A man who spent 32 years in prison for a pair of 1981 homicides is suing Harford County and the estates of former officials for wrongfully convicting him twice.

The lawsuit, which names the county’s former top prosecutor and Harford County sheriff’s deputies who investigated the “Memorial Day Murders,” comes after John Norman Huffington was exonerated in a pardon by former Gov. Larry Hogan and awarded $2.9 million by the state.

Huffington said in a statement that the decades he spent behind bars had cost him the ability to have a family of his own and time with his aging parents. His mother died while he was imprisoned; his father was in his 90s and suffering from Alzheimer’s when he was released.

“Neither of my parents ever got to see and understand my name was cleared and I was free,” he said.

In addition to suing Harford County through its executive, Bob Cassilly, the lawsuit names the estate of his older brother, Joseph Cassilly, the county’s longtime state’s attorney who was disbarred for his conduct in Huffington’s case. The Maryland Court of Appeals, now called the Maryland Supreme Court, found that the Republican prosecutor lied about documents that undermined the credibility of an investigating FBI agent. Filed last week, the lawsuit accuses the elder Cassilly of “brazen misconduct” but says he “did not act alone,” naming other investigators who it says “fabricated and coerced knowingly false witness statements and withheld material, exculpatory evidence.”

Brian Eldridge, an attorney representing Huffington, said in a statement that the case was “maddening in terms of just how badly John was mistreated by the criminal justice system.”

Joseph Cassilly, who served for 36 years as Harford’s state’s attorney, died in January. He had maintained that his statements about the 1981 case were true.

“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased …” Bob Cassilly said in a statement, praising his brother’s military and government service. “Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case – the county was never the defendants’ employer; however, as Joe’s brother, and as a longtime public servant, I am proud that Harford County has always supported the professionals in law enforcement and the criminal justice system who protect innocent citizens from violent criminals.”

Huffington was twice convicted of the killings of Diane Becker, 21, who was beaten and stabbed to death on May 25, 1981, in her recreational vehicle in Abingdon, and Joseph Hudson, her boyfriend, who was fatally shot and discovered on a secluded path a few miles away.

Investigators had said that the pair were killed over cocaine and cash. Prosecutors had relied on now-discredited testimony that hairs found at the murder scene matched Huffington, who was 18 at the time of the killings. He was sentenced to death after being convicted the second time, but that sentence was overturned, and Huffington was resentenced to two life terms. He was freed in 2013, sentenced again to time served, and Hogan granted him a full innocence pardon in the final days of the Republican governor’s administration.

Prosecutors had tried Huffington and his friend, Deno Kanaras, separately for the murders. A jury convicted Kanaras of felony murder in Becker’s death, and he ultimately served 27 years of his life sentence before being released in 2008.

The lawsuit filed last week alleges that prosecutors relied heavily on Kanaras as a key witness in Huffington’s case, granting him and his family “extraordinary latitude” and using him “to fabricate a patently false and ever-evolving story implicating” Huffington. Kanaras’ family was well-known in the community and owned a restaurant that was frequented by Harford County law enforcement, the lawsuit says.

Much of the prosecution’s case also relied on hair testing by FBI agent Michael P. Malone, whose analysis turned out to be wrong. A 1997 Department of Justice probe further found Malone had a history of testifying falsely, conducting inaccurate analysis of hair samples and making claims that exceeded the scope of scientific testing. The Justice Department informed Cassilly that the agent had testified falsely in Huffington’s case, but Cassilly did not provide that information to Huffington’s lawyers.

Huffington “paid dearly for the insufficient investigation and prosecution with decades of his life, deep trauma to his personal relationships, and a derailment of his reputation, career aspirations and earning potential,” Antonio M. Romanucci, one of Huffington’s lawyers, said in a statement.

Because of Huffington’s lengthy prison term, he received one of the largest awards under Maryland’s Walter Lomax Act, which regulates financial compensation for people who were wrongfully convicted in the state.

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