New York City and state will pay $2.6 million to a man who served almost 14 years in prison before he was cleared in a 1990 nightclub shooting that left a bouncer dead, the New York Times reports. The money will be paid to Olmedo Hidalgo to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the Manhattan district attorney's office, the Police Department and other defendants.
Hidalgo, who was cleared by the district attorney's office in 2005, is one of two men who were convicted and sent to prison in the killing. The other, David Lemus, was retried in 2007 and acquitted; he has a lawsuit pending. Questions were repeatedly raised, by the police and federal prosecutors, defense lawyers, and the press, about whether the wrong men were behind bars. Among the evidence pointing to their innocence was a confession by a former member of a drug gang that he and a friend had committed the crime.