In photo, Phillip Bivens. He has been free since a judge set aside his conviction Sept. 16, 2010, and now is living in New Orleans. While in prison, he contracted hepatitis, which has led to medical problems, including liver cancer. From [HERE] and [HERE] A federal lawsuit filed yesterday alleges Forrest County law enforcement officers beat and/or threatened three African-American men to get false confessions out of them in a 1979 murder and rape of Eva Gail Patterson. A Mississippi judge cleared the three in 2010 after DNA testing secured by the Innocence Project New Orleans proved their innocence and pointed to the real perpetrator.

Phillips Bivens, Bobby Ray Dixon and Larry Ruffin together spent 82 years behind bars in Mississippi for a crime they didn’t commit. Ruffin was accidentally electrocuted in prison in 2002. He had been ordered to fix a fan in a prison office, despite a lack of training in electrical repair. Dixon died in November 2010 just months after his release because he was dying of lung cancer. 

Bivens and Dixon pled guilty to the crime and testified against Ruffin in exchange for life sentences. They recanted shortly after, saying they had been beaten and forced to implicate Ruffin.

DNA testing pointed to the involvement of Andrew Harris, who was already serving a life sentence for a separate rape committed two years after the 1979 crime. Harris was indicted for the crime two months after Bivens and Dixon were exonerated. According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Hattiesburg, authorities received the name of the true perpetrator during the investigation but ignored it.

Authorities targeted Ruffin, “despite the complete lack of evidence connecting him to the crime, violently beat him and threatened his life using explicitly racial language to coerce him into confessing,” according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Hattiesburg.

Authorities disregarded his alibi, ignored evidence that corroborated his innocence, fabricated confessions from Dixon and Bivens and coerced them into falsely testifying against Ruffin, the lawsuit claims. “(Authorities) engaged in … conscience-shocking misconduct that led to the conviction and wrongful imprisonment of an innocent man.”

Authorities ignored a lack of evidence and failed to see the contradictions between Ruffin’s false confession and the evidence they actually did have.

“Mr. Ruffin’s confession included the statement that Mr. Ruffin had used a blue Ford that he borrowed from a friend at Brooks Bar; the police never attempted to locate this car,” the lawsuit says. “The confession stated that Mr. Ruffin had worn tennis shoes borrowed from his friend Jessie White during the crime; officers never questioned White about his shoes or attempted to inspect them.”

Patterson’s young son gave a general description of his mother’s killer — a light-skinned black man with bushy hair.

In contrast, Ruffin was dark-skinned with short hair. He also didn’t own a car or a pair of tennis shoes that matched the shoe print.

The son described only one man, but authorities wound up blaming three men for the murder. [MORE]