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A woman who was released from a Nevada prison in 2015 – after being locked up for more than three decades for a murder that she did not commit – received $ 3 million US for the partial settlement of a federal civil rights trial, said his lawyer. Wednesday.
Cathy Woods, 68, was still seeking damages from the city of Reno and former police investigators who she accused of having confessed to a 1979 confession while She was patient in a psychiatric hospital in Louisiana.
Woods spent 35 years in jail for the murder of Michelle Mitchell, a sophomore at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1976. The DNA evidence collected from a cigarette butt found on the crime scenes have finally exonerated. She has been living in the state of Washington since then.
Nevada County Commissioners agreed to a $ 3 million deal with Woods, seen here in 2014, who spent 35 years in prison for a murder that she did not commit before to be exonerated by genetic evidence related to a cigarette butt. (Andy Barron / The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP, File)
"Although no amount of money can compensate Ms. Woods for what she has endured, it will at least help cure her," said her lawyer, Elizabeth Wang.
Wang said that Woods was psychotic and that the detectives should never have questioned him. Woods was waiting when Mitchell was killed and later moved to Louisiana. His mother entrusted him to a psychiatric hospital, where Woods told the murder to a staff member.
The Nevada Supreme Court quashed her 1980 conviction, but she was sentenced again in 1984 on a second trial.
A judge overturned the conviction in 2014 after DNA tests linked inmate Rodney Halbower, an inmate of the Oregon Prison, to the crime. He has since been convicted of two murders committed in the San Francisco area during the same period as Mitchell's.
Woods was the oldest woman to have been wrongfully convicted and then exonerated, according to the National Register of Expressions.
The Washoe County Commission voted 4-0 Tuesday to pay $ 3 million to settle part of its federal lawsuit. Former District Attorney Cal Dunlap has been named as defendant.
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"The conviction and murder of Woods for murder is a tragic situation that Washoe County hopes to never repeat," the county said in a statement. "Although money can rarely compensate an individual for loss of liberty, Washoe County sincerely hopes that the settlement will be used for the best possible care of Woods."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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