An August 2023 traffic stop landed two Ravenna men in jail on felony drug charges. The charges were eventually dropped when the alleged cocaine in the car they had occupied turned out to be carpet cleaner, and the two men filed suit in federal court, claiming Portage County Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski and three deputies violated their civil rights.
Through their attorney, Eddie Sipplen, plaintiffs Zephaniah Robinson and Jack Metcalf, though, voluntarily petitioned the court on March 24 to dismiss their lawsuit. Receiving no objection from the defendants, the court agreed to do so on March 28.
Court documents do not indicate why the plaintiffs dropped their lawsuit, and Sipplen did not respond to The Portager’s request for comment.
Metcalf, however, said it boiled down to money. He said he paid Sipplen $450 to file the case. Unemployed at the time, Metcalf said he got the money from family members.
During a March 2025 settlement conference, Metcalf said the sheriff’s office offered him and Robinson each $2,500 to close the case. (The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) Sipplen refused and said he would take the case to trial, Metcalf said.
“Then he was wanting a pretty penny to bring the case to trial. He wanted $8,000 to go to trial,” Metcalf said.
Sipplen’s alleged financial request came a week after the settlement conference, and when Metcalf could not supply the funds, the attorney dropped the case.
Had the case gone to trial, and had the plaintiffs prevailed, Metcalf said the deal was that Sipplen would take one third of whatever the plaintiffs got.
“He was guaranteeing that we were getting $50,000,” Metcalf said. “Instead, he just made me spend $450 for no reason.”
He also expressed frustration at former county Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci signing off on indictments when “it was never cocaine. It was always carpet cleaner doing its job to clean up the mildew. They vacuumed up rocks and sticks and charged us with 66 grams of cocaine. They still somehow got a dirty drug test,” Metcalf said.
Metcalf said he was not a friend of Robinson and was only in the vehicle because he had asked Robinson for a ride. He said Robinson had agreed to provide the transportation, but needed to do an errand first.
When Robinson drove onto I-76 near Tallmadge Road, Deputy Anthony Zappone pulled the vehicle over because he mistakenly identified it as belonging to a male robbery suspect. Zappone, and other officers who arrived on the scene, noticed a white substance sprinkled in the back of the car, and used a Narcotics Identification Kit (NIK) to conduct a roadside test of the then-unidentified substance.
Receiving what they reported as positive results (but which Portage County Common Pleas Court Judge Laurie Pittman noted on Nov. 15 were actually negative), they recommended that the felony charges be filed. The samples were then sent to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation for further testing.
Those results came back negative. But it was already mid-November, and the defendants had had to cope for months with electronic monitoring devices they’d had to pay for themselves, court fees, bond, felony charges of trafficking and possessing cocaine, multiple legal proceedings, actual time in jail and more. That’s not to mention the impact on the owner of the vehicle, who had had to cope for months with her car being towed and impounded.
“I did absolutely nothing,” Metcalf said. “The driver [Robinson] told them I had nothing to do with the case, and they still took me to jail. There was absolutely nothing in this car that had anything to do with drugs. Nothing was going on strange; there was no crime going on. Not even close,” he said.
Because the case was dismissed without prejudice, Metcalf said he has a year to find a new attorney and refile the case. Without funds to even get started, he said he does not know if he could do so.
The Portager could not reach Robinson, the other plaintiff, for comment.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.