A federal judge on Monday rejected efforts by lawyers for the City of Miramar and the Broward Sheriff's Office to keep some DNA test results out of evidence in a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Anthony Caravella, who was freed after serving more than 25 years in prison for a 1983 murder.

U.S. District Judge James Cohn ruled that jurors will be told that DNA test results from 2010 linked the crime to another man, Anthony Martinez. He said it would be unfair to Caravella if the jury wasn't told about those forensic findings.

Lawyers for Miramar, the Sheriff's Office, three former city officers and one former deputy tried to persuade the judge to keep out some DNA results from 2010 that linked Martinez to the crime. Prosecutors and city police named him a "person of interest" in the murder shortly before he died in 2010.

Attorney Matthew Mandel, who represents Miramar and the former city officers, argued that once that "cat's out of the bag" he feared jurors would "take that out on our officers."

The former officers are accused of framing Caravella, who was 15 and had an IQ of 67 when he confessed to the rape and murder of Ada Cox Jankowski, 58. Their lawyers are suggesting that the DNA tests that set Caravella free do not mean that he couldn't possibly have had some role in the crime.

Caravella was freed in September 2009 and his conviction was thrown out by a judge — at the request of prosecutors — in March 2010. DNA excluded him as the source of evidence found on the victim.

During questioning, retired Miramar detective George Pierson said officers did not feed Caravella information about the crime.

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Pierson testified that Caravella, now 44, got many details about the crime correct when police took sworn statements from him in 1983 and 1984.

Caravella's lawyer, Barbara Heyer, said detectives honed in on Caravella because he was vulnerable and confessed, thinking officers would drop a charge against a female friend if he said what they wanted to hear.

Much of Heyer's questioning focused on why detectives stopped investigating Martinez, a 17-year-old neighbor who was the last person seen with Jankowski when she was alive.

Heyer also questioned why detectives did not more aggressively investigate Cyril Cozier, a second suspect identified within hours of the murder. Cozier died in 1998.

Hours after Jankowski's body was found, detectives found Cozier at a nearby park. He had a blood stain on his shirt. They took his shirt as evidence but accepted his wife's word that he was home asleep..

Soon after Caravella was charged with the murder, tests showed Cozier's hair was found on the victim and her hair was on his shirt, court records show. Detectives later said they unwittingly contaminated evidence by using the same surface to process evidence from the victim and from Cozier.
