Law360 (September 8, 2026, 6:08 PM EDT) -- The Second Circuit has partially revived a civil lawsuit from a New York City man wrongly convicted of a 1989 murder, giving the man another shot to hold the city accountable for violating his civil rights, and ruling that the cold case investigation of the killing fabricated evidence that affected the outcome of his trial.

The three-judge panel found that while some of Ricardo Jimenez's claims were correctly dismissed, he correctly alleged that an investigation nearly a decade after he was incorrectly convicted of murder, and that he can potentially bring civil liability claims against the city under Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York . The panel sent the case back for a federal judge to determine whether Jimenez sufficiently alleged that the city failed to provide adequate training on prosecutors' evidence disclosure requirements.

"The court below, finding that Jimenez failed to allege a constitutional violation sufficient to support Monell liability, addressed neither the "policy or custom" element nor the causation element of Jimenez's claim against the City of New York," Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi said in the opinion. "We therefore remand this matter to the district court to make an initial determination, in light of the law as set forth in this opinion, of whether Jimenez adequately pled his Monell claim against the City of New York."

The opinion provides an exhaustive account of the 1989 shooting of Sean Worrell in a movie theater in the Bronx following an altercation in the theater's concession stand line. A teenage employee who saw both the altercation and shooting identified the shooter as "Leon," and gave detectives a woman's name who the employee believed was the suspect's girlfriend, the opinion said.

Police continued their investigation and, as part of it, showed the employee and the woman a single photo of Jimenez, and they both identified him as a suspect. Jimenez was arrested, but after the employee stopped cooperating, police released Jimenez from custody, the opinion said.

The case was assigned to an NYPD cold case detective, Wendell Stradford, around 1999, and working with an assistant district attorney from the Bronx, the case against Jimenez was reopened. The movie theater employee then began cooperating with the prosecution again, and the duo also gathered testimony from two other key witnesses, including a jailhouse informant, the opinion said.

The cold case investigation led to Jimenez being convicted of second degree murder in 2007 and being sentenced to 22 years in state prison. Jimenez filed a state appeal, and later a subsequent habeas petition in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the opinion said.

The federal court found that throughout the process of the cold case investigation, the assistant district attorney hid the prosecution's promises to a cooperating witness. This suppression of evidence led the court to grant Jimenez's habeas petition, the opinion said.

Jimenez in July 2023 filed a civil suit against the city, the Bronx district attorney and detectives who investigated his case, both initially and as a cold case. A federal court dismissed all the lawsuit's claims in 2025, finding that Jimenez had not sufficiently proven the municipal liability claims or that the detectives were connected to his wrongful conviction, the opinion said.

The Second Circuit revived claims against the city, finding that under Monell, Jimenez had plausibly alleged evidence in his case had been unfairly suppressed. The panel said that because Jimenez sufficiently alleged a violation under Brady v. Maryland , the civil claims should be allowed to continue.

The panel also found that Detective Stradford should be made to face the claims that they fabricated evidence. The panel found that the detective and ADA likely caused two of the state's star witnesses to fabricate evidence by offering them various inducements, including reaching out to federal prosecutors about a separate case involving one of the witnesses, the opinion said.

The panel agreed with the district court's dismissal in a number of ways, including finding that the Bronx District Attorney's office should be dropped from the suit. Jimenez was unable to properly allege in the lawsuit that the Bronx DA's office deliberately engaged in malicious prosecution, the opinion said, adding that it was an improper defendant.

Joshua D. Kelner, who represents Jimenez in the civil lawsuit, told Law360 in an email statement that the lawsuit is about holding bad prosecutors and detectives accountable.

"Ricardo Jimenez spent nearly two decades imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, and today the Second Circuit held that he is entitled to prove how that happened," Kelner said. "The court recognized that the allegations against Detective Stradford, and against the City for a culture in which prosecutors faced no consequences for withholding evidence, should go forward on their merits."

A spokesperson for the New York City Law Department declined to comment.

Circuit Judges Guido Calabresi, Eunice C. Lee and Alison J. Nathan sat for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Jimenez is represented by Joshua D. Kelner of Kelner & Kelner.

The city is represented by Alex Fumelli, Richard Dearing, Rebecca Visgaitis and Tahirih M. Sadrieh of the New York City Law Department.

The case is Jimenez v. City of New York et al., case number 25-776 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

--Editing by Vaqas Asghar.

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