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Court lets innocent inmate sue
Saturday, 07 October 2006
Federal judges refused to throw out the case of a man wrongly jailed 22 years.
By Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writer
A federal appeals court has refused to throw out a civil-rights lawsuit brought by former Pennsylvania death row prisoner Nicholas Yarris, who spent 22 years behind bars until after a long-sought DNA test cleared him of a Delaware County rape and murder.
Yarris, now 45 and living in England, sued Delaware County after his 2004 release, contending that prosecutors and detectives destroyed evidence pointing to the real killer, manufactured evidence against him, and thwarted his demands for DNA testing.
The lawsuit is one of a growing number of suits filed across the country by defendants who were freed as a result of DNA testing after spending years in prison.
Prosecutors and detectives had sought dismissal of the suit under the long-recognized legal principle that prosecutors and investigators should be immune from lawsuits as long as they act in accordance with the law when they prosecute someone.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in a decision filed Monday, said that the prosecutors "are not entitled to absolute immunity from suit for constitutional violations caused by their alleged deliberate destruction of exculpatory evidence."
John W. Beavers, Yarris' lawyer, said the decision was important because it allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Yarris, meanwhile, "wants nothing more than to have the true killer caught," he said.
William J. Conroy, an attorney for the defendants, declined to comment on the ruling. "We can't comment because it's an ongoing case," he said.
Yarris had been convicted in 1982 of the kidnapping, murder and rape of Linda Mae Craig, who was abducted as she was leaving her job at the Tri-State Mall in Delaware, in December 1981.
Her body was found later in a snow-covered parking lot in Delaware County - and Yarris was prosecuted in Delaware County Court.
For years, Yarris sought DNA tests, but it was not until his federal public defenders went to U.S. District Court that DNA testing showed that semen found on the victim's clothing did not come from Yarris but from two unknown males.
Contact staff writer Emilie Lounsberry at 215-854-4828 or "This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it!" .