Pa. man now freed sues police that put him in prison for 1979 murder case

A former councilman from Beaver County spent a decade in prison for a 1979 murder case he did not commit. Now he’s suing the police unit who put him there.

Gregory Scott Hopkins filed a federal-level complaint against Beaver County detective Andrew Gall as well as Rocco DeMaiolo and Ashlee Mangan who are both state police investigators on Tuesday, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Counts of civil conspiracy, fabrication of evidence and malicious prosecution were filed against the police officers.

In the lawsuit, it says the unit purposefully charged Hopkins for a crime they knew he didn’t commit.

Hopkins was convicted of third-degree murder in 2013 for the killing of Janet Walsh. The 23-year-old woman was found strangled in her apartment on Sept. 1, 1979, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Hopkins’ conviction was reversed in 2020. The Superior Court stated the pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht’s testimony wasn’t based on science, but on opinion.

After Hopkins was released from prison, the district attorney dropped the charges against him in early 2022.

Alec Wright, Hopkins’ lawyer, said the evidence of semen was “meaningless” because the former councilman was in a sexual relationship with Walsh.

According to the lawsuit, the detectives ignored this and only tested a dozen DNA samples for where they believed they would find Hopkins’ semen 30 years later. The detectives allegedly ignored 100 other potential sources of DNA that showed under the fluorescent light.

“The defendants in this case do not deserve to wield the power we’ve given them,” Wright said in a statement, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. “The false criminal narrative that they created against Mr. Hopkins is patently absurd and beyond implausible.”

Read more about this case via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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