Posted on 04/17/2025 3:08:54 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Six years after a jury acquitted a Modesto defense attorney and his codefendants in an alleged murder conspiracy, Stanislaus County has agreed to settle a malicious prosecution lawsuit for $22.5 million, one of the largest payouts of its kind in the history of the California courts.
County supervisors approved the settlement Tuesday on the threshold of a trial in the federal case, which was brought by eight plaintiffs who contended that police and prosecutors had fabricated the charges against them.
At the heart of the case was the late Frank Carson, a veteran Modesto defense attorney with a pugilistic style who delighted in antagonizing police and prosecutors. The ill feeling toward him at the Stanislaus County district attorney’s office was no secret.
In August 2015, after a three-year investigation, the district attorney’s office accused him of masterminding a complicated plot to kill a scrap-metal thief, Korey Kauffman, as revenge for the alleged theft of pipes on Carson’s property.
Eight others were charged with helping Carson murder Kauffman or covering up the crime: two brothers who owned a local liquor store; three members of the California Highway Patrol; Carson’s wife and stepdaughter; and a drug-addled handyman who cut a deal in exchange for his cooperation.
No physical evidence linked any of the defendants to the death of the 26-year-old Kauffman, whose fragmented skeleton was found in the Stanislaus National Forest in 2013, 17 months after he vanished. Kauffman, who stole habitually to feed his meth addiction, ran in a world where many people had wished him harm.
But investigators at the D.A.’s office — including those Carson had publicly denounced and ridiculed — decided to focus on him based on a tip that Kauffman had planned to steal from Carson’s property. The case resulted in an 18-month preliminary hearing and a...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The size of the settlement of the future malicious prosecution lawsuit that will certainly be filed in the Massachusetts Karen Read murder case will dwarf this current California settlement. Just IMHO, of course.
Here is a detailed article about the events in question.
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=22d8c5fe-45c6-4ba3-ad95-1c24c529870f
The size of the settlement of the future malicious prosecution lawsuit that will certainly be filed in the Massachusetts Karen Read murder case will dwarf this current California settlement. Just IMHO, of course.
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What’s your opinion on how this legal precedent might figure in to a malicious prosecution case against leticia lames, fani willis or boot jack smith?
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