Nevada woman cleared of murder after 35 years in prison gets $3 million

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nevada-woman-cleared-murder-after-35-years-prison-gets-3-n1047671

Aug. 29, 2019, 8:54 AM EDT
By Associated Press

A Nevada woman who spent 35 years in prison for a murder she didn't commit before she was exonerated by DNA evidence on a crime-scene cigarette butt will get $3 million in a partial settlement of a federal civil rights lawsuit, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Cathy Woods, 68, will continue to seek additional damages from the city of Reno and former detectives she accuses of coercing a fabricated confession from her while she was a patient at a Louisiana mental hospital in 1979, according to her lawyer, Elizabeth Wang.

Woods was released from prison in 2015 when new evidence linked the 1976 killing of a Reno college student to an Oregon inmate, Rodney Halbower, who has since has been convicted of two San Francisco Bay Area slayings that happened during the same period.

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