CROOKED POLICE AGAIN

Steven R. Dewitt says he spent 13 1/2 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Now he wants the people who put him there to pay.

Dewitt, 33, once a District resident but who now lives elsewhere, has gotten the white-shoe law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP to file a civil suit on his behalf, claiming that four Metro Police detectives framed him for the 1991 slaying of Paul Ridley, who was gunned down as he pumped gas into his BMW at a Northeast Amoco station.The suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court Thursday, names the District and a handful of Metropolitan Police detectives who investigated Ridley's shooting. Dewitt claims that the detectives who arrested him manipulated - even beat -- witnesses, withheld exculpatory evidence and gave erroneous testimony under oath. "An innocent man spent 13-plus years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Absolutely, it's a miscarriage of justice," said Akin, Gump's Michael A. Fitzpatrick. Dewitt was released from prison last year after his lawyer found new evidence that he claimed pointed to different man as Ridley's killer.

Through his lawyers, Dewitt released a statement Thursday. "I can't explain what's it's like to be in prison for something I didn't do. There were two tragedies. It was a tragedy that Paul Ridley's life was taken. But it was a tragedy that I had to spend 13 years in prison for a crime I didn't commit," Dewitt said.

Prosecutors had alleged that Dewitt killed Ridley in a drug dispute. But his lawyer claimed that new evidence showed that another man - who looked like Dewitt - shot Ridley to keep him from testifying in a separate murder trial. Last year, a D.C. Superior Court judge vacated Dewitt's conviction and ordered a new trial.

Prosecutors opposed Dewitt's release at the time and have not charged anyone else with the crime. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, refused to comment on Thursday's suit. The D.C. Attorney General's office will defend the suit. "We have not received the complaint but we will of course respond in court to any allegations made against the District of Columbia and its employees," said Attorney General's spokeswoman Traci L. Hughes.

Thursday's suit is one of the first to be filed under D.C.'s Unjust Imprisonment Act, which allows wrongfully convicted inmates to be compensated for their lost years. In order to win an Unjust Imprisonment case, Dewitt's lawyers have to show that he's innocent of the crime. But the suit also claims false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, which could push the damages into the tens of millions.....

It took years to track down old witnesses and to dig up new witnesses. But the biggest delay was in waiting for the law to change. Until Congress passed the Innocence Protection Act, convicts couldn't bring new evidence forward if it surfaced more than three years beyond their conviction, D'Antuono said. Dewitt, though, never gave up hope, D'Antuono said. "He knew that he was innocent," she said. "It was a real privilege to represent him."

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