A Connecticut man has filed a lawsuit against the city of Hartford and a forensic expert he claims withheld evidence in a murder investigation that led to him being tried twice before the state Supreme Court overturned his conviction and a third jury acquitted him of all charges.

Donald Raynor alleged in his federal civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday that the city, specifically four police detectives, and a forensics expert called by the state during his trial for the murder of Delano Gray withheld and manufactured evidence that was used to convict him.

"But for the deliberate indifference of the city of Hartford and the Hartford Police Department, the investigating officers, and James Stephenson, Mr. Raynor would not have been convicted of the murder of Delano Gray. By this complaint, he seeks relief for his wrongful conviction," his complaint said.

An eyewitness to the June 2007 killing told police that she did not see the shooter and gave only a partial description of the getaway vehicle. Police were only able to collect shell casings at the scene, and a state crime lab could estimate the type of firearm used, the lawsuit said.

Police were led to Raynor based on a statement from a then-confidential informant, Jose Rivera. Rivera told police that he drove Raynor to the site of the shooting and said that Raynor used a .223 Kel-Tec assault rifle, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said that Rivera was under investigation for multiple murders and assaults and had personal motives for participating in the Gray investigation. Rivera negotiated a deal that in exchange for information about Raynor's purported role in the murder, he would get leniency in his own cases, the lawsuit said.

Months after the killing of Gray, another woman who lived in the same neighborhood, Debra Parker, reported that two men began shooting at her in February 2008 after she arrived at her home. Police investigated the shooting and found nearly two dozen .223 caliber shell casings near her home, the lawsuit said.

Parker, like the witness to Gray's murder, provided police with a vague description of the men who fired shots at her. The same day as the shooting, Parker's son mentioned that he had gotten into a fight with Raynor and another man at a concert the night before, the lawsuit said.

Gray's murder investigation went cold until August 2011 when Parker's son was also killed in a shooting. Police began questioning Parker about her son's death, and during the interview she claimed, for the first time, that she believed Raynor fired shots at her in 2008.

Police arrested Raynor in June 2013 and charged him with the murder of Gray. A jury trial was held and prosecutors relied heavily on testimony from Rivera and a firearms expert, James Stephenson, the lawsuit said.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Raynor's first trial and a mistrial was declared. A second trial was held with the state largely relying on the same evidence from Rivera and Stephenson, and the second jury convicted Raynor, resulting in a 60-year prison sentence.

Raynor filed an appeal in September 2015 and an intermediate appellate court affirmed the conviction by the second jury. Raynor mounted another appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court, and in a December 2020 ruling it ordered a third trial.

The state high court held that a hearing was necessary to determine the reliability of the ballistics evidence and that a lower court should have excluded evidence from the Parker shooting, for which Raynor was never charged, the lawsuit said.

Defense counsel found through discovery during the third trial that during that Rivera admitted to police in 2009 that he was not present with Raynor during the shooting. Information also surfaced that proved Stephenson deliberately manipulated a state firearms database so he would return evidence that a Kel-Tec assault rifle was used in the shooting.

The third jury found Raynor not guilty in March 2024 and after 11 years in prison he was finally released. The lawsuit claims that because of the hidden and manufactured evidence he was wrongly held in prison, which had a profound negative impact on his health, the lawsuit said.

A spokesperson for the Hartford Police Department and an attorney representing Raynor did not respond to a request for comment.

Raynor is represented by Allison M. Near and Rosemarie Paine of Jacobs & Dow LLC.

Counsel information for the government, the detectives and Stephenson was not immediately available.

The case is Raynor v. The City of Hartford et al., case number 3:26-cv-00359, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

--Editing by Rich Mills.