• Man wrongly imprisoned in murder case wins $13.2 million in civil rights lawsuit

    Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer

    David Ayers, center, walks out of the Justice Center as a free man, Monday, Sept. 12, 2011. Ayers, who was serving time for murder, had his charges dropped because of DNA testing that did not trace back to him. Carrie Wood, from the Innocence Project, leads him outside.

    By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A man who spent 11 years in prison on a murder conviction that was later reversed has won a $13.2 million award in a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Cleveland.


    A federal jury found Friday that two Cleveland detectives fabricated or withheld evidence in the 2000 trial of David Ayers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

    Ayers was convicted of aggravated murder in the Dec. 17, 1999, beating death of Dorothy Brown, a 76-year-old woman who lived in a high-rise run by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. Ayers was a resident of the same complex and a security guard for the housing authority, according to court documents.

    He was arrested in March 2000 and convicted late that year.

    He maintained his innocence, and after the Ohio Innocence Project took up his case in 2008, Ayers got a state appeals court to order the trial judge to allow DNA testing of a single pubic hair found on Brown’s body – the results of which showed the hair did not come from Ayers.

    But while the hair was being tested, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his conviction (read the decision here in PDF), saying the trial judge improperly allowed testimony of a jailhouse informant who said Ayers confessed to killing the victim and stealing money from her.

    Ayers was freed in 2011.

    One detective settled with Ayers out of court. But in the civil rights trial, the Plain Dealer reported, Ayers’ lawyers said two other detectives, Denise Kovach and Michael Cipo, had tried to frame Ayers because he was gay – despite evidence that Brown had also been sexually assaulted.

    According to The Associated Press:

    Among the most serious allegations by Ayers against Kovach and Cipo were that the two detectives conspired with each other to fabricate a confession that he never made, coerced a friend of Ayers to lie by saying that Ayers had told him of the murder before Brown's body was discovered, and gave key information about the crime to Ayers' prison cellmate so he could later testify against Ayers about an admission he didn't make.

    The detectives had denied any wrongdoing.

    After the civil rights verdict, The Plain Dealer reported, the director of Cleveland's law office said the city was "considering our options."

    As for Ayers, the newspaper quoted him as saying: "My goal is that it never happens to anyone else ever again."

  • Court: Flipping the bird at a cop doesn't warrant arrest

    By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A New York man arrested after he gave the finger to a police officer can sue police for malicious prosecution, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, overturning a lower-court decision that deemed the officer's response reasonable.


    In its decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that giving someone the finger is an "ancient gesture of insult" and "is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity."

    The incident took place in May 2006, court documents say, when John Swartz and his wife, Judy Mayton-Swartz, were driving through the upstate village of St. Johnsville, N.Y., to the home of Judy’s son.

    Swartz was in the passenger seat when he noticed a local officer, Richard Insogna, in a police car using a radar device. Expressing his displeasure, Swartz reached "his right arm outside the passenger side window and extending his middle finger over the car’s roof," according to court documents.

    The couple continued their drive. They were not speeding or committing other traffic violations, but upon reaching their destination and getting out of the car, they saw an approaching police car with its lights flashing.

    Ordering them to get back into the vehicle, Insogna told the couple this was a traffic stop and requested their documents. Swartz told his wife not to show the officer anything, prompting Insogna to say, "Shut your mouth, your ass is in enough trouble." Then, after checking the woman's license and registration, Insogna called for backup, according to court documents. Three other officers soon appeared.

    After being told he and his wife were free to go, Swartz tried to speak with Insogna, but the other officers stepped in front of him.

    Swartz was arrested after he either muttered or shouted, depending on whose account one reads, that he felt "like an ass."
    At the station, he was told he had been arrested for disorderly conduct, a charge that was later dismissed.

    Swartz's lawyer, Elmer Robert Keach III, praised the court's decision, The Associated Press reported.

    "It reaffirms that just because you insult a police officer [it] doesn't give that police officer the right to detain you or arrest you and take away your liberty," Keach told The AP, calling the decision an "important victory for civil rights."

    A lower-court in Albany had previously dismissed the couple's claim because police insisted they had stopped the couple out of concern for the woman's safety.

    In his deposition, Insogna said Swartz's gesture made him "concerned for the female driver, if there was a domestic dispute.”

    But the appeals court deemed his conclusion unreasonable. "Indeed, such a gesture alone cannot establish probable cause to believe a disorderly conduct violation has occurred," court documents read.

    The court added, however, that the merits of Swartz's lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, still must be litigated at a separate trial.

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