Exonerated Denver Prisoner Files Suit

DENVER, CO -- Clarence Moses-El, who served 28 years in Colorado prison for rape, was released, was retried and released again, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Thursday filed in U.S. District Court in Denver against the City of Denver, Denver Police officers and former Denver District Attorney, Mitch Morrissey.

Moses-El alleges the city, county and police destroyed and mishandled evidence, manufactured false evidence, and engaged in malicious prosecution and a conspiracy to violate his civil rights.

In 1987, Moses-El's original arrest, conviction and sentence to 48 years in prison, hinged on a dream. The rape victim, a neighbor, was attacked, raped and beaten in her Federal Heights home after a night of drinking in August, 1987. She said she was able to identify her attacker as "Bubbles" (Moses-El) after a dream at the hospital.

Over the years, another man, L.C. Jackson who had been in the victim's apartment earlier in the evening, confessed to the rape, and then later recanted. Jackson was convicted of other sexual assaults and also served time in prison. The victim was also feuding with Moses-El's girlfriend at the time, case records showed.

In the 1990s, he reached out to Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project a national organization that works to clear the falsely accused, to help him get access to DNA testing of evidence collected for the crime. Moses-El raised about $1,000 from prison to have evidence from a 1987 rape kit DNA tested, and had an order to test the evidence. The evidence was placed in a box marked "Do Not Destroy," and kept in storage for four weeks, but then Denver police threw the box in a dumpster.

After Jackson confessed, a judge vacated Moses-El's conviction after 28 years, but District Attorney Mitchell Morrissey demanded a retrial of Moses-El in fall, 2016, shortly before his term-limited office ended in January. A Denver jury found Moses-El not guilty in Nov., 2016 and he walked from prison a free man.

Moses-El's case was followed for 12 years by reporter Susan Greene, formerly of the Denver Post and now editor of the Colorado Independent.

Greene wondered in an editorial during the retrial why Morrissey held on to the case. "Why [would] a district attorney who has distinguished himself nationally as a champion of DNA evidence … two months before leaving office, risk his legacy on a case in which police threw out all the DNA?" she wrote. "The answer may lie in Morrissey's refusal to admit his office messed up."

Read Moses-El's complaint here:

Photo of Clarence Moses-EL by Marie-Dominique Verdier, via Colorado Independent