Judge
rules Sarsfield deserves $13.6M for
wrongful conviction
By Jennifer Kavanaugh/ Daily
News Staff
Friday, October 6, 2006
MARLBOROUGH
-- Seven months after the city
settled a wrongful rape conviction
lawsuit for $2 million, a federal
judge ruled this week that Eric
Sarsfield deserves $13.6 million for
the decade he spent in prison.
Wednesday's ruling by U.S.
District Court Judge Rya Zobel
doesn't change the $2 million
settlement the city reached with
Sarsfield in March, but it does give
Sarsfield's lawyers the option to
chase after other parties, to the
extent they exist, for the rest of
that money.
The
judge's decision comes almost four
years after Sarsfield first sued the
city and several police officers
over his 1987 conviction for a rape
he did not commit. She wrote that
Sarsfield's "social and communal
life has been shredded" by his
conviction and incarceration.
"It is, of course, impossible to
make plaintiff whole and to give
back to him his lost liberty, the
time he lost from ordinary life, and
his emotional and physical health,"
Zobel wrote in her decision.
"Translating such losses into
dollars is, at best, an attempt at
reasoned judging."
The judgment breaks down to $2
million for pain and suffering from
the time after the 1986 rape until
1991, when he was confined to
maximum security in Gardner; $11
million for damages since then; and
$655,940 for economic losses
Sarsfield has incurred as a result
of the arrest and imprisonment.
"The whole thing took 20 years
of my life away," Sarsfield said,
when reached yesterday at his
Clinton home. He said he wants to
move on. "I'd like to kind of put it
behind me."
Sarsfield, now 43, was arrested
and convicted for a 1986 rape on
Pleasant Street. In his lawsuit, he
accused police officers of unfairly
targeting him as a suspect, ignoring
details that suggested his
innocence, fabricating evidence
against him, and bullying the rape
victim into identifying him as the
attacker. He was cleared by two DNA
tests after he was released.
In March, city officials said
they agreed to the $2 million
settlement because they feared a
much larger payout if the case went
to trial. In one court filing,
Sarsfield's attorneys said the
evidence and standards set by other
cases "support an award of $20
million." City Council President
Arthur Vigeant said he hadn't seen
the $2 million as a gamble at the
time.
"We thought it was fair, and we
went with the advice of counsel,"
Vigeant said yesterday. "Hopefully,
we can put this behind us, and he
can take this judgment and turn his
life around."
In settling the suit -- which
also spared the officers, most of
whom are retired, from making any
payouts -- the city signed over any
insurance rights to Sarsfield. That
meant Sarsfield's lawyers could
chase after any insurers the city
had at the time, though the city
discovered it had gaps in insurance,
and some of the insurers are no
longer in business.
"We're considering all possible
options," said Deborah Cornwall, one
of Sarsfield's attorneys, when asked
if she will pursue insurers.
Sarsfield had gotten another
$500,000 from a state fund, but
Cornwall said "no amount of money,
as the judge said in her opinion,
can ever compensate Eric Sarsfield
for what he went through. "Even
though the city and Sarsfield agreed
to a settlement, Zobel presided over
a trial to determine the total
amount of damages Sarsfield should
get. The proceedings included the
testimony of Sarsfield, his wife
Denise, the rape victim and a
psychiatrist, and the report of an
economics professor.
In a report to the court,
psychiatrist Jerome Rogoff wrote
Sarsfield had endured trauma in
prison, staying in a cell with
cockroaches and rats, and living in
fear of attacks by other inmates who
believed he was a sex offender.
Rogoff said Sarsfield suffered
from physical ailments and continues
to struggle with a serious drinking
problem, anxiety, post-traumatic
stress disorder, social phobia and
panic attacks. He was also
threatened in 2000 by a Bolton
Police officer for failing to
register as a sex offender, because
a clerical error had kept him on the
list, the court records state.
Sarsfield lost his job in May
2005, and now does some part-time
deliveries for a friend. When asked
about the fact that the suit has
revealed so much about his private
life, Sarsfield said he separates
the events from who he is as a
person.
"It's the truth, what can you
say?" Sarsfield said. "It's not
about me. It's about what happened
to me, the whole process, the whole
legal process that got us here."
(Jennifer Kavanaugh can be
reached at 508-626-4416 or at
jkavanau@cnc.com.)
