9th Circuit Revives Wrongful Conviction Lawsuit

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in Goldstein v. County of Los Angeles is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Appeals panel revives former inmate's suit against L.A. County," is Maura Dolan's Los Angeles Times report.

A man convicted of murder largely on the basis of a jailhouse informant's perjured testimony may attempt to hold Los Angeles County liable for his 24 years in prison, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals revived a lawsuit by Thomas Goldstein, who was released from prison in 2004 after a district judge found that informant Edward Fink had lied on the stand.

Fink, a heroin addict and felon, frequently received favors from prosecutors for testifying against defendants. His testimony against Goldstein earned him a reduced sentence.

Fink claimed that Goldstein told him in jail that he had a killed a man over money. On cross-examination, Fink lied when he said he had received no benefit for his testimony in that or other cases. The judge overturned Goldstein's conviction, and Los Angeles County prosecutors declined to retry him.

And:

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, one of the 9th Circuit panelists, agreed with Wednesday's decision but wrote separately to point out that California had executed Tommy Thompson in 1998 on a murder and rape conviction "based on Fink's perjured testimony."

"It is unlikely that Thompson was death-eligible for his part in the crime, if he was guilty at all of any offense …," wrote Reinhardt, appointed by former President Carter. "Although Thompson was executed as a result of Fink's perjury (as well as the other unfortunate judicial matters…) the innocent Mr. Goldstein was fortunate enough to avoid that fate."

The San Francisco Chronicle coverage is, "Lawsuit revived in wrongful murder term," by Bob Egelko.

In a separate opinion, one judge said the same informant's perjured testimony in another case led to the 1998 execution of a man who was probably ineligible for the death penalty and may have been innocent.

The ruling Wednesday involved Thomas L. Goldstein, a former Marine who had no criminal record when he was convicted of fatally shooting John McGinest in an alley near Goldstein's Long Beach home in 1979.

And:

Goldstein, who is now in his mid-60s, has sought damages against former District Attorney John Van de Kamp, the city of Long Beach and Los Angeles County, claiming they were responsible for his wrongful prosecution and conviction.

The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed his case against Van de Kamp in 2009, ruling unanimously that prosecutors are immune from damages for wrongful convictions. Long Beach settled with Goldstein for nearly $8 million in 2010, and on Wednesday the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated his suit against the county.

The suit alleges that the district attorney's office had failed to train Goldstein's prosecutors to notify defense lawyers that an informant had been promised leniency. In a 3-0 ruling, the appeals court said the county can be held responsible for the misconduct of its prosecutors, reversing a federal judge's ruling that district attorneys are agents of the state.

One member of the panel, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, said Fink's "perjured testimony" had also been crucial to the conviction and execution of Thomas Thompson for a 1981 rape and murder in Orange County.

"L.A. County May Be Liable for Shaky Snitch," by Tim Hull for Courthouse News Service.

A man who spent 24 years in prison based largely on the testimony of a drug-addicted snitch may have a case against Los Angeles County, the 9th Circuit ruled Wednesday.

California district attorneys work for the county, not the state, when "adopting and implementing internal policies and procedures related to the use of jailhouse informants," and therefore are not necessarily immune from civil rights claims, the federal appeals court in Pasadena found.

The ruling breathes new life into the long-running case of Thomas Goldstein, a man tried and convicted for a murder in Long Beach in 1979. With no other evidence against the former Marine save shaky eyewitness testimony that was later recanted, prosecutors relied heavily on the word of jailhouse snitch Edward Fink, whom circuit Judge Sidney Thomas described as "aptronymic." In other words, aptly named.

"Federal appeals court rules wrongly convicted man's lawsuit against LA County can resume," is the AP filing, via the Republic.

While the case was pending the U.S. Supreme Court ruled prosecutors could not be held liable in such cases, so a district court dismissed Goldstein's suit.

But on Wednesday the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it could move forward, saying the issue was not prosecutors' misconduct but an administrative failure by the county, which should have established an index of informants and favors to share with defense attorneys.

Thomas Goldstein's case is noted in this earlier post.