A long haul trucker who was found not guilty by a jury of assaulting a worker in the shipping department of Domtar Corp., located in Sandy Township, Clearfield County, has filed a federal lawsuit in Johnstown, alluding to the fact he ended up spending nearly a year in prison prior to his trial because of his skin color.

Jovaughn Matthie, 31, of Philadelphia, on Oct. 30, 2023, arrived at Domtar, a paper manufacturing company, at about 5 p.m. to pick up a load of product.

As Matthie explains in his lawsuit that was filed in the District Court on Monday, he initially drove to the wrong location at the company.

He was told he had arrived at the receiving department but needed to go to the other side of the building — to the shipping department — to pick up the load.

Upon arriving at the shipping department he met with an employee and began to give him the pickup number.

The two men were having trouble hearing each other, and Matthie, in his lawsuit, reported the shipping department employee called him a name.

The confrontation became heated and Matthie asked to see the employee’s manager.

The employee, the lawsuit reported, punched Matthie in the mouth and Matthie responded.

The two threw punches and kicks at each other and the company employee fell, but got up and started coming after Matthie, who “ran out of the facility to his truck.”

Later that night, police from Sandy Township arrested Matthie as he was sleeping in his cab while at the nearby Pilot Truck Stop.

The company employee during the melee suffered a cut of the left eyebrow as well as several tooth fractures that occurred during a fall, and police charged Matthie, who describes himself as “an African-American man of Jamaican descent,” with simple assault, harassment and aggravated assault.

No charges were brought against the shipping department employee, a white male, who according to Matthie, threw the first punch,

Bail, based on the serious charge of aggravated assault, was set at $50,000 and Matthie was taken to the Clearfield County Correctional Facility, where he stayed, due to his lack of ability to post bail, for almost a year.

When his case came to trial in October 2024, he served his own attorney, and a jury, after 40 minutes deliberation, found him not guilty of all of the charges.

Trial Judge Fredric Ammerman also found him not guilty of harassment, a summary offense, and ordered Matthie’s immediate release from the jail.

Matthie has now filed a four-count civil rights lawsuit in the federal district court charging Clearfield County District Attorney Ryan P. Sayers and Sandy Township Police Officer Travis A. Goodman with malicious prosecution, violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments; malicious prosecution under Pennsylvania law and selective prosecution under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“This selective treatment of (Matthie) was motivated by an intention to discriminate on the basis of race,” the lawsuit stated.

The alleged victim was not charged with any offenses, while Matthie spent almost a year behind bars due to his inability to post bail.

“The supposed victim of Mathie’s assault, a white man, actuality assaulted Matthie and committed perjury at the preliminary hearing, yet was never charged with any crime…This selective treatment (of Matthie) was motivated by an intention to discriminate on the basis of his race,” it stated in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit contended, “The difference here was because of Matthe’s membership in a protected class- black.”

Matthie’s federal petition also named Sandy Township and Clearfield County as defendants, noting “these governmental (agencies) have engaged in the practice of overcharging individuals based on their race, and have been lax in their duty to train and monitor the County’s police officers and District Attorneys.”

To emphasize the point, the Matthie lawsuit lists details of seven cases involving white defendants who were involved in fist fights similar to the one that occurred at Domtar.

In those instances the defendants, who were caucasian, received low or unsecured bail, or faced lesser charges than the felony aggravated assault offense brought against Matthie.

The lawsuit stated that Sandy Township through its police department and the county through its district attorneys “have never charged and brought to trial a white person on an aggravated assault charge where the defendant engaged in a mere fist fight after being assaulted by another.”

Matthie is asking damages in excess of $150,000 on each of the counts brought against the police officer and the DA as well as similar compensation from the named governmental agencies.

Matthie is representing himself in the lawsuit.

The Clearfield County District Attorney was unavailable for comment.