EXCLUSIVE: $12.5M for Plainfield man imprisoned 22 years for murders he didn't commit

This story was first published July 14.

PLAINFIELD – A man who spent more than two decades behind bars for a savage crime he did not commit will never get back those lost years of life. But he will get millions of dollars.

Byron Halsey, who was released from prison in 2006 after being convicted of the 1985 murder of his girlfriend's two children, last week settled the wrongful conviction lawsuit against this city and the state of New Jersey for $12.5 million.

The federal lawsuit claimed police fabricated Halsey's confession, which they didn't record even though they had the means to do so, and that investigators lied on the stand.

In settling the case, authorities did not admit wrongdoing. But Halsey, 55, has become another name in a growing list of people across the country exonerated tanks to DNA evidence tested years after their convictions.

The gruesome murders of Tina Urquhart, 7, and her brother, Tyrone Urquhart, 8, shocked the community. Both were raped in the basement of their rooming house. Tina was strangled and hit with a brick while the killer stabbed Tyrone with scissors and used a brick to slam nails through his skull.

Investigators zeroed in on the distraught and hungover Halsey as a suspect the day the bodies were found, interrogating him for 12 hours, browbeating him into taking a lie-detector test (which he failed), interrogating him for yet another 12 hours before coercing him into signing a confession they had fed to him, his lawsuit said.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty against Halsey, who maintained his innocence through the one-month 1988 trial, but a holdout on the jury spared his life.

Halsey finally was exonerated in 2006 after a DNA test showed he was not the killer. The charges against him were dropped a year later.

When State Police ran the DNA results against its database, it matched a convicted rapist, Clifton Hall, a neighbor of Halsey who prosecutors had used as a trial witness.

Hall died in prison in 2009 before he could be tried for the killings.

While a semen sample had been collected from the scene, the case happened before DNA testing was used in criminal investigations.

In 1993, Halsey began asking for DNA testing but the Union County Prosecutor's Office resisted, letting Halsey remain in prison for another 13 years before finally acquiescing in 2006, two years after the Innocence Project, which advocates for the wrongfully convicted, took on his case.

In 2009 Halsey sued the city, the Union County Prosecutor's Office and the investigators involved in the case. Halsey settled the lawsuit last Wednesday.

The city's insurance company will pay $4.9 million while city taxpayers will be on the hook for another $1.37 million on behalf of former Police Officer Frank Pfeiffer.

The state will pay $5.75 million while the state's insurance company will pay another $500,000 on behalf of former Union County Prosecutor's Office Lt. Raymond Lynch.

The city on Monday approved an emergency budget expenditure to fund the first of four installment payments.

Pfeiffer retired from the county in 1995 and gets an annual $47,500 state pension while Lynch retired in 1996 and collects an annual $71,700 state pension.

Halsey will get $8.27 million of the settlement while his attorneys will get the rest, with the bulk of the attorneys' share going to the law firm of Barry Scheck, a founding lawyer with the Innocence Project, which was not involved with Halsey's lawsuit.

Halsey's attorney for the civil case, David Rudovsky of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg in Philadelphia, said Tuesday that Halsey and his legal team "are pleased."

"While we can't give him back those 22 years, this settlement both vindicates his claims and lets him go on with his life," he said.

Halsey now lives in Pennsylvania and couldn't immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

"He is happy that this whole process over at this point," his attorney said.

Halsey's settlement is among several recent high-cost payouts in wrongful conviction cases. The highest is believed to be the $20 million awarded in March to Juan Rivera of Illinois who spent 19 years in prison for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. He too was cleared by DNA.

Last year, New York awarded a $10 million settlement to Jabbar Collins who spent 15 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Like Halsey, Collins argued that police and prosecutors used illegal tactics to score a conviction at any cost.

Staff Writer Sergio Bichao: 908-243-6615; sbichao@mycentraljersey.com