Cooperation Leads to Freeing An Innocent Man
Francisco Carrillo, Jr. is exonerated after spending nearly 20 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit
On March 14, 2011, the Los Angeles County Superior Court reversed Francisco “Franky” Carrillo Jr.’s 1992 conviction for the murder of Donald Sarpy, and ordered his release from incarceration pending the district attorney’s decision on whether to dismiss the charges against Mr. Carrillo, who has been behind bars for nearly two decades.
Prosecutors conceded that new evidence required the reversal and that it was unlikely they would seek to retry Carrillo.
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NCIP legal director Linda Starr with
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Linda Starr, legal director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law and a member of Carrillo’s legal team, said, “Franky Carrillo is innocent and after nearly 20 years, his release is a victory for justice.”
She added, “His conviction is another stark example of major problems that contribute to so many wrongful convictions – bad eyewitness identifications caused by poor police identification procedures and tunnel vision by police that not only keeps them from even considering that they may have made a mistake, but results in their continuing to work to vindicate their original bad work.”
Carrillo, 37, will be released from the Los Angeles County Jail to experience freedom for the first time since he was arrested in 1991. State prison officials were working Tuesday morning to process the release and his lawyers are at the jail to greet him upon his release.
Carrillo was convicted of the 1991 murder based on identification testimony from six people, including the victim’s son. All six have now admitted that they did not really see anything, and were influenced to make their identifications of Carrillo. In addition, two other men have confessed to the shooting and said that Carrillo was not involved.
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From left: Morrison & Foerster attorney Alison Tucher, Francisco “Franky” Carrillo Jr., NCIP Legal Director Linda Starr,
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Carrillo’s legal team consisted of attorney Ellen Eggers; attorneys Alison Tucher, George Harris and Erika Drous from the law firm of Morrison and Foerster, and Starr and attorney Paige Kaneb from the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP). The attorneys and a team of investigators conducted a lengthy investigation and developed the evidence of innocence that led to an evidentiary hearing that began March 7.
During six days of testimony before Superior Court Judge Paul Bacigalupo, the eyewitnesses testified that they could not really see the shooter’s face, and the true perpetrators asserted their rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify. Carrillo also testified that he was not involved in the shooting. Defense investigator David Lynn testified to a confession he obtained from another man who exonerated Carrillo.
At the hearing, the eyewitness who was the first to implicate Carrillo back in 1991 took the witness stand and apologized to Carrillo, saying he was willing to accept punishment for what he had done because he knew that it was wrong and that he had stolen the life of an innocent man.
On Monday, at the conclusion of the hearing, representatives from the district attorney’s office conceded that Mr. Carrillo’s petition should be granted. Judge Bacigalupo then ordered Carrillo’s release.
The Crime and Investigation
Donald Sarpy, 41, was murdered on January 18, 1991, when he was shot as he stepped out of his home in Lynwood. Sarpy’s son, Dameon, and five other friends were nearby, but none were wounded.
Their initial statements demonstrated how little they saw. A few told police that they heard someone in a passing car shout a Hispanic gang slogan (the neighborhood was controlled by an African-American gang whose rival was a Hispanic gang) and they could only describe the shooter as a Hispanic male teenager. The witnesses could not agree on what the car looked like—providing descriptions ranging from tan to black and shiny to dull. Some said there were three males in the car and some said there were only two males in the car.
Carrillo, who was 16 years old at the time, became a suspect after law enforcement, due to a mix-up in street names, erroneously came to believe that he was the perpetrator of another shooting.
The first witness to identify Carrillo was Scott Turner, one of the attempted murder victims, who identified Carrillo from a photographic lineup and then told his friends that he had chosen the person in position number 1 and also described what Carrillo looked like.
When the other attempted murder victims were shown the photo lineup months later, all chose Number 1, Carrillo’s photograph, because Turner had told them that Carrillo was the shooter. With no physical evidence linking Carrillo to the crime, their testimony was critical to the prosecution.
Carrillo was tried twice. The first ended in a mistrial after jurors were deadlocked 7 to 5 for acquittal. In 1992 at his second trial, Turner recanted his identification of Mr. Carrillo, but the remaining five witnesses strengthened their identifications, eliminated inconsistencies in their testimony and the district attorney argued that because Turner was in custody, he was simply scared to be labeled a “snitch.”
The jury convicted Carrillo on all counts and he was sentenced to two consecutive life prison sentences.
The Exoneration
Questions about Carrillo’s innocence were raised early. At his sentencing on December 3, 1992, a criminal defense attorney came to court and announced that a former client was in the hallway, that the client was at the crime scene, and that he would say that Carrillo had not been involved. The trial judge denied that request and sent Carrillo to prison.
In March of 2003, after his conviction had been upheld by California courts, Carrillo discovered for the first time that handwritten notes from the man who came to court at his sentencing were still in the defense investigator’s file. In those notes, the man admitted to his participation in the murder.
Relying on that new evidence, Carrillo filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2003. But the Superior Court denied the petition finding that “[c]ompared to the quality and quantity of the witnesses who identified the defendant as the shooter, defendant’s ‘evidence’ is speculative at best.”
Without the funds to hire either an attorney or an investigator to assist him, Carrillo could not obtain the evidence he needed to challenge the eyewitness identifications and thereby establish his innocence.
It was not until attorney Ellen Eggers, the law firm of Morrison and Foerster, and the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) began to look into Carrillo’s claim of innocence pro bono that he was able to obtain the overwhelming evidence of his innocence that is presented in this petition.
The real break in the case came when Dameon Sarpy, son of the murder victim, read a handwritten confession from one of the true perpetrators and then admitted that he could not then or now identify anyone in the car and that he had relied on Turner’s word to identify Mr. Carrillo.
Carrillo’s legal team then tracked down four of the other five witnesses and all recanted their testimony, saying they did not actually see the shooter because it was dark and everything happened so quickly.
The District Attorney’s Office tracked down the remaining eyewitness who also recanted his identification.
The eyewitnesses testified at the evidentiary hearing during the week of March 7, and maintained that they never saw the shooter’s face well enough to make an identification, and that they relied on Turner in identifying Carrillo.
Turner testified at the hearing that at 2:30 in the morning, after Dameon’s father died, police showed him a book of photos of rival gang members from which he picked multiple photos. Police told him that the first two photos he had chosen could not have been the shooter because those men were incarcerated. He then chose Carrillo’s photo because it looked like the first photo that he had chosen. Police told him that Carrillo was a young guy trying to make a name for himself and was most likely the shooter. In Turner’s own words, he “ran with it” and told his friends that he had identified the shooter, and who he had identified. Turner’s heartfelt apology to Carrillo at the hearing brought the courtroom to tears.
At the culmination of the hearing, Judge Bacigalupo granted the petition and ordered Carrillo’s release.
Following the judge’s ruling Monday, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Brentford Ferreira said that while a decision would be made later on whether to bring Carrillo to trial again, he conceded the state’s evidence had been eviscerated. “I don’t see how we could try this case again,” he said.
“Franky’s release is a miracle,” Eggers said after the ruling. “Franky Carrillo himself deserves the most credit – for keeping the faith and never giving up on himself or his case, even when all seemed hopeless. Franky is a true hero.”
Another member of Carrillo’s legal team, NCIP attorney Paige Kaneb, said, “This exoneration was a huge team effort. Everyone, including Franky, contributed to his release and to developing and presenting the evidence of innocence to the court in a way that compelled this ruling.”
For more information:
Contact: Northern California Innocence Project, (408) 554-4790
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