2 Ex-Inmates Get $7 Million for 17 Lost Years

Clarence Chance and Benny Powell, imprisoned for 17 1/2 years after being wrongfully convicted of murder, on Tuesday won $3.5 million apiece from the city of Los Angeles--the largest such awards ever granted.

The pair, released in March after serving time for the 1973 murder of an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, will receive a total of $9 million, including interest, over the next 30 years.

The settlement resolves two $50-million lawsuits the men filed against the city, claiming police misconduct and false imprisonment. The payout caps a dramatic series of events for Chance and Powell, whose road to freedom was paved by a New Jersey private investigator who uncovered new evidence that defense lawyers say proves the two men were framed by overzealous Los Angeles Police Department investigators.

Chance, who has been living in a Brentwood hotel room for the past two months, said he will use most of the money to help other prisoners who have been wrongfully accused. He said he also hopes to find a place to live, replace his “banged up” Buick Regal and launch careers in the entertainment industry for himself and his new girlfriend.

Powell said he plans to set up a foundation for homeless children, buy a suburban house for his mother in Arizona, finish his memoirs, set up trust funds for his two sons and reward the private investigator whose probing helped bring about his release.

After that, he added: “I think I’ll go to a brand new place and start all over again.”

The men’s attorney, Cary Medill, said the awards--the largest pretrial settlements in city history--come after five months of intense negotiations.

“The city put up a good fight,” he said. “We’ve been wrestling them for months. I don’t think any amount can pay for what these gentlemen have gone through. In prison, they were in with the toughest of the tough and had to always look over their shoulders. It was no picnic.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, said council members had to cut the city’s losses in a case they did not believe they could win in court.

“I think it’s a tragedy that this situation got this far,” he said. “It’s an expensive settlement but it would have been a lot more expensive if we had gone to court.”

Councilwoman Rita Walters said the two men deserved the money.

“I think it’s a disgrace that they were sent to prison with manufactured evidence,” Walters said. “No amount of money will ever give them back 17 years. . . . It really makes you wonder how many others are in the same position.”

At his request, Powell, 45, will receive a large initial payout and will get monthly payments for 10 years. Chance, 43, has asked to receive the money in three lump sum payments and monthly payouts over 30 years.

Chief Assistant City Atty. James Pearson, who handled the negotiations, said the settlement is a good deal, considering the facts and past judgments in similar cases.

“There was a person who was in prison for 33 months and got $1.3 million,” he said. “How much is 17 years worth?”

In making her dramatic ruling last March, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declared the Police Department’s conduct “reprehensible” and said she hoped its Internal Affairs unit would look into the “sordid record” of the case. She apologized to Chance and Powell for “gross injustices.”

Defense lawyers have alleged that officers coerced witnesses into giving false testimony against Chance and Powell and withheld evidence that a jailhouse informant who testified against Powell had failed two lie detector tests and had implicated two others in the killing of Deputy David Andrews.

Last April, the City Council called on the grand jury to investigate the conduct of officers accused of holding back evidence that might have cleared the pair and to “review the appropriateness” of comments by former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who has maintained that the men had been released on a procedural error and should have remained behind bars.

The grand jury has not yet taken up the probe; police would not disclose the results of their internal investigation.

LAPD Lt. William Hall, who helped conduct the investigation that sent Chance and Powell to prison and has called the pair “guilty as sin,” refused to comment on the settlement. Hall is the only one of the five officers most closely involved in the original investigation who is still on the force.

Jim McCloskey, the New Jersey lay minister whose efforts led to the pair’s release, said: “These guys deserve every cent of it for all the pain and suffering they went through.” McCloskey’s Centurion Ministries works on behalf of those he calls “the convicted innocent.”

The murder case against Chance and Powell started to unravel on March 21, 1987. On that date, Chance wrote to McCloskey from Folsom Prison, saying he had been wrongfully convicted of murdering the deputy. Intrigued by Chance’s claim that he had actually been in jail at the time of the murder, McCloskey hit the streets trying to recreate the case.

He found that the owner of the South-Central Los Angeles gas station where Andrews was killed was repeatedly asked by police to identify Powell and Chance, although he could not. A woman who lived across the street said the detectives offered her sons a bicycle and part of a $10,000 reward for testimony against the pair, “even though my sons had consistently maintained that they were unable to identify the two men.”

And the three women who did testify each signed statements for McCloskey saying they falsely implicated the men because they were afraid of the police.

The big break came when McCloskey looked into the testimony of Lawrence Wilson, a jailhouse informant discredited in 1981 when he concocted a story about Sirhan Sirhan confessing to plot to kill Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Powell, who was out of town on a speaking tour Tuesday, said he “will never forget” the part McCloskey played in his release, and said the investigator “will be well taken care of.” He said he will also use the money to finish his autobiography, which is tentatively titled “Stand Tall Through It All,” help out other prisoners and set up a foundation for needy children.

In an interview, Chance also rattled off a long list of possibilities for the money--from a career producing martial arts films to a new house in the suburbs to a foundation to help others locked up for crimes they say they did not commit.

“Yesterday I had the same integrity I got today and the same outlook on life,” Chance said. “. . . I can’t share with you exactly what I’ll do with a million dollars. I might go on over there to (Somalia) and spend it on one starving child.”