Two Maryland men spent years in prison as prosecutors withheld evidence that could have cleared them, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Eric Lynn spent 4,115 days behind bars for a Montgomery County murder he didn’t commit, costing about $679,000, before a jury acquitted him in 2007. Key’ Marion Ennals lost 631 days to a wrongful Dorchester County murder charge that cost roughly $100,600; he was cleared in 2024 after a judge removed local prosecutors over withholding evidence.
In both cases, defense attorneys later uncovered violations of the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence — failures that upended lives, derailed careers and families, and, critics say, rarely led to accountability. The rule stems from the 1963 landmark decision Brady v. Maryland.
Lynn and Ennals were ultimately cleared after their respective attorneys discovered prosecutors had withheld evidence that could have undermined a key witness, violating the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to share such evidence with the defense…