CA: Corrupt prosecution and imprisonment of Ricky Walker finally settled

Police who just KNEW who was guilty made the facts fit

Santa Clara County agreed to pay wrongfully convicted East Palo Alto resident Rick Walker $2.75 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from his 1991 murder conviction, Walker's attorney announced today. Walker, 51, was released from prison in 2003 after DNA tests and other new evidence cleared him of the stabbing and suffocation death of his former girlfriend Lisa Hopewell, a Cupertino resident. "This is going to allow him to have a little bit of financial breathing room at this stage of his life,'' Walker's attorney Matt Davis said.

Walker had already received more than $400,000 from a State of California fund for wrongful convictions. Walker has no other lawsuits pending in connection with his wrongful conviction. "This closes the book,'' Davis said. Santa Clara County Counsel Anne Ravel was out of the office at a State Bar Association meeting and unavailable for comment on the settelement.

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Background:

When Quedellis Ricardo ``Rick'' Walker was freed from state prison this month after serving nearly 12 years for a murder he didn't commit, the Santa Clara County district attorney said Walker had been framed by another man who participated in the killing. But a review of Walker's conviction in 1991 for killing an ex-girlfriend also shows that investigators did not check key evidence, and the prosecutor who tried the case misled jurors and struck secret deals with key witnesses.

Detectives did not record a key interview with the man who falsely accused Walker, and did not succeed in verifying his story, documents and interviews with participants in the case reveal. The district attorney's office also did not test potentially exculpatory physical evidence. And the prosecutor who tried the case hid from the court two leniency deals that were decisive in convicting Walker and misled jurors to bolster his star witness's credibility. The district attorney's office now concedes that the two key witnesses repeatedly lied on the stand.

Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu, who is overseeing a review of the case, acknowledged in an interview last week that her office should have done things differently. ``I want to take responsibility for what we did,'' she said. Sinunu said, however, that others also deserve blame. ``There were so many things that went wrong,'' she said, pointing at the sheriff's department, Walker's lawyer and dishonest witnesses.

Indeed, the problems with the case have renewed questions about why Walker's lawyer didn't do more to fight the prosecution's actions and to develop evidence that someone else was guilty. The district attorney's office is now investigating another suspect. But the case against Walker was built by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney.

``It stinks,'' said Professor Robert Weisberg, who teaches criminal law at Stanford Law School. ``As a matter of professional ethics, it's very unpleasant. Very, very unpleasant.''

On Jan. 10, 1991, 34-year-old Lisa Hopewell, a troubled, drug-addicted graduate of Princeton University, was found bound in duct tape and gruesomely stabbed in a condominium off Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino. Within days, Walker was a suspect, authorities say. The East Palo Alto auto mechanic, then 35, had dated Hopewell. A year earlier, he had been arrested for stealing her car after an argument. ``Everything we heard pointed to Ricky Walker,'' said Earl Pennington, a veteran sheriff's detective who led the investigation and discussed the case last week. He cited interviews with people in East Palo Alto, Walker's shaky alibi and details investigators learned about Walker's tempestuous relationship with Hopewell. Walker also failed a lie detector test, he said.

``I'm still not convinced that Ricky didn't do it,'' said Pennington, who retired last year. ``I think we did an excellent investigation. If he didn't do it, I'm sorry. But we presented the case to a jury, and a jury convicted him.''

There was never any physical evidence tying Walker to the murder, however. A person linked to the murder scene by evidence was Rahsson Bowers, a 20-year-old crack dealer from East Palo Alto with prior convictions for robbery and embezzlement. When Bowers' prints were identified on duct tape binding Hopewell, Bowers quickly confessed to participating in the killing. He identified Walker as the mastermind.

State and federal courts have long dictated caution when dealing with the accusations of criminal suspects because they have strong motives to shift blame and so are inherently untrustworthy. But investigators did not record the critical conversation in which Bowers named Walker. Their tape recorder wasn't working, one detective testified at trial. Without a recording, it was unclear who first suggested Walker was the murderer. Bowers testified at trial that he did. Sheriff's Sgt. Jerry Egge testified that detectives did.

Another red flag appeared within days when investigators gave Bowers a lie-detector test to check his description of the crime, which initially included two white men who jumped out of a closet to assist in the attack. Like Walker, Bowers failed his test. Bowers subsequently changed his story, removing the white men and placing blame solely on Walker, according to trial transcripts. Investigators did not administer a second lie-detector test to check that version. Pennington said he couldn't remember why a second test wasn't administered.

Authorities did have evidence that might have revealed more about who was at the murder scene. But it wasn't tested. Cigarette butts found near Hopewell's body contained trace amounts of saliva, according to reports from the Santa Clara County Crime Laboratory. Shortly after Walker's arrest, investigators analyzed a sample of his blood. DNA testing in 1991 was not as advanced as today. But serology testing routinely done by the county crime lab, as well as DNA testing that had been in use for years, could have compared the saliva to Walker's blood. The test could not have proved that Walker smoked the cigarettes, but it might have shown that he didn't. ``The technology existed to do the tests,'' said Edward Blake, a leading forensic scientist who testified about DNA testing for prosecutors as early as 1987. The analysis was never done, according to a July 8, 1991, report in the crime lab, because the district attorney's office never asked for it, the crime lab's director, Benny DelRe, said this week.

Assistant District Attorney Sinunu said the testing would not have been useful because it could not positively tie Walker to the murder. Trial transcripts show, however, that prosecutor John Schon used the cigarette butts to try to put Walker at the scene, telling jurors they should consider the fact that Walker smoked the same brand as cigarettes found there.... This year, the saliva was finally subjected to DNA testing as a pro bono lawyer, Alison Tucher, worked to prove Walker's innocence. It showed the saliva belonged to another man. The district attorney is now planning to charge him with Hopewell's murder.

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