Simi Valley reached a $21-million settlement with a man who spent more than 38 years wrongfully incarcerated in the brutal 1978 murders of a woman and her 4-year-old son, officials said.

Craig Coley, 71, was released from prison in 2017 after he was pardoned by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, who said that DNA evidence and a painstaking re-investigation of the Simi Valley murders proved his innocence.

The city said Saturday that the agreement would mitigate long, costly and unnecessary legal proceedings. Simi Valley will be on the hook for roughly $4.9 million of the settlement, while the rest is expected to be paid by insurance and other sources, officials said.
“While no amount of money can make up for what happened to Mr. Coley, settling this case is the right thing to do for Mr. Coley and our community,” City Manager Eric Levitt said in a statement. “The monetary cost of going to trial would be astronomical and it would be irresponsible for us to move forward in that direction.”

The state approved a separate, much smaller payout last year. Brown approved a $1.95-million payment for Coley — $140 for each day he was wrongfully behind bars — that marked the largest payout by the state’s Victim Compensation Board for an erroneous conviction.

The victims were discovered by a relative who grew concerned when Rhonda Wicht didn’t show up for a family get-together. The 24-year-old had been strangled with an 11-foot macrame rope, her son, Donald, smothered in his bed.

Coley, a Vietnam War veteran who was going through a breakup with Wicht, was held for questioning that day and ultimately charged with the two murders. He did not have a prior criminal record.

A key witness against Coley was Wicht’s next-door neighbor, who said she heard banging noises and saw Coley’s truck parked outside the apartment complex the morning of the murders. She testified that someone with medium-length hair drove it away.

Another neighbor who lived downstairs told jurors that he heard noises from Wicht’s apartment at 5:30 a.m.

At Coley’s first trial, jurors spent four weeks deliberating before announcing they were deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of guilt. A second jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder in 1980, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But he always maintained his innocence. A retired Simi Valley detective named Mike Bender was instrumental in pushing law enforcement agencies to reexamine the case.

Bender has said that in 2015, he caught the right ear in Brown’s office. A year later, Simi Valley Police Chief David Livingstone also launched an investigation, just as he was taking the helm of the department.

In Coley’s claim for compensation and other court filings, his attorneys and prosecutors detailed troubling inconsistencies in the evidence against him.

The neighbor who heard noises from downstairs first told police, hours after the murders, that he heard the commotion not at 5:30 a.m., but an hour earlier, exactly when Coley, who worked as a night manager at a restaurant, was out socializing with former co-workers. Coley dropped one off at 4:45 a.m.

The new investigation also raised questions about Wicht’s next-door neighbor’s claim that she had seen a man matching Coley’s description drive away the morning of the killings. Exactly 39 years after Wicht’s murder, detectives returned to the neighbor’s apartment to peer out her window.

There was no way, they concluded, that she could have seen from her window whoever was inside a truck parked outside.
But the most indisputable finding that officials said supported Coley’s innocence came when detectives located DNA evidence once thought destroyed.

A piece of Wicht’s bedsheet the night she was found dead contained another man’s sperm, along with a man’s epithelial cells. Coley’s DNA was not found on the sheet.

Investigators also tested stains, blood and semen on a child’s Mickey Mouse T-shirt that police at the time said they discovered in a pile of dirty clothes during a search of Coley’s apartment after the murders. New tests on the shirt revealed the boy’s DNA, as well as the sperm of several individuals. None of them matched Coley.

Soon after Coley was pardoned, a judge declared him factually innocent. Simi Valley police have not arrested anyone else in the killings.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-craig-coley-simi-settlement-20190223-story.html

the way God dey do him work pass human reasoning.

If na Nigeria, police will reward you with talks like. ........ "You just get luck say you dey innocent, Na 58 years you for stay"

donstan18:
If Na Nigeria, police go tell you say......."You just get luck say you dey innocent, Na 58 years you for stay"

So u will tink o...but this is Nigeria and you can get away with murder...else many will be in prison instead of walking on the streets, socializing and smiling like they didn't kill people...

I pray the man gets another twenty years of life with good health to enjoy his money , get a young wife and probably bear children too

That doesn't worth it. Bleep, freedom is better than money but wetin man go do

I pity the guy.
21 million is a slap in the face compared to the time spent.
If he went to court he might have gotten a better deal.
The quick payout was because the state couldn't defend its actions.

meobizy:
I pity the guy.
21 million is a slap in the face compared to the time spent.
If he went to court he might have gotten a better deal.
The quick payout was because the state couldn't defend its actions.

guy no be naira ohh, if they slap my face with 21 milla, I will turn the other cheek and Oliver Twist

Y not 38 millions

JbravoAdodger:


guy no be naira ohh, if they slap my face with 21 milla, I will turn the other cheek and Oliver Twist

No amount of money is worth a man's freedom.
If they are to put the mistake into financial value it will cost more than twenty one million dollars.

So SIMI already has a VALLEY... that's cool



See my signature

I also watched a documentary about a couple who spent 20 on death row, a wrongful conviction for killing 2 policemen.. Now the couple is old

meobizy:
I pity the guy.
21 million is a slap in the face compared to the time spent.
If he went to court he might have gotten a better deal.
The quick payout was because the state couldn't defend its actions.

He got off because of painstaking DNA evidence.

If the prosecution could show that as at that time, this level of tech wasn't able to detect what it detected, he won't get what he got.

Meanwhile, how many people free roaming have made that 21M USD in that space of years?

Wow

Sadly, he has little time to spend the money.

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this is no consolation for the loss of his freedom

One would think the amount settled it but NO. Because no amount can be compared with freedom. 38 damn years because of a crime you know quite well you didn't commit. 38 years of Agony!!!

Will that money really make up for the lost time... I don't think so.


But at least from now on he can enjoy his liFe.

So many innocent peepz are serving jail time...

All the prostitutes in that area no go allow am rest now. I don't know why there are so much women in this world and all have this sense of entitlement

An average naija man will try this shit and collect 21dollars...you go hear..."38yrs no far"

ergv

the amount isn't worth it

claustrophobic person like me can't even spent 2 months in jail for a million dollars

migin7000:
this is no consolation for the loss of his freedom

He could have died broke in a street fight or stabbed because of a gf if he hadn't been in jail and I'm sure he is richer than all his former friends enjoying so called freedom. Brov. With 21millions dollars you can catch up for the wasted time

I swear no amount of money can make up for the years lost.

DonHummer:
I pray the man gets another twenty years of life with good health to enjoy his money , get a young wife and probably bear children too

Amen