CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : 3 Freed in 1984 Street Slaying

Three Vallejo men convicted of murder after going on a “gay-bashing” rampage in San Francisco five years ago were ordered freed from prison Friday. The defendants, whose murder convictions were reduced to involuntary manslaughter by an appeals court, were resentenced to time already served and ordered freed by Superior Court Judge Edward Stern. The judge reduced the 15-year-to-life terms for the men to eight years in prison, which made all three eligible for release after serving roughly four years. Timothy White, 26, David Rogers and Donald Clanton, both 24, were convicted of the 1984 murder of John O’Connell during an unprovoked street attack in San Francisco. But the 1st District Court of Appeals, on a split 2-1 vote, ruled in November that the murder convictions had to be reduced to involuntary manslaughter because the defendants did not have the required “implied malice” to constitute a murder.