3 Once Convicted of Killing Officer Set Free in San Diego

In an apparent end to a case that tarnished the reputations of local police and prosecutors, three street gang members who were once convicted of murdering a San Diego police officer were set free Thursday.

The three were released just hours after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 1988 fatal shooting of rookie police Officer Jerry Hartless, 23. A fourth defendant also pleaded guilty but is serving time on an unrelated drug charge.

The four members of the crack-dealing Lincoln Park Syndo Mob were convicted in 1994 of murder and given life sentences.

An appeals court last year set aside the convictions because prosecutors had failed to reveal that their star witness had been given extraordinary treatment while in jail, including free phone calls, sexual trysts with two women and a cushy cell.

The witness, now serving a life sentence on drug charges, refused to cooperate with prosecutors as they decided whether to seek a retrial. State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer concluded that there was not enough evidence to merit a retrial.

“This travesty of justice is a great dishonor to a man who gave his life to protect the people of San Diego,” said Hartless’ widow, Shawn Dee.

In 1991, a jury deadlocked in the case, amid indications that police conducted no-knock searches, roughed up witnesses, trampled the crime scene, planted a gun as evidence and committed perjury.

After winning a conviction in 1994, Deputy Dist. Atty. Keith Burt was selected prosecutor of the year by his peers throughout California. Burt has since been demoted.

The case was given to the attorney general’s office when a judge ruled that the district attorney’s credibility to handle the case fairly had been undermined.

Attorneys for Stacy Butler, 38, Darryl Bradshaw, 38, Kevin Standard, 36, and Clifton Cunningham, 38, read a statement in which the four admitted that they had been meeting with rival gang members when Hartless came upon them.

But they insisted they scattered and never knew who shot Hartless. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Butler said after his release.