Just over six months ago, 43-year-old Maurice Caldwell walked out of the San Francisco Jail a free man, for the first time since his conviction of second-degree murder in a fatal shooting of an individual named Judy Acosta at the Alemany Public Housing Project on June 30, 1990.
Not everyone agrees that Mr. Caldwell was innocent. The court overturned the charges based on the fact that Mr. Caldwell’s original defense had been inadequate.
However, District Attorney George Gascón still refiled the case.
“The case was overturned because of ineffective assistance of counsel, not because the court found that he was innocent,” said Eric Fleming, Assistant District Attorney.
However, Paige Kenab disagrees, pointing to the fact that a Nevada prison inmate confessed to the crime and that they found other witnesses who say that Mr. Caldwell was not even there.
Tonight, Mr. Caldwell will be the featured speaker at the Yolo Judicial Watch’s first annual fundraiser and awards ceremony.
The theme tonight is “Preventing Wrongful Convictions – Righting the Wrong in the Judicial System.”
The event begins at 6 p.m. at the Woodland Community and Senior Center, 2001 East St. in Woodland.
Awards will be presented to retired California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, Vanguard Activist Award; attorney Mark Merin, Vanguard Distinguished Lawyer Award; State Sen. Mark Leno, Vanguard Elected Official Award; Natalie Wormeli of the Yolo County chapter of the ACLU, Vanguard Organization Award; Michael Romano of the Stanford Three Strikes Project, Vanguard Law School Award, and Alana de Hinojosa, Youth Social Activist Award.
Other speakers include Linda Starr, legal director of the Innocence Project, Natasha Minisker of the Northern California ACLU, and Tracie Olson, Yolo County Public Defender.
One of the misconceptions that exists is that preventing wrongful convictions is being soft on crime. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our speaker tonight, Maurice Caldwell, served 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, and the real murderer was out and killed someone else. That is the price that we pay for convicting the wrong person.
The judge set aside Mr. Caldwell’s 1991 conviction last December and ordered a new trial, after lawyers for the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) at Santa Clara University School of Law demonstrated evidence of actual innocence and that Mr. Caldwell’s defense attorney at trial was incompetent. A San Francisco Superior Court judge then ordered Mr. Caldwell released when San Francisco prosecutors declined to retry him.
According to published accounts, Mr. Caldwell was convicted of a San Francisco murder based on the testimony of a single eyewitness, Mary Cobbs, who originally told police that the shooters did not live in the area and that she did not know their names or nicknames.
During an initial interview, police brought Mr. Caldwell, who had been the witness’ neighbor, to her door. Ms. Cobbs did not identify him at the time, but two weeks later picked him out of a photo lineup identifying him by his nickname “Twan.”
New evidence NCIP unearthed shows her testimony was wrong and as a result, Mr. Caldwell has been locked up for a crime he did not commit.
It also shows that the actual perpetrators were never apprehended and went on to commit more crimes.
The Innocence Project, an organization founded to free individuals who are wrongly convicted of crimes, took on his case three years ago, after Mr. Caldwell had already served 17 years in prison.
They were able to locate two witnesses who actually saw the murder and testified that Mr. Caldwell had no involvement. They also located a statement from another individual, who acknowledged he was the real killer. That man is now serving a life sentence in a Nevada prison for a subsequent murder.
For his part, Mr. Caldwell is just happy to have his freedom back.
“All the things I dreamed about when I was young, I can now bring to life,” said Mr. Caldwell. “I can’t find a way to say what this means to me and what NCIP means to me. I’m just sorry my mother isn’t here to see this day finally come.”
Despite all of this evidence, District Attorney George Gascón refiled the charges on Caldwell.
However, the prosecutor faced some huge hurdles.
Ms. Cobbs had since died, meaning there is only a transcript from the trial. Trial exhibits, such as the photos Cobbs was referring to in her testimony, were destroyed by the court.
According to one account, “Caldwell’s defense attorney for the retrial, Steve Olmo, argued in motions that it was a violation of Caldwell’s due process rights to proceed on the case, given the missing evidence and the inability to cross-examine Cobbs.”
The judge agreed and ruled the testimony of Ms. Cobbs’ from twenty years ago as inadmissible.
That made it impossible for prosecutors to go forward with the case.
“When you have a case as old as this it’s going to require some investigative work to present it in court again,” says Erica Derryck, spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s office. “Unfortunately we were not able — given the court’s ruling, and destruction of the exhibits and evidence — to meet our burden [of proof] so we dismissed the case today.”
The Chronicle in March reported, “Raelyn Acosta, the victim’s cousin, said the family was still convinced Caldwell was guilty.”
“There is a person missing,” she said of Judy Acosta, who “would still be here but for this man – 21 years is not enough.”
But Mr. Caldwell’s own actions suggest otherwise.
He was offered a plea from the District Attorney, “He could plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, attempted murder, and shooting into an occupied vehicle. He could have gotten out of jail right away, since he’d already served the sentence for those crimes,” Ms. Kaneb said in an interview with the San Francisco Weekly.
But Mr. Caldwell refused.
“He turned it down right away,” said Kaneb. “He made this great statement, on the record actually, that he’s been fighting this case for 20 years, and if he were 1 percent involved he would have taken this deal and walked, but he was 100 percent innocent and wouldn’t take the deal.”
Tonight Yolo County will have a chance to hear Mr. Caldwell’s story from his own mouth, and there will be a period of question and answers.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
