Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann

The Jeans in the Stolen Car

A stolen car returned with changed plates, a missing rope, and striped jeans beneath its passenger seat. The jeans vanished in police custody. Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann brought that abandoned lead into the federal civil-rights trial of two men imprisoned for eighteen years.

Under the Passenger Seat

Theresa Fusco clocked out of Hot Skates in Lynbrook, New York, at 9:47 p.m. on November 10, 1984. She was sixteen. Her body was found near the railroad tracks on December 5. The medical examiner determined that she had been raped and strangled with a ligature.

Between 9:30 and 11:05 on the night Fusco disappeared, a car was stolen less than a mile from the rink. Its owner found it about a week later near other railroad tracks. The license plates had been changed. A rope formerly kept in the car was gone. Under the right passenger seat, the owner’s sister found women’s or girls’ striped jeans that had not been there before the theft; at least one leg was inside out.

The Lynbrook police inadvertently discarded the jeans before Fusco’s body was discovered. Nassau County homicide detectives later investigated the lead and created reports recording the car, the altered plates, the missing rope, and the pants. Those reports did not reach the prosecutors or the defense. At the later civil trial, a police-practices expert described the combined facts as clearly exculpatory under minimally accepted practices of the 1980s.

John Restivo and Dennis Halstead were convicted in 1986. Hair said to have been recovered from Restivo’s van supplied the principal forensic link. Testing of semen from an intact vaginal swab later excluded them and John Kogut, the third convicted man. Their convictions were vacated in 2003. After Kogut was acquitted at retrial, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Restivo and Halstead in December 2005. Each had spent eighteen years in prison.

The Hair-Evidence Chain of Custody

The hairs from the van carried a different chronology. Experts found postmortem root banding, a decompositional change that develops while hair remains attached to a body. The questioned hairs resembled known autopsy hairs and lacked the debris and mechanical damage present on unrelated hairs from the van. One expert concluded that the banding could not have developed during the brief interval in which prosecutors alleged Fusco was inside the vehicle.

Autopsy hairs and questioned hairs sat in unsealed envelopes in the same unlocked laboratory cabinet. The envelopes did not record how many hairs they held and were not logged when handled. Homicide detectives could be admitted without signing in and were commonly left unescorted. Volpe testified that he could visit at his leisure.

Hoffmann and the trial team presented two constitutional theories: Volpe suppressed the stolen-car lead, or he placed autopsy hairs among the material attributed to Restivo’s van, acting alone or with assistance. The jury found that Volpe maliciously prosecuted Restivo and Halstead and denied them a fair trial. It returned a general verdict, so it did not state whether liability rested on suppression, fabrication, or both.

The Civil Findings

The damages phase ended on April 17, 2014, with awards of $18 million to each man. The Second Circuit affirmed in January 2017. It upheld the challenged evidentiary rulings, refused to reduce the awards as excessive, rejected a setoff for the $2.2 million each plaintiff had received from New York under its unjust-conviction statute, and left the fee award intact.

DNA established that none of the three convicted men contributed the semen recovered from Fusco. The civil verdict established Volpe’s liability for malicious prosecution and denial of a fair trial. Because the verdict was general, it did not choose between suppression of the stolen-car lead and fabrication of the hair evidence. The $36 million judgment stood.

Seven Polygraphs

Chris Tapp was twenty years old when Idaho Falls police questioned him about the 1996 rape and murder of Angie Dodge. The interrogations consumed roughly sixty hours and included seven purported polygraph examinations. Officers threatened him with execution and introduced nonpublic details that later appeared in his statements. Crime-scene DNA excluded him, but a jury convicted him in 1998.

Tapp’s release and exoneration came in separate steps. In March 2017, an agreement vacated the rape conviction and reduced the murder sentence to time served, leaving the murder conviction in place. Genetic genealogy later led investigators to Brian Dripps. DNA from a discarded cigarette matched the crime-scene sample; Dripps confessed, said he acted alone, and was arrested in May 2019. On July 17, 2019, the court vacated Tapp’s murder conviction.

A federal civil action examined how the interrogation produced incriminating words after investigators supplied the underlying facts. Idaho Falls settled in 2022 for $11.7 million. The mayor apologized, and the city agreed to discuss reforms to its interviewing and interrogation practices. Hoffmann’s public statement returned to the first objective contradiction: “Chris Tapp’s wrongful conviction never should have happened; DNA cleared him over 20 years ago.”

One Photograph

Jamal Trulove’s prosecution depended on one eyewitness. Evidence at his later civil trial showed that an inspector pointed toward a photograph of Trulove while pressing the witness to identify the shooter. Another inspector showed her a single photograph at her apartment. The officers then used a six-person array containing people whom the witness had already seen or rejected, narrowing the unfamiliar choices.

Trulove was convicted of murder in 2010 and sentenced to fifty years to life. A California appellate court reversed in 2014, and a jury acquitted him at retrial in 2015. In April 2018, a federal jury found two inspectors liable for deliberately fabricating evidence and withholding exculpatory information. It awarded Trulove $10 million. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers later denied their requests for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, or remittitur.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a $13.1 million settlement in March 2019, ending the city’s appeal. By then Trulove had spent more than six years imprisoned. A single photograph had become a false point of certainty; the civil record exposed every hand that had moved it into place.

The Tape Stopped

Stefon Morant was twenty-six when he was convicted of a 1990 New Haven double murder committed while he was visiting family in North Carolina. Witnesses later described threats and coercion. Recorded statements stopped and started, allowing coaching to occur off tape before a polished account resumed. Morant spent twenty-one years in prison, was released in 2015, and later received a full and unconditional pardon.

After a month-long federal trial, a jury awarded Morant $38 million on May 29, 2026. It found former detective Vincent Raucci liable for withholding favorable evidence and malicious prosecution; Raucci and Vaughn Maher were liable for coercion, fabrication, and civil-rights conspiracy. The jury also found New Haven liable for a widespread custom or practice of suppressing evidence favorable to criminal defendants.

Post-trial proceedings remained pending. On June 26, the city and the detectives sought a new trial; alternatively, they asked the court to reduce the award to between $2 million and $10 million, and the city sought credit for $5.8 million in state compensation. As of July 22, 2026, the court had not ruled on those motions.

The four trials relied on evidence omitted, altered, or isolated during the original investigations: discarded jeans, hairs attributed to unsealed envelopes, repeated interrogations, a suggestive photograph, and interrupted recorded statements. Hoffmann’s presentations restored the full chronology so juries could evaluate how each item entered the prosecution.