Thomas L. Goldstein, who spent 24 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder, said Tuesday that he has filed a civil rights suit in federal court in Los Angeles that seeks damages from Long Beach, Los Angeles County, four police officers and two prosecutors.
"There is no way to give me back those 24 years," said Goldstein, 55, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference at the Pasadena offices of Kaye, McLane & Bednarski, the law firm representing him. "No way to give me a career, a wife, a family -- all those things I had for myself when I was arrested all those years ago.
"Throughout my 24 years of incarceration, I expected the system to work," Goldstein said.
He added that the system had failed him many times before he secured his freedom last April. Five federal judges ruled that his constitutional rights had been violated, and a state court judge dismissed the charges "in furtherance of justice."
He cited a lack of evidence against Goldstein and the "cancerous nature" of the case.
"I am immensely grateful for the work of the federal public defender's office and other people who helped me, but justice has not been done yet," said Goldstein, a former Marine who served in Vietnam. "Today, I ask for justice. I ask the city of Long Beach and the county of Los Angeles to make amends."
Goldstein, a native of Kansas, was convicted of the November 1979 shotgun slaying of John McGinest in Long Beach.
His conviction was based largely on both the testimony of a notorious jailhouse informant and an eyewitness who later recanted.
Goldstein, who was a Long Beach City College student at the time, has steadfastly maintained his innocence. No physical evidence tied him to the crime and no evidence existed that he had ever met the murder victim. Most of the witnesses who saw the slaying identified the killer as black or Mexican American and several said the gunman was considerably larger than Goldstein.
Goldstein's suit asserts that four Long Beach police officers worked with a jailhouse informant to fabricate testimony that Goldstein confessed the murder to him when they were cellmates. The complaint also said the officers improperly influenced one witness, Loran Campbell, to identify Goldstein as the killer.
In the suit, Goldstein's lawyers assert that during his preliminary hearing and trial, prosecutors sat mute as the jailhouse informant, Edward F. Fink, committed perjury when he said that he was receiving no benefits for his testimony against Goldstein.
