AP: Supreme Court rules against wrongly imprisoned man

Posted 2/21/2007 11:58 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — A deadline is a deadline is a deadline, the Supreme
Court said Wednesday in refusing to allow a man wrongly imprisoned for
more than eight years to sue the police officers who arrested him.

Andre Wallace, whose murder conviction was overturned in 2002, waited
several years too long to file his false arrest lawsuit, the court said
in a 7-2 ruling.

He had two years in which to file his civil rights lawsuit, which he began
working on during the year after his release. The issue before the court
was when the two-year clock began to run.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said the correct starting
point is when a judge reviews the criminal charges against a defendant and
bounds him over for trial. In Wallace's case, this hearing occurred in 1994,
shortly after his arrest.

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