Woman receives $3 million for getting wrongfully jailed in a murder case

Naveda : A woman who spent 35 years in jail for a murder she did not commit and was sentenced on the basis of DNA evidence on a crime-scene cigarette butt will be getting a whopping sum of $3 million in a partial settlement of a federal civil rights lawsuit, her lawyer said.

Cathy Woods, 68, will continue to seek additional damages from the city of Reno and former detectives she accuses of coercing a fabricated confession from her while she was a patient at a Louisiana mental hospital in 1979, according to her lawyer, Elizabeth Wang.

She was released from jail in 2015 after a new evidence in the case was found.

With this she became the longest-ever wrongfully incarcerated woman in U.S. history, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

"Although no amount of money will compensate Ms. Woods for what she endured, this will go at least some way toward providing care for her," Wang said.

The Washoe County Commission voted 4-0 on Tuesday to pay $3 million to settle a portion of the federal lawsuit that had named former county District Attorney Cal Dunlap as a defendant.