{"id":11575891,"date":"2025-07-24T10:08:38","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T14:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/?p=11575891"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:43:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:43:18","slug":"wrongful-convictions-memorial-day-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2025\/07\/24\/wrongful-convictions-memorial-day-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"Man sues over wrongful convictions in Harford County \u2018Memorial Day Murders\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man who spent 32 years in prison for a pair of 1981 homicides is suing the estates of former Harford County officials for implicating him in the killings and\u00a0wrongfully convicting him twice.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, which names the county&#8217;s former top prosecutor and Harford County sheriff&#8217;s deputies who investigated the &#8220;Memorial Day Murders,&#8221; comes after John Norman Huffington was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2023\/01\/13\/outgoing-gov-larry-hogan-pardons-john-norman-huffington-in-marylands-infamous-memorial-day-murders\/\">exonerated by a judge and pardoned by former Gov. Larry Hogan<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2023\/07\/05\/maryland-approves-29-million-for-harford-county-man-who-spent-32-years-in-prison-for-infamous-memorial-day-murders\/\">awarded $2.9 million by the state.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Huffington<strong>, <\/strong>62, said the decades he spent behind bars had cost him the ability to have a family of his own and time with his aging parents. His mother died while he was imprisoned; his father was in his 90s and suffering from Alzheimer&#8217;s when he was released.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like this. I don&#8217;t like coming into these rooms. I don&#8217;t like coming back into the courtroom and relitigating these things,&#8221; Huffington said at a Thursday news conference in Harbor East. &#8220;But I&#8217;m doing it because I owe it to my family, I owe it to a lot of people, and we&#8217;ve got to fix it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit seeks damages for deprivation of liberty without due process, malicious prosecution, false arrest and other civil rights violations. In addition to suing Harford County through its executive, Bob Cassilly, the lawsuit names the estate of his older brother, Joseph Cassilly, the county&#8217;s longtime state&#8217;s attorney who was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2021\/10\/22\/retired-harford-states-attorney-cassilly-disbarred-over-handling-of-memorial-day-murders-his-reaction-oh-whatever\/\">disbarred for his conduct<\/a> in Huffington&#8217;s case. The Maryland Court of Appeals, now called the Maryland Supreme Court, found that the Republican prosecutor lied about documents that undermined the credibility of an investigating FBI agent. Filed last week, the lawsuit accuses the elder Cassilly of &#8220;brazen misconduct&#8221; but says he &#8220;did not act alone,&#8221; naming other investigators who it says &#8220;fabricated and coerced knowingly false witness statements and withheld material, exculpatory evidence.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Joseph Cassilly, who served for 36 years as Harford&#8217;s state&#8217;s attorney, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2025\/01\/17\/joseph-cassilly-former-longtime-harford-county-states-attorney-dies-at-74\/\">died in January<\/a>. He had maintained that his statements about the 1981 case <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2021\/10\/29\/joseph-cassilly-my-statements-about-1981-double-murder-case-remain-true-commentary\/\">were true<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased,&#8221; Bob Cassilly said in a statement, praising his brother&#8217;s military and government service. &#8220;Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case &#8211; the county was never the defendants\u2019 employer; however, as Joe\u2019s brother, and as a longtime public servant, I am proud that Harford County has always supported the professionals in law enforcement and the criminal justice system who protect innocent citizens from violent criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The county is listed as a defendant, and Huffington attorney John Marrese said that the issue of whether it&#8217;s liable &#8220;will be briefed and argued zealously.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Cassilly &#8220;was disbarred because of what he did in John Huffington&#8217;s case. You don&#8217;t get disbarred easily, that&#8217;s not something that happens,&#8221; said Brian Eldridge, another lawyer representing Huffington. He called Cassilly&#8217;s conduct in Huffington&#8217;s case &#8220;unethical&#8221; and &#8220;reprehensible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want to hold him accountable, even in his passing,&#8221; Eldridge said.<\/p>\n<p>Huffington was twice convicted of the killings of Diane Becker, 21, who was beaten and stabbed to death on May 25, 1981, in her recreational vehicle in Abingdon, and Joseph Hudson, her boyfriend, who was fatally shot and discovered on a secluded path a few miles away.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators had said that the pair were killed over cocaine and cash. Prosecutors had relied on now-discredited testimony that hairs found at the murder scene matched Huffington, who was 18 at the time of the killings. He was sentenced to death after being convicted the second time, but that sentence was overturned, and Huffington was resentenced to two life terms. He was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2013\/07\/18\/huffington-granted-500000-bond-murder-victims-family-outraged\/\">freed in 2013<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2017\/12\/06\/huffington-sentenced-to-time-served-for-1981-harford-double-murder\/\">sentenced again to time served<\/a>, and Hogan granted him a full innocence pardon in the final days of the Republican governor&#8217;s administration.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors had tried Huffington and his friend, Deno Kanaras, separately for the murders. A jury convicted Kanaras of felony murder in Becker\u2019s death, and he ultimately served 27 years of his life sentence before being released in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit filed last week alleges that prosecutors relied heavily on Kanaras as a key witness in Huffington&#8217;s case, granting him and his family &#8220;extraordinary latitude&#8221; and using him &#8220;to fabricate a patently false and ever-evolving story implicating&#8221; Huffington. The Kanaras family was well-known in the community and owned a restaurant  frequented by Harford County law enforcement, the lawsuit says. Huffington&#8217;s lawyers said that Kanaras testified &#8220;effectively that he was held hostage by John while John committed the murders,&#8221; and that prosecutors had concealed blood test results that cast doubt on his testimony.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the prosecution&#8217;s case also relied on hair testing by FBI agent Michael P. Malone, whose analysis turned out to be wrong. A 1997 Department of Justice probe further found Malone had a history of testifying falsely, conducting inaccurate analysis of hair samples and making claims that exceeded the scope of scientific testing. The Justice Department informed Cassilly in 1999 that the agent had testified falsely in Huffington&#8217;s case, but Cassilly &#8220;buried&#8221; the letter and did not provide that information to Huffington&#8217;s lawyers<strong>, <\/strong>Marrese said.<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8220;There needs to be a reckoning for this man&#8217;s life being denied and completely derailed,&#8221; said Antonio M. Romanucci, one of Huffington&#8217;s lawyers. &#8220;The people and the agencies that were involved must be held to account for the harms and losses that they caused John.&#8221;<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Because of Huffington&#8217;s lengthy prison term, he received one of the largest awards under Maryland&#8217;s Walter Lomax Act, which regulates financial compensation for people who were wrongfully convicted in the state.<\/p>\n<p>Using the civil courts gives Huffington&#8217;s team the ability to question any living witnesses and obtain documents &#8220;that perhaps John still hasn&#8217;t seen,&#8221; Marrese said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be able to hopefully answer questions that investigators either didn&#8217;t want to answer, didn&#8217;t think to answer, or they knew the answer and didn&#8217;t document it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There&#8217;s both the opportunity to recover money, and there&#8217;s the opportunity to investigate this further and continue to prove John&#8217;s name is innocent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Huffington, who has since published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johnhuffington.com\/\">book<\/a> on his case, worked as Living Classrooms&#8217; director of workforce development after his release and has since become an advocate for exonerating people from wrongful convictions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t help but acknowledge 32 lost years, but what I refuse is to have 32 wasted years,&#8221; Huffington said on Thursday. He said that &#8220;one of the proudest things&#8221; he&#8217;s been able to do is teach a wrongful conviction awareness and avoidance class to police recruits in Illinois.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a little bit ironic to be in a room with a hundred police cadets, but they want to hear, and they kind of look at you like, &#8216;How did this happen?&#8217; Well, it happens, and that&#8217;s the problem,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><em>Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:dbelson@baltsun.com\">dbelson@baltsun.com<\/a>, on X as @DanBelson_\u00a0or on Signal as @danbels.62.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Norman Huffington, who spent 32 years in prison for a pair of 1981 homicides, is suing Harford County and the estates of former\u00a0officials for wrongfully convicting him twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":11576928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-07-24T17:33:17Z","apple_news_api_id":"1d950640-6a25-472e-b6e2-c82d536c51b0","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-07-24T19:43:21Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AHZUGQGolRy624sgtU2xRsA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"middle","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"subheadline":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[503,86,83,84,85],"tags":[],"feature":[],"location":[325,223],"type-of-work":[],"coauthors":[413],"class_list":["post-11575891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aegis","category-crime-public-safety","category-latest-headlines","category-local-news","category-news","location-harford-county","location-maryland"],"post_status":"","edit_last":0,"edit_lock":0,"highlights":"","original_byline":"","original_canonical":"","original_category":"","original_email":"","original_id":0,"original_pubdate":"","original_source":"","primary_section":"503","primary_tag":0,"print_workflow_body":{"deck_headline":"","print_title":"Man sues over wrongful convictions in Harford County \u2018Memorial Day Murders\u2019","print_subheadline":"","print_priority":"","print_placement":"cover","print_planned_ready":"","print_pub_date":"","print_slug":"TBS-L-WRONGFULSUIT-0725","print_content":"<p>A man who spent 32 years in prison for a pair of 1981 homicides is suing Harford County and the estates of former officials for wrongfully convicting him twice.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, which names the county's former top prosecutor and Harford County sheriff's deputies who investigated the \"Memorial Day Murders,\" comes after John Norman Huffington was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2023\/01\/13\/outgoing-gov-larry-hogan-pardons-john-norman-huffington-in-marylands-infamous-memorial-day-murders\/\">exonerated in a pardon by former Gov. Larry Hogan<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2023\/07\/05\/maryland-approves-29-million-for-harford-county-man-who-spent-32-years-in-prison-for-infamous-memorial-day-murders\/\">awarded $2.9 million by the state.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Huffington said in a statement that the decades he spent behind bars cost him the ability to have a family of his own and time with his aging parents. His mother died while he was imprisoned; his father was in his 90s and suffering from Alzheimer's when he was released.<\/p>\n<p>\"Neither of my parents ever got to see and understand my name was cleared and I was free,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to suing Harford County through its executive, Bob Cassilly, the lawsuit names the estate of his older brother, Joseph Cassilly, the county's longtime state's attorney who was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2021\/10\/22\/retired-harford-states-attorney-cassilly-disbarred-over-handling-of-memorial-day-murders-his-reaction-oh-whatever\/\">disbarred for his conduct<\/a> in Huffington's case. The Maryland Court of Appeals, now called the Maryland Supreme Court, found that the Republican prosecutor lied about documents that undermined the credibility of an investigating FBI agent. Filed last week, the lawsuit accuses the elder Cassilly of \"brazen misconduct\" but says he \"did not act alone,\" naming other investigators who it says \"fabricated and coerced knowingly false witness statements and withheld material, exculpatory evidence.\"<\/p>\n<p>Brian Eldridge, an attorney representing Huffington, said in a statement that the case was \"maddening in terms of just how badly John was mistreated by the criminal justice system.\"<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Cassilly, who served for 36 years as Harford's state's attorney, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2025\/01\/17\/joseph-cassilly-former-longtime-harford-county-states-attorney-dies-at-74\/\">died in January.<\/a> He had maintained that his statements about the 1981 case <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2021\/10\/29\/joseph-cassilly-my-statements-about-1981-double-murder-case-remain-true-commentary\/\">were true.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\"Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased ...\" Bob Cassilly said in a statement, praising his brother's military and government service. \"Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case \u2014 the county was never the defendants\u2019 employer; however, as Joe\u2019s brother, and as a longtime public servant, I am proud that Harford County has always supported the professionals in law enforcement and the criminal justice system who protect innocent citizens from violent criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Huffington was twice convicted of the killings of Diane Becker, 21, who was beaten and stabbed to death on May 25, 1981, in her recreational vehicle in Abingdon, and Joseph Hudson, her boyfriend, who was fatally shot and discovered on a secluded path a few miles away.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators had said that the pair were killed over cocaine and cash. Prosecutors had relied on now-discredited testimony that hairs found at the murder scene matched Huffington, who was 18 at the time of the killings. He was sentenced to death after being convicted the second time, but that sentence was overturned, and Huffington was resentenced to two life terms. He was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2013\/07\/18\/huffington-granted-500000-bond-murder-victims-family-outraged\/\">freed in 2013<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2017\/12\/06\/huffington-sentenced-to-time-served-for-1981-harford-double-murder\/\">sentenced again to time served<\/a>, and Hogan granted him a full innocence pardon in the final days of the Republican governor's administration.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors had tried Huffington and his friend, Deno Kanaras, separately for the murders. A jury convicted Kanaras of felony murder in Becker\u2019s death, and he ultimately served 27 years of his life sentence before being released in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit filed last week alleges that prosecutors relied heavily on Kanaras as a key witness in Huffington's case, granting him and his family \"extraordinary latitude\" and using him \"to fabricate a patently false and ever-evolving story implicating\" Huffington. Kanaras' family was well-known in the community and owned a restaurant that was frequented by Harford County law enforcement, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the prosecution's case also relied on hair testing by FBI agent Michael P. Malone, whose analysis turned out to be wrong. A 1997 Department of Justice probe further found Malone had a history of testifying falsely, conducting inaccurate analysis of hair samples and making claims that exceeded the scope of scientific testing. The Justice Department informed Cassilly that the agent had testified falsely in Huffington's case, but Cassilly did not provide that information to Huffington's lawyers.<\/p>\n<p>Huffington \"paid dearly for the insufficient investigation and prosecution with decades of his life, deep trauma to his personal relationships, and a derailment of his reputation, career aspirations and earning potential,\" Antonio M. Romanucci, one of Huffington's lawyers, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Because of Huffington's lengthy prison term, he received one of the largest awards under Maryland's Walter Lomax Act, which regulates financial compensation for people who were wrongfully convicted in the state.<\/p>\n<p><em>Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at\u00a0dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_\u00a0or on Signal as @danbels.62.<\/em><\/p>\n","print_budget_line":"","print_excerpt":"John Norman Huffington, who spent 32 years in prison for a pair of 1981 homicides, is suing Harford County and the estates of former\u00a0officials for wrongfully convicting him twice.","print_notes":"","photo_limits":"Photo limits are: 1 featured image, 5 featured gallery images, 5 embedded gallery images and 5 in-article embedded images. Articles that exceed these limits will not export. Please adjust images to reflect these limits.","print_featured_gallery_richtext":"","print_inline_galleries_richtext":"","print_inline_images_richtext":""},"print_workflow_exported_ts":"1753379470","print_workflow_exported_username":"Molly Fellin Spence","print_workflow_shapes":"","print_workflow_side":{"print_section":24280,"print_status":24232,"print_endpoint":"tribune","add_export_buttons":""},"really_short_title":"","short_title":"","syndication_source":"","market_neutral_title":"","social_title":"","dfm_hub_post_id":0,"paywall_level":"premium","featured_media_content":{"content_type":"image","content":{"id":11576928,"title":"John Huffington and his lawyers announce a civil lawsuit for his wrongful double murder conviction and incarceration","filename":"TBS-L-WRONGFULDEATH-LAM-P1.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/TBS-L-WRONGFULDEATH-LAM-P1.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/?attachment_id=11576928","alt":"","author":"36","description":"","caption":"John Huffington wipes sway tears as he and lawyers talk about the civil lawsuit for his wrongful double murder conviction and more than 32 years of incarceration he suffered.  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