The Detroit City Council voted on July 14, 2026, to pay a $5.8 million settlement to resolve claims filed by former state prisoner Aaron Salter, who served 15 years of a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit before his 2018 exoneration.

Salter was 21 in 2003 when he was convicted of shooting three people hanging out on the front porch of an eastside Detroit home. Willie Thomas died of his injuries, while Jamar Luster and Michael Payne survived. Though it was dark and Luster was diving off the porch to avoid the gunfire, he gave a description to Detroit cop Donald Olsen of two shooters that he glimpsed under a streetlight some 35 feet away.

One he identified as a neighborhood acquaintance known as “Rob,” described as 5’7” and 150 to 170 pounds. The other shooter, who was described as thinner and somewhat taller, Luster did not recognize. But he also told Olsen that a man named “E” Collins had “shot up the house” earlier in the month. Based on what he later called a “hunch,” Olsen showed Luster a photo of Salter, falsely telling him that an arrest had been made in the shooting. He neglected to mention that Salter stood 6’4” and weighed 250 pounds. Based on that single photo, Luster identified Salter as the shooter.

No other evidence or eyewitness tied Salter to the crime. Olsen later showed Luster a photo lineup of six other potential suspects, which did not include Salter, after which he testified that Luster did not identify any as the shooter. Luster, however, testified that he identified two as potential suspects. Decades later, after Salter was exonerated and filed suit, Luster testified that one of those he picked out was Collins. But at that time, and based on Olsen’s recommendation, the Wayne County prosecutor issued a warrant for Salter’s arrest. With Luster’s eyewitness identification, he was convicted at trial three months later in December 2003.

The conviction was upheld on appeal, and the state Supreme Court declined review. During that process, attorneys assigned to the case from the Federal Defender’s Office (FDO) were unable to find the photo of him that Olsen showed Luster. What they did find in the police file, however, was a large photo of Collins.

A prisoner claimed in 2013 to have personal knowledge that Salter was not guilty of the shooting, and FDO attorneys gave Salter a polygraph exam, which he passed. Another five years later, when the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) was formed by then-newly elected County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, all the evidence pointed to a shaky conviction. Salter’s trial attorney was deposed and testified that the photo of Collins was never provided at trial. The prosecuting attorney agreed that it would have been turned over to his defense if it were there. Salter’s appeal attorneys also said the photo was never in the files they received. In addition to the sworn word of three attorneys, even Olsen told CIU investigators that “[t]he case stinks. It always stunk”—which Worthy said was news to her because the cop’s opinion had never been shared with prosecutors.

That was sufficient for the CIU to successfully argue that the case should be reopened to review the newly found evidence. The resulting challenge to Salter’s conviction was successful, and he was freed from prison on his 36th birthday. By that time, he had served 15 years for the murder he did not commit, qualifying him for a payout of more than $700,000 from the state’s wrongful conviction compensation fund (WCCF)—although it was already running low on money, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2020, p.20.]

Lawsuit Filed

With the aid of attorney Wolf Mueller of his eponymous firm in Novi, Salter filed suit in 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, accusing Olsen of violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when he fabricated evidence—by using Luster’s manipulated photo identification to establish probable cause—that led to Salter’s false arrest and malicious prosecution. The suit also made a claim against Olsen for failing to report that Luster identified Collins from the larger photo lineup and for failing to share the larger photo of Collins that he was shown—potentially exculpatory evidence that Olsen was bound to disclose under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).

When the district court ruled in 2022, it rejected the claims for fabrication of evidence, noting that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had earlier found a single-photo identification process may not be sufficient to sustain such a claim. See: France v. Lucas, 836 F.3d 612 (6th Cir. 2016). Salter’s related claims for false arrest and malicious prosecution also failed. But on the Brady claim, the district court found that Olsen was not entitled to qualified immunity (QI), given the “reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different had the larger photo been turned over and had Luster’s identification of ‘E’ [Collins] as one of the shooters been given to the defense.” QI was also denied on the claim that Luster’s identification of Salter had been unduly suggested when Olsen neglected to mention that Salter was nine inches taller and nearly 100 pounds heavier than the man that Luster said he saw.

On appeal, the Sixth Circuit affirmed both denials of QI on March 21, 2025, and the full Sixth Circuit declined to rehear the case en banc on May 25. See: Salter v. City of Detroit, 133 F.4th 527 (6th Cir. 2025); and 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 11898 (6th Cir. 2025). A petition for a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court of the U.S. to rehear the case was also denied on February 23, 2026. See: Olsen v. Salter, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 973. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, with a payout that included costs and fees for Salter’s attorney. See: Salter v. Olsen, USDC (E.D. Mich.), Case No. 4:18-cv-13136.

Meanwhile, Salter took some of the funds that he received from the WCCF to launch Innocence Maintained, a nonprofit that provides housing and other resources to help those exonerated and released from prison to re-establish their lives—whether waiting on funds from the beleaguered WCCF or pursuing civil suits like his. As he explained to the Detroit News, “[A] lot of these guys have nothing, and they have nobody to turn to.”  

Additional source: Detroit News

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