Detroit, Feb 17 (AP) A jury awarded USD 10 million to a Detroit-area man who spent nearly six years in prison for the killing of a 15-year-old girl before his conviction was thrown out at the request of prosecutors.

The jury said Alexandre Ansari's constitutional rights were violated by a Detroit police detective who concealed evidence in the fatal shooting.

Also Read | Earthquake in China: Quake of Magnitude 4.6 on Richter Scale Jolts Southern Xinjiang, No Casualty Reported.

The verdict, returned Thursday in federal court, “restores some of Mr. Ansari's dignity and will allow him to recover from the horrendous experience of being wrongfully convicted of a heinous crime he did not commit,” attorney Wolf Mueller said.

Mueller argued that police had crucial information about a different suspect, but it was not shared with the prosecutor or defence at the 2013 trial in Wayne County court.

Also Read | Who Was Alexei Navalny? Jailed Opposition Leader and Staunch Critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin Dies in Prison; All You Need To Know.

The information would have revealed that the fatal shooting of Ileana Cuevas and the wounding of two more people in 2012 was likely arranged by a heroin dealer upset over drug thefts, he said.

A failure to disclose the information would be “egregious," US District Judge Stephen Murphy III said earlier in the litigation.

The detective had denied wrongdoing. But the prosecutor's office found that he feared for his family in Texas and Mexico if the drug dealer knew he was investigating him for murder, according to evidence in the case.

In 2019, prosecutor Kym Worthy agreed to a "full and complete exoneration" of Ansari, freeing him from a life prison sentence, Mueller said. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)