A Georgia police chief accused of conspiring to falsely accuse a man of murder after a Russian roulette accident more than 25 years ago has asked a federal judge to let him out of the man's civil rights suit, arguing that he "played no substantive role" in the allegedly crooked investigation.

Floyd County Police Chief Mark Wallace said in a Monday motion to dismiss that he was a sergeant with the department in 1996, when teenager Cain Storey — who was freed from prison two years ago — was charged with the killing of his friend Brian Bowling.

But Wallace said that he had a minimal part in the investigation that led to Storey and Darrell "Lee" Clark's convictions and that Storey had wrongly lumped him in the suit he filed last month via a series of shotgun pleadings that never explain Wallace's supposed culpability.

"There are no factual allegations showing that Wallace had anything to do with the various alleged misdeeds of the other individual defendants," he said. "Plaintiff attempts to lump Wallace in with these other defendants through broad, speculative, and conclusory pleading … but such allegations do not enjoy the presumption of truth and are insufficient to state a plausible claim against Wallace."

What's more, Wallace argued, even if Storey had been wrongly accused of Bowling's murder, there was nothing in his complaint to suggest Wallace had played a part in the allegedly crooked probe, much less intended to.

"Plaintiff has failed to plead facts showing that Wallace acted with actual intent to cause harm to plaintiff. As such, both the malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims against Wallace are barred by official immunity," he added.

Bowling, according to Storey's suit, died on the night of Oct. 18, 1996, as a result of an accidental gunshot wound. Storey, who was 17 at the time, said that he brought his father's revolver to Bowling's house and that the two boys began playing with it.

Bowling, who was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time, then loaded the gun, spun the chamber, pointed the gun at his head and fired, killing himself.

After police arrived, Detective Dallas Battle, who would lead the investigation, questioned Storey and Bowling's girlfriend. After conducting what Storey called an "inept and incompetent" crime scene investigation, Battle and his partner David Stewart allegedly began concocting a narrative that Storey had deliberately murdered Bowling.

Battle and Stewart's theory, according to the suit, was that Storey and Clark had been members of a gang called the Free Birds and planned Bowling's execution for snitching on them about a supposed earlier crime.

Battle is accused of planting evidence in Bowling's casket after ordering him exhumed, threatening a single mother that she could lose her children if she refused to testify against the boys and secured further false testimony from a hearing-impaired and nearly illiterate man implicating Storey and Clark.

The two men were convicted in 1998 of Bowling's murder and stayed in prison on life sentences until podcasters Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis of the investigative true-crime podcast "Proof" uncovered evidence suggesting that the men were innocent. Storey and Clark were freed in December 2022 after their murder convictions were tossed, according to the Georgia Innocence Project, which worked on the case on the men's behalf.

But Wallace, in Monday's dismissal bid, said Storey's complaint had only identified a handful of points in the story where he was alleged to have been involved.

Those, he said, included interviewing Bowling's girlfriend, being present at the exhumation of his body and participating in the interview where Storey initially confessed to shooting Bowling. After that, Wallace said, he made the decision to charge Storey with the lesser crime of manslaughter, saying that charge was supported even by the facts Storey himself volunteered.

"The facts, as pled, show that Wallace obtained a confession from plaintiff that he accidentally shot Bowling, which provided support for an involuntary manslaughter charge against plaintiff. What Battle and Stewart may have done subsequently with the confession was out of Wallace's control," Wallace said.

"In interrogating plaintiff and charging plaintiff with manslaughter, Wallace did not violate plaintiff's clearly established rights," he added.

Storey is represented by Sam Starks of the Starks Law Firm and Wolfgang Mueller of the Mueller Law Firm.

Wallace is represented by Derrick L. Bingham and Julie R. Comer of Stites & Harbison PLLC.

The case is Storey v. Floyd County et al., case number 4:24-cv-00288, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

--Editing by Rich Mills.