Wrongfully imprisoned man to get $1 million from state
Jeremy Puckett spent almost 20 years behind bars for a killing he didn’t commit. On Thursday, the state agreed to pay the 44yearold Sacramento man close to $1 million for his lost time.
Puckett was first arrested in April 2001 for a cold case homicide that occurred three years earlier in eastern Sacramento County. That’s where sheriff ’s deputies found Anthony Galati lying on the side of the road with two bullet wounds in his head.
Puckett was arrested, prosecuted and eventually convicted in March 2002 despite having an alibi for the crime that the jury never heard.
He spent years appealing his conviction on his own until the Northern California Innocence Project took his case in 2014. It would take another six years for Puckett to be exonerated.
Puckett was released on March 13, 2020, just six days before Gov. Gavin Newsom first ordered all Californians to shelter in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
The Chronicle followed Puckett through his first year of reclaimed freedom, which coincided with an unprecedented societal lockdown. Less than a month after his release, Puckett acknowledged some difficulty adjusting to a quickly changing world while trying to reconnect with family members whose lives had reluctantly pressed on in his absence.
“My daughter was 1 when I was first incarcerated. She’s 20 now. So just to see the fact of the amazing woman she became is a good thing to see, a great thing actually,” he said last April. “Coming off of this COVID situation, it’s been hard. It’s been hard for everybody, though . ... The world is struggling.”
After months trying to find his footing, Puckett eventually obtained a new ID, a job and his own place in south Sacramento. He welcomed a grandson in September and hosted a small family gathering for Thanksgiving.
On March 12, one day before the anniversary of his release, he touched down in snowy Denmark to meet an online romantic interest for the first time.
“It’s going great,” he texted a couple of days later.
He was in the Scandinavian country on March 18 when the
California Victim Compensation Board convened via Zoom to consider his application to receive $968,800 as an erroneously convicted person.
“Mr. Puckett’s convictions were vacated on habeas in 2020 based upon the prosecutor’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence and defense counsel’s ineffective assistance,” CalVCB chief counsel Kim Gauthier told the board’s appointed members. “On Jan. 15th, 2021, the superior court found Mr. Puckett to be factually innocent of both convictions . ... The court noted the absence of any physical evidence implicating Mr. Puckett, the lack of credibility of the sole witness against Mr. Puckett, who had since recanted and identified a different suspect, as well as Mr. Puckett’s credible alibi defense.”
Gauthier noted that the specific amount represented “$140 for each of the 6,920 days that he (Puckett) was wrongfully imprisoned for these erroneous convictions.”
In a unanimous vote, the nation’s first victim compensation program directed the state Legislature to appropriate the money for Puckett, with CalVCB Chair Gabriel Ravel calling cases involving wrongful imprisonment “particularly difficult.”
“The compensation only goes so far,” he said.
A CalVCB spokesperson explained that the Legislature typically sends a bill containing all the wrongful conviction claims approved that fiscal year to the governor’s desk sometime between June and September. Once the bill takes effect as an urgency statute, it can take several weeks for claimants to receive payment.
But the board’s referral means a check will be cut, said Karyn SinunuTowery, who represented Puckett’s exoneration bid as a volunteer attorney for the NorCal Innocence Project.
“It just has to go to appropriations committee and then the check will be written,” SinunuTowery, a retired Santa Clara County prosecutor, wrote in an email Friday. “It will happen.”
Puckett, who called into the meeting but didn’t speak, told The Chronicle afterward that the money won’t change his plans.
“I’m still focused on what I need to do,” he wrote in a text message from Denmark, where he planned to stay for another week.