Bridget Reed Morawski
WMAL
For the third time this year, the District has been ordered to pay millions in damages for false imprisonment.
Santae A. Tribble was granted $13.2 million in damages by a D.C Superior Court judge for his false and often abusive imprisonment.
Tribble was wrongly convicted for the 1978 slaying of a Southeast Washington taxi driver, and spent 28 years in jail for the crime he didn’t commit. He was exonerated in 2012 by DNA testing that confirmed he did not contribute the strands of hair that were found at the crime scene. The hairs were the only physical evidence against him, their reliability in court bolstered by exaggerated claims by an FBI examiner.
Tribble will receive compensatory damages of $400,000 per year he was jailed, as well as $956,000 in lost wages, $412,000 in medical expenses, and $100,000 per year since he has been released and through 2019.
Through his time in jail, Tribble reportedly suffered greatly, from emotional and mental abuses in long term solitary confinement, to extreme physical harm at the hands of prison guards. Medical experts testified that he is expected to die of his various chronic ailments by 2019.
He is the recipient of the third multi-million dollar settlement this year. Donald E. Gates, 64, was awarded a $16.5 million settlement by a D.C federal jury for similar, false hair match analysis that wrongly imprisoned him the rape and murder of a college student in 1981. The District has also been ordered to pay Kirk L. Odom, 53, $9.2 million for his wrongful conviction of another 1981 rape in Capitol Hill.
Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (Photo: The Innocence Project)
