Trial begins in lawsuit alleging Metro detectives framed woman for 2001 murder

“It’s a little bit like déjà vu,” Lobato said, testifying during the first day of a federal civil trial in which she has sued two retired Metropolitan Police Department homicide detectives for allegedly framing her for murder when she was 18 years old.

Lobato, now 41, was a teenager from Panaca when she was accused of beating and stabbing 44-year-old Duran Bailey, a homeless man who was found dead with a severed penis on July 8, 2001. She was convicted in two criminal trials and spent more than 15 years behind bars before she was released from jail in early 2018, after prosecutors dropped the charges against her and declined to pursue a third trial.

On Oct. 30, District Judge Veronica Barisich signed Lobato’s certificate of innocence, court records show, finding that Lobato “did not commit the offenses for which she was convicted and is actually innocent.”

The judge found that Lobato is entitled to monetary relief under a 2019 state law allowing for people released from wrongful imprisonment to sue to receive a certificate of innocence and compensation.

The federal trial that began Monday in front of U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware is over a lawsuit filed by Lobato in 2019. The trial is expected to last into next week, when it will be up to a jury to decide if retired Metro homicide detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle fabricated evidence against Lobato and intentionally caused her emotional distress.

“The defendants framed her; they framed her for a crime she didn’t commit,” attorney Elizabeth Wang, one of the lawyers representing Lobato, told the jury during opening statements on Monday.

Wang alleged that detectives “manipulated” Lobato during a police interview, misrepresented witness statements, omitted facts in police reports and destroyed notes from portions of witness interviews that were not recorded.

Attorney Craig Anderson, who is representing Thowsen and LaRochelle, told the jury that Lobato’s certificate of innocence does not establish that the detectives fabricated any evidence. He disputed Lobato’s claims that she did not make several statements during her interview with detectives, which officials have previously claimed as a confession to Bailey’s murder.

“It’s a puzzle — there’s a lot going on here,” Anderson told the jury.

In 2017, a judge granted Lobato’s request for a third trial after finding that ineffective assistance of counsel may have played a role in her second conviction of voluntary manslaughter. Forensic expert testimony pointed to Bailey’s time of death being late July 8, when there was uncontested evidence that Lobato was in Panaca, the eastern Nevada community 170 miles from Las Vegas.

Bailey was found dead near a dumpster in west Las Vegas. He had been stabbed multiple times, several of his teeth had been knocked out, his midsection was wrapped in plastic wrap and he was covered in trash. His severed penis was found several feet away from his body.

Fingerprints and shoe prints found at the scene did not match Lobato, and no blood was found on a baseball bat officials have previously alleged Lobato used to beat Bailey, according to court records.

Lobato was tied to the case after she told several people that she fought off a man who attempted to sexually assault her in the parking lot of an east Las Vegas Budget Suites in May 2001, and that she had slashed at his lower body with a knife, her attorneys argued Monday.

Anderson told the jury that detectives interviewed several witnesses who said they had heard Lobato had cut off a man’s penis in Las Vegas around the time of Bailey’s death. Lobato’s attorneys argued that no one ever claimed Lobato had said she had killed a man, and that the attack happened over a month before Bailey was killed.

Lobato’s attorneys argued Monday that police went to interview Lobato in late July 2001 with the intent to arrest her. Wang said police made Lobato “doubt her own memory,” and that Lobato thought police wanted to speak with her about the man she said had attacked her in May 2001.

Lobato also testified about that attack during her first trial in 2002, when she was convicted of murder and sexual penetration of a dead body.

When she took the witness stand on Monday, she told the jury that she hoped the current trial would end “very much different” than her previous court proceedings.

Lobato testified on Monday to experiencing several sexual assaults during her childhood and as a teenager.

“I promised myself that it was never going to happen again,” she said.

Lobato has previously said she didn’t report the man who attacked her in May 2001 because she did not have good experiences when she reported prior sexual assaults. During her initial trial, prosecutors insinuated that those sexual assaults could have led Lobato to kill Bailey in a rage, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in 2002.

Attorney David Owens, who is also representing Lobato, began questioning her on Monday by asking why she pursued the lawsuit against the detectives.

“They stole my life,” she said. “And they never even told me they were sorry.”

Lobato is expected to continue testifying on Tuesday.

Attorney David Owens was misnamed in a previous version of this story.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.