Denver will pay $122,500 settlement

Man spent 10 months in jail after false claim.

A man who says he was falsely accused by Denver police of plotting to hire a hitman to kill his ex-girlfriend will receive part of a $122,500 settlement.

Brian Hinman was in jail in 2013 for violating a restraining order when a cellmate concocted a tale aimed at cutting his own jail sentence short, Hinman’s lawsuit contended. The cellmate told a police detective that Hinman asked him to carry out the killing.

For a time, the accusation worked — Hinman spent 10 more months in jail before the case relying on the cellmate’s account fell apart, and prosecutors dropped the charges, the lawsuit says. During that time, the suit says, the detective, Jonathan Joyce, ignored evidence the cellmate was unreliable and had made the story up to win favor as a witness.

Now the city will pay Hinman $71,625.97, and his attorneys at the Civil Rights Litigation Group will receive $50,874.03.

That payout was one of two approved by the City Council on Monday. The council also signed off on $106,302.72 in attorney’s fees as part of a $200,000 settlement to resolve the back-pay case of two 911 center technology services workers.

A jury found after a trial in early 2016 that the two had been stiffed for years on overtime pay while working mandatory on-call shifts. The employees, Leroy Bunn and Mark Newland, will receive the rest of the settlement.

Hinman’s police payout will end a lawsuit he filed two years ago.

It says Hinman vented to his cellmates about the heated situation with his ex-girlfriend after he was picked up on the restraining order violation. One, named as Brien Roberts, used details Hinman mentioned during casual conversations to create an otherwise fabricated story, in which he told the detective that Hinman tried to hire him to burglarize the ex-girlfriend’s home and kill her.

But some of the details didn’t pan out when Joyce visited the ex-girlfriend’s building, the lawsuit says. On the day that Roberts claimed he huddled with Hinman to plot the murder, the suit says, jail surveillance video showed three interactions that lasted only a minute or two at a time.

The lawsuit accused the city of poorly training Joyce, a newer detective. It also accused Joyce of unlawful detention and wrongful prosecution, claiming he selectively presented evidence in court.