The story was edited in December 2018 to remove identifying information in accordance with cleveland.com's right-to-be-forgotten policy.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County judge was right to dismiss the rape case against a former Laurel School softball coach mid-trial after a Shaker Heights police detective lied under-oath about concealing exculpatory evidence, an appeals court has ruled.

The 8th District Court of Appeals held that detective Jessica Page acted in bad faith and deprived the coach of his constitutional right to due process when she lost or destroyed evidence that could have called Newton's guilt into question, and then didn't tell anyone about it.

"The record reflects that Detective Page lost or destroyed potentially exculpatory evidence that could have contradicted [the girl's] trial testimony and, in attempting to conceal this fact, went so far as to lie to another detective, the prosecuting attorney and the trial court about the circumstances of its disappearance," the court wrote.

The coach has filed a lawsuit accusing Page, the Shaker Heights police department of malicious prosecution and the former student who accused him of defamation.

That case is pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley's office is considering whether to to appeal the court's decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, a spokesman said.

Page has been placed on administrative leave while the department conducts an internal review into her handling of the case, Commander John Cole, who is also named in the lawsuit, said Friday.

The existence of the second diagram was unearthed during the girl's testimony on the second day of the coach's trial on two counts each of rape, sexual battery, kidnapping and abduction.

Page met with the girl in March 2015 and created a diagram of the equipment room, which depicted several buckets of softballs. Page interviewed more witnesses in the following months, including the coach and another teacher at the school whose accounts of the room contradicted the girl's statement, Russo's order notes.

Page asked for another interview with the girl to discuss the discrepancies and produced a second diagram of the room. The new diagram contradicted the layout of the room and the girl's previous statements about the attack, and it was not contained in the investigative file when Shaker Heights police gave it to prosecutors before the case went to a grand jury.

Assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor Maggie Kane had asked Page in an email about a month before Newton's trial was set to begin about a possible second diagram.

"If it existed, it is in the file," Page replied

Page lied on the stand to Russo, the appeals court held. She said that she told Kane the week before the coach's trial that she thought there was a second diagram but could not find it.

Page admitted under further questioning that she did not bring up the diagram. She said that she did not remember the second diagram until Kane asked her about one, and she claimed it never existed.

She watched video from her second interview of the girl and realized it was made and, when she couldn't find it, she just decided not to tell Kane or her partner.

Russo dismissed the case with a strongly worded opinion saying Page "went rogue" and acted with "flagrant disregard for the laws we live under."

Cuyahoga County prosecutors appealed Russo's decision to the appeals court within days of the dismissal.

The coach's lawyers, Larry Zukerman and Paul Daiker, praised the appeals court's decision.

"I've never seen a case more on point where a detective was caught destroying evidence that was helpful to a defendant," Zukkerman said. "If not this case, than what case?"

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