David Ayers does not expect good fortune. In his new job as a Horseshoe Cleveland security guard, he makes his rounds amid customers who hope they'll be rewarded for no reason but luck. Ayers does not share their optimism. Good news surprises him.
Ayers spent 11 years in prison for the murder of his elderly neighbor, Dorothy Brown, a crime he says he did not commit. He was released from prison in 2011, his conviction overturned, the charge against him dismissed. Two years later, his lawsuit against the Cleveland police officers who arrested him ended in victory — with a $13.2 million judgment from a federal jury...
But in December, a federal appeals court upheld the verdict and judgment against retired Cleveland homicide detective Denise Kovach and her late partner, Michael Cipo. The court's opinion included a near-endorsement of Ayers' main arguments for his innocence: that DNA from the scene of Brown's 1999 death points to another unknown man as the killer, and that the detectives, among other errors, manipulated jailhouse informant Donald Hutchinson to get Ayers convicted.
