A federal jury has sided with the city of Redmond and King County in a civil-rights lawsuit filed by a man who spent nine years in jail only to be acquitted at trial.
A jury issued its verdict this month following a 13-day trial before U.S. District Judge John Chun, finding Emanuel Fair was not the victim of malicious prosecution.
The verdict ends a long, complicated and hard-fought case that began when Fair was charged two years after the 2008 sexual assault and strangulation death of Arpana Jinaga after a Halloween party at a Redmond apartment complex.
Now 42, Fair was arrested and spent the next nine years in jail due to legal delays and police and prosecutors' attempts to strengthen their case against him, which was almost purely circumstantial, according to court documents.
His 23-page civil-rights complaint, filed in 2021, contended police and prosecutors botched the probe and wrongly targeted him because he was a Black man with a criminal record, despite evidence implicating Jinaga’s neighbor, who is white.
His lawsuit alleged police found DNA from three other men on key pieces of evidence, including the boot lace they believe was used to strangle Jinaga and on a motor-oil can and bathrobe tied to the crime scene. Her body was covered in motor oil in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence that might pinpoint the killer.
The pleadings say police also found traces of DNA possibly linked to Jinaga’s neighbor on an oil bottle found in a dumpster and a witness said he saw the neighbor at the front door of her apartment just hours before she was killed.
Prosecutors provided the neighbor with immunity during the investigation.
The lawsuit alleges that, after zeroing in on Fair because of his race and rap sheet, investigators relied on the cherry-picked DNA evidence while disregarding other genetic findings and suspects as part of a “gather facts that fit the theory strategy. The result, it claims, was a biased probe that “caused Fair to be arrested and charged without probable cause for a murder he did not commit.”
Then, due to “inexcusable delays in Fair’s trial and prolonged pretrial detention,” he “spent more than nine years in the King County Correctional Facility as an innocent man, in conditions of inhumane confinement that are well known to have a detrimental effect on mental health,” the suit contends.
“I felt like I was kidnapped,” Fair said in a 2021 interview with The Seattle Times, when explaining his decision to pursue his claims of negligence, civil rights violations and malicious prosecution. “I lost a lot. There was potential there that was just taken away.”
Pretrial rulings further delayed the case from going to trial. The county took a 2025 ruling on motions for summary judgment to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals when Chun — in a pointed 52-page order — said evidence in the lawsuit indicated a senior deputy prosecutor and supervisor was "motivated, at least in part, by Fair's race.
Chun had declined to dismiss the prosecutor from the lawsuit, even though prosecutors are normally entitled to “absolute immunity” from civil liability. He found that the prosecutor exceeded his role as an advocate and blurred the line between prosecutor and investigator.
Chun also declined to dismiss the allegations of prosecutorial malfeasance — the allegation the jury rejected.
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