Prisoner Will Be Released Because Boy Lied at Trial

A Cardiff man who served more than nine months in prison for an assault conviction was ordered released Tuesday on $5,000 bail after an 11-year-old boy admitted that he lied when he testified in the man’s 1990 trial.

Kelvin Wiley, 30, was granted bail at a hearing in Vista Superior Court after Judge J. Morgan Lester cited the recanted testimony of the son of the alleged assault victim as cause for reconsidering the conviction.

The boy originally testified that Wiley’s truck was parked at his home shortly before his mother, Toni DiGiovanni, was assaulted. The boy was the first to find his mother on the floor of their Encinitas townhouse, where she lay bruised and in shock, a belt wrapped around her neck.

The boy’s testimony placing Wiley at the assault scene was the most significant corroboration of his mother’s allegations, Lester said.

“At the time I made the ruling (on Wiley’s sentence), I thought (the boy’s) testimony was credible,” Lester said. “The court finds that the new . . . testimony puts a different slant on the information I relied on before.”

An appeal in the case was filed in state appellate court earlier this month and is awaiting hearing. Defense attorney Kevin McLean has contested the conviction in light of the boy’s new testimony, and on the argument that Wiley’s prior history of alleged abuse should not have been presented to the jury.

Upon hearing of the bail decision, Wiley said he was ecstatic.

“It finally appears that this nightmare is going to come to an end,” Wiley said in a telephone interview from Soledad State Prison. “It seems that the judicial system is finally going to correct its errors.”

Wiley is expected to be released today.

Both defense and prosecutors have argued that the case was a tangled, “fatal attraction” dispute.

Each side has portrayed the other as being the obsessed aggressor.

Wiley claimed that DiGiovanni was a woman scorned--unstable, three times divorced and, at times, psychotic. The night before the alleged assault, Wiley declined a dinner invitation from DiGiovanni, saying he intended to return home for the night, McLean said.

Hours later, the two met unexpectedly at a nightclub. Wiley was in the company of a female friend, McLean said. “That set her (DiGiovanni) off,” McLean said.

After arguing, the two parted. From there, the stories diverge.

Initially, Wiley suggested that the assault was staged to frame him. Later, his defense attorney maintained that the attacker was another man.

DiGiovanni testified that Wiley came to her home early Sept. 23, 1990, and began roughing her up, as he had allegedly done before, during a tumultuous off-and-on, 18-month courtship.

Out of numerous alleged outbursts, the strangulation was Wiley’s most violent, DiGiovanni claimed.

About a year after the conviction, DiGiovanni’s son told prosecutors he lied about seeing Wiley’s truck on the morning of the attack, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Silver said. On a visit with relatives in November, the boy spoke with his grandparents about the case. He admitted to lying under oath, and the grandparents, who are Toni’s mother and father, prompted him to tell the truth in court.

The boy said he was trying to protect his mother, who he feared was being abused by Wiley, Silver said. The boy also said his mother did not coerce him to lie, Silver said.