MD to award nearly $3M to man wrongfully imprisoned 31 years for murder

A Maryland man is set to receive nearly $3 million in compensation after serving 31 years in prison for a 1986 murder that a court later ruled he didn’t commit.

The Board of Public Works, comprising the governor, comptroller and treasurer, is expected to vote Wednesday to approve the payment for Gary Washington, 63, who in 2018 was released from a sentence of life imprisonment after the Baltimore City Circuit Court vacated his convictions.

The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office dismissed the charges against him months later.

Washington is expected to be the third exoneree this year to receive compensation under the Walter Lomax Act through which people who were wrongfully convicted can receive payments equal to Maryland’s most recent annual median household income — currently $94,991 — multiplied by the length of their incarceration.

The Board of Public Works in January approved nearly $244,000 in compensation and attorneys’ fees for a man who served two years in prison after wrongful first-degree rape and sexual assault charges.

In March it approved $2.4 million to a man wrongfully incarcerated for about 25 years after the Baltimore City Circuit Court convicted him of second-degree murder and handgun crimes.

Before the Walter Lomax Act — named for a man who began advocating for the wrongfully convicted following his release in 2006 after spending 39 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit — it was up to the Board of Public Works to determine how much and when to pay someone who was exonerated.

Since 2021, the Board of Public Works has approved $15.6 million in compensation and attorneys’ fees under the act. The state has paid out roughly $9.2 million of that amount, according to the board.

The state also continues to pay out compensation approved under a prior version of the statute. As of Tuesday, the state still had to pay about $6.4 million of the $23.6 million approved between 2017 and 2021, when the Lomax Act took effect.

Following his exoneration, Washington filed suit against Baltimore police officers, alleging in a federal court complaint that they had threatened child witnesses and their parents to get false testimony.

Without physical evidence connecting Washington to the murder of Faheem Ali, prosecutors relied on testimony from 12-year-old Otis Robinson, who said in court that he saw Washington shoot Ali, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.

Washington, though, said to his defense attorney that it was another man who was arguing with Ali about drugs and then struck Ali in the face. The gun went off and Ali was shot in the head, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.

Robinson first recanted his statement publicly in 1999, saying at a petition hearing that police detectives told him he wouldn’t see his mother again if he didn’t identify Washington as the shooter, according to a 2019 report from The Baltimore Sun published in The Washington Post.

Washington’s lawsuit also alleged that police officers coerced a 13-year-old girl by threatening to take her away from and possibly arrest her mother, The Sun reported. The girl didn’t testify in court but signed a witness statement identifying Washington as the shooter.

A federal judge dismissed Washington’s claims last year, according to a Sun report, though his attorneys have appealed the ruling.