After 35 Years In Prison, Wrongly Convicted Woman Gets $3 Million From A Federal Lawsuit

After spending 35 years in prison for a murder she did not commit in Nevada, Cathy Woods, 68, was exonerated by DNA evidence on a crime-scene cigarette butt. Now, she will be receiving $3 million in a partial settlement of a federal civil rights lawsuit, according to her lawyer.

According to ABC News, Woods will continue to seek additional damages from the city of Reno and former detectives she claims coerced her into a false confession. At the time, Woods had been a patient at a Louisiana mental hospital in 1979, according to her lawyer, Elizabeth Wang.

Washoe County public defender Maizie Pusich told The Associated Press in 2014 that Woods didn’t remember confessing while at the hospital, the article reports.

“I’m told it was a product of wanting to get a private room,” Pusich said. “She was being told she wasn’t sufficiently dangerous to qualify, and within a short period she was claiming she had killed a woman in Reno.”

Woods had been released from prison in 2015 when new evidence linked the 1976 killing of a Reno college student, 19-year-old Michelle Mitchell, to an Oregon inmate who has since been convicted of two Bay area murders that happened during the same time frame. 

The article said Woods was the longest-ever wrongfully incarcerated woman in the U.S. history, according to the Nation Registry of Exonerations.

“Although no amount of money will compensate Ms. Woods for what she endured, this will go at least some way toward providing care for her,” her lawyer stated.

She also said Woods was extremely psychotic and never should have been interrogated by detectives investigating the murder. 

The Washoe County Commission voted 4-0 on Tuesday, August 27, to pay $3 million to settle just a portion of the federal lawsuit. Wang said a separate lawsuit filed against the state earlier this month will also continue. Under a new Nevada law, wrongfully convicted individuals can seek up to $3.5 million in civil damages.  

Nevada’s Supreme Court overturned Woods’ initial conviction in 1980. However, she was then convicted in 1984, and the high court upheld that conviction in 1988.

A judge vacated it for good in 2014 after DNA technology, not previously available, linked evidence to the real killer. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Detectives in Reno and Northern California subsequently identified the man as the “Gypsy Hills Killer,” named for an area in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Pacifica where one body was found.

The county put in a statement that they remain confident there was no wrongdoing by any county employees but that the settlement brings an end to costly litigation according to ABC news report. 

“The conviction and subsequent incarceration of Woods for murder is a tragic situation that Washoe County hopes is never repeated,” the county said. “While money can rarely compensate an individual for loss of freedom, Washoe County sincerely hopes that this monetary settlement will be utilized for the best possible care of Woods.”