SAN DIEGO (CN) — A federal judge in California Wednesday refused to allow San Diego County to quash a lawsuit brought by a woman who claims its sheriff's department and other officials' handling of evidence led to her being wrongfully convicted of killing her husband.
On a Sunday afternoon more than 20 years ago, Jane Dorotik’s husband Robert headed out for a jog. He never returned home. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department later found his body in a wooded area nearby.
Despite her pleas of innocence, Jane Dorotik was arrested for the killing and spent nearly two decades behind bars before she was exonerated in 2022 based on findings that the DNA evidence found under Robert’s fingernails did not come from Jane, blood analysis used at her trial was faulty, and the crime lab’s handling of the evidence was problematic. Prosecutors tried to bring new charges against her in 2020 but ultimately dropped them.
Dorotik claims that her wrongful conviction was the result of police misconduct and San Diego Sheriff’s Department officers and crime lab employees' suppression and mischaracterization of exculpatory evidence in police reports that pointed at other suspects — including forensic evidence which she claims was not made available to herself or her attorneys during her trial.
Among the officials named in Dorotik’s complaint are Bonnie Howard-Regan and Kurt Mechals, two San Diego assistant district attorneys who handled the case. Dorotik says they misrepresented evidence, elicited and failed to correct false testimony, and called on expert witnesses they knew were not qualified.
In 2020, the sheriff's department agreed that Dorotik's conviction should be overturned after authorities discovered "voluminous" evidence that was "never provided to the defense," according to the suit. Prosecutors attempted to bring charges again, but dropped them in 2022.
At Wednesday's hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, San Diego County argued the case should be dismissed because Dorotik’s lawsuit was filed past the two year statute of limitations for her claims that the county violated her constitutional rights.
Dorotik argued that her lawsuit was filed on time because the statute of limitations started when her charges were finally dismissed in 2022.
San Diego County also argued that Dorotik’s lawsuit doesn’t specify which constitutional rights were infringed on by each of the defendants in the case, and it doesn’t show how the county’s policies, practices, or customs caused her rights to be violated.
Dorotik’s lawyers said that the lawsuit does specify which constitutional rights were violated by which defendants, but U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo, an Obama appointee, questioned whether they could prove that individual county employee’s actions constituted policies, practices and customs.
“I would really like to know if you have allegations beyond this case,” Bencivengo said, adding that she would like to know if there are widespread problems at the sheriff's department in handling evidence.
“And it doesn’t seem like you have that,” she said.
Dorotik’s lawyers countered that they do have evidence and of prior allegations that the county’s crime lab has problems with chain of custody documentation of evidence, and assertions that employees brought home pieces of evidence in cases outside of Dorotik’s.
In 2021, the San Diego District Attorney’s Office sent a letter to defense attorneys in the city alerting them to concerns over San Diego Regional Crime Lab worker Connie Milton’s credibility and performance on the job. Milton retired in 2021, but she worked at the department when evidence in Dorotik’s case was collected in 2000.
Bencivengo gave Dorotik leave to amend her complaint to add those allegations into her lawsuit.
“Let’s keep it focused,” Bencivengo said.
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