Maurice Hastings Case: DNA Exoneration and $25M Settlement

Maurice Hastings’ wrongful conviction settlement is a $25 million agreement reached in August 2025 between Hastings and the City of Inglewood, California, resolving a federal civil rights lawsuit over the police misconduct that sent him to prison for 38 years for a 1983 murder he did not commit. His attorneys described it as the largest wrongful conviction settlement in California history.¹²

Who Maurice Hastings Is and What He Was Convicted Of

In 1983, Roberta Wydermyer was abducted, sexually assaulted, and killed by a single gunshot to the head in Inglewood. During the autopsy, the coroner collected biological evidence, including semen from an oral swab.¹³⁴ The semen collected during the autopsy was never tested at the time.⁵

Hastings maintained his innocence from the day of his arrest. In 2000, he requested DNA testing of the biological evidence. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office denied the request, and at some point the evidence was reported missing.⁶⁴

What the Police Are Alleged to Have Done

The misconduct that produced the settlement was laid out in Hastings’ 2023 federal complaint against Inglewood Police detectives Grant Price and Russell Enyeart and the estate of Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office investigator George W. Clark. According to the complaint, less than three weeks after the murder, police arrested a man named Kenneth Packnett on an unrelated car theft charge. When arrested, Packnett had jewelry and a coin purse belonging to Wydermyer, along with a loaded .357 Colt Python of the same type and caliber as the murder weapon. Packnett was never investigated for the killing. Detective Enyeart was reportedly investigating Packnett for a series of car thefts at the same time, and still no one connected him to the murder.⁷

Instead, the complaint alleged, the investigation was steered toward Hastings through three kinds of misconduct:

Coerced identifications. Detective Price allegedly used improper suggestions to get eyewitnesses to identify Hastings after they had initially failed to pick him out of a photo array.
Fabricated evidence. Officers allegedly falsified witness statements and police reports. Price reportedly fabricated a report claiming a witness had “volunteered” that the suspect had a gold tooth, a detail matching Hastings but not observed by other witnesses. Clark allegedly fabricated a claim that an acquaintance of Hastings said he owned a blue steel revolver with a large barrel.
Suppressed exculpatory evidence. A Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department crime lab report excluded Hastings as the source of pubic hair found on the victim. The complaint alleged Price withheld this report from both the prosecutor and the defense, keeping it in a separate forensic file. Officers also allegedly suppressed alibi evidence.⁷

How DNA Finally Cleared Him

The case did not move again until 2021, when Hastings submitted a claim of innocence to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, established under District Attorney George Gascón.³ The Los Angeles Innocence Project at Cal State LA, directed by attorney Paula Mitchell, took on his case and worked with the university’s California Forensic Science Institute to locate the biological evidence and secure a court order for testing. The testing was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and performed at an independent laboratory in June 2022.⁸

The results excluded Hastings. When the DNA profile from the victim’s oral swab was uploaded to CODIS, the national DNA database, it matched Kenneth Packnett, the same man arrested weeks after the murder with the victim’s jewelry and a matching-caliber revolver.⁶ Packnett had died in prison in 2020 while serving time for kidnapping and rape, and was never prosecuted for Wydermyer’s murder.⁹

Release and Factual Innocence

On October 20, 2022, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan vacated Hastings’ conviction and ordered his immediate release. He walked out of prison at age 69.⁴ At a press conference days later, Hastings said: “I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not standing up here a bitter man. But I just want to enjoy my life while I have it. And I just want to move forward.”¹⁰

The Conviction Integrity Unit then conducted a follow-up investigation, interviewing witnesses and reviewing evidence, before concluding that Hastings was innocent and Packnett was the sole perpetrator. On March 1, 2023, Judge Ryan formally declared Hastings factually innocent, a legal finding that goes beyond vacating a conviction: it means the evidence conclusively proves the person did not commit the crime and clears the arrest and prosecution from their record.¹¹¹²

The State Compensation That Came First

Before the $25 million civil settlement, Hastings received separate compensation from the state. Under California Penal Code section 4900, people who were erroneously convicted are entitled to $140 per day of wrongful imprisonment. On April 12, 2023, the California Victim Compensation Board unanimously approved his claim for $1,945,720, covering 13,898 days.¹³

The Federal Lawsuit and the $25 Million Settlement

In November 2023, Hastings filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, case number 2:23-cv-09684. The named defendants were Inglewood detectives Grant Price and Russell Enyeart in their individual capacities, and the estate of investigator George W. Clark through his successor in interest, Joann M. Clark. The complaint brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for deprivation of liberty without due process, denial of a fair trial through fabrication of evidence and Brady violations, and malicious prosecution in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.⁷ Hastings was represented by the firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann and Freudenberger, with Nick Brustin as lead counsel.¹⁴

In August 2025, Hastings and the City of Inglewood reached the $25 million settlement resolving the case. The deal was announced publicly on September 23, 2025.¹⁴ Representatives of the City of Inglewood did not respond to requests for comment from multiple news outlets.¹

Hastings, then 72, said in a statement: “No amount of money could ever restore the 38 years of my life that were stolen from me. But this settlement is a welcome end to a very long road, and I look forward to moving on with my life. I thank God that I’ve made it to the other side of this decades-long ordeal, and I thank my family and legal team for their steadfast support over the years.”¹⁵ Brustin told reporters: “Police departments throughout California and across the country should take notice that there is a steep price to pay for allowing such egregious misconduct on their watch.”²

As of 2025, Hastings was living in Southern California and remained active in his church.¹

1
CNN. Maurice Hastings Wrongful Conviction Settlement
2
U.S. News & World Report. California Man Gets $25M for Wrongful Conviction After 38 Years in Prison
3
Los Angeles County. District Attorney Gascón, LA Innocence Project Seek Factual Innocence of Maurice Hastings
4
Los Angeles Times. He Spent 38 Years in Prison for a Crime He Didn’t Commit
5
Daily News. Maurice Hastings Was No Killer, and After 38 Years in Prison He Is Rejoicing
6
NPR. DNA Evidence Frees California Man
7
Courthouse News Service. Hastings v. Price Complaint
8
Cal State LA. Wrongfully Convicted Client of Los Angeles Innocence Project at Cal State LA Freed After 38 Years
9
CBS News Los Angeles. Man Convicted of 1983 Murder Cleared After Spending Nearly Four Decades in Prison
10
ABC7. Innocence Project, Maurice Hastings, George Gascón, DNA
11
LA County District Attorney. District Attorney Gascón, LA Innocence Project Seek Factual Innocence of Maurice Hastings
12
CBS News. Maurice Hastings Wrongfully Imprisoned Decades, Declared Factually Innocent
13
California Victim Compensation Board. Meeting Minutes, April 12, 2023
14
Courthouse News Service. SoCal Man Wins Record $25 Million in Wrongful Conviction Settlement
15
CBS News Los Angeles. Inglewood Settlement for Man Freed After 38 Years in Prison for Wrongful Conviction