By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

A citizen of Washington who was falsely accused and incarcerated for an alleged arson received a one hundred thousand dollar settlement in exchange for dismissal of her Section 1983 case against the investigating officer who withheld exculpable evidence from her defense, including information identifying a possible suspect.

The sixty-six-year-old Plaintiff was held in jail for a month and subjected to eight months of house arrest after being charged with Arson in the First Degree after a fire at a Dollar Tree Store in Kent.

Apparently to the investigating officer it was a righteous case that a sixty-six year old disabled woman with no criminal history was an arsonist but that information from another investigator who received a tip the day of the fire that a gang-banger and convicted arsonist with multiple prior convictions had bragged that he torched the store as a diversion to cover his shoplifting was not worthwhile enough to provide the prosecutor’s office or her defense.

Had it not been for the efforts of her criminal defense attorney, her potential legal jeopardy could have become much worse.