“No amount of money can give me back the time that I lost.”
Baltimore City agreed to pay $9 million to James Owens, a man wrongfully convicted of the 1987 murder of a young woman in Southeast Baltimore. Mr. Owens was sentenced to life in prison without parole and spent 21 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. The settlement reached today is reported to be the largest ever in Maryland for allegations of police misconduct.
A team of lawyers at Brown, Goldstein & Levy and Levin & Curlett represented Mr. Owens in a lawsuit filed in the federal district court of Maryland alleging that Baltimore Police Department homicide detectives who investigated the murder failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to Mr. Owens’ criminal defense attorney.
Mr. Owens was exonerated by DNA evidence and released from prison in 2008. Today’s settlement brings to a close a long and painful chapter in Mr. Owens’ life. Mr. Owens commented that, “no amount of money can give me back the time that I lost.”
Joshua Treem, Andy Freeman, Brooke Lierman, Chelsea Crawford, and Neel Lalchandani from Brown, Goldstein & Levy and Chad Curlett and Sarah Lacey of Levin & Curlett represented Mr. Owens.