Robert Davis was a brilliant engineer who managed North American Rockwell’s Apollo project. During that time, he was given two Lucite paperweights — one containing a fragment of lunar material the size of a grain of rice, the other a piece of the Apollo 11 heat shield — as gifts. After Robert’s death in 1986, his wife Joann experienced financial troubles, so she decided to try to sell the paperweights. She contacted several auction houses without success, finally emailing NASA for help in finding a buyer for what she called “rare Apollo 11 space artifacts.” Norman Conley, a special agent and criminal investigator for NASA’s Office of the Inspector General, was assigned to investigate whether Davis really possessed a moon rock. He had someone pose as a broker and call Davis. During recorded several conversations, Davis explained how she obtained the moon rock and insisted she wanted to do everything legally. At no point was she informed that all lunar material is the property of the federal government and that possession was a crime. Conley arranged a meeting with Davis at a Denny’s restaurant. Davis, who was 75 at the time, went to the restaurant with her second husband, Paul Cilley. Davis thought she was going to sell the paperweight and placed it on the table. Instead, law enforcement stormed the restaurant, clutched Cilley by the back of his neck, and pushed Davis outside. The agents ignored Davis’s pleas to use the restroom, with Conley admitting that he knew she had wet herself. After everything got straightened out and Davis and Cilley were released from custody, Davis decided to sue Conley. Conley contended that as a government agent he was immune from liability, but Chief 9th Circuit Judge Sidney Thomas disagreed. In rejecting Conley’s appeal, the judge said that Davis had presented enough evidence to show that her constitutional right to be free of unreasonable seizure may have been violated. “Conley had no law enforcement interest in detaining Davis for two hours while she stood wearing urine-soaked pants in a restaurant’s parking lot during the lunch rush,” Thomas wrote. While the courts allowed Davis' lawsuit against Conley to move forward by denying his claim of qualified immunity, it's not clear whether she ultimately won a final judgment or received any compensation.
