wadkins on Breckenridge Street at the time of the shooting.
“Probable cause ‘is not a high bar,’” the judge wrote, explaining that an identification from a known witness is generally sufficient unless officers have reason to believe the witness is lying or mistaken. The opinion also noted that any deliberate falsity relevant to a constitutional claim must be the officer’s, not a nongovernmental informant’s.
Wadkins had argued Klingshirn left out information that the victim’s sister suspected another man—identified in the record as a confidential informant—had shot Brown and was supplying false tips, and that another person known as “Ghost” had recently been released from prison for manslaughter. Even crediting those assertions for the sake of argument, the court said the totality of the circumstances still supported probable cause.
The ruling ends Wadkins’ malicious-prosecution suit, which he filed under Section 1983, a federal civil-rights law. Summary judgment means the judge found there was no genuine dispute of material fact requiring a jury trial and that the detective was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The case is captioned Wadkins v. Klingshirn, No. 5:23-cv-00175, in the Eastern District of Kentucky.
Brown was killed Jan. 21, 2021. Klingshirn filed the criminal complaint nine months later; an arrest warrant issued and Wadkins was booked into jail. After the grand jury declined to indict, prosecutors dismissed the charge. The civil case focused not on guilt or innocence but on whether police had enough reliable information to move forward at the time.
Wadkins maintains he is innocent of Brown’s murder. The court’s decision does not resolve who killed Brown; it addresses only whether Klingshirn violated the Constitution by seeking charges without adequate grounds. With the judgment, the lawsuit is dismissed and stricken from the court’s active docket.
