Post-Tribune

Man found to have been denied fair trial awarded $25.5M

- By Meredith Colias-Pete Post-Tribune Associated Press contribute­d. mcolias@post-trib.com

A federal jury awarded $25.5 million last week to a Gary man after finding a now-retired Hammond cop prevented him from having a fair trial in a 1980 gas station rape and robbery case.

James Hill, now 59, won his civil case Nov. 22 after three hours of deliberati­ons in the U.S. District Court in Hammond. He was given $25 million in compensato­ry damages and an additional $500,000 in punitive damages, records show.

Hill was 17 at the time of his arrest and spent 17.5 years in prison, according to his lawyers. Hill sued the city of Hammond and former Hammond police Capt. Michael Solan, alleging the police department’s policies and procedures were also to blame.

“The Hammond Police frog-marched a 17-year-old special education student out of his high school English class in 1980 and he remained locked up until 1998, despite the fact that the police obtained evidence a year before Hill’s trial that another man perpetrate­d the crimes in question,” Hill’s lawyer Scott King said in a statement.

“Despite knowing they had a legal obligation to disclose that evidence to Mr. Hill’s then trial attorney, the Hammond Police, including Solan, deliberate­ly hid that evidence.”

The civil case was the second won against Solan and Hammond, records show.

In 2006, Hill’s co-defendant in the 1980 case, Larry Mayes, won a $9 million verdict that was later reduced to $4.5 million.

Hill and Mays had their 1982 conviction­s set aside after a Lake County magistrate found the state had violated their rights by failing to turn over evidence to their defense attorneys before their trials.

Hill filed his civil lawsuit in 2010. To win the case, he had to prove by a prepondera­nce of the evidence that the outcome of his 1982 trial could have been different if Solan had turned over two sets of police records.

Jurors had to agree that the documents were favorable to Hill, were either exculpator­y or could have been used to impeach a witness, and that they were material to the case.

Decades later, Hill was charged in connection with the 1980 death of an off-duty Hammond cop. He was a teenager when he and Pierre L. Catlett were accused as part of a Nov. 14, 1980, robbery that left Patrolman Lawrence Pucalik dead during a side job working hotel security.

Prosecutor­s said Hill was the getaway driver for the other two men who went inside, but Hill maintained his innocence. Hill first was charged in the case in 2012, and he was joined by two co-defendants, Catlett and Larry Mayes. Hill’s civil lawsuit in that case is pending in federal court.

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