SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The city of San Francisco will pay $8 million to settle a lawsuit with a man who spent 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit after a police officer allegedly falsified evidence against him.
Maurice Caldwell was released from prison on March 28, 2010, a few months before San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Charles Haines overturned his conviction on a finding that Caldwell's counsel had been ineffective.
In 1991, Caldwell was found guilty of the 1990 murder of Judy Acosta on Ellsworth Street in the Alemany Projects in San Francisco. A guilty verdict was obtained primarily based on the testimony of one eyewitness, who was allegedly tainted by "suggestive" police tactics.
Throughout his 20 years in prison, Caldwell refused multiple plea deals that would have secured his immediate release. He continued to insist on his innocence despite having to serve further time behind bars, he claimed in his federal lawsuit.
Caldwell said a key witness who identified him as the shooter was manipulated by suggestive police tactics and promised financial incentives, including a trip to Disneyland, in exchange for her testimony.
His lawsuit claims now-retired police commander Kitt Crenshaw, who was a sergeant at the time, handcuffed him and presented him to a key witness before a photo lineup to influence the witness's identification of him as a suspect. The witness initially described the suspect as not precisely matching Caldwell's appearance and said the suspect was someone she did not know, unlike Caldwell, who was a neighbor she knew as "Twone."
Caldwell also claims Crenshaw fabricated notes saying Caldwell admitted he was dealing drugs and present during the shooting, even though Caldwell actually said he was at his uncle's house during the shooting.
In an emailed statement Friday, San Francisco City Attorney's Office spokesman John Coté said Crenshaw "played no role" in Caldwell's trial and that this involvement in the murder investigation "was limited to a single interaction with Caldwell on a singe day in the summer of 1990."
Coté emphasized that Caldwell's conviction was overturned based on ineffective counsel and not based on any alleged misconduct in the murder investigation. According to the City Attorney's Office, courts had rejected four previous attempts to overturn the guilty verdict based on alleged false testimony, newly discovered evidence, cumulative errors that denied him due process and the claim that he is actually innocent.
"Two different courts rejected Mr. Caldwell’s petition for a finding of actual innocence," Coté said, adding that prosecutors chose not to retry Caldwell because the key witness had died in 1998.
According to Caldwell's lawsuit, Crenshaw had a motive to doctor evidence because Caldwell had filed a complaint against him with the city's police watchdog agency, the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC), now known as the Department of Police Accountability. Caldwell claimed Crenshaw, who was a narcotics officer at the time, had assaulted him. During the OCC investigation, Crenshaw admitted that he threatened to kill Caldwell during a previous interaction.
A federal judge ruled in 2016 that while Caldwell had raised legitimate questions about Crenshaw’s motive to frame him, a prosecutor “broke the chain of causation” by reviewing all the evidence before independently deciding to charge Caldwell with murder.
But that ruling was overturned two years later by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said a jury should decide whether evidence was fabricated and whether the prosecutor relied on alleged falsehoods to charge Caldwell.
The manner in which police first presented Caldwell to the trial's key witness was highly prejudicial, according to Caldwell's lawsuit. While another officer was interviewing the witness on July 13, 1990, Crenshaw allegedly found Caldwell outside, handcuffed him and "dragged him up" to the witness’s front door. While presenting a handcuffed Caldwell to the trial's future star witness, Crenshaw said something to the effect of, "This is Maurice Caldwell, Twone, the guy I've been telling you about. I need the keys to put him in the patrol car,” according to the complaint.
Caldwell had also accused two other officers, Arthur Gerrans and James Crowley, of improperly prejudicing the witness during a photo lineup, but the Ninth Circuit found the officers could not be sued because they never confirmed the witness picked the "correct suspect," apart from stating Caldwell's name after he was identified.
The city previously offered Caldwell $2.5 million to settle the lawsuit, an offer that was rejected by him and his attorneys.
Caldwell’s lawyers announced the settlement during a court hearing this past April, nearly nine years after the suit was filed on April 16, 2012.
The $8 million dollar figure was revealed this week in the agenda for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ July 27 meeting. The board’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee will consider the proposed settlement before it goes to the full board for a vote. It would then have to be approved by San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
Caldwell’s attorney Terry Gross, of the firm Gross & Belsky, said his client is pleased with the settlement, but he declined to comment further until the deal is approved by the city and accepted by the court.
“We are very happy to reach this excellent settlement with the city for our client, but we’re not at liberty to speak about it until it becomes final,” Gross said in a brief phone interview.
Coté, of the City Attorney's Office, framed the settlement as good deal for the city. He said Caldwell was seeking more than $21 million in damages.
"Settling this for a fraction of that avoids the cost of further litigation in a case about police practices from the 1980s where evidence and witnesses are no longer available more than 30 years later," Coté said. "Nothing about this settlement should be read as an admission that the officer did anything other than his job when he stopped and took a statement from Caldwell during the investigation."
Follow @NicholasIovino
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
