Freed Bowie Man Sues Montgomery; Police Hid Evidence, Lawsuit Alleges

The Washington Post - Washington, D.C.

Author:

Ruben Castaneda - Washington Post Staff Writer

Date:

Aug 30, 2008

Start Page:

B.4

Section:

METRO

Text Word Count:

416

A Bowie man acquitted last year in a 1994 slaying in Montgomery County has filed a civil lawsuit accusing police of hiding exculpatory evidence during his first trial, which ended with a conviction that was overturned on appeal.

Eric D. Lynn, 39, alleges that Montgomery police investigators paid a key witness against him at that trial and did not disclose to the defense or the prosecution that they had done so.

During the trial, homicide investigators testified that the witness, a woman referred to in court only as "Sandy," was not paid for her cooperation. Sandy also testified that she was not paid.

During the second trial, Russell E. Hamill, then a narcotics investigator, testified that he gave Sandy money he owed her for drug cases while she was helping with the homicide probe. A retired detective, Richard Fallin, testified that investigators gave Sandy $200 just before she implicated Lynn in the slaying, $100 of which came from a homicide detective's pocket.

A jury acquitted Lynn on Oct. 31. He had been in jail or in prison for more than 12 years when he was freed.

"If the detectives had revealed to the prosecution that in fact they had paid Sandy for her cooperation in the homicide investigation, these witnesses would not have been able to lie and assert that Sandy had not been paid for her cooperation," the lawsuit filed this week alleges. "The fact that these witnesses were able to lie, unimpeached, directly resulted in the defendant's conviction."

Patricia P. Via, chief of litigation for the county attorney's office in Montgomery, which will defend the county and current and former officers, declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it had not been served at her office.

At his first trial, in 1994, Sandy placed Lynn inside Ephraim Hobson's apartment in Silver Spring when he was fatally shot. Lynn was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In 2003, a Circuit Court judge overturned Lynn's conviction after finding that his trial attorney did not conduct a meaningful investigation of Sandy, which would have enabled him to impeach her credibility by noting that she had been convicted of theft, was a paid police informer and was a crack user and dealer.

The lawsuit names Montgomery County and four current and former police investigators. Terrell N. Roberts III, one of Lynn's attorneys, said the action was filed in Prince George's Circuit Court because Lynn was arrested in that county.

Credit: Washington Post Staff Writer