District to pay $16.65 million to wrongly imprisoned man, attorneys say

[Little Tich]

Source: Washington Post

The D.C. government will pay $16.65 million to settle a federal lawsuit after a jury found that D.C. police framed an innocent man who served 27 years in prison for a rape and murder.

The settlement in the civil rights case of Donald E. Gates, 64, will be the largest paid to an individual in city history, District officials said Thursday.

A nine-person jury on Wednesday found that two D.C. homicide detectives fabricated all or part of a confession purportedly made by Gates to a paid police informant and withheld other evidencein an attack on a 21-year-old Georgetown University student in Rock Creek Park.

The award completes for now Gates’s ill-fated encounter with law enforcement in the brutal June 1981 killing: framed by police after a case of mistaken identity, convicted on flawed FBI forensic evidence, and exonerated and freed through DNA testing in 2009.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/district-to-pay-1665-million-to-wrongly-imprisoned-man-attorneys-say/2015/11/19/2f62fd58-8ecf-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html

[7962]

1. Sounds about right. Now what about those who LIED to convict him?

THOSE bastards need to do 27 yrs themselves

[mpcamb]

2. Right! Is anyone's pension being garnished?

Is anybody else tired of the public picking up the bill?

[7962]

3. At the very LEAST they should lose their pension. Good idea. nt

[christx30]

4. Exactly.

They have no reason to shy away from these type of tactics in ANY case they take. All that matters is the "win". There are no personal consequences. The taxpayer gets soaked for the $16 million. They go on to their next case, or retirement. The victim of this tactic gets to lose nearly 30 years of his or her life.
Sickening.

[mpcamb]

6. Swap places. You lied in court... YOU do the time and the falsely-accused goes free.

[christx30]

8. That sounds perfectly reasonable.

I wish they would institute something like that. Sadly, the police will never willingly give up sovereign immunity.

[FreakinDJ]

5. The DA has immunity by law

[mpcamb]

7. Do the detectives?

[McCamy Taylor]

10. Statue of limitations on perjury?

[7962]

9. Immunity from ANYTHING?