The civil trial jury found Las Vegas police and two detectives, now retired, fabricated evidence during their investigation and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon Lobato.
Lobato was 18 when she was interviewed by police without an attorney, arrested and charged with killing Duran Bailey in Las Vegas in July 2001.
No physical evidence or witnesses connected Lobato to the killing, and she maintained she never met Bailey.
But police maintained she confessed in jail that she had killed a man who tried to rape her during a three-day methamphetamine binge.
She was exonerated and freed from prison in late 2017 after the Innocence Project and attorneys in Las Vegas again took her case to the state Supreme Court.
Justices said evidence showed that Lobato was in her hometown of Panaca, Nevada, some 150 miles (214 kilometers) from Las Vegas when Bailey was killed.
Last October, a state court judge in Las Vegas issued a certificate declaring Lobato innocent of Bailey’s killing. »