Wrongfully Jailed Man Wins Suit (and $2.25 mil settlement)

[MountainLaurel]

A federal jury ruled yesterday that a now-deceased Virginia State Police investigator fabricated the confession that sent Earl Washington Jr. to death row for more than nine years for a rape and murder he didn't commit.

The jury in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, Va., awarded $2.25 million to Washington in his lawsuit against the estate of Curtis Reese Wilmore, who died in 1994. Washington's attorney said it was the largest award in a federal civil rights case in Virginia history.

After a two-week trial and six hours of deliberation, the five-woman, four-man jury found that Wilmore deliberately falsified evidence, which resulted in Washington's conviction and death sentence in the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Williams, 19, of Culpeper.

The verdict marked another milestone in the legal odyssey of Washington, whose pardon in 2000 became a symbol in a statewide and national debate over whether death-row inmates can use new technology to challenge their convictions. Washington's case inspired a 2001 law that gives Virginia inmates who claim innocence the right to seek DNA testing at any time, loosening what was then the toughest rule in the nation on new evidence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501617.html

[madmax]

1. I don't understand

why states won't pay for DNA testing if DNA is availble in any case and more so in a death sentence case. How the hell much does it cost anyway? Can't cost more than a human life. I wish Mr. Washington the best and he deserves every cent. It's a shame that Mr. Wilmore is already deceased. His punishment for fabricating evidence should be to fulfill the sentence given Washington.

[MountainLaurel]

2. They don't want to be proven wrong

They fear that if the general public became aware of the extent to which the justice system in this country has almost nothing to do with what is just -- cops who lead witnesses and force confessions from vulnerable people, prosecutors who take spurious cases to court, the inequality of the process for the poor -- faith in the system as a whole would crumble.