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Wrongly Imprisoned Man May Press Case Against Detective

Richard Bauer
Yakima Police Department

A Yakima police detective must now face accusations that he fabricated evidence against a man who spent nearly ten years in prison after he was wrongly convicted of rape and burglary.

A panel of federal appeals judges has overruled a holding by a Spokane trial judge that Ted Louis Bradford waited too long to file a civil rights abuse claim against Yakima police detective Joe Schershligt in a rape and burglary case in 1995.

Bradford, who was 23 years old at the time, was exonerated in 2003 when DNA tests proved he was not the man who attacked a woman in her home.

Incredibly, even though his conviction was wiped out, Yakima prosecutors chose to try him again on even more serious charges - but this time, he was found not guilty.

Once Bradford was finally out from under the criminal cloud, he turned on the detective who interrogated him for hours so many years ago, and finally got him to falsely confess.

A Spokane federal judge held that Bradford had waited too long for his legal counterattack, but the appeals judges disagreed and sent the case back.

The question will be whether the detective is entitled to immunity on the civil rights complaint, or if he must answer for his conduct.