Las Vegas Police Pay $29.5 Million to Woman Wrongfully Imprisoned for 15 Years After Detectives Fabricated Evidence

Las Vegas police have paid Kirstin “Blaise” Lobato $29.5 million after a federal jury found that two detectives fabricated evidence that helped send her to prison for a murder she did not commit. Lobato was arrested at 18 and spent nearly 16 years behind bars before her convictions were overturned.

Her attorney, David Owens, confirmed on October 5, 2026, that she had received the settlement, resolving a wrongful conviction lawsuit while the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was challenging a $34 million jury verdict. The payment followed a 2024 finding that detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle violated Lobato's constitutional rights during the investigation of a 2001 killing.

The case began with the July 8, 2001, discovery of Duran Bailey's body near a dumpster in Las Vegas. Bailey had been severely beaten and mutilated, including the removal of his penis. Detectives focused on Lobato after learning she had described using a knife to defend herself against an attempted sexual assault.

Lobato told investigators that the encounter occurred months earlier, in another part of Las Vegas, when a man tried to rape her. Detectives connected her account to Bailey's death, reporting that she had admitted to cutting off a man's penis during the confrontation. Her attorneys later argued that the officers distorted her statements and omitted details that would have undermined the murder allegation.

The prosecution relied heavily on those disputed statements, although forensic evidence collected at the scene did not link Lobato to Bailey. She maintained that she was in Panaca, Nevada, approximately 170 miles away, when the killing occurred.

A jury convicted Lobato of first-degree murder and sexual penetration of a dead body in 2002. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed the convictions in 2004 after finding that her defense had been improperly restricted from questioning a prosecution witness. At a second trial in 2006, she was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sexual penetration of a dead body, receiving a sentence of 13 to 45 years.

Her convictions unraveled after forensic experts challenged the prosecution's timeline. Three specialists testified that the absence of blowfly eggs on Bailey's body indicated he had died shortly before being discovered around 10 p.m. on July 8, when Lobato was with her family in Panaca. The prosecution's earlier estimate had placed the death hours earlier, leaving room for its argument that she could have committed the killing before traveling out of Las Vegas.

In December 2017, a Nevada judge overturned the convictions after finding that Lobato's trial attorneys had provided ineffective legal representation by failing to present expert evidence challenging the estimated time of death. Prosecutors dismissed the charges later that month, and Lobato was released in January 2018. She received a certificate of innocence in 2024.

Lobato sued the police department and detectives in July 2019, accusing them of violating her constitutional right to due process by fabricating evidence that contributed to her prosecution and imprisonment.

On December 12, 2024, a federal jury found Thowsen and LaRochelle liable for deliberately fabricating evidence and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Jurors awarded Lobato $34 million in compensatory damages and assessed an additional $10,000 in punitive damages against each detective.

U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware II rejected the defendants' efforts to overturn the verdict or obtain a new trial on March 31, 2026. He found that the evidence supported the jury's conclusions, including its finding that the detectives had misrepresented Lobato's statements in police reports.

The ruling also allowed the verdict to stand despite arguments that prosecutors, rather than detectives, had made the decision to pursue criminal charges. Jurors had sufficient grounds to find that the fabricated reports contributed to Lobato's wrongful prosecution, the judge determined.

The $29.5 million settlement was submitted to the Metropolitan Police Committee on Fiscal Affairs in September 2026 as the defendants pursued an appeal. The agreement reduced the original compensatory award by $4.5 million and ended the remaining dispute over damages.

Following confirmation of the payment, Owens said Lobato could finally move forward with some sense of justice after 25 years, bringing an end to litigation rooted in her arrest as a teenager.