A man who spent 23 years in prison after allegedly being framed for murder by vindictive police had his civil suit over the ordeal dismissed by a Rhode Island federal judge, who lamented the lack of recourse for misconduct she said amounted to a "tragedy in criminal justice."

In her memorandum and order issued on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy wrote it seems there should be recourse based on the "gravity" of the "injustices" suffered by Raymond D. Tempest, whose DNA was never found at the crime scene and whose conviction was vacated after the state's highest court agreed prosecutors had suppressed witness credibility evidence. 

However, as much as she tried to find evidence his claims could proceed, it simply was not there — and one claim was time-barred, she said.

Judge McElroy wrote that the failure of Tempest's civil case "highlights how the field of civil rights litigation is riddled with doctrines, rules and mechanisms that make claims like Mr. Tempest's nearly impossible to bring successfully."

She said those factors "essentially whittled down his viable causes of action to one narrow, technical and historically disfavored claim that hardly does justice to the situation" and had to be dismissed with prejudice. 

The remaining defendants in Tempest's three-count case included former Woonsocket Police Department Sergeant Ronald Pennington and the City of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, as prior claims against the city's police chief Rodney Remblad were dismissed after his death in 2024, according to court records.

The police were accused of implicating Tempest in Doreen Picard's 1982 murder after his brother, a Woonsocket police detective, began investigating Remblad for drug dealing, bribery and auto theft.

Tempest's brother had also recently arrested Remblad's brother-in-law, Stanley Irza, for having stolen cars, and Irza became the first to falsely blame Tempest for an attack that left Picard dead and her neighbor, Susan Laferte, so injured that she couldn't remember what happened, according to Tempest's suit.

Pennington, who was less senior than Remblad, followed his investigative lead, even when he learned Irza was Remblad's informant, the suit said. When Pennington discovered two witnesses' accounts implicating Tempest were factually implausible, he coached them into revising their stories, Tempest's 2022 amended complaint said.

"Pennington himself admitted that he would suggest facts to witnesses," according to the complaint.

Tempest was found guilty by a jury in 1992 following court testimony from four witnesses — whom Tempest said had credibility issues or were coerced — that he had confessed to the murder, his amended complaint said.

On the basis of constitutional rights violations, the Rhode Island Supreme Court in 2016 affirmed the vacatur of Tempest's murder conviction, court records show. The state's highest court found prosecutor James W. Ryan deliberately hid pretrial statements one witness made to Ryan and Pennington that could show she wasn't credible, Tempest's suit said. 

"The investigatory and prosecutorial misconduct that led to the Rhode Island Superior Court's decision to vacate his sentence is a tragedy in criminal justice," Judge McElroy noted in Tuesday's opinion.

Tempest sued after making an Alford plea in 2017 to avoid being retried for Picard's murder, according to his suit, which said the Rhode Island attorney general threatened to again ask that he serve an 85-year sentence. Under the plea, he did not admit to killing Picard in 1982 but could finally be done with the legal battle over her murder, accepting a sentence of time served, his suit said.

However, Tempest still sought compensation for his ordeal, accusing the city of failing to uphold the law through a practice of "unconstitutional misconduct in homicide and other criminal investigation" by encouraging officers to use illegal investigatory techniques, which included inventing evidence, according to his amended complaint.

The officers and city were also accused of abuse of process under Rhode Island law in connection with their purported framing of Tempest, and the city was blamed for the acts of its police.

Due to limitations, the judge said the relevant period that she was considering included the time surrounding the decision to recharge Tempest, the pretrial planning phase for that case, and "the Alford plea ordeal."

However, within these parameters, Tempest could not succeed.

"While Mr. Tempest has provided plenty of evidence about Mr. Pennington's involvement in pretrial planning, the court sees no evidence to suggest his involvement in the decision to recharge Mr. Tempest or, more importantly, the decision to issue the coercive threat about the Alford plea," Judge McElroy wrote.

"Absent either of those, the court cannot see how Mr. Pennington 'instituted' the proceedings," she continued, denying Tempest's abuse of process claim.

Without that claim, Tempest's case against the City of Woonsocket fell because the arguments were based on the alleged wrongdoing of their former employee, Pennington, the judge said.

She then turned to Tempest's Monell claim, which would have allowed him to hold the local government accountable for violating his rights. She said that claim, which could have been presented in 2016 after the Supreme Court vacated his conviction, was time-barred when he sued in 2020.

Representatives for the parties declined to make any comments on Friday. The Rhode Island Attorney General's Office had no comment on the case.

Tempest is represented by Ashley Burkett and Jeffrey H. Horowitz of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP; Andrew Levchuk of Andrew Levchuk, Counsellor at Law LLC; and Thomas G. Briody of the Law Offices of Thomas G. Briody.

Ronald Pennington is represented by Christopher R. Alger and Melody A. Alger of Alger Law LLC.

The City of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is represented by Jeffrey M. DeSisto of DeSisto Law LLC and Mark T. Reynolds of Reynolds DeMarco & Boland Ltd.

The case is Tempest v. City of Woonsocket, case number 1:20-cv-00523, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.

--Editing by Philip Shea.