DETROIT (AP) - A Detroit man exonerated this year in a 1997 rape is suing the state under Michigan’s wrongful imprisonment law.
James Chad-Lewis Clay’s lawsuit filed in Michigan’s Court of Claims seeks $81,372 and blames Detroit officials for failing to test rape kits in timely manner.
Clay spent 19 months in prison before being freed in July after reporting by the Detroit Free Press raised doubts about the case.
Clay was convicted in 2017 of raping a teenager in 1997 and sentenced to 25 years based on DNA rape kit evidence that had languished in storage.
He was freed after it emerged he’d had an intimate relationship with the now 37-year-old woman when they were teenagers, around the time she said an armed man raped her.
A judge later dismissed the case.
___
Information from: Detroit Free Press, http://www.freep.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.