LYNN, MA—Released one year ago today following his exoneration for a murder that he did not commit, Angel Echavarria is now suing the City of Lynn and former Lynn Police and Massachusetts State Police officers for malicious prosecution and violations of his civil rights.
In January 1996, Angel Echavarria was wrongly convicted of the January 1994 murder of Daniel Rodriguez—a crime he did not commit. On April 30, 2015, the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts overturned Mr. Echavarria’s conviction. One year ago today, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dropped all charges against Mr. Echavarria. Mr. Echavarria was released from prison at age 48, having been wrongly incarcerated for almost half of his life.
Mr. Echavarria’s suit against the city of Lynn, Lynn police officers, and Massachusetts State Police officers was filed by Arthur Loevy, Jon Loevy, and Steven Art of the civil rights firm Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law and the Law Office of Ruth Greenberg.
The lawsuit alleges that former Lynn and Massachusetts State Police officers fabricated false eyewitness identifications and false witness statements used to implicate Mr. Echavarria in a crime he did not commit. In addition, these police officers allegedly suppressed evidence that a key eyewitness had unequivocally identified another man as the perpetrator of the crime—a man who the police officers themselves had arrested for a very similar shooting just weeks earlier. Instead of investigating the actual perpetrators of the murder, the officers named in this lawsuit decided to frame Mr. Echavarria for something he had not done.
No physical evidence ever connected Mr. Echavarria to the crimes. Eyewitness descriptions of the perpetrators were entirely inconsistent with Mr. Echavarria, and Mr. Echavarria had a solid alibi on the night of the crime.
During his almost quarter-century of wrongful incarceration, Mr. Echavarria lost his mother and the opportunity to raise his five children. Since his exoneration, Mr. Echavarria has been living in Florida and making the most of his time now that he is finally free.
Loevy & Loevy is one of the nation’s largest civil rights law firms, and over the past decade has won more multi-million dollar jury verdicts than any other civil rights law firm in the entire country. A copy of the lawsuit, Angel Echavarria v. J. Michael Roach, et al., No. 1:16-cv-11118, can be found here.
