SOAK THE CROOKED POLICE!

If you make injustice very expensive, there might be less of it. See my earlier post of August 25 for background

Lawyers for Earl Washington Junior are seeking one-point-six (m) million dollars in fees and expenses for their successful federal suit against a late state police investigator. The legal fees are in addition to the two-point-25 (m) million dollars that jurors awarded to Washington in May.

Washington spent nine-and-a-half years on death row for the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Lynn Williams, a 19-year-old Culpeper woman. DNA testing led to Washington's pardon in 2000.

In May, a federal jury in Charlottesville found that Curtis Wilmore, a state police officer who died in 1994, fabricated parts of Washington's confession. Wilmore got a confession from Washington in 1983 in which Washington was said to have known details of the crime only the killer could have known. Washington is mildly retarded.

Robert Hall, one of Washington's lawyers, said U-S District Judge Norman Moon will decide whether the state should pay the fees.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)