State prosecutors on Wednesday charged a San Joaquin, Calif., private investigator with forging and falsifying documents to help four death row inmates in what authorities called one of the largest frauds on the justice system in California history.
The 17-page criminal complaint filed against Kathleen Culhane in Sacramento County Superior Court capped a one-year investigation triggered by suspicious declarations submitted by Culhane in the clemency bid of death row inmate Michael Morales, said Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for the attorney general's office.
Morales, 47, of Stockton was convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of Terri Winchell, a 17-year-old Lodi high school student.
Morales was sentenced to death in 1983. His execution is on hold pending a federal review of the state's lethal injection protocol.
Last February, attorneys for Morales withdrew sworn statements from five of six jurors urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop Morales' execution, amid allegations that the defense documents were fraudulent.
In all, Culhane allegedly filed questionable declarations on behalf of 11 jurors, two witnesses, two court interpreters and one police officer while working as a private investigator for the state-funded Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco and in private practice between November 2002 and February 2006, Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Mike Farrell said.
The documents were filed in the cases of death row inmates Morales; Vicente Figueroa Benavides, convicted by a Kern County jury of the 1991 murder, rape and sodomy of a 21-month-old; Christian Monterroso, convicted by an Orange County jury of the 1991 murders of Tarsem Singh and Ashokkumar Patel; and Jose Guerra, convicted by a Los Angeles County jury of the 1990 rape and murder of Kathleen Powell.
State prosecutors were investigating whether other fraudulent evidence prepared by Culhane was presented to the courts in those and other cases.
Culhane pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Wednesday and was jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail.
In an interview, Culhane's defense attorney, Stuart Hanlon, described her as a law school graduate "strongly opposed to the death penalty."
"We are going to evaluate all the evidence and then determine whether to go to trial or seek a resolution," he said.
In a separate interview, Farrell said, "It doesn't matter whether you're for or against the death penalty; you have to play by the rules. She played by her own rules to undermine the judicial system in the most serious cases out there: capital cases."
