Louisville police paid $350,000 to a man jailed for 7 years before charges against him were dropped
- Louisville paid $350,000 to a man who was in jail for seven years.
- Percy Brown was in jail for murder before prosecutors finally dropped the charges.
The city of Louisville paid a man $350,000 after he sat in jail for seven years before charges against him were finally dropped.
Louisville police arrested Percy Brown in 2008 for the shooting death of Jennifer French and charged him with murder, rape, sodomy, and kidnapping.
In 2016, once charges against him were dismissed and he was released from jail, Brown filed a federal lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department and the city.
In the lawsuit, Brown accused the police of "falsifying" and "fabricating" the witness statements that were used to bring charges against him.
"The evidence that was fabricated, falsified, and manufactured by the Defendant Officers was the only evidence linking Mr. Brown to the murder and violent crimes that he was charged with and was the only basis upon which prosecutors filed and maintained charges," the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit adds that police "concealed" the falsity of the witness statements for seven years from Brown and his attorneys.
The city settled the lawsuit in July. The settlement agreement, obtained by local Fox affiliate WDRB through an open records request, shows the city paid Brown $350,000 under the agreement that the payment was not an admission of wrongdoing.
Elliot Slosar, an attorney for Brown, did not immediately return a request for comment from Insider, but Slosar told WDRB that Brown had "suffered a serious injustice at the hands of numerous law enforcement agencies."
Police initially connected Brown to French's death because she was scheduled to testify against him in an upcoming fraud trial, WBRD reported. Slosar told the outlet that Brown was more than 70 miles away from French when she was shot.
Slosar told WBRD that civil litigation is still pending against one officer in the case.