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The Dallas City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to approve a $900,000 settlement with a man who says he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a 19-year-old woman after a detective suppressed key evidence in the case.

Shakur Stewart, formerly known as Everold Stewart, was sentenced Jan. 7, 1988, to 25 years in prison for the murder of Michelle Chinn in Dallas. Thirty years later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated his conviction after prosecutors discovered six pages of notes by the lead detective that contradicted eyewitness testimony from two people. The case was dismissed in 2019 after the district attorney’s office said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support a conviction.

Stewart sued the city of Dallas and Det. John Coughlin in federal court over allegations the investigator violated his constitutional rights when he “repeatedly hid” facts about his first interviews with the two witnesses. The case against Stewart relied entirely upon the two witnesses, and the interview notes contained statements that contradicted their trial testimony, the lawsuit says.

The city of Dallas, which represents Coughlin, and Dallas police declined to comment.

Coughlin could not be reached for comment. A police spokesperson said he retired in November 1997. His LinkedIn profile says he’s the owner of an investigation and consulting company in Dallas, Corporate Security Solutions, and serves as chairman of a nonprofit, the Southwest Transportation Security Council.

Stewart’s attorney, Don Tittle, said Stewart was wrongly convicted 35 years ago, and that had “a profound impact” on his life. Stewart was 19 at the time of the shooting and is not a U.S. citizen, so he wasn’t able to return to America because of the conviction, according to court records.

Although the National Registry of Exonerations highlighted Stewart’s case, the district attorney’s office said he is not an exoneree. Tittle said the court of criminal appeals found that a constitutional violation occurred, but stopped short of a finding of actual innocence, which would have made Stewart eligible for compensation by the state. The state compensates those officially exonerated with $80,000 for each year of imprisonment.

Originally from Jamaica, Stewart is now a citizen in Canada, where he works as a truck driver, Tittle said.

“He never stopped proclaiming his innocence,” Tittle said in a written statement. “Mr. Stewart considers this the final step in his exoneration.”

Chinn was fatally shot in the back of her head in August 1987 in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 2700 block of Holmes Street in Dallas. (In archives and some court documents, Chinn’s last name is spelled with two ns, but in other court documents it’s only spelled with one n.)

Another man, David Matthews, was also charged in the killing and pleaded guilty, but the case was dismissed in 2000, court records show. The court records available Tuesday did not say why the case was dismissed.

Stewart was granted parole in December 1990, and was discharged from parole Oct. 2, 2012, according to court records. In December 2017, the district attorney’s office said it obtained the police department’s full homicide file and found the handwritten notes, which weren’t in prosecutors’ file, according to court records signed by the DA’s office and Stewart’s appellate attorney.

The notes, prepared by Coughlin during the investigation, said one witness, Chinn’s fiancé Leroy Davidson, told Coughlin on the night of the killing that he didn’t see the shooter.

Coughlin wrote that Davidson said he and Chinn traveled to apartments near the shooting after learning of the arrest of Chinn’s brother-in-law. Davidson described the shooters as a group of Jamaicans, then identified Matthews as the man who shot Chinn, according to the notes.

Those statements contradicted testimony during trial, when Davidson said he rode with Chinn in a cab to visit a friend when they were caught in a shootout between two groups of Jamaican men. He said Stewart fired three shots before he saw Chinn collapse, according to court records.

Coughlin’s handwritten notes also showed a second witness, the cab driver, told police on the night of the shooting that he was two blocks away when he heard five or six gunshots.

During testimony, however, the cab driver — Simon Gemda — said he directly saw the shooting and Stewart with a gun. He said he didn’t tell police the truth when he was first interviewed. But Gemda’s initial statements documented in Coughlin’s notes were not disclosed to the jury or attorneys, court records say.

The district attorney’s office said in court records that Dallas police did not hand over the six pages of notes until prosecutors looked into the case in 2017. The trial attorneys submitted affidavits stating they did not receive copies of the documents.

In their motion to dismiss the case, the district attorney’s office said “the exculpatory evidence directly relates to eyewitness’ ability to identify Stewart.” Davidson died in 1995, and Gemda was deported in June 1997, according to court records.

Claire Crouch, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, confirmed that the case was overturned on a violation of the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose evidence that shows defendants in a positive light or could be used to potentially acquit them. The office dismissed the case and is unable to retry it, she said.

Coughlin has come under scrutiny before over allegations he hid material evidence, including in the exoneration of Rickey Dale Wyatt. Wyatt was released from prison in January 2012 after he spent 31 years behind bars for a rape he always maintained he did not commit. He was declared innocent in 2014.

In that case, Coughlin concealed a photograph and records that established Wyatt was not the rapist, and made false statements about Wyatt’s appearance, according to a lawsuit filed by Wyatt, which he later voluntarily dismissed after he received state compensation.