Luis Quinones

Criminal charges against a Butler man who had been accused of sexually assaulting two former Butler County Prison inmates have been dropped.

Luis A. Quinones was working in Butler County Prison as a food service worker with Trinity Services Group in 2016 when two former inmates accused him of repeatedly sexually assaulting them. Quinones was immediately dismissed from his job as a result of the accusations, according to his lawyer.

Assistant District Attorney Terri Schultz said the case was dropped because she decided that she would be unable to prove the accusations “beyond a reasonable doubt.

“My standard is beyond a reasonable doubt and, in this case, I determined that we couldn't prove that,” she said.

The charges, which were formally dropped Thursday, include felony institutional sexual assault, attempted sexual assault and misdemeanor indecent assault.

Quinones — along with the county jail, county government and the food service company — still face a federal lawsuit. Currently, it remains unresolved and the outcome of the criminal case will not impact the federal lawsuit.

“It's a different standard when you have a civil lawsuit, but in a criminal case we determined that we don't have enough information to prosecute,” Schultz said about the differences between the criminal case that has been dropped and the ongoing federal lawsuit.

The case involves one inmate who was jailed after pleading guilty to a probation violation for a use/possession of drug paraphernalia conviction. The second prisoner was incarcerated after pleading guilty to burglary, according to previous reports.

Both inmates, who are from Butler, were working on the kitchen staff at the time of the alleged incident. According to the federal lawsuit, Quinones sexually assaulted them in an unsupervised area.