Posted on 11/18/2006 8:48:42 AM PST by calcowgirl
SAN FRANCISCO - An investigator who allegedly fabricated juror statements to win clemency for a death row inmate earlier this year is now suspected of submitting forged documents in at least three other cases involving condemned prisoners, the California Attorney General's Office said Friday.
Agents with the state Department of Justice searched Kathleen Culhane's San Francisco apartment on Thursday seeking evidence that could be used to charge her with felony perjury, forgery and submitting false documents, according to court records.
An affidavit filed in support of the search warrant said officials doubt the authenticity of at least 23 declarations Culhane filed from jurors and witnesses in the four capital cases and think the deception may be even more extensive.
''I believe that Culhane falsely created the declarations, signed and dated them, and subsequently submitted them as evidence,'' John Porbanic, a state peace officer, wrote in the warrant application. ''In that Culhane's activity preparing declarations during the period outlined is permeated with fraud, it appears there is probable cause to examine all declarations and related evidence that were prepared by Culhane.''
The four condemned murderers on whose behalf Culhane is alleged to have made up statements that were used in either appeals or requests for executive clemency are: Michael Morales, Vicente Benevides Figueroa, Christian Monterrosso and Jose Guerra, according to the affidavit.
Culhane's lawyer, Stuart Hanlon, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The veracity of Culhane's work first came under scrutiny when she was a private investigator working on the defense of Morales, a Stockton resident who was scheduled to be executed at San Quentin State Prison on Feb. 21 for raping and murdering Terri Winchell, 17, in 1981.
In the weeks leading up to Morales' execution, Culhane, 39, gave Morales' lawyers signed statements from six former jurors saying they thought Morales deserved clemency because some of the testimony at his trial may have been fabricated. The letters were filed as part of Morales' official appeal for clemency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But prosecutors in San Joaquin County almost immediately produced a competing set of documents from five of those jurors swearing they had never spoken with Culhane and still supported the death sentence for Morales. The signatures on those declarations were different from the ones Culhane prepared, they said.
Morales' lawyers, former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr and Los Angeles lawyer David Senior, initially stood by the declarations, but withdrew them as unreliable a week before Morales was scheduled to die. The execution was postponed indefinitely for unrelated reasons after the defense team convinced a federal judge the state's lethal injection methods might be unconstitutionally cruel.
Culhane allegedly prepared most of the suspect statements while a staff investigator for the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, a state agency based in San Francisco that represents death row inmates, records show. She worked for the center from Oct. 2001 to Sept. 2005, and the oldest document at issue was dated Nov. 11, 2002, the day before the center petitioned the California Supreme Court to overturn the sentence of Vicente Benevides Figueroa.
''I'm quite angry'' at Culhane, he said. ''I don't know how anyone could have anticipated an event like this.''
While probing Culhane's past work as a defense investigator, state agents went back to the people with names on the 23 disputed documents to ask if the signatures matched theirs. None said they did, and at least two noted their first names were misspelled, according to the affidavit.
amazing.. hang him... by his big toes and give the victim's families sticks,, he has added to the plight of those families most affected by murderous actions.
Pretty disgusting and at the least incompetent. I hope she gets plenty of "time" to contemplate her deeds. The prosecutors do a much better job when they use false testimony.
Hang "HER" you mean.
Gosh, liberal lawyers would lie??? But they are liberals!! Don't know you that liberal lies are okay because they only lie about things which are good for us?
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