California county pays $11M to man exonerated in 1998 murder

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A California county has paid $11 million to a man who spent two decades in prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1998. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported Tuesday that the payment settles a federal lawsuit filed by Horace Roberts accusing Riverside County and its sheriff’s department of manufacturing the murder case against him. Roberts sued in 2019, alleging investigators failed to turn over key evidence to prosecutors. He was exonerated and freed after DNA testing of crime scene evidence led to the arrests of two other men in the strangling of Terry Cheek.