Six years after the ju judge acquitted the defense attorneys of Modesto and his Code Fendant on suspicion of murder conspiracy, Stanislaus County agreed to settle a malicious prosecution case with $22.5 million, one of the biggest payments in California court history.
County supervisors approved the settlement at trial thresholds in federal cases on Tuesday. This came from eight plaintiffs who alleged that police and prosecutors had edited the charges against them.
At the heart of the case was the late Frank Carson, a veteran Modesto, a cleric-style veteran who was pleased to be hostile to police and prosecutors. The malice against him at the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office was no secret.
In August 2015, after a three-year investigation, the District Attorney’s Office accused him of masterminding a complicated plot to kill scrap metal burglar Korey Kauffman as a revenge for alleged pipe theft of Carson’s property.
The other eight were charged with helping Carson kill Kaufman or cover up the crime. Two brothers owned a local liquor store. Three members of the California Highway Patrol. Carson’s wife and stepdaughter. And a drug-packed handyman who cut back on transactions in exchange for his cooperation.
There was no physical evidence linking any of the defendants to the death of 26-year-old Kaufman. Kaufmann’s fragmented skeleton was discovered in the Stanislaus National Forest in 2013. Habitatly stolen Kaufman ran in a world where many people harmed him.
Ruins of the skeleton of a scrap metal thief were discovered in August 2013 in Stanislaus National Forest 17 months after his loss of disappearance.
However, investigators at the district attorney’s office, including Carson, decided to focus on him based on hints that Kaufman had planned to steal from Carson’s property. The lawsuit marks an 18-month preliminary hearing and a 17-month trial, making it the second-longest murder trial in California history. Even as he was on a murder trial, Carson continued to practice the law at Modesto Court in Downtown.
“I’ll be given a thumbs back in the man’s eyes for 25 years,” Carson says.
The Times explored the case in their 2021 podcast, “The Trial of Frank Carson.”
The star’s witness was handyman Robert Woody. Robert Woody was smoking a crystal female when he confessed to his girlfriend that he had killed Kaufman and gave the pig a body. Police arrested him, and Woody claimed he had created a story to impress his girlfriend.
However, the man Carson attacked as “fraudulent and professional,” Kirk Bunch, the district attorney’s office, promised in a tape-taped interview that he had promised disastrous woody consequences if he didn’t cooperate.
“We can go to death penalty or life without parole,” Bunch told Woody.
Woody’s story often changes from law enforcement under highly suggestive questions, and he fails to lead police into a single piece of physical evidence related to the murder.
That didn’t stop the prosecutors from building their case in his words. At the trial, he testified that Carson asked Bobby Aswal, the owner of the liquor store, to be careful of the burglar thieves at Junk Storn Lott in Turlock.
In an interview with the Times after the trial, Woody said he had made up the entire account because he had no other options. He was facing first-degree murder charges and wanted to see his family again. He described his testimony as “making makeup” and “the story they wanted to hear.”
Ultimately, Woody, who was allowed to sue manslaughter in exchange for a seven-year sentence, was the only person convicted in connection with Kaufman’s death.
Carson and the owner of the liquor store Aswal and his brother Daljit were acquitted in June 2019, and charges against the other co-defendants were thrown out by the court or prosecutors.
Carson’s family believes the stress of a criminal case, including the 17 months he spent in prison, destroyed his health and contributed to a heart attack that killed him at the age of 66, a year after his acquittal.
In March 2021, Georgia DeFilippo stood on Turlock’s property and shared it with her late husband, Frank Carson. Local thieves were known to raid Lott for scrap metal.
(Brian van der Bragg/Los Angeles Times)
“They called him offensive, but he was the kind of defense attorney who stood up for his client,” said Georgia DeFilippo’s Carson widow, whose settlement cuts are $4 million. “I think it broke his heart and his spirit. He wasn’t the same.”
She said she wanted to see criminal charges against the former Stanislaus County district. Atty. To Birgit Fladager, who was the main side of the prosecution, and others in her office.
“They invented fiction and placed us there as if we were characters from a terriblely written novel,” she said this week. “I’m not going to get over the fact that I can do that, and they were able to leave there without the truth [consequences]. ”
Defilippo said she and her daughter believed they were arrested on false charges only to pressure her late husband to plead guilty of a murder he had not committed.
“They didn’t care about me, my daughter, or those poor highway patrols. They ruined their lives. They were frank,” she said. “I don’t think the same way about law enforcement. I wake up and think, ‘I thank God I’m not in prison.’ ”
She is the co-executor of Carson’s real estate and will also receive $4 million in the settlement. Her lawyer, Gary Gwilliam, described the case as a “warning story.”
“This is what happens when the government chases after people they don’t like,” Gwilliam said.
He said during the civil lawsuit’s deposit, the prosecutors and law enforcement officers targeting Carson did not admit that they had done something wrong. “You can take it to the bank, there was no discipline for anyone there,” Gwilliam said. “They said they thought they had done the right thing. ‘Woody thought he could trust me.’ They have to pinch the lines. ”
The incident was erroneous, including assigning a key role to investigators with a “salient history of hostility” and reliance on Woody, an eyewitness who had incentives to lie.
Threatened by the death penalty, Robert Lee Woody said he promoted an epic murder charge.
(Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office.)
In a detailed report, Murphy said the “stimulating history” between Carson and the local prosecutor should have forced the District Attorney’s Office to reject itself. He concluded that the case should not have been filed in the first place. “I don’t think any reasonable ju-sans have convicted these defendants,” he wrote.
Doug Manor, a former Stanislaus County prosecutor and frequent critic of the district attorney’s office, said the prosecution was “the most frightening abuse of justice,” and the size of the settlement suggested realistic fears that the ju judge could face far greater penalties if the ju judge filed a lawsuit.
“The risk must have been enormous to pay $22.5 million,” he said. “They must have been obviously worried about the double and triple judgment that would have been appropriate under the facts of this case.”
“They went after the defense attorney they hated the most,” he said. “They took a lawyer, locked him up for a year and filed his accusations with his wife. [step]A girl forces her to mourn. ”
The $22.5 million will be split into eight plaintiffs, including three former CHP officers and a liquor store owner.
Stanislaus County Advisor Thomas Bose said the funds will be paid by the county’s general fund and insurance.
Atti, Stanislaus County district. Jeff Laugero, who took office in January 2023, described the settlement as “the necessary steps to close the difficult chapters and focus on current public safety priorities.”
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