Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Brought by Man Who Served 24 Years for Rapes He Did Not Commit

The Supreme Court building in Washington on Feb. 24, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The Supreme Court decided against hearing the wrongful conviction lawsuit of a Wisconsin man who spent 24 years behind bars for two rapes he didn’t commit.

The court denied the petition of Daryl Holloway on April 3 in an unsigned order without explaining why. No justices dissented. A petition is granted and oral arguments are scheduled if at least four of the nine justices vote to move the case forward.

Holloway sued the city of Milwaukee and local police in 2019, saying his civil rights were violated by police detectives he claims framed him for the crimes.

Holloway, a black man, was convicted of sexually assaulting two white women. In September 1993, when he was 25 years old, he was sentenced to 120 years in prison for the rapes and burglary.

Attacked and Robbed

When the sexual assaults took place in the summer of 1992, there were several sexual assaults that had taken place in Milwaukee.

At least five of the assaults involved white women who were attacked and robbed in their homes on Milwaukee’s East Side by a black male at knifepoint.

“Holloway’s conviction rested on unduly suggestive identification practices that primed the victims to choose him as the rapist, despite the lack of physical evidence,” stated his petition filed with the Supreme Court in December 2022.

After the allegedly botched police lineup of suspects, two of the victims identified Holloway as the perpetrator even though they didn’t see their attacker’s face when they were assaulted.

Other women who had been raped around the same time in the vicinity attended the lineup but failed to identify Holloway.

Holloway asked the trial judge to throw out the lineup but he refused, saying the lineup was carried out in a “fair and impartial manner, using the necessary means to avoid any type of suggestiveness whatsoever.”

While tests of crime scene materials yielded inconclusive results, Holloway was convicted.

Requests for New DNA Tests

His post-conviction counsel asked repeatedly for new DNA tests to be conducted on the rape kit samples from the two victims. Eventually, years later, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office agreed to perform additional DNA testing on the samples.

The new testing showed that Holloway may not have been the source of the seminal fluid taken as evidence. A private lab then retested the samples and Holloway and the state agreed that this evidence was “exculpatory in nature.”

The parties agreed that if that evidence had been available at trial, “a reasonable probability exists that a jury would have reached a different result” and that, in light of the new evidence, “it would be difficult for the state to [prove guilt] beyond a reasonable doubt in a retrial,” the petition stated.

On Oct. 4, 2016, the same judge who had originally sentenced Holloway vacated his convictions, exonerating him. Holloway was freed.

Holloway sued but U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee, ruled against him in the wrongful conviction lawsuit in September 2021.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit later found fault with the identification procedures and determined that the police officers involved in investigating the crimes may have violated Holloway’s civil rights, but ruled the officers were shielded by qualified immunity and couldn’t be held liable for damages.

Qualified immunity is a rule invented by the courts that shields law enforcement officials from individual liability unless the person violated a clearly established right.

Civil libertarians have become increasingly critical of the rule in recent years, which they say allows government officials, particularly police officers, to get away with sometimes egregious wrongdoing.

Even though the identification procedures “may well have violated Holloway’s right to due process,” the officers’ “conduct was not ‘clearly established’ as unlawful at the time ... and so the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity,” the 7th Circuit ruled in August 2022.

Holloway’s attorney, Nathaniel Cade Jr., was dismayed by the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up his client’s case.

Wrongful Conviction Award Recommended

“I’m still perplexed by the Supreme Court because we know it only takes four to take a case, and we know that [Justice] Clarence Thomas has apparently signaled that he’s not a fan of qualified immunity,” he told The Epoch Times in an interview.

In the future, the majority-conservative Supreme Court could take a case on qualified immunity if the right kind of case comes along, Cade speculated.

“I think that if it was someone who was very valuable to folks on the right, it was very clear there was some conspiracy, or they did something wrong, and they were able to walk away—I think at that point, they would say, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t know it was this bad,’” the lawyer said.

The Wisconsin Claims Board issued a report in April 2022 unanimously recommending that the state award Holloway $1 million for his wrongful conviction, which is well above the state-prescribed maximum of $25,000.

No funds will be paid unless the state Legislature appropriates the money, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Jennifer Lynn Williams of the Milwaukee City Attorney’s Office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

The case is Holloway v. City of Milwaukee, court file 22-589.