CINCINNATI, Ohio – A federal appeals court today upheld a jury's $13.2 million award to a former security guard who spent 11 years in prison for a wrongful murder conviction based on faulty evidence provided by two Cleveland detectives.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 12-page opinion denying requests by Detectives Denise Kovach and Michael Cipo to overturn the jury's verdict on behalf of David Ayers, 57, a security guard for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.

The three-judge panel rejected the detectives' claims of qualified immunity, a federal doctrine that shields police officers and other government officials from liability for violating a person's constitutional rights.

The judges said the detectives forfeited their qualified immunity defense when they failed to raise the issue during their trial on allegations of malicious prosecution in 2013. Both of the detectives have retired from the department.

Ayers stood trial in 1999 for the beating death of 76-year-old Dorothy Brown, who lived in a CMHA high-rise in Cleveland. He was convicted based primarily on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, and was sentenced to life in prison.



Ayers, however, denied confessing to the murder or even talking to the informant. He filed numerous appeals until he finally prevailed in 2011, when DNA tests proved that a single pubic hair found in Brown's mouth did not come from him.



The lawyers representing Ayers in the civil rights lawsuit argued that anti-gay sentiments caused the two detectives to frame Ayers – who is gay -- despite evidence that Brown also had been sexually assaulted.

Ayers did not fit the profile of the killer, given the obvious sexual nature of the attack, the lawyers said.



Kovach and Cipo blamed the pubic hair on the victim's messy apartment.



In 2011, the federal appeals court granted Ayers' petition for release from prison, finding that the detectives had violated Ayers' 6th Amendment right to a lawyer by planting an inmate in Ayers cell and inducing Ayers into allegedly making incriminating statements without the assistance of counsel.