New Haven settles with NSB client Scott Lewis over crooked cop case

NSB client Scott Lewis won a $9.5 million settlement from the City of New Haven after spending more than 19 years in prison for a brutal double homicide he did not commit. The settlement came early in discovery before NSB had taken a single deposition.

Mr. Lewis had been set up by a corrupt cop who was working under the orders of a notorious New Haven organized crime boss. The detective coerced three different witnesses into giving false statements implicating Mr. Lewis in the high-profile murder of a former New Haven alderman-turned-drug-courier and his lover. NSB’s complaint showed how the corrupt detective worked with the complicity of his supervisors and co-investigators to manufacture a case against Mr. Lewis through intimidation, threats, and false promises of leniency. The liability case was so overwhelming that the City of New Haven settled before significant discovery had begun.

Mr. Lewis was represented by NSB partners Nick Brustin and Emma Freudenberger, associate Farhang Heydari, and Cochran Fellow Rick Sawyer, along with co-counsel Richard Emanuel, whose postconviction work helped win Mr. Lewis’s release from prison.

New Haven Register here