A coalition of national nonprofit groups asked the Justice Department on Tuesday to investigate and suspend an FBI employee who was found by a jury to have falsified evidence against a man who served 12 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence.
The National Innocence Network, which is dedicated to clearing people who are wrongfully convicted, asked Justice Department officials to investigate former Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Danny Miller, who now works for the FBI. A federal jury found in April that Miller had helped wrongly convict Herman Atkins on robbery and rape charges 19 years ago.
The jury, seated in Los Angeles to hear Atkins' civil rights claim over the wrongful conviction, unanimously concluded that Miller had "intentionally attributed a statement" to a witness that the man did not make. The jury also unanimously concluded that Miller had "failed to disclose" that he had "fabricated" the statement and that there was a "reasonable probability" that if he had told the truth the outcome of Atkins' trial "would have been different."
During the trial, Miller testified that he now works as an intelligence analyst for the FBI, focusing on homeland security, at the agency's Little Rock, Ark., office.
Tuesday's action marked the first time that the National Innocence Network, made up of organizations at 31 law schools, "has ever asked that a law enforcement officer be suspended and investigated for misconduct that led to a wrongful conviction," said Kathleen Ridolfi, executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University Law School.
The coalition made the request in a letter to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine of the Justice Department's Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Complaints Office in Washington.
Atkins, now a Fresno resident, was convicted of rape and robbery in Riverside County and sentenced to 45 years in prison, stemming from a 1986 robbery and rape at a shoe store in Lake Elsinore.
He steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2000, DNA tests conducted by Richmond, Calif., forensic scientist Edward Blake, and later confirmed by the FBI, eliminated Atkins as the source of semen found on the victim's sweater. Atkins was released from prison the same year. The actual rapist was never identified.
