CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The City of Cleveland does not have to pay a $13.2 million jury verdict against two police detectives who framed a former housing security officer for murder, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

The court’s justices in a 6-1 decision found that plaintiffs cannot force the government to pay out civil judgments on behalf its employees. Only the employee can invoke the right to be indemnified, Justice Patrick Fischer wrote in the majority’s opinion.

Justice Melody Stewart cast the lone dissenting vote.

The decision means that 63-year-old David Ayers, who spent 11 years behind bar for a murder he didn’t commit and whose lawsuit is the basis of the opinion, may never see the $13.2 million a jury awarded him.

Ayers, a former Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority security officer, was arrested in 1999 in the beating death of Dorothy Brown, 76, who lived in a housing authority high-rise in Cleveland. He was convicted at trial based primarily on the testimony of a jailhouse informant and was sentenced to life in prison.

Ayers denied confessing to the murder or even talking to the informant. He filed several appeals over the next dozen years. He prevailed in 2011 when DNA tests proved that a single pubic hair found in Dorothy Brown’s mouth did not come from him.

Ayers’ lawyers argued in the civil trial that anti-gay sentiments caused the two detectives who handled the case, Denise Kovach and Michael Cipo, to frame their client, who is gay. Evidence showed that Brown was also sexually assaulted.

A judge dismissed the city from the lawsuit before it went to trial, but city attorneys defended Kovacn and Cipo against the lawsuit when it went to trial in 2013.

Jurors decided that Kovach and Cipo were liable for Ayers’ wrongful murder conviction and awarded Ayers $13.2 million.

The city took several steps to avoid footing the bill, including hiring an attorney to help Cipo and Kovach file for bankruptcy.

Justice Fischer wrote in Wednesday’s opinion that the decision was narrow and that Ayers has raised other arguments at the trial court level that the justices did not consider.