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Buffalo, NY (AP/WBEN) A Buffalo woman who spent more than 13 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing her teenage daughter has reached a $2.7 million settlement with the state.
Lynn DeJac Peters held a news conference Tuesday morning to discuss details of the agreement reached with the Attorney General's Office.
DeJac Peters sought $10 million from the state after being convicted in 1994 of strangling her 13-year-old daughter, Crystallynn Girard, in their Buffalo home. Her attorney, Steve Cohen, tells WBEN the state hired a forensic pathologist, and "as soon as the pathologist made the statement this was a strangulation murder and there was sperm in Crystallynn Girard, something that had never been revealed, it became clear Dennis Donohue was the murderer and the state quickly settled."
DeJac Peters' second-degree murder conviction for allegedly strangling the teen was overturned in 2007 after newly analyzed DNA evidence placed Donohue in Crystallynn's bedroom around the time she died. Erie County authorities later determined that the girl died of a cocaine overdose. Cohen says there is a suit pending against the county and the state. "(The county) gave full immunity to the killer for almost nothing. Donohue didn't testify against Lynn DeJac in the face of overwhelming evidence he killed Crystallynn Girard," explains Cohen. Cohen contends the city police failed to follow through on evidence they had, and both the city and county took steps to make sure she never got a fair retrial.