Two legal experts told Mid-Hudson News that they believe Edward Holley will have a weak case if he decides to file a lawsuit against the State Police.
Holley has filed a notice of claim against the State Police and Orange County, three months after he was acquitted in the murder of Megan McDonald. Filing a notice of claim is the first step to sue a municipality or government entity for an alleged wrongful action.
“I can’t imagine that (Holley) will be successful with a lawsuit against the State Police,” said Richard Klein, Professor Emeritus with the Touro Law Center in New York City and a former trial attorney. “Just because you got a not guilty verdict, it doesn’t mean you turn around and sue the cops that arrested you. I understand that (Holley) spent some time in jail, and there may have been some misconduct on the part of investigators. But, unless his constitutional rights were violated, I don’t see a lawsuit going anywhere.”
Klein explained that law enforcement is protected by qualified immunity. According to the Legal Law Institute at Cornell University, qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that shields government officials, including law enforcement officers, from civil liability in lawsuits for actions taken while performing their duties, unless their conduct violates a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right of which a reasonable person would have known.
The most serious allegations in the 96-page claim, filed in Orange County Court, are directed at the State Police. The filing accuses five State Police investigators of misconduct during the investigation and prosecution that ultimately led to Holley’s 2023 arrest in connection with McDonald’s murder, which occurred two decades earlier in the Town of Wallkill.
David Shapiro, MPA, Inspection and Oversight program director at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said the State Police’s investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Holley could have been motivated by malice with an improper purpose to convict the defendant without sufficient persuasive evidence
He added that physical evidence during the trials was inadequate and that circumstantial evidence “was unclear in totality.”
“Were the investigation and prosecution deficient? Yes,” said Shapiro, a former Essex County, N.J., prosecutor and FBI special agent. “Were the investigation and prosecution an egregious deviation from proper procedure? Probably not.”
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