Maryland officials award $3 million to Baltimore man who spent 31 years wrongfully imprisoned
BALTIMORE — Maryland officials on Wednesday awarded more than $3 million to a Baltimore man who served 31 years in prison before he was exonerated, one of the largest payments under a 2021 law that reformed how the state compensates people who have been wrongfully convicted.
Gary Washington, 63, met privately with Gov. Wes Moore and then watched silently as the three-member Maryland Board of Public Works approved $2,982,205 that will be paid to him in seven installments through early 2027.
Washington was released in 2018 after spending 11,459 days in prison for his conviction of first-degree murder and use of a handgun in a crime of violence in the 1986 fatal shooting of Faheem Ali. The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office dismissed the charges against him in early 2019.
Moore, a Democrat, apologized to Washington and his wife, Theresa, during the public meeting at the State House after spending time, and praying, together in the governor’s office.
“There are no words that can convey how sorry I am to you two today, how sorry we are to both of you for what you had to endure,” Moore said. “On behalf of the entire state, I’m sorry for the failure of the justice system.”
A Baltimore City Circuit Court judge vacated Washington’s convictions, in part, because of testimony from a witness who was 12 years old at the time of the shooting and later recanted and said police forced him to falsely identify Washington.
In a federal lawsuit filed in 2019 against five former Baltimore Police officers, Washington said detectives investigating Ali’s death coerced that witness, Otis Robinson, and a 13-year-old girl into testifying by threatening to take them away from their parents.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of the officers last year. Washington’s attorney, Renee Spence, accompanied him to the State House for the board meeting and declined to comment Wednesday, citing an appeal in that case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
Washington is the 14th person to receive compensation under the Walter Lomax Act, the 2021 state law named after a man who spent nearly 40 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit.
The state board — which includes Moore, Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman — has previously awarded more than $9.2 million since the law went into effect and more under an earlier law that expanded eligibility of wrongfully convicted people.
Washington will be paid $94,911, the current median household income in Maryland, for each of his 31 years served.
The total will be close to the roughly $3 million that Lomax was awarded in 2019, and more than the $2.9 million awarded last year to John Huffington, a Harford County man who wrongfully spent 32 years in prison for an infamous 1981 double murder.
“There is no amount that can undo the injustice that can make up for what this state took from you,” Moore said.
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