On December 5, 2024, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), PLN’s non-profit publisher, in conjunction with attorneys from Loevy & Loevy in Chicago, filed a federal civil rights suit on behalf of Tony Hopps, who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned in Florida for 31 years. One of the suit’s most galling accusations is that Hopps was framed by an investigating Tampa Police Department (TPD) detective in retaliation for his previous refusal to cooperate with another police investigation.

On January 25, 1990, at about 3:15 p.m., two Black men robbed Ruby and Dunbar Dyches in their Tampa hotel room. When Dunbar Dyches opened the door, one of the assailants pressed a firearm into his stomach, and the second struck him over the head with a blunt object. Dyches did not get a good look at either man because the gun captured his full attention, and he fell to the ground after being hit. The two men fled with Ruby Dyches’s purse in a maroon car.

At the time of the robbery, Hopps was standing outside his home across town, speaking with a neighbor who was waiting to pick up her nephew from a bus stop. TPD Officer Mark Scott arrived about 3:49 p.m. and detained Hopps on an unrelated investigation. Detective Gene Strickland also spoke with Hopps and took his picture. The photo showed that he had a full beard, a build that was not muscular and that he was not wearing camouflage pants or a hat. Hopps was taken into custody on the unrelated case.

Meanwhile, Detectives J.D. O’Nolan and George McNamara began investigating the robbery of the Dycheses, who provided very little information about their assailants. Both described the first man as very muscular with a mustache but no beard. The couple agreed the man was wearing camouflage pants and a cap. Neither got a look at the second man, and they could not describe him. The Dycheses then returned home to Georgia.

The next day, on January 26, 1990, TPD located a stolen vehicle inside which they found Mrs. Dyches’s stolen belongings, several guns, three masks, an L.A. Raiders cap and a glove. Four men were seen running from the car but were not apprehended. Hopps was in jail on the unrelated case at the time. Despite knowing that Hopps was not one of those seen fleeing from the stolen car and that he did not match the description the Dycheses had provided, McNamara decided to pin the robbery on him; McNamara had a dislike for Hopps because Hopps previously refused to identify a suspect in another crime that McNamara was investigating. O’Nolan and Strickland went along with this plan.

The detectives compiled a photo array that included six men, all known or suspected robbers in cases unrelated to the Dyches case. One of the men was Hopps, but the detectives used an old photo of him without a beard because they knew using the photo that Strickland took on the day of the robbery would cause the Dycheses to exclude him as a suspect.

Rather than administer the photo array in person, as is standard procedure, the detectives mailed it to the Dycheses’ home in Georgia. O’Nolan included a letter instructing the Dycheses to select the person who robbed them. They were allowed to review the montage together and discuss amongst themselves who they should pick, which is improper and unduly suggestive. The Dycheses selected Hopps from the array and returned it to the detectives with a letter explaining their choice. Even though both letters contained exculpatory evidence, they were never disclosed to the Dycheses or the prosecutor’s office—and of course not to Hopps’s defense team either.

Conviction, Exoneration and Lawsuit

Hopps was charged and tried for the Dyches robbery based solely on this faulty and highly improper identification procedure. Mr. and Mrs. Dyches testified at trial that Hopps was one of the two men who robbed them, basing their identification on the suggestive photo array. Hopps’s attorney called Detective Strickland as a witness to prove that he had detained Hopps at the time of the robbery. But Strickland falsely testified that he did not know the date and time he had detained Hopps—though dispatch records, which he possessed, demonstrated otherwise.

On June 26, 1990, Hopps was convicted of burglary of a dwelling with a firearm and robbery with a firearm. He was subsequently sentenced to concurrent life sentences.

Hopps unsuccessfully appealed his convictions and sentence for many years, but he never gave up on proving his innocence. He eventually requested a review of the case by the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) after it was established in 2018 by then-State Attorney of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, Andrew Warren—who was ultimately rewarded for seeking by justice with dismissal by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.61.]

Warren eventually determined there was “no valid evidence to suggest Hopps committed the crime” and there was “substantial evidence to suggest he did not do it.” Because the photo array that detectives used was improper and unduly suggestive—and because Hopps did not match the description that the Dycheses initially provided, CRU said that the State could no longer support the conviction. He also could not have committed the robbery because he was at home being detained by Strickland.

In August 2021, Hopps filed a motion for post-conviction relief, which was granted by a state court, and he was released. By that time, he had been wrongfully imprisoned in Florida’s notoriously harsh penal system for 31 years. In December 2024, Hopps, 59, filed suit against the City of Tampa and its three former detectives responsible for his wrongful conviction. The complaint alleges a series of constitutional violations that they committed, and it further states that the violations happened due to Tampa’s inadequate polices, practices, training and supervision. The complaint seeks compensatory damages, attorney’s fees and costs of litigation, as well as punitive damages against McNamara, Strickland, and O’Nolan. Hopps is represented by HRDC litigation director Jonathan P. Picard and Loevy & Loevy attorneys Jon Loevy, Gayle Horn, Heather Lewis Donnell and Rachel Brady. See: Hopps v. City of Tampa, USDC (M.D. Fla.), Case No. 8:24-cv-02806.

“I hope to get justice for the pain of being away from my family, and the decades being behind bars for something I didn’t do,” Hopps said, adding: “I hope no one else has to go through what I went through.”

Unfortunately, that hope seems unrealistic. Hopps’s case is the third time in as many years that HRDC has partnered with Loevy & Loevy to seek justice for Floridians who were framed by local police and incarcerated for decades for crimes they didn’t commit. In February 2024, they secured a promise from Tampa to pay $14 million to Robert DuBoise for 37 years that he spent wrongfully imprisoned thanks to malfeasance of other TPD cops, as PLN previously reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.26.]

In April 2024, HRDC and Loevy & Loevy filed a similar suit on behalf of Willie Williams; as PLN reported then, Jacksonville cops helped send him to prison for 45 years—also for a crime he didn’t commit. [See: PLN, June 2024, p.22.]  

Additional sources: McClatchy News, Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times

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