The fate of a lawsuit filed against Pottawattamie County officials by two men who were wrongfully convicted of murder will be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. The Court announced today that it will hear an appeal from former Pottawattamie County prosecutors who were named in the civil action.

The suit, filed by Terry Harrington and Curtis W. McGhee Jr., stems from their first-degree murder convictions in 1978 for the death of retired Council Bluffs police captain John Schweer.  Twenty-five years later, in 2003, the convictions were overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court because prosecutors and police withheld evidence of a more likely suspect. In addition, several trial witnesses later recanted their testimony.

Former Pottawattamie County Attorney David Richter and then-deputy Joseph Hrvol are accused in the suit of not only ignoring evidence pointing to another suspect, but of purposefully painting Harrington and McGhee, who were then black teenagers from Omaha, as guilty of murder. Instead of alluding to the possibility of racial profiling, the suit alleges that county officers were motivated by political concerns to convict the black men of killing a white police officer.

Prosecutors have argued that they are immune from civil suit because their actions fell within the scope of their duties. That argument was rejected by federal courts and, previous to today’s announcement by the Supreme Court, the case was set to begin in late summer in U.S. District Court in Des Moines.