Tampa detectives framed Hopps in 1990 with a deliberately tainted photo identification, lawsuit charges.
TAMPA – Today, attorneys for Tony Hopps, 59, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on his behalf against the City of Tampa and three former detectives of the Tampa Police Department. The suit asks a jury to award damages and relief for Mr. Hopps’ wrongful arrest and prosecution, and the more than three decades he spent in prison for a robbery he had nothing to do with.
On the afternoon of January 25, 1990, two men burst into the Tampa hotel room of Ruby and Dunbar Dyches of Augusta, Georgia, and robbed them at gunpoint. The victims, both in their 70s, got only a brief glimpse of one of their attackers, whom they described as a shorter, muscular man with a mustache and no beard. They could provide no description of the second man.
The following day, police recovered a stolen vehicle and discovered the Dycheses’ possessions from the robbery inside, along with some guns and masks. Four men were seen running from the vehicle, none of whom was Mr. Hopps—who was in fact in jail on an unrelated case at the time, as the defendant detectives knew. (In fact, Mr. Hopps was actually speaking with Det. Strickland across town, on an unrelated matter, within half an hour of the robbery—an apparent alibi the detective later avoided disclosing in court.)
Despite this exculpatory evidence—and the fact that Mr. Hopps (taller, skinny, non-muscular, and bearded) did not fit the victims’ description—the detectives decided to target Mr. Hopps for the robbery. Around February, detectives assembled a photo array for identification purposes, and put Mr. Hopps in it.
As the complaint contends, nearly everything about this photo array was improper. The detectives deliberately used an old photo of Mr. Hopps, in which he had no beard, instead of one they had taken shortly after the robbery in which he was bearded. Additionally, instead of coordinating with local police to have the witnesses interviewed separately and properly, the detectives simply mailed the photo array to the victims’ home in Georgia and told them the suspect was in the array. The elderly Dycheses selected the photo of Mr. Hopps and discussed their choice with each other. On the sole basis of this tainted identification, Mr. Hopps was convicted at trial and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.
Mr. Hopps never gave up on proving his innocence. Nearly 30 years later, after many failed motions to appeal, Mr. Hopps successfully petitioned the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) of the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office to review his case. The CRU report found that the entire identification procedure was non-standard even in 1990, and would likely be suppressed in trial if it were used today. Based on this, Mr. Hopps’ alibi, and the fact that he bore no resemblance to the description of the robber, the CRU declared that they could not stand by the conviction of Mr. Hopps. Subsequently, Mr. Hopps’ conviction was overturned, and the State dismissed all charges against him in August 2021.
“There is no valid evidence to suggest Hopps committed the crime, and there is substantial evidence to suggest he did not do it,” Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren told the Tampa Bay Times. “Our system makes mistakes sometimes,” he told WFLA. “When we become aware of a problem, we should be proactive about fixing it, and that’s exactly what we did here.”
Today’s lawsuit asks a jury to decide and provide damages for five different counts of violations of Mr. Hopps’ rights, including violation of due process, illegal detention and prosecution, and conspiracy. It names as defendants the City of Tampa, along with Tampa detectives Gene Strickland, J.D. O’Nolan, George McNamara, and unknown employees of the city.
Mr. Hopps is represented by attorneys Jon Loevy, Gayle Horn, Heather Lewis Donnell, and Rachel Brady of Loevy + Loevy, and Jonathan Picard of the Human Rights Defense Center.
“No one can give Mr. Hopps back the decades he lost, and nothing can repay him for the physical and emotional distress he and his family have been through,” says attorney Jon Loevy of Loevy + Loevy. “But the City of Tampa must be held accountable for the policies and procedural failures that allowed these detectives to frame our client.”
“The City of Tampa and its police force committed a grievous wrong when they framed and convicted Mr. Hopps of a crime he did not commit and took 31 years of his life and freedom from him,” says Paul Wright, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center. “This is an opportunity to right that wrong and try to undo some of the damage they have caused.”
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Contact:
Jon Loevy, Loevy + Loevy, 773-354-2200, jon@loevy.com
Gayle Horn, Loevy + Loevy, 312-285-4409, gayle@loevy.com
Michael McDunnah, Loevy & Loevy, 312.371.5871, mcdunnah@loevy.com
Paul Wright, Human Rights Defense Center, 802-275 8594, pwright@prisonlegalnews.org
Jon Picard, Human Rights Defense Center, 561-360-2523, jpicard@humanrightsdefensecenter.org
For a copy of the complaint in this case, Case 8:24-cv-02806, click here.
