WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY | Innocent man seeks millions after two years in jail

Innocent man seeks millions after two years in jail

By Shayla Reaves - bio | email
Posted By Charles Gazaway - email

NEW ALBANY, IN (WAVE) - An southern Indiana man wants officials in Floyd and Clark County to pay him millions after he spent two years in jail for a crime he did not commit. Seven pages tell a story that has taken more than two years to resolve. Donald Clark Woods is now out of jail but a legal notice threatens a lawsuit against the police and investigators who put him there. All this unless they agree to pay him $5 million in damages within 90 days.

Jason Pattison, Woods' attorney, would not let him comment on the case to us but Pattison had this to say over the phone. "For a guy to be jailed for two years without an attorney coming to see him is outrageous," said the attorney of Jenner, Auxier & Pattison in Madison, Indiana.

Woods was arrested in 2006 on child molestation charges, his case put off nine times ultimately never making it to trial. Eventually, attorney Jennifer Hinkebein Culotta got the case last year, visited Woods in the Clark County jail and she had a lot of questions about the allegations.

"They alleged somebody had placed a 4-foot long weed-eater wire into the penis of a child," said Culotta, of Culotta and Cullota LLP in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Recently, Pattison drafted a legal notice sent to the Floyd County Police Department, the Clark County Prosecutors Office, the Clark County Council and the Office of the Indiana Attorney General. In it, Woods claims he and his wife split up eight years before the alleged crime. The victim was allegedly Woods own son who was five-years-old at the time. A child, Woods said he has not had contact with for nearly ten years now.

"I just thought medically that cannot be physically possible that a weed-eater wire that's not sterilized would stay in a body eight years without any possible medical repercussions," Culotta said of reviewing the case.

After she petitioned for the child's medical reports last year, Culotta discovered an important piece of evidence that occurred one year before Woods was arrested. "In the medical reports, one year prior there had been a CT scan of the pelvis and it's apparent that there was no weed-eater wire there," Culotta said of the findings.

The news was enough to get Woods out of jail just in time for last Christmas. Still the case isn't over yet.

"In this situation we had police officers, prosecuting officers, we had the court system we had defense attorneys, if all those people are not actively investigating the case and working the case properly then you end up like we have with Donald Woods," Culotta said. "An innocent person sitting in jail for two plus years."

Charges against Woods were officially dismissed for lack of evidence in March 2009. We are still awaiting comment from the Clark County Prosecutors Office and Attorneys for the City of New Albany representing the New Albany Police Department.

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