Two brothers wrongly convicted for the Dec. 24, 1991, abduction, rape and murder of Dana Ireland have filed a federal lawsuit claiming their civil rights were violated by Hawaii County and its police department.

The suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu alleges multiple violations of the rights of Albert “Ian” Schweitzer and Shawn Schweitzer, including conspiracy, malicious prosecution, violation of due process and infliction of emotional distress.

The lawsuit, which seeks seeks financial compensation, was filed by Honolulu attorney William Harrison plus Steve Art, David B. Owens and Israa Alzamli of Loevy + Loevy, a Chicago law firm specializing in civil rights cases.

“There is no sum of money that can compensate them,” Harrison told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald on Wednesday. “But the law says that … you can have a jury of your peers determine what that’s worth. And that’s what we will be doing in this case.”

Named as defendants in the suit are Hawaii County, Police Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz, Deputy Chief Reed Mahuna, retired police officers including former Chief Paul Ferreira, Detective Steven Guillermo, Lt. Francis Rodillas and Capt. Raymond Simao, plus William Perreira, a former investigator for the prosecutor’s office.

Ferreira, who was the chief immediately prior to Moszkowicz, was a detective assigned to investigate the case in the 1990s, according to the complaint.

A scheduling conference has been set for March 24 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rom Trader.

Ian Schweitzer and Shawn Schweitzer were 20 and 16, respectively, when Ireland, a 23-year-old Virginia woman who had recently graduated from college, was found badly beaten and sexually assaulted on a fishing trail in lower Puna.

She died shortly after midnight Christmas Day 1991.

Falsely implicated by another defendant, Frank Pauline, Ian Schweitzer, now 53, spent more than a quarter-century in prison before being exonerated in 2023. After his older brother was sentenced to life in prison, Shawn Schweitzer took a plea deal for manslaughter with a probation sentence that allowed him to leave jail with time already served.

Pauline — who also was convicted, sentenced to 180 years and killed in 2015 in a New Mexico prison — later recanted his confession, saying he lied in exchange for leniency in a drug case involving his half-brother, John Gonsalves.

DNA recovered from Ireland’s body identifies the man who actually kidnapped, raped and killed her as Albert Lauro Jr. of Hawaiian Paradise Park. Lauro, a 57-year-old fisherman, committed suicide last year after police collected his DNA with a buccal swab, questioned and released him.

No DNA matching either Schweitzer brother or Pauline was found on Ireland or at the scene.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants, under intense community pressure to solve Ireland’s murder, “framed Ian and Shawn for the crime” and “knew that they had manufactured false evidence.”

“Rather than attempt to bring Ms. Ireland’s real killer to justice, defendants conspired to fabricate evidence implicating the brothers in the crime and to suppress evidence that would have proved their innocence,” the complaint states. “Among other things, defendants fabricated statements for jailhouse informants to provide, implicating Ian and Shawn.”

“My family and the Ireland family are all victims of this terrible injustice,” Ian Schweitzer said in a statement. “My brother and I have been clear since day one that we had nothing to do with this terrible crime. For all of our sakes, the real perpetrator should have been arrested, the Ireland family should have gotten justice, and me and my family should have been left to live our lives in peace.”

“My brother and I were framed for a terrible rape and murder we had nothing to do with,” added Shawn Schweitzer. “Ian spent more than 20 years in prison, and our entire family had to deal with the fallout from police lies that exploded our lives. None of us have ever been the same, and nothing can ever make up for the damage this caused.”

Harrison said the Schweitzer family has suffered “public opprobrium based on, basically, these … very nasty and difficult allegations.”

“And anywhere the family went, they believed people were whispering ‘that’s the family, that’s the Schweitzers,’ so on and so forth,” he said. “They’ve obviously lost so much precious time in their lives together. These are brothers who, you know, were apart for 25 years, and a family whose two boys were literally snatched from them.”

The lawsuit alleges that, despite having recently identified the actual perpetrator, Moszkowicz and Mahuna instead of “conducting an honest investigation and closing the case … continue to spin outrageous theories premised on the false notion that plaintiffs were somehow involved when no reasonable person would believe they are.”

“In reality, there is no real investigation going on in regard to the Schweitzers, and that’s part of the lawsuit,” Harrison said. “We believe that they’re — you’ve heard of the term ‘adding insult to injury’ — they’re continuing to do that in this case. And that’s what we’re seeking, as well, is compensation for their intentional wrongful conduct in this case.”

The Tribune-Herald reached out to Corporation Counsel, the county’s civil lawyers, for comment, but didn’t receive a reply in time for this story.