Verdict Attacks Police Grilling

In a charging document, county homicide Detective Ronald Herndon wrote that Longtin admitted his involvement in Zinetti's slaying.

The investigator who took Longtin's alleged statement, now-retired sergeant Glen Clark, testified in the civil trial that after saying he chased his wife, Longtin denied killing her. After Longtin was charged with the murder, Herndon and Clark, in separate pretrial hearings, recounted Longtin's alleged statement but omitted his denial, according to testimony in the civil trial.

At the urging of a county police sex crimes detective, authorities tested the DNA found inside Zinetti's body. It matched the genetic material of a serial rapist.

That man, Nathaniel D. Oesby, 30, was convicted in 2001 of Zinetti's murder and sentenced to two terms of life in prison.

Longtin's experience was chronicled in a series of articles in The Washington Post in 2001 examining how county homicide detectives coerced false confessions from innocent people after unlawfully subjecting them to marathon interrogations, depriving them of sleep and refusing to let them speak to their lawyers.

County homicide detectives coerced false confessions from at least three other men in addition to Longtin, the articles said.

Besides Herndon and Clark, two other homicide detectives, both still active, were named in Longtin's lawsuit: Troy Harding and Robert J. Frankenfield.

Harding and Frankenfield have found themselves in controversies before.

A year ago, Maryland's Court of Special Appeals threw out the jury convictions of a man on charges of voluntary manslaughter and a handgun violation because it ruled that Frankenfield violated his rights. The appellate court found that Frankenfield, in a videotaped interview, questioned the suspect after the man had asked for an attorney five times. Under the law, police are supposed to stop questioning a suspect when he asks for a lawyer.

In 2003, Frankenfield was part of a team of detectives that charged a woman and two teenage girls from Arizona with torturing and killing a Mitchellville woman in 2002. The woman and the teenagers were incarcerated for three weeks before a county prosecutor determined that they were innocent and had them freed.

Harding was part of a team of detectives that obtained one of the other false confessions reported by The Post. Harding has said he felt good about his conduct in the cases, saying neither man confessed to him.