SARSFIELD FINALLY GETS A SETTLEMENT -- 20 Years later

Crooked police again

A former Marlborough resident who spent 10 years in prison on a rape conviction before being exonerated by DNA testing has settled his lawsuit against the city for $2 million. Eric R. Sarsfield, 42, of Clinton, had asked for at least $10 million in damages in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and several police officers. In a special meeting Monday night, the city council transferred the money from the stabilization and health insurance funds to cover the settlement. Mayor Nancy Stevens, as well as city lawyers Mary Jo Harris and James Agoritsas, called the settlement fair. The city faced possible bankruptcy if it lost at trial, Agoritsas said. "We are the only defendants in this case. We recognize the fact the jury is going to look to assign blame in this case. Any award against the city in the tens of millions of dollars would render this city bankrupt," Agoritsas said. The lawsuit already has cost the city about $400,000, and he estimated another $500,000 in legal costs for a trial.

The settlement also stipulates that the city will assign its rights to Sarsfield so he can proceed with litigation against insurance companies with which the city contracted after Sarsfield was prosecuted. The insurance companies have denied the city had coverage for the lawsuit. "A part of my life has gone by," Sarsfield told the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester. "It has been 20 years of my life. At least I don't have to worry about it any more, and I can put it behind me now." Sarsfield was awarded $500,000 by the state last year for wrongful imprisonment.

On Aug. 24, 1986, a 30-year-old woman who had moved to Marlborough from Iowa just three weeks before was raped several times by an apparently drunken man who came to her apartment to ask for a glass of water as she was on her patio potting plants. She escaped by pretending to get her attacker a drink. Sarsfield's suit claimed that he and the victim were "manipulated, cheated, and betrayed by law enforcement officers more interested in closing a case and getting a conviction than in playing by the rules and serving justice."

Sarsfield, 24, and married at the time, testified at his 1987 trial that he was not the rapist. The victim "consistently told police that she was uncertain about identifying Mr. Sarsfield as the man who raped her," according to the suit. Nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. He was paroled in June 1999, and the next year DNA tests cleared him and the conviction was vacated.

Sarsfield's suit claimed that police pointed him out to the woman in photo arrays, and as a result, police "improperly induced an unsuspecting victim to identify Mr. Sarsfield incorrectly, fabricated exculpatory evidence and withheld evidence of their misconduct in order to ensure his false arrest, unfair trial and wrongful conviction."

In a Telegram & Gazette interview in 1993, the victim said that during counseling she had wondered whether she had picked out the wrong man. Several current and former police officers also were also named in the lawsuit. "We're very mindful of the pain and trauma Mr. Sarsfield went through. However, we are of the opinion that our police officers involved in this case did nothing wrong," Agoritsas said.

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