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$3M for NV woman wrongly imprisoned 35 years for murder

Posted at 9:36 PM, Aug 28, 2019
and last updated 2019-08-29 01:13:07-04

RENO (AP) — County commissioners in Nevada have agreed to a $3 million settlement with a woman who spent 35 years in prison for a murder she didn't commit before she was exonerated by DNA evidence tied to a crime-scene cigarette butt.

The National Registry of Exonerations says Cathy Woods was the longest-ever wrongfully incarcerated woman in U.S. history.

The Washoe County Commission approved the settlement Tuesday.

Woods was released from prison in 2015 when new evidence linked the 1976 killing of a Reno college student to an Oregon inmate who since has been convicted of two San Francisco-area slayings that occurred about the same time.

Woods' lawyer said Wednesday they will continue to seek damages from the city of Reno and former detectives accused of coercing a fabricated confession from Woods while a patient at a Louisiana mental hospital in 1979.