Baltimore to pay $11 million settlement to wrongly convicted man who spent 25 years in prison

Anthony Hall spent 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Now, Baltimore City will pay him $11 million to settle his claims that police threatened witnesses into framing him for the killing. 

The witnesses previously recanted, and Wednesday, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott offered an apology. 

Decades of pain 

In July 1991, Gerard Dorsey was gunned down in an alley off North Brice Street in a desolate West Baltimore alley. Police quickly identified a suspect, Anthony Hall. 

Hall was 29 years old at the time and had two young children. 

Convicted after a trial in the Spring of 1992, Hall would spend years behind bars for second-degree murder and a weapons conviction. 

"How personal that is for me as someone who when this happened was seven years old and who lived through the years of zero tolerance and lived through that kind of policing," Mayor Scott told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren. 

Scott added, "The police department is not where we want it to be, but it's a hell of a lot better than where was when I was a young person."

The lawsuit 

Hall sued the city, accusing police of intentional misconduct by forcing people in the neighborhood to lie about what they saw. 

There was no physical evidence tying Hall to the killing, and authorities were never able to develop a motive. They relied on two primary witnesses. 

In a sworn statement, one of them, Nancy Hill, said detectives "treated me like a suspect. They repeatedly accused me of lying. They threatened to lock me up for withholding evidence related to the murder of Mr. Dorsey if I did not tell their version of events."

Hill wrote, "After hours of being interrogated, crying, and wanting to protect my children, I said what the detectives wanted: That I saw Mr. Hall run by me before I heard the gunshot killing Mr. Dorsey. That was a false 'statement.'"

"I am sorry he had to go through that. That's a long time for something that you did not do," Mayor Scott said. "And $11 million cannot make up for time lost with family and time lost with people."

Hall already received $2.36 million from the state and an apology from Governor Wes Moore on Valentines Day 2024.

"I first want to say to Mr. Hall, who I hope is listening, how deeply sorry we are for the wrongs that happened to you," Governor Moore said at the time. 

Moore noted Hall's original defense attorney was disbarred in 1992 for ethics and tax violations.  

The governor also highlighted problems with the case against Hall "including prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence and the police pressuring and intimidating witnesses that they put on the stand to make sure that Mr. Hall got convicted."

Approving the settlement 

Baltimore's spending board approved the $11 million settlement, one of the city's largest ever, without any opposition.

Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen praised reforms within the Baltimore Police Department he hopes will prevent what happened all those years ago from happening again. 

"You can reduce violence. You can reduce homicides. You can reduce shootings, and you do not have to do it in a way that is unconstitutional, that coerces false confessions, that is just plain wrong in how people are treated," Cohen said. 

He noted, "This is not an isolated incident where we've got someone whose life and livelihood was so badly harmed by a wrongful conviction that many decades later, we are now paying out $11 million to settle up. This is why we've changed policing in Baltimore."

The settlement will be paid out in two installments: $6 million dollars immediately and the other $5 million next year. 

WJZ Investigates reached out to Hall's attorneys but has not heard back.