ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A Maryland man who was wrongly imprisoned for 32 years, including a decade on death row, for two killings he did not commit is suing former law enforcement officials in a lawsuit announced Thursday, though four of the five people named as defendants are deceased.
John Huffington was pardoned by then-Gov. Larry Hogan in January 2023. Hogan cited prosecutorial misconduct in granting a full innocence pardon to Huffington in connection with a 1981 double slaying in Harford County. A Maryland board approved $2.9 million in compensation for Huffington later that year during Gov. Wes Moore’s administration.
Huffington said in a statement Thursday that “it took many, many painful years, but the truth eventually came out.” Just 18 at the time of his arrest, he said neither of his parents ever got to see and understand that his name had been cleared and he was set free.
“All of those years I spent behind bars damaged and strained my relationships, cost me the ability to have a family of my own, cost me the ability to be with my mother when she died, cost me precious time with my father who was in his nineties and suffering from Alzheimer’s when I finally was released,” he added.
Huffington, 62, always maintained his innocence. He was released from Patuxent Institution in 2013 after serving 32 years of two life sentences.
He was convicted twice in the killings known as the “Memorial Day Murders.” Diane Becker was stabbed to death in her recreational vehicle, while her 4-year-old son, who was inside, was not harmed. Joseph Hudson, Becker’s boyfriend, was fatally shot and found a few miles (kilometers) away. A second suspect in the slayings testified against Huffington, was convicted of first-degree murder, and served 27 years.
Prosecutors relied on testimony that was later discredited about hair found at the crime scene purportedly matching Huffington’s.
He appealed his first conviction in 1981. In 1983, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death. Prosecutors later commuted that sentence to two life terms.
Questions about evidence in the case arose when The Washington Post uncovered an FBI report in 2011 that found the FBI agent who analyzed hair evidence in Huffington’s case may not have used reliable science, or even tested the hair at all. The report had been written in 1999, but Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly didn’t provide it to Huffington’s lawyers.
A Frederick County judge vacated Huffington’s convictions and ordered a new trial in 2013 after Huffington presented new evidence using DNA testing that was not available during his earlier trials. When the hair evidence was tested for DNA more than 30 years later, the results showed it was not Huffington’s hair.
Maryland’s highest court unanimously voted to disbar Cassilly in 2021. The court found he withheld exculpatory evidence in the 1981 double murder and lied about it in the following years.
Cassilly, who maintained he did nothing wrong, retired in 2019. He died in January.
His brother, Bob Cassilly, who is now the Harford County executive, said in a statement that his brother was a decorated war hero who was injured while serving his country and served as the county’s state’s attorney for 36 years while in a wheelchair.
“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased, as are the other named defendants, except for one who is almost 80,” Cassilly said. “Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case — the county was never the defendants’ employer.”
Huffington also is suing the assistant state’s attorney on his case, Gerard Comen, the Harford County government, and the county sheriff’s office detectives, David Saneman, William Van Horn and Wesley J. Picha. All but Saneman are now dead, according to the lawsuit filed July 15 in federal court in Baltimore.
Saneman told The Washington Post on Wednesday he had not seen or heard of the lawsuit and declined to comment.