Philadelphia D.A. agrees to pay $255,000 to witness held for weeks

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has agreed to pay $255,000 to a witness in a murder trial who claimed a prosecutor had her jailed to make sure she would testify, then left her there for weeks after the case was postponed.

As Nicole Schneyder sat in prison for 54 days in 2005, the man she called her father died. Schneyder was escorted in handcuffs to his viewing but wasn't allowed to attend the funeral.

Schneyder sued then-Assistant District Attorney Gina Maisto Smith, claiming Smith violated her rights because the prosecutor refused to ask a judge to free her even after the trial was pushed back nearly four months.

The settlement, reached Monday, came after an appeals court ruled that Smith couldn't claim the immunity that shields prosecutors from being sued for job-related conduct - and that Schneyder's suit could proceed to trial.

The judges called Smith's alleged conduct "outrageous" and unconstitutional. "Whether to keep Schneyder in jail should have been the court's decision, and Smith knew it," the three-judge panel wrote.

Schneyder, 42, declined to comment Wednesday. Her lawyer, Daniel A. Silverman, said the case highlighted prosecutors' frustration with witnesses too scared to testify against violent criminals.

"They thought that they could just cut these corners," he said. "When the state and law enforcement starts to cut corners, you're going down a dangerous slope."

Now with the Ballard Spahr law firm, Smith drew attention this year when the Archdiocese of Philadelphia hired her to oversee its reexamination of past misconduct or child sex-abuse allegations against two dozen priests.

On Wednesday, she referred questions on the Schneyder case to the District Attorney's Office, which represented her. Spokeswoman Tasha Jamerson said the settlement was in the city's "best financial interests" and not an admission of guilt.

"Gina Smith had not yet had the opportunity to present her full defenses to these allegations," Jamerson said. "The settlement in this case should not in any way be interpreted as an indication that the District Attorney's Office believes that Ms. Smith engaged in any wrongdoing."

The facts of the case never made it to a jury, and the judges who rejected Smith's motion to dismiss the suit acknowledged they had to view evidence "in the light most favorable to the plaintiff."

Smith was a veteran sex-crimes prosecutor when she transferred to the District Attorney's homicide unit. The case that entangled Schneyder was among her first murder trials.

Schneyder, then 36, had been deemed a critical but reluctant witness against Michael Overby, accused in a 1990 rape and murder. During two previous trials on the charges, Schneyder failed to show up. One trial ended in a hung jury and the other was overturned on appeal.

As Smith prepared for the third trial, she petitioned Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford Means to issue an arrest warrant for Schneyder as a material witness, a routine prosecutorial step. Means approved the request.

Schneyder was detained on Jan. 27, 2005, six days before the murder trial. Means set cash bail at $300,000, an amount Schneyder clearly didn't have. But the judge wasn't presiding at Overby's trial, so he directed Smith to tell him if that case "was continued or broke down" so he could release Schneyder, according to a sworn statement he later submitted.

A week after Schneyder was detained, Overby's trial was rescheduled to May 25. But the prosecutor failed to tell the judge, even after Schneyder's relatives called her "approximately 25 times" asking why Schneyder was still in jail, according to the lawsuit.

A month after Schneyder's arrest, her father figure died, and one of her sisters appealed to the Public Defender's Office to get her out. Paul Conway, chief of the defender's homicide unit, arranged for Schneyder to briefly attend the viewing.

Conway then looked deeper into the case, and realized Schneyder was being held for a trial that was months away. He appealed to Means, who said he didn't realize Schneyder was still behind bars and freed her. In his affidavit, the judge blamed Smith for the situation.

"I was relying on her, and her alone, to keep me apprised of Ms. Schneyder's custodial status," Means said in an affidavit.

Smith disputed Schneyder's account. In a deposition, she testified that she told Means the murder trial had been continued.

In its ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois that Smith couldn't claim immunity as a prosecutor.

"No reasonable prosecutor would think that she could indefinitely detain an innocent witness pending trial without obtaining reauthorization," said the July 29 opinion from Judges D. Brooks Smith, Theodore McKee, and Richard G. Stearns, who cited their own experience as prosecutors. "And there can be no doubt that is what Smith intended."

Schneyder ultimately testified against Overby in the 1990 death of Lillian Gaines in her South Philadelphia home. Overby was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Jamerson said that there had been no other allegations involving the detention of material witnesses since the Schneyder case and that staffers had had "supplemental training" on the topic.

During the five-year legal battle, the District Attorney's Office extended the lawsuit to include Laura Davis, the public defender appointed for Schneyder at her initial bail hearing, contending that if the prosecutor was liable, so was the defender.

As part of the settlement, the defenders' association agreed to pay Schneyder $20,000 but denied any wrongdoing. "Judge Means' affidavit speaks volumes as to who was responsible for notifying the court," said Michael B. Pullano, its attorney.

Schneyder's lawyer called the public defenders the "heroes" in the case, because they got her out of jail. He dismissed as "silly lawyerly gobbledy-goop" the district attorneys' contention that Smith never got a chance to put on her case.

"Every person with knowledge of the facts, except Gina Smith, faulted Ms. Smith for what happened to my client," Silverman said.