A Las Vegas woman was awarded more than $34 million after being wrongly convicted twice of the brutal murder of a homeless man.

Kristin Lobato, 41, who now uses the name Blaise, was arrested at age 18 and charged with the murder and mutilation of homeless man Duran Bailey, 44, in Las Vegas in July 2001 .

Although Lobato was 150 miles from the scene in Penaca, Nevada, and without any physical evidence linking her to the murder, she was charged because of the “confessions” she made.

The so-called confession was Lobato telling numerous friends months before Bailey’s murder that a black man had attempted to rape her in May 2001, saying she had fought off the attacker by cutting off his penis with a penknife .

After Duran’s death made headlines when he was found mutilated with a cracked skull and severed penis, one of Lobato’s friends told police about his story and she was questioned.

Although she admitted to stabbing a man in the groin, she denied police insistence that this constituted a confession to Bailey’s murder and maintained that she was not even in Las Vegas at that time. at that time, according to Las Vegas Review Journal article from the time.

A jury convicted her of murder based solely on her “confession” when she was 19, until that verdict was thrown out in 2004 because the judge was found to have limited key testimony and did not allow Lobato’s lawyers to cross-examine a witness. .

Lobato was retried in 2006 and convicted of involuntary manslaughter, mutilation and weapons charges, and sentenced to 13 to 45 years in prison, while maintaining her innocence.

Kristin Lobato, 41, was awarded more than $34 million after being wrongly convicted twice of the brutal murder of a homeless man in 2001.

Despite no evidence linking her to the scene, Lobato was convicted of the brutal murder of homeless man Juran Bailey (pictured), who was found beaten and mutilated in a parking lot.

Lobato was ultimately exonerated and released from prison in late 2017 after the Innocence Project reviewed her case and took it to the Supreme Court.

Attention focused on two Las Vegas detectives, Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle, now retired, and a civil trial jury concluded that they fabricated evidence during their investigation.

The defense also cited bloody footprints at the crime scene that were three times larger than Lobato’s, and a complete lack of DNA evidence proving she had ever met Bailey.

His conviction was overturned after it was established that prosecutors relied on a jailhouse “confession” that a witness claimed to have heard, but that Lobato’s lawyers were not allowed to cross-examine.

Even after her murder conviction was overturned in 2004, Lobato was later sentenced to 13 to 45 years in prison at her retrial.

Upon her release in 2017, at the age of 35, Lobato told reporters: “I feel overwhelmed. I feel excited. I feel grateful. I’m so happy and I’m ready to go.

Prosecutors and the judge involved in his case were condemned when Lobato was released, saying in part that prosecutors ignored “strong alibi evidence” that would have proven Lobato was not in Las Vegas at the time of the murder.

Lobato, seen testifying in her own defense at her 2002 trial, claimed she was 150 miles from Las Vegas at the time of the murder, and said the so-called “confession” was actually a description of his way of fending off a sexual assault that occurred months earlier.

When asked if the $34 million reward made up for decades of wrongful conviction, Lobato replied: “I have no idea what the rest of my life is going to look like.”

At the end of Lobato’s long legal saga this week, she was awarded enormous damages – $34 million in compensatory damages from the Police Department and $10,000 in punitive damages from the share of each former detective – as they were found to have “intentionally inflicted distress” on him.

As she left the courthouse, Lobato told reporters, “This has been an uphill battle with many, many obstacles, and I’m glad it’s finally over.”

When asked if becoming a multimillionaire would make up for the decades she spent wrongly, Lobato said she didn’t know and had “no idea what the rest of my life would be like “.

The detectives, Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle, and their attorney, Craig Anderson, declined to comment on the case outside of court.

Anderson told U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware he plans to file additional court documents after the verdict. Anderson said Friday that an appeal was “likely.”

The department previously agreed to pay damages if the jury found in favor of Lobato.

Last October, a state court judge in Las Vegas issued a certificate declaring Lobato innocent of Bailey’s murder.