01/10/02

Pardoned Ex-Inmate Files Civil Lawsuit

    Earl Washington Jr., who was nearly executed for a rape and murder he did not commit, filed a lawsuit yesterday against police and prosecutors, accusing them of railroading him into jail.

   Washington, 41, who now lives in Virginia Beach, spent 17 years in prison, including 9 1/2 on death row, before he was cleared through DNA tests. In 2000, then-Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) granted him an absolute pardon.

   In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, Washington's attorneys are seeking "fair and reasonable" damages from the town of Culpeper, Fauquier County and 10 law enforcement officials.

   "Earl lost a lot of things that [we] take for granted. You sure can't get those years back," said attorney Robert Hall.

   Washington was sentenced to death in 1984 after a jury found that he murdered Rebecca Lynn Williams, 19, who was stabbed 38 times in her Culpeper apartment. Washington, who has an IQ of 69, was convicted largely on the strength of a confession in which he got several details wrong, including the race of the victim and the number of times she was stabbed.

  Two years ago, Washington's attorneys persuaded Gilmore to order new analysis of evidence gathered during the investigation. Tests on genetic material, using technology that was not available at the time of the slaying, showed no sign that Washington had been at the crime scene. Officials said the tests revealed that the DNA belonged to two other men.

  Washington became the fifth man to be released from a Virginia prison, and one of more than 100 exonerated nationwide, because of post-conviction DNA testing.

   The lawsuit alleges that Washington's false confession and prosecution were secured through a series of missteps. It seeks damages for 11 counts, including defamation, the violation of Washington's right to due process, coercion of a false confession and deliberately failing to investigate.

   "Earl Washington Jr.'s ordeal was not a tragic mistake, but the result of a concerted effort by law enforcement officers . . . to convict him for these brutal crimes despite the total absence of credible evidence against him," the lawsuit states.

   Washington became a suspect in Williams's killing in 1983 after he was arrested for breaking into an elderly woman's Fauquier County home and hitting her with a chair. He later was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in that case.

   When Fauquier deputies questioned Washington, he confessed he had attacked the woman. He also admitted responsibility for four other unrelated crimes, including Williams's slaying. Investigators later concluded that Washington could not have committed three of those crimes.

   According to the lawsuit, police decided Washington was Williams's killer and ignored evidence that suggested he was innocent or pointed to someone else.

   For example, the lawsuit alleges that police instructed the Virginia crime lab not to compare Washington's hairs with those found on a work shirt that detectives believed belonged to the attacker. The shirt was found  in a dresser that had been in Williams's home.

   Washington came within five days of execution in 1985. He survived only after another death row inmate alerted a New York law firm, which agreed to take his case.

   In 1993, DNA tests ordered by then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D) on evidence taken from Williams's body found genetic material that could not have come from Washington or Williams's husband. State officials decided that the tests did not rule out the possibility that two men were involved in the slaying, but Wilder commuted Washington's sentence to life in prison.

   The suit names Culpeper Police Chief Charles "C.B." Jones and three other department officers. It also names Culpeper Commonwealth's Attorney Gary L. Close, former Virginia State Police superintendent Denny M. Slane, one state police officer and three Fauquier sheriff's investigators.

The suit was filed at the close of business hours yesterday, and Jones and Close had already left their offices, as had the Fauquier county attorney. The Culpeper town attorney said he had not seen the lawsuit.