A federal judge has refused to shield a retired Oklahoma City police detective from civil rights claims brought by Glynn Simmons, the man who served the longest wrongful conviction sentence in United States history. U.S. District Judge Bernard Jones ruled that a jury, not the courts, must decide whether retired detective Claude Shobert violated Simmons' constitutional rights by fabricating a lineup report nearly 50 years ago.
Jones denied Shobert's request for qualified immunity, finding that a reasonable jury could conclude Shobert fabricated a February 1975 lineup report claiming an eyewitness identified Simmons, according to Courthouse News Service. The judge emphasized that the report created a genuine issue of material fact because Simmons has maintained he was never present in that lineup at all. As reported by The Oklahoman, Simmons' federal lawsuit against Shobert alleges conspiracy, fabrication of evidence, deprivation of liberty without probable cause, and violation of his fair trial rights.
A Fabricated Lineup Report at the Center of the Case
The ruling traces back to a February 2026 decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated Jones' earlier summary judgment denial and sent the qualified immunity question back for a more thorough analysis. The appellate panel concluded that the district court's original denial had been too brief to satisfy federal standards, per the same Courthouse News account. Investigators later uncovered suppressed police records showing that the prosecution's key eyewitness had actually identified four other men across eight separate lineups — none of them Simmons or his co-defendant.
That witness, an 18-year-old who had been shot in the head during the robbery, told officers early on that her memory was jumbled. Shobert's defense attorneys have argued in court filings that he has no memory of the 1974 investigation or the lineups nearly 50 years later, and that he never even testified at Simmons' original trial. His lawyers say that limited involvement and lack of memory should shield him from personal liability, an argument the courts have so far declined to resolve in his favor.
The Underlying Crime and a Broken Alibi
The case stems from the December 30, 1974 robbery and murder of 30-year-old liquor store clerk Carolyn Sue Rogers in Edmond. Simmons, then 22, was more than 600 miles away in Harvey, Louisiana, at the time of the shooting, according to the Loevy & Loevy law firm, whose account notes that four witnesses testified at trial that Simmons was playing pool in Louisiana that night. He was nonetheless convicted and sentenced to death in July 1975; that sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1977 after U.S. Supreme Court rulings invalidated Oklahoma's mandatory death penalty framework.
Simmons ultimately served 48 years, 1 month, and 18 days behind bars before his release in July 2023, a span that the National Registry of Exonerations recognizes as the longest wrongful incarceration in U.S. history. He was 70 years old when he walked free, half a century after his arrest at age 22.
One Settlement Down, One Fight Still Ahead
The City of Edmond has already resolved its share of the litigation. In August 2024, the Edmond City Council approved a $7.15 million settlement with Simmons to close out his federal civil rights claims against the city and the estate of deceased Edmond police detective Sgt. Anthony Garrett, without admitting liability. Oklahoma City and Shobert, by contrast, chose to keep fighting, pursuing appeals that delayed the case until this month's ruling.
The gap between that federal settlement figure and Oklahoma's own wrongful conviction law is stark. State compensation for the wrongfully imprisoned is capped by statute at $175,000 — the maximum amount Simmons received in late 2023 following his formal judicial exoneration, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That payout worked out to roughly $3,646 for every year Simmons spent behind bars, underscoring why federal civil rights lawsuits remain the primary path for exonerees seeking meaningful financial recovery for lost decades.
A Co-Defendant Left Without Compensation
Simmons' co-defendant, Don Roberts, was paroled in 2008 after serving more than three decades for the same crime. But Oklahoma County District Attorney Vickie Behenna declined to formally exonerate Roberts when she dropped the charges against him in 2023, citing a lack of physical evidence without declaring him actually innocent. That distinction has left Roberts ineligible for the state compensation Simmons received.
With qualified immunity now denied, the case against Shobert and Oklahoma City is positioned to move toward a jury trial, where the fabricated lineup report and the decades-old investigation into Rogers' murder will face fresh scrutiny.
