@Nonilex I'd like to point out that one of the elements of a civil lawsuit for the tort of criminal malicious prosecution is "actual innocence." That is, it's one of the things that the plaintiff, the person who was maliciously prosecuted, has to be able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence. The other elements are generally not too tough to prove: there was a criminal prosecution; it was initiated by the defendant; it terminated in the plaintiffs favor; there was no probable cause for it; the defendant acted with malice; the plaintiff suffered damages. Proving actual innocence can be challenging because of that whole proving-a-negative thing. But here we seem to have prosecutors who have come right out and conceded that Hearn just flat-out didn't do the thing he was charged with doing, which, unless I'm missing something, makes a malicious-prosecution lawsuit as close to a slam dunk as these things ever get. I'm sure this point is not lost on his extremely good lawyer, Norm Eisen.