To resolve a lawsuit filed by a man who alleged police exchanged bullets to frame him for a murder in 1992, Detroit agreed to pay $7.5 million.
With the help of gun experts, law students at the University of Michigan, and his firm belief that he was innocent, the plaintiff was freed from jail in 2017 after serving 25 years.
The plaintiff asserted his lack of greed and expressed gratitude to the City Council for approving the payment. He expressed gratitude for his continued life and the fact that he is still with his children and grandkids and did not perish in prison.
He was found guilty of murdering a friend in 1992 outside a restaurant. His mother's pistol was taken by the police and identified as the murder weapon. The University of Michigan Law School's Innocence Clinic urged the judge to reconsider the case in 2016. Two bullets that were removed from the body and photographed do not like the rounds that a defense expert studied decades before the trial.
Surprisingly, the real bullets were still in the Detroit police storage. They did not match the .38-caliber pistol that was identified as the weapon, according to examinations. A court ordered a fresh trial for the plaintiff, but the prosecution then withdrew all allegations. It was a particularly awful case with layer upon layer upon layer of police malfeasance, according to the director of the Innocence Clinic.
Even the city's expert admitted, during depositions for the case, that the police lab's decades-old gunshot study was blatantly incorrect. The scenario might be a terrible error or a purposeful gaffe, according to a worker who spent 32 years at the Georgia State Crime Laboratory.
Separately, the state paid the plaintiff more than $1 million for his erroneous conviction and $50,000 for each year he was imprisoned. Now that Detroit has resolved the lawsuit, he'll probably need to pay it back.
