Nashville's Metro Council on Tuesday approved a $1.2 million settlement for Paul Shane Garrett, who was wrongfully convicted of a 2000 North Nashville murder.
Garrett, 50, originally sought $18 million in a lawsuit against the city of Nashville.
The council voted to approve $1.2 million in damages at the recommendation of Metro's legal team.
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In 2003, Garrett was wrongfully convicted of manslaughter in connection with the killing of 30-year-old Velma Tharpe. Two decades later, after a push from the Tennessee Innocence Project and a new report from the Davidson County District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit, all charges against Garrett were dismissed.
Garrett then filed a lawsuit against the city and five police officers for their involvement in the investigation.
In May 2021, Calvin Atchison was indicted on first-degree murder charges in Tharpe's death. Atchison is due in court for a status hearing Feb. 22.
How the case unfolded
Police linked Atchison to the crime through DNA evidence, but a failure to follow up from both original investigators and then-prosecutors meant he was not fully investigated until 2011. Much of the court case against Garrett rested on alleged confessions made by Garrett in an unrecorded interview with police. Another 10 years would elapse before another review of the case.
Allison Bussell, legal counsel for Metro, said their review of the case's files indicated Nashville police sent the DNA reports it received from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to the District Attorney's Office in keeping with the department's legal responsibility to submit evidence.
"When the cold case unit went back and looked at this file, it was not a failure to turn over DNA evidence to the district attorney that gave them pause," Bussell said Monday during a Budget and Finance Committee meeting. "It was more related to the idea that the original arrest warrant said that the individual confessed, and then there was testimony at the preliminary hearing that he confessed, and the evidence just did not support that that happened."
Garrett's interactions with police
Garrett was interrogated on multiple occasions, all but one of which were recorded, Bussell said. The officer in charge of the investigation said Garrett confessed during the interrogation that was not recorded.
MNPD reported this and the DNA evidence issue to the District Attorney's Office and then reviewed all of the files touched by the officers involved in Garrett's case, Bussell said.
In his 2022 lawsuit, Garrett said he told officers nearly 50 times he did not kill Tharpe and said police lied to him about DNA and other evidence in the case to coerce a confession.
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Garrett was also coerced into a guilty plea by poor representation, the suit claims.
He had been worn down by the investigation, his time in jail and a reported assertion from his attorney that if he didn't take the plea, he would most likely be executed.
For 18 years, Garrett was in prison, sustaining incalculable losses, including family relationships, the lawsuit states.
Chris Gilder, deputy chief of MNPD's Executive Services Bureau, said current policy requires all interrogations to be recorded. Case files are reviewed by supervisors. The department's honesty and truthfulness policy calls for termination if broken, he added.
None of the officers involved currently work for MNPD.
"I hope somebody's looking at it … to make sure that when we have this kind of evidence that exonerates someone that it's not overlooked in the future, and we don't have somebody sitting in jail for something they did not do," At-large Metro Council member Zulfat Suara said Monday. "We have to do everything we can to avoid situations like that."
Reach reporter Craig Shoup by email at cshoup@gannett.com and on Twitter @Craig_Shoup. To support his work, sign up for a digital subscription to www.tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Man awarded $1.2 million in settlement for wrongful conviction
