Article: Disorderly Conduct Case Verdict Thrown Out

A federal judge threw out yesterday a $201,500 verdict won a day earlier by a Portsmouth, Va., woman who said D.C. police violated her constitutional rights when they arrested her on a disorderly conduct charge in 1990.

U.S. District Judge Henry A. Mentz Jr., a senior judge from New Orleans who is temporarily assigned to the District, said the jury made a mistake. Mentz said there was "no sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to have found . . . the alleged constitutional violations and false arrest and imprisonment."

On Thursday, a six-member jury found that two police officers acted illegally when they arrested Shirley P. Langevine, a registered nurse who at the time lived in ...

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