St. Paul man suing Ramsey County, alleges deputy planted DNA evidence

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Thomas Rudenick (FOX 9)

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - For three years, three months and 19 days, Ben Hill sat behind bars for a crime he knew he didn't commit.

"I told everyone the same thing. I said, 'Watch. You are going to see on the news someday. You're going to see that I didn't do this'", said Hill.

He was found guilty and sent to prison in 2013 for illegally possessing a firearm after his DNA was found on two guns, even though two witnesses testified they weren't his. Because he had a criminal record, he couldn't legally have a gun at the time he was charged with the crimes.

After spending more than 1,200 days in jail and maintaining his innocence the entire time, a Ramsey County District Court Judge found "proof by a preponderance of the evidence that the DNA was planted in this case."

Hill's appeal was granted, and he was fully exonerated in 2018.

"He had no shot after the DNA was discovered on the firearms... the DNA statistics might be infallible, but how the DNA got where it got is where the weak link is," said attorney Paul Applebaum, who is now representing Hill, alongside attorney Thomas Halger.

Court documents allege an independent investigation later found then-Ramsey County Sheriff's Office investigator Thomas Rudenick had Hill's DNA swabs and the two guns for four days without turning them into evidence.

"He had the DNA and the firearms together for four days...he had it all at the same time so that he could tamper with it," said Halger.

At a post-conviction hearing, Rudenick even admitted he kept evidence as he pleased and never bothered to keep accurate chain of custody logs, so he didn't have to "deal with transfer sheets and all that paperwork."

"Deputy Rudenick intentionally circumvented the paperwork protocol that are intended to prevent this type of abuse," said Halger.

Hill is now suing Rudenick, Ramsey County and nine other "John Doe" deputies in federal court for $55 million.

"I'd like to get my life back to how it was on track to be before all this happened. I want to be successful in life. I want to have my family back together," said Hill.

This isn't the first time Rudenick has been accused of misconduct. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to theft charges after an outside investigation revealed he stole evidence from cases, sold it to pawn shops and pocketed the cash. He retired from the Sheriff's Office that same year, and Hill's attorneys think the goal of retirement may have been his motivation for planting evidence in Hill's case.

"According to him, he was trying to retire, and they wouldn't let him, and they wouldn't let him because he had too many open cases," said Halger.

FOX 9 reached out to Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who would not comment on the litigation because he wasn't in office at the time of the alleged incident.

Ramsey County told Fox 9 they have not been served with the complaint yet and would not be providing comment at this time.