On January 6, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reinstated the claim of a now-exonerated Maryland prisoner against a trio of Baltimore cops who allegedly coerced a confession from an eyewitness that was used to convict him of a fatal shooting in December 1986. The false testimony was later recanted, but not before it put Gary Thomas Washington in prison, where he remained for 31 years until 2018, when his conviction was overturned and he was granted a writ of actual innocence. That allowed him to collect nearly $3.1 million from a state wrongful imprisonment fund in 2024.

Washington was 25 when he was accused of fatally shooting Faheem “Bobo” Ali, 17, during a dispute over illegal drugs. No gun or other physical evidence was recovered from the scene, other than the bullet that killed Ali. Washington and two witnesses called in his defense identified another man, Lawrence Thomas, as the shooter. But Washington was convicted, largely on the eyewitness testimony of bystander Otis Robinson, who’d been just 12 at the time.

In 1996, nearly 10 years after he first gave his identification, Robinson recanted his testimony, claiming that it was coerced by Baltimore Police Department Offs. Thomas Pellegrini, Oscar Requer, and Helen Fahlteich. They “threatened to take me away from my mother forever,” he said, but he came forward to recant as an adult because “I couldn’t live with myself.” Washington petitioned for post-conviction relief. But a state court found the recantation “incredible” and denied the petition in 1999.

Nearly 18 years later, Washington again sought post-conviction relief, arguing that the recantation—which Robinson, by then 42, repeated a third time—amounted to newly discovered evidence that undermined his conviction. The circuit court this time found the recantation credible and granted Washington’s petition, overturning his conviction in August 2018 and granting him a writ of actual innocence. He was freed from prison, and the state dropped charges against him four months later in January 2019. 

With the aid of attorneys from Loevy & Loevy in Chicago, Washington filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in August 2019. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, he accused Baltimore, its police department and various staffers, including the three cops, of violating his civil rights with Robinson’s coerced testimony. Defendants argued that the state court’s 1999 determination—finding Robinson’s recantation incredible—collaterally estopped Washington from using it against them. The district court agreed and dismissed the case. Washington timely appealed.

The following January, the Fourth Circuit ruled for him on his appeal. The Court agreed that there was a collateral estoppel issue, but not the one Defendants claimed. Rather, it said that the writ of actual innocence was in conflict with the earlier denial of post-conviction relief in 1999. That decision then precluded application of collateral estoppel. “[A]pplying collateral estoppel to prohibit Appellant from litigating the alleged misconduct that led to his … now vacated convictions is incompatible with the equitable principles that underlie the doctrine,” the Court declared.

“Among the varied exceptions to the collateral estoppel doctrine,” the Court explained, “it is black letter law that a … determination will not have preclusive effect when it is ‘itself inconsistent with another determination of the same issue,’” part of Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 29 recognized in Rourke v. Amchem Products, Inc., 153 Md. App. 91, (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2003). Far from shackling courts to earlier rulings that later look suspect, the Fourth Circuit said, state lawmakers had intended to set up a test whether, “if [the convicting] jury had the benefit of the newly discovered evidence as well as the evidence that was before them, would there be ‘a substantial or significant possibility that the result would have been different[,]’” quoting Smith v. State, 233 Md. App. 372 (2017).

Since Robinson’s recanted testimony was found credible, it no longer provided probable cause for Washington’s arrest and conviction. So “his civil claims that rely on Robinson’s recantation may proceed,” the Court declared. Accordingly, the district court’s dismissal of Washington’s wrongful conviction claim was reversed and the case remanded. Dismissal was affirmed for a separate claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, as well as another Brady claim alleging that potentially exculpatory evidence was withheld, which the Court found too speculative. The case has now returned to the district court, where a settlement conference has been scheduled for September 2025. PLN will continue to update developments as they unfold. See: Washington v. Pellegrini, 125 F.4th 118 (4th Cir. 2025); and Washington v. Balt. Police Dep’t, USDC (D. Md.), Case No. 1:19-cv-02473.

Meanwhile, the state of Maryland determined that the writ of innocence qualified Washington for payment under the Walter Lomax Act, a 2021 measure adopted by state lawmakers to provide payment for wrongful imprisonment. In February 2024, the state Board of Public Works approved a structured payout to Washington over the next 32 months totaling $2,982,204.75, which represented $94,991 annually, or $260.07 for each of the 11,459 days he spent wrongfully imprisoned. With an extra $90,000 in housing benefit payments, Washington received nearly $3.1 million. See: In the Matter of the Wrongful Conviction of Gary Washington, Claimant v. Board of Public Works.  

Additional source: Maryland Matters

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