The Framers of the San Francisco Police Dept

[Joe Guy]

San Francisco pays $13.1 million to man framed for murder

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A man who spent more than six years in prison after police framed him for murder received a $13.1 million settlement from the city of San Francisco on Tuesday.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by Jamal Trulove. The settlement was part of the board's consent calendar and was approved without comment.

San Francisco's city attorney and Trulove's lawyers negotiated terms of the settlement before it was presented to the board for approval.

Trulove was an aspiring actor and hip-hop artist when he was arrested for the 2007 murder of his friend and neighbor in a low-income housing project. A jury convicted him of murder in 2010 and he was sentenced to life in prison. Alex Reisman, one of Trulove's lawyers, said Trulove spent eight years in maximum security prisons, mostly in Southern California hundreds of miles from family. He was also stabbed, Reisman said.

"He endured a lot," Reisman said.

An appeals court overturned the conviction in 2014 and ordered a new trial. He was acquitted in a 2015 retrial. Three years later, Trulove sued the police department and four officers saying they fabricated evidence, coerced a key eyewitness and withheld vital information that may have exonerated Trulove.

A federal jury last year determined the two lead homicide detectives had violated Trulove's civil rights and awarded him $14.5 million. Trulove accepted the $13.1 million offer in exchange for the city's dropping of its appeal. The jury cleared two other officers of wrongdoing.

The jury found that detectives showed an eyewitness a single photo of Trulove rather than presenting the person with photos of other people as part of a "lineup" to identify a suspect. Evidence also was produced showing the detectives were aware of another suspect who they did not investigate, among other failures.

The four officers named in Trulove's lawsuit have retired. No officers were disciplined for their roles in the case, Reisman said.

source

[ex-khobar Andy]

This should be disqualifying for Kamala Harris who was SF DA at the time. I am not saying that she was responsible for police misconduct but it happened on her watch.

[BoSoxGal]

This should be disqualifying for Kamala Harris who was SF DA at the time. I am not saying that she was responsible for police misconduct but it happened on her watch.

No, no, no. That's a really unfair conclusion to leap to, absent specific evidence showing that the DA's office had the ability to know that a frame had occurred. District attorneys aren't the supervisor of police departments, that's the police commissioner's job.

One of the reasons my immune system suffered irreparable damage from toxic levels of stress hormones over the better part of a decade was because I lived in constant fear that I was prosecuting someone on evidence that I had no ability to know was fabricated.

Having attended numerous state and national conferences and trainings for prosecutors I am very ready to acknowledge that many are ambitious assholes too quick to throw ethical guidelines to the winds and too many are just monsters who actively participate in fixing cases, but a whole lot are good people who believe in the rule of law and are duped by crooked and/or willfully ignorant cops.

So, more evidence before I'm willing to hang this on Ms. Harris.

(But in general I am not likely to be inspired to vote for her or any other former prosecutor, because there are few and far between who are truly courageous about bucking the trends of 'tough of crime' and 'war on drugs' that have failed us so miserably in recent decades and that require prosecutors to do ugly things that don't actually achieve justice in a moral sense.)

[ex-khobar Andy]

This should be disqualifying for Kamala Harris who was SF DA at the time. I am not saying that she was responsible for police misconduct but it happened on her watch.

No, no, no. That's a really unfair conclusion to leap to, absent specific evidence showing that the DA's office had the ability to know that a frame had occurred. District attorneys aren't the supervisor of police departments, that's the police commissioner's job.

No I am not saying that she was responsible. But there are too many people who will say that she is, and in the end we need a candidate against whom no semi plausible accusation can be leveled. Life ain't necessarily fair, as you well know.

[liberty]

There are too many prosecutors that care about only one thing and that is a conviction.