A Louisville man who claimed he was wrongfully incarcerated for seven years before charges against him were dismissed has been paid $350,000 by the city to settle a lawsuit.
Percy Brown was arrested in 2008 in connection with a 2004 shooting that killed 19-year-old Jennifer Nicole French. He spent more than seven years in jail awaiting trial for murder, rape, sodomy and kidnapping, among other charges.
After the charges were dismissed, Brown filed a lawsuit in 2016 claiming Louisville Metro Police officers “fabricated” evidence and then piled on additional “false charges” to keep him behind bars.
In a July 28 settlement agreement obtained through the Kentucky Open Records law, the city agreed to pay Brown and his attorneys $350,000 with the agreement it was not an admission of wrongdoing.
Chicago Attorney Elliot Slosar, who represents Brown, said Brown “suffered a serious injustice at the hands of numerous law enforcement agencies.”
Slosar said the lawsuit is still pending against one of the officers whose dismissal from the case is being appealed, but the settlement “allows Mr. Brown to continue rebuilding his life while the court assesses the remaining claims.”
Police believed Brown shot and killed French because she was scheduled to testify against him in a fraud case. It was dismissed when prosecutors could not locate key witnesses, according to court records.
Slosar has said that Brown was more than 70 miles away gambling at a casino when French was murdered. And he said there are Casino records, attached to the lawsuit, that prove it.
Prosecutors argued the records only proved that someone using Brown’s casino card was there.
Brown’s murder case was pending for so many years, in part, a judge and prosecutor have said, because Brown chased away multiple lawyers, firing some and threatening to kill others, repeatedly delaying the trial.
In total, Brown went through at least eight attorneys in the murder and other pending cases.
Source: WDRB
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