Man acquitted of pregnant girlfriend’s murder and freed from prison loses $150 million wrongful-arrest suit against NYPD (EXCLUSIVE)

A Queens man who was acquitted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend on retrial and freed from prison has lost a $150 million wrongful-arrest suit against the NYPD, the Daily News has learned.

Derick Redd, 49, filed the false-arrest and malicious-prosecution suit against the city and the NYPD after a Queens jury acquitted him of the murder in the 2018 retrial.

But cops had probable cause to arrest him when they charged him with stabbing his girlfriend Niasha DeLain to death inside her Lefferts Blvd. apartment on Oct. 25, 2008, the day she was supposed to give birth, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Raymond Dearie ruled.

Redd served nine years in prison after an earlier jury convicted him and a judge gave him the maximum 25 years to life.

But that conviction was tossed on appeal because the trial prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Eugene Reibstein, made too many inflammatory speculative statements to the jury and “misstated the evidence against [Redd]” according to a 2016 decision by the Appellate Division 2nd Department.

But in his Dec. 30 ruling, Dearie sided with the city and NYPD in the civil suit, finding that the cops had enough of a case to arrest Redd.

Police found two pieces of circumstantial evidence enough to support an arrest, the judge said — DeLain’s upstairs neighbor heard a woman yell “Stop, Derrick!” the morning of the murder and cell tower data showing Redd’s phone around the corner from the crime scene for about two hours before the neighbor heard the scream.

Dearie also pointed to evidence which on its own wouldn’t be enough for an arrest but bolstered the case — no signs of entry in DeLain’s apartment, with Redd having a key, the smell of cleaning solution in the apartment, open bottles of bleach in Redd’s car, three small cuts on his hand, as well as his erratic behavior after the murder and misleading statements to detectives.

”Admittedly, the case against Redd was far from airtight. Given the lack of forensic evidence connecting Redd — or anyone else — to the crime, as well as uncertainty as to witness credibility, the time of death, and Redd’s whereabouts during the relevant period, it is not surprising that Redd’s second trial ended in an acquittal,” Dearie wrote.

“But probable cause [to arrest] does not require an airtight case or a guarantee of conviction.”

“A reasonable officer could have concluded, based on the totality of the information available at the time of the arrest, that Redd killed DeLain,” he added.

Prosecutors alleged that Redd stabbed DeLain, 25, multiple times in the stomach in her South Ozone Park home the day she was to give birth to a baby boy she planned to name Aidan.

Redd stopped short of admitting the horrific crime but made some startling statements the night of the slaying.

“I either avoid the problem or I eliminate it,” Redd told investigators that night, officials said.

“I wasn’t sure the baby was mine,” he allegedly said. “I didn’t trust her with my heart. We argued about an abortion.”

He maintained his innocence after his first conviction, though DeLain’s mother, Towanda Wimms, has always believed he is the killer — and is glad he won’t be getting a multimillion-dollar payout from the city for his arrest and imprisonment.

“This has been a long, drawn-out process since losing Niasha and Aidan back in 2008. However with this recent turn of events as it relates to the federal lawsuit, it appears some form of justice is being served,” she told the Daily News.

“We thank all who worked on the lawsuit for their diligence. We are also grateful to the police officers, detectives and [the] first prosecutors because we are 100% positive they got it right the first trial.”

It’s not the first time Redd was acquitted of murder. When he was 19, he was found not guilty of the 1992 killing of Carlos Sarmiento, a 52-year-old diamond cutter who was shot to death in his Rego Park, Queens, building during a mugging.

Patricia Miller, who heads the city Law Department’s Special Federal Litigation Division, said she was “gratified” by Dearie’s decision.

“The ruling also brings some measure of justice to a family that suffered an unspeakable loss and believes Mr. Redd should not profit from his horrific crime,” she said.

Redd’s lawyer did not return a request for comment.