SACRAMENTO -- As she was led off to prison in handcuffs Thursday, former inmate advocate Kathleen Culhane had few regrets about falsifying documents in an attempt to spare the lives of four convicted murderers.
Earlier during a brief hearing -- shortly before she was sentenced to five years in prison -- Culhane had called capital punishment "a brutal legacy of lynching," adding that "I cannot have remorse for a government that kills at midnight and invests millions of dollars in the process." When she left the courtroom of Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gary E. Ransom, she held her head high.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, June 27, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 75 words Type of Material: Correction
Death penalty foe: An article in the California section on Aug. 17, 2007, about former defense investigator Kathleen Culhane being sentenced to five years in prison for faking documents to try to delay four executions, said she had worked as an investigator for prisoner rights programs, sometimes tracking down subjects in Haiti and West Africa. In fact, Culhane worked for human rights groups in Latin America. The error was recently brought to the newspaper's attention.
To prosecutors, Culhane had committed one of the largest frauds against the legal system in California history. A law school graduate and former San Joaquin County resident, Culhane worked as an investigator for lawyers appealing the cases of death row inmates.
What possessed her to invent declarations that were dispatched to the California Supreme Court, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the defense attorneys she worked for?
In an interview last week as she awaited sentencing, she said she was acting on principle when she committed what she called an act of civil disobedience. "I felt I had to try something proactive to bring about a sure, or at least a very likely, delay in order to slow down the march toward execution," said Culhane, 40.
Was she successful?
On a gray and windy afternoon at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, Culhane, a petite woman with brown hair, blue eyes and an easy smile, acknowledged, "I don't think I made a ping in the legal system."
Defense attorneys as well as prosecutors said they were shocked by Culhane's actions, which they said only compounded the suffering of friends and family of the condemned men and their victims by, as one put it, "trying to win on lies."
"What she did is an affront to the entire legal system," said Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Mike Farrell. "The scariest people are the ones who think the ends justify the means -- that's Kathleen Culhane."
Also burned was former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who in February 2006 joined the effort to delay the execution of Michael Morales.
Morales was sentenced to death in 1983. His execution has since been postponed amid legal challenges to California's application of lethal injections.
Starr declined to comment on Culhane's sentencing, except to say, through a spokeswoman, that her case was "ineffably sad."
