$7.52 Million Settlement After DNA Cleared Man Who Spent 18 Years in Prison for a Crime He Did Not Commit

In 1989, Dwayne Allen Dail was 20 years old when a Wayne County jury convicted him of raping a 12-year-old girl in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The prosecution rested largely on two pieces of evidence that later science would discredit: a cross-racial eyewitness identification made six weeks after the crime, and hair microscopy analysis presented as placing Dail at the scene. He received two life sentences plus 18 years.

For years, Dail and his family sought DNA testing on biological evidence from the case. Requests to the Goldsboro Police Department were repeatedly met with the response that the evidence had been destroyed. In 2007, the department located a nightgown belonging to the victim that had been held in storage all along. DNA analysis of that garment not only excluded Dail as the source, it matched William Neal, a man already imprisoned in North Carolina for other offenses. Neal was subsequently convicted of the assault in 2010 and sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole. On August 28, 2007, a Wayne County judge vacated Dail's convictions. He walked out of prison after serving 18 years.

In August 2010, Dail filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the City of Goldsboro and individual police officials. The complaint alleged that investigators were negligent in evidence collection and maintenance, that repeated denials about the existence of biological evidence obstructed Dail's access to exculpatory material, and that these failures prolonged his imprisonment well beyond the point when DNA testing could have freed him. E. Spencer Parris and G. Christopher Olson of Martin and Jones served as co-counsel alongside Burton Craige and Narendra Ghosh of Patterson Harkavy LLP.

The case proceeded through three mediated settlement conferences before Judge Terence Boyle in the Eastern District of North Carolina. The City of Goldsboro and its insurers ultimately agreed to resolve all claims. On November 19, 2013, the parties announced a total settlement of $7,520,000. The City contributed $2.71 million directly; insurance carriers paid the remaining $4.81 million. The state of North Carolina had previously compensated Dail separately, paying him more than $350,000 under the state's wrongful conviction compensation statute.

In a statement following the resolution, city spokeswoman Kim Best acknowledged that 'the evidence was not catalogued and maintained sufficiently, which prolonged his imprisonment.' The Goldsboro Police Department adopted new evidence-management policies as part of the fallout from the case. Dail was 44 years old at the time the settlement was announced.