He was imprisoned for 39 years for two crimes that he did not commit and will now receive $ 21 million – 25/02/2019

Craig Coley should never have spent 39 years in prison. Everyone seems to agree on that. They also agree that The 71-year-old must spend the rest of his life as a millionaire.

The city of Simi Valley announced Saturday the signing of an agreement to resolve the dispute with the federal government that would grant Coley $ 21 million for his nearly four decades of wrongful imprisonment for the murders of Rhonda Wicht and her son Donald, aged 4, in 1978. Thirty-nine years is the longest prison sentence that has been canceled in California, says the city.

"Although no amount of money can compensate for what happened to Mr. Coley, reaching an agreement in this case is the right thing for Mr. Coley and our community," said the director. the city, Eric Levitt, in a statement. The trial would be expensive and irresponsible.

Often, those unfairly convicted face long battles to determine how they should be compensated for their incarceration. since the localities accuse the previous administrations and have debated the resulting sum, this constitutes an expiation.

Not on this occasion. In Coley's case, all levels of government joined the initiative. The Simi Valley Police Department reopened the case, get support from Ventura County Attorney Gregory Totten.

In 2017, the then Governor, Jerry Brown, pardoned the Navy veteran. The California Victims Compensation Board awarded him last year an award of nearly $ 2 million: $ 140 for each of the 13,991 days that Coley was "illegally behind bars, away from society, from a job and his loved ones". A few months later, Coley filed a lawsuit for human rights violations by the federal government. Today, the city offers several millions.

The city will pay about $ 4.9 million and the rest will come from insurance and other sources, according to a press release.

In November 2017, Totten's office announced that Simi Valley prosecutor and police chief David Livingstone were supporting Coley's offer of mercy. Simi Valley researchers, located about 40 km northwest of Los Angeles, They found "biological samples" (which the trial court ordered to destroy after Coley's conviction in January 1980) in a private laboratory, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

"It has been found that a key piece of evidence used to convict the defendant it does not contain its DNA, but it contains the DNA of other individuals"He said.

The investigation, which also included the questioning of witnesses and the reconstitution of the Coley case from documents not disclosed by his family and other sources, led Totten to believe that "the evidence, as we know it now, comply with the applicable legal standard, a conclusion of objective innocence ".

On November 22, 2017, Brown pardoned Coley, turning him into a free man, and a week later, the Ventura County Superior Court not only overturned Coley's convictions, but declared him innocent, paving the way for compensation by the state.

In granting his pardon, Brown said that he had asked in 2015 that the state parole hearing board investigate the case and that the commission hear at least three officials of law enforcement who claimed that a detective in 1978 "mishandled the case".

Coley did not have a criminal record before the murders, noted Brown, and He was a model prisoner, dedicated to religion. He also got two titles and began working on a master's degree, according to the State Compensation Commission.

"The grace with which Mr. Coley endured this prolonged and unfair imprisonment is extraordinary," the governor wrote.

Although the agreement gives Coley and his family a sense of justice, it also means that the murderer (s) of Rhonda and Donald Wicht escaped arrest. Police announced last year that she was waiting for the Golden State badbadin to help them solve the case, but he was also acquitted by DNA, reported the newspaper. Ventura County Star.

According to the National Register of Exemptions, Wicht and his son were found murdered on November 11, 1978. Donald had been asphyxiated, Wicht had been strangled. with a macramé rope and it seemed that someone had organized the scene to make it look like a robbery. Wicht, 24, was also raped, as determined by a doctor.

The neighbors told the police that they had woken up to the sound of a fight around 5.30 am, and a neighbor said that she had looked outside and saw Coley's truck. According to the synopsis of the recording, Coley, director of the restaurant and son of a retired detective from Los Angeles, was breaking up with Wicht at the time.

Coley, then 31, told the police that he was in a restaurant until 4:30 am, which had left a friend around 4:45. He had gone home. Police searched Coley's house and found a child's shirt and a bloody towel, who believed that he had been used in the murders, said the synopsis.

Coley was charged with first degree murder and prosecutors announced that They would seek the death penalty.

At the trial, the police said that there was no sign of forced entry into Wicht's home and that an internal key had been found on the floor of his apartment. A doctor told the jurors that Coley had many injuries, including penile abrasion, according to the register.

As he would do for the next four decades, Coley denied committing the crimes, baduming his own defense. Your colleagues they supported their story that he was at the restaurant until dawn on the day of the murder and that his defense team questioned the characterization of Coley's injuries by the prosecution, according to the synopsis.

The jury voted 10-2, and the judge declared a null judgment. Coley He was found guilty at the end of a second trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The California Court of Appeals upheld his conviction a decade later.

Detective Michael Bender of the Simi Valley Police reviewed the case and he was convinced of Coley's innocence. In his 2013 leniency petition, Bender stated that another detective had destroyed the evidence that could have been claimed by Coley, depending on the file.

"There was no one there to fight for this man, so I just continued the fight," Bender said. CNN last year. "It was the right thing to do."

In a storage unit, boxes of evidence were found that once we thought that they had been destroyed, and the company that had badyzed Coley's biological samples had been purchased by a private company, which He kept the samples.

The leaf in which Wicht's body was found did not contain Coley's DNA, but contained sperm and possibly saliva from an unidentified man, and the boy's shirt did not contain Cole's DNA, according to the register.

As part of the new investigation, the police also went to the building where the neighbors lived and determined that It would have been difficult to distinguish the details of a vehicle and no one could be identified from the inside. When Brown officially exonerated Coley, he categorically stated, "I grant this forgiveness because Mr. Coley did not commit these crimes."

After the announcement of the agreement last Saturday, the lawyer Ron Kaye said that Coley "can now live the rest of his life, which we hope will be very good in the future, with the security that it deserves, "according to the newspaper Los Angeles Times.

Source: CNN.

GML