An innocent man who spent 27 years behind bars for a rape and murder he didn't commit was framed by police, a federal jury has found.
Donald E. Gates was wrongly convicted of assaulting Georgetown University student Catherine Schilling and shooting her in the head five times as she walked through park on June 22, 1981.
The 21-year-old paralegal's naked body was retrieved from an embankment the next day in Washington D.C's Rock Creek Park along a route she used as a shortcut home from work.
Gates, now 64, was released from prison in 2009 after DNA evidence revealed he was not connected to the crime, and a janitor at Schilling's law firm was behind the slaying.
And now Washington D.C. officials have agreed to pay him $16.65million in damages after a jury on Wednesday found homicide detectives fabricated his confession, withheld information and fed his name to an unreliable informant.
That's about $617,000 for every year Donald Eugene Gates spent in prison. Gates has already received more than a million dollars from the federal government for its role in his conviction. The settlement with the city brings his total compensation to $18 million.
According to the Washington Post, the jury took less than seven hours to find retired detectives Ronald S. Taylor and Norman Brooks guilty of misconduct because Gates wasn't given the right to a fair trial.
They also ignored warnings about the identity of the actual killer.
A third, now-retired lieutenant John Harlow, was cleared.
Outside the courtroom, Gates told reporters: 'It feels like the God of the King James Bible is real, and he answered my prayers.
'Justice is on the way to being fulfilled... It's one of the happiest days of my life.'
In October 1982, a jury convicted a then 24-year-old Gates of the rape and first-degree murder of New Jersey-native Schilling.
At Gates's criminal trial, a D.C. Superior Court jury was told that Gates had confessed to an informant named Gerald Max 'Bear' Smith.
Smith said he was drinking in the park with Gates the night of the murder,
He said Gates wanted to rob Schilling, but when Schilling resisted, Gates killed her.
According to the Innocence Project Smith was paid $50 for the initial tip and $250 for picking out the photograph.
In all, Smith allegedly pocketed around $1,300 for his help on the case.
The police used his information despite a junior homicide investigator telling them that Smith was 'treacherous' and totally unreliable, The Post reported.
There were also questionable reports Gates had been spotted purse-snatching in the same park a week earlier.
A FBI forensic expert also told the jury he had matched hairs to one found on the victim.
However, during Gates's time behind bars, the Justice Department’s inspector general found problems with the work of the agent who linked Gates’s hair to the crime.
Hair DNA, and their place in criminal trials, in FBI labs has recently come under scrutiny because of problems with testing.
In 2009, Gates's conviction was overturned. He was freed on December 15 and used the $75 he was issued on his release to take a bus and spend Christmas with his family in Akron, Ohio.
He now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In 2012 genetic evidence left at the Schilling scene tied to a culprit, who died a year earlier.
He was a convict and temporary janitor who had worked in the same building as Schilling, prosecutors revealed.
But the U.S. attorney's office has not identified him, arguing that his privacy continues past his death.
Gate's exoneration also prompted the D.C. Public Defenders' Office to look into the cases of four different men who were convicted on flawed DNA evidence.
A federal law grants innocent prisoners who waive claims against federal officials $50,000 every year they are incarcerated.
In February, a D.C judge awarded $9.2 million, including $350,000 per year of incarceration, to Kirk L. Odom, a District man wrongfully imprisoned for more than 22 years for a 1981 rape and robbery. The city has appealed that award.
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