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    • Delaware reaches historic settlement with wrongfully imprisoned man
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    Delaware reaches historic settlement with wrongfully imprisoned man

    Sakege Posted on

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    The city of Wilmington and Attorney General Kathleen Jennings’ office have agreed to pay $3 million to a man who wrongfully spent half his life behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit, according to public documents.

    The settlement with former Delaware prisoner Mark Purnell is believed to be the largest legal settlement in state history between law enforcement and a wrongfully convicted person.

    Purnell, who will not personally receive that sum due to attorney and tax costs, could not be reached for comment.

    Purnell was 16 when Tamika Giles was shot and killed during a botched robbery in 2006 in Wilmington’s Quaker Hill neighborhood. Relying on evidence now considered deeply flawed by the state Supreme Court, a jury found Purnell guilty of murder and he was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2008.

    Read about the case: Delaware man’s decade-old murder conviction overturned; prison release may follow

    His fight to have the courts recognize the injustice of the investigation and prosecution that put him behind bars began with a 133-page handwritten appeal filed without the assistance of a lawyer in March 2010.

    Then, after more than a decade – and finally with the assistance of lawyers – his fight culminated in an extraordinary Supreme Court ruling that reviewed the fine details of the evidence presented against him and the new evidence that had emerged since his conviction. . In a ruling issued in 2021, the court said Purnell’s appeal created a “strong inference” that he was innocent of the crime and that his conviction was unfair.

    In the ruling, the court noted unfairness in the prosecution of the case, inconsistencies in evidence and testimony, and called Wilmington police’s 11-hour interrogation of a key witness in the case, a 17-year-old boy, “intellectually disabled”. person − as “worrying”.

    The ruling returned Purnell to the status of innocent until proven guilty. He remained in prison for almost 10 months while prosecutors offered him immediate release in exchange for him pleading guilty to a charge less serious than murder and at the same time arguing the court deemed him “too dangerous” to be released on bail.

    Starting in 2022: His murder conviction was overturned, why Mark Purnell is still in prison

    In the end they decided to abandon the case against him and, at 32 years old, was released in April 2022 after more than 16 years in prison.

    After his release, he said he looked forward to being with his family.

    “I want to be successful and be a positive energy in this world,” he said. “I have to agree with everyone who believed in me.”

    Lawyers working on his behalf were expected to file a federal lawsuit seeking compensation and rely on the myriad errors and injustices in the investigation that the Supreme Court highlighted in ruling that his conviction was unjust.

    However, documents obtained through the Delaware Freedom of Information Act show that Wilmington city officials, who investigated his case, as well as the Delaware Department of Justice, which prosecuted his case, agreed to reach a settlement. agreement before any litigation. The agreement was ratified in August.

    Freedom: Mark Purnell, who spent 16 years in prison due to an unfair trial, is suddenly released

    James Moreno is an attorney who has worked on capital defense and wrongful conviction cases for decades. Today he is the interim executive director of the Delaware Innocence Project, a small nonprofit that investigates allegations of wrongful convictions in Delaware.

    He called Purnell’s settlement a “drop in the bucket,” considering much larger payouts for wrongful convictions elsewhere, what was taken from him and the needs he will have after spending so much time in prison.

    He noted that prison is a “violent and unstable place” and people locked up there often suffer and develop mental health problems. Purnell’s time there would not have prepared him for life on the outside, the struggle to get a job and make up for lost time.

    He said people should consider whether they would trade 16 years of their life (16 years spent in a maximum security prison) for such a deal.

    “In today’s world you won’t get very far,” said Moreno. “And it’s certainly not the amount of money that’s going to deter the type of conduct that occurred in this case.”

    Despite paying the sum to avoid litigation, the settlement agreement expressly denies any wrongdoing or fault on the part of city or state officials regarding Purnell’s case, a standard clause in such agreements. The agreement also includes language preventing the parties from discussing the case, another standard clause in such agreements.

    Moreno said the payment will not promote accountability for the individuals responsible for the misconduct that led to the wrongful conviction and that there should be consequences for the professionals involved.

    “No one ever takes responsibility. No one ever says sorry. That really sends the wrong message,” Moreno said.

    The money itself will come from state and city general funds. In a written statement, Caroline Harrison, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Jennings, said the Justice Department’s portion of the settlement is being paid for by funds appropriated by the General Assembly for the state’s “litigation needs.”

    In an email, John Rago, deputy chief of staff to Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki, said the city’s portion of the settlement would be paid through the city’s general fund, since Purnell’s conviction came when the city was not insured for such losses.

    Today, Wilmington and other municipalities treat large settlements for police misconduct or violence as a cost of doing business. While generally self-insured, the city has excess liability coverage through Travelers Insurance that covers claims exceeding $750,000.

    As of last year, the city paid about $318,000 annually for coverage, a total that had increased 42% over the previous five fiscal years.

    Wrongful conviction cases in Delaware are relatively rare and are more common in larger cities like Philadelphia as well as in other states. They occur and earlier this year, the Delaware General Assembly approved a new program to provide compensation to those unjustly convicted.

    “The reason we don’t see more wrongful convictions overturned in Delaware is largely because until recently, there was no one in Delaware looking at these cases and looking for them,” Moreno said.

    The Delaware Department of Justice has a conviction integrity unit created to examine these cases, but Moreno described the unit as largely “non-functional” and geared toward only a limited subset of cases and evidence presented by someone who claims that They were unjustly convicted.

    He added that Delaware law, as well as the availability of case records from both the prosecutor’s office and the courts, also limits such work. Seeing the number of cases that have been overturned in other states, he hopes there will be more here once Delaware Innocence moves forward with its work.

    “You can’t say Delaware is an outlier,” Moreno said.

    Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 either [email protected].

    Sakege
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