A Greensburg man who once served a six-year prison sentence for the sexual assault of a young runaway and is currently in jail awaiting trial on charges that he raped a co-worker wants the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office to pay him more than $250,000 for the malicious prosecution of an unrelated assault case that kept him behind bars for more than a year.

Jonathan M. Pollard, 32, in a lawsuit filed this week, claimed he spent 431 days in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. In that case, prosecutors said Pollard assaulted a former fiancee on a Greensburg street in 2018.

Pollard, who filed the lawsuit without the help of a lawyer, claims Assistant District Attorney Anthony Iannamorelli prosecuted the case without evidence and enticed a police officer to give misleading testimony after the accuser recanted her allegations.

A jury in July 2019 found Pollard not guilty of simple assault and harassment charges, after which he was released from jail.

Iannamorelli referred questions about the lawsuit to District Attorney John Peck, who said he had not been served with Pollard’s court filing and was unable to comment on its allegations.

“I’ll have to review it in light of all the facts involving Mr. Pollard’s incidents that occurred before and after this case. The fact that he was found not guilty doesn’t mean it was a malicious prosecution, it just means there wasn’t sufficient evidence,” Peck said.

According to court records, Pollard was charged in November with rape and 14 other counts in connection with allegations made by a woman who told police he sexually assaulted her in a Greensburg apartment. Pollard was initially released on a $10,000 unsecured bond. He returned to jail in June after he was charged by Latrobe police with corruption of a minor.

Pollard’s criminal record dates back to 2007 when he along with other family members were accused of beating and holding a 19-year-old woman against her will for six months.

Pollard, then 17, was charged as an adult after police said his family beat the woman and called her their slave. His case was moved to juvenile court, where he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to a period of detention, according to Tribune-Review archives.

He and family members were arrested again two years later after police said they forced a 17-year-old runaway into sex acts in exchange for food and cigarettes in their Jeannette home. According to court records, Pollard pleaded guilty in 2009 to sexual assault and unlawful restraint and served a 3- to 6-year prison sentence.

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