Baltimore Police officer not liable for exoneree’s wrongful conviction, jury finds

A federal jury declined to find a Baltimore Police detective liable for an exoneree’s wrongful murder conviction, prompting a judge to dismiss remaining claims against the city.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher closed the civil case brought by Clarence Shipley Jr., who had sought damages from multiple Baltimore officers he alleged violated his right to due process by fabricating evidence and concealing exculpatory notes.

After an eight-day trial, the jury found last Wednesday that Shipley had not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that former detective Edward Henneman Sr. fabricated evidence to implicate him as a suspect in a 1991 Cherry Hill killing.

Gallagher dismissed a remaining claim against the city’s police department on Monday, noting a “lack of finding of a constitutional violation committed by any member of the Baltimore Police Department.”

It was another victory for Nathan & Kamionski LLP, a Chicago law firm contracted by the city to represent officers in wrongful conviction lawsuits. The firm is known for its aggressive approach to winning such cases. The defendants’ attorneys did not return requests for comment.

Shipley was represented by a team of attorneys from Washington-based Flowers Keller LLP, headed by former assistant federal public defender Kobie Flowers, who declined to comment.

Sentenced when he was 20 years old, Shipley had been incarcerated for 27 years before a judge found him innocent in 2018. He alleged that officers concealed a note memorializing a call that identified an alternate suspect and coerced statements out of a witness who later recanted his testimony.

Although Shipley’s lawsuit named nine officers as defendants when it was filed in 2021, the matter went to trial earlier this month in U.S District Court for Maryland with only three individual defendants left, as well as the police department itself.

Gallagher had dismissed claims against several officers in 2024, partially granting a motion for summary judgment by the defendants. The judge dropped two more officers as defendants during the trial, entering a judgment as a matter of law, leaving only one former officer for the jury.

She had also ruled at the outset of the trial that the plaintiff’s lawyers could not use paid actors to recreate testimony from the 1992 murder trial.