Calif. man pardoned after serving 4 decades in wrongful conviction
A California man who served nearly 40 years in prison for murders of a woman and her 4-year-old son that he said he did not commit has been pardoned by Gov. Jerry Brown after a new investigation proved he was wrongly convicted.
Craig R. Coley, who is now 70, was arrested on Nov. 11, 1978, in the murder of Rhonda Wicht, 24, who had recently ended their relationship. Wicht was found beaten and strangled, appar- ently with a macramé rope, in her apartment in Simi Valley, Calif., the Ventura County district attorney’s office said. Her son, Daniel, had been smothered.
Coley’s first trial, in 1979, ended with a hung jury, but he was found guilty in a retrial the next year and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But on Monday, Ventura County District Attorney Gregory D. Totten and Simi Valley Police Chief David M. Livingstone announced that they were supporting a clemency appeal by Coley, saying that new DNA tests conducted during a yearlong investigation would support a “finding of factual innocence.”
Brown signed the pardon Wednesday, and Coley walked out of the state prison in Lancaster the same day, as a free man.
Coley, who had no criminal record at the time of his arrest, was a model inmate for the nearly four decades he spent in prison, pursuing religion and staying away from gangs and violence, Brown said in a statement announcing the pardon.
Now that he is free, Coley may apply to receive compensation of $140 for every day he spent behind bars, “which works out to about $1.9 million,” Michael D. Schwartz, a special assistant district attorney, said in an email Thursday.
The murder case has now been reopened.
“As district attorney, I must tell you I look forward to the day when I can shake Mr. Coley’s hand, apologize to him for the injustice he suffered,” Totten said at a news conference. “I am also hopeful that one day soon we will bring to justice the violent man responsible for this most horrific crime.”