DEBUNKED

Connecticut to Pay $25M to Men Wrongly Convicted in 1985 Murder

Two men spent decades in prison for the murder of Everett Carr in part because of fabricated evidence presented by famous forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee.

Two Connecticut men will get $25.2 million from the state after wrongfully spending decades behind bars, in part because of evidence given by a top forensic scientist that a judge later found to be fabricated. The settlement was reached in a pair of lawsuits brought by Shawn Henning and Ralph Birch, who were convicted in 1989 of stabbing Everett Carr 27 times in his home four years prior. During the pair’s trial, Dr. Henry Lee—also known for his work on the OJ Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey cases—testified that blood evidence had been found on towels at the crime scene, a fact that prosecutors later used to argue that the killers had cleaned themselves up after the murder. Henning and Birch spent the next three decades in prison before having their felony murder convictions overturned in 2019, with their charges being dismissed the next year. Subsequent testing had found the towels were free of blood; a judge ruled this July that there was no evidence Lee ever tested the towels himself. Lee defended his work at the time, saying he had neither the “motive nor reason to fabricate evidence.”