Inmate Finally Freed as D.A. Backs Off

Thomas Lee Goldstein, wrongfully imprisoned for murder for 24 years, was freed Friday by a Long Beach Superior Court judge after the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office finally conceded it had no case against him.

“I’m nervous and anxious and uncertain about the future, but I am glad to be out,” Goldstein, a 55-year-old former Marine, said outside the Long Beach courthouse moments after his release.

A native of Kansas, Goldstein has always maintained his innocence in the November 1979 shotgun slaying of John McGinest on a Long Beach street. He had been living in a garage in a neighborhood near the scene of the murder and attending Long Beach City College.

He was convicted on the basis of testimony from a jailhouse informant and an eyewitness who later recanted.

In recent years, five federal judges agreed that Goldstein’s constitutional rights had been violated by the district attorney’s office during his 1980 trial.

On Friday, Superior Court Judge James B. Pierce ordered Goldstein released after a prosecutor told the judge that the district attorney’s office was unable to retry him.

Earlier this week, Pierce dealt a critical blow to prosecutors’ case when he ruled that they could not present testimony from Loran Campbell, the eyewitness who recanted his testimony in 2002 and died last year.

“In light of the court’s previous ruling on the trial testimony of Loran Campbell, the people are unable to proceed,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick Connolly said.

Goldstein looked numb as his nearly a quarter of a century in custody came to an end after a two-minute hearing.

After Connolly dismissed the charges, defense lawyer Charles L. Linder asked the judge to rule that the district attorney’s office could not charge Goldstein again because this was the second time this year that a Superior Court judge had dismissed the case. Connolly had no objection and the judge agreed.

Lindner and Goldstein’s lead attorney, Dale M. Rubin, briefly embraced their client before Goldstein left the courtroom. Rubin later drove Goldstein to a downtown Veterans Affairs center to meet with social workers, who he hopes will help facilitate his reentry to society.

Goldstein said he planned eventually to move back to Kansas, where his mother lives.

Wearing yellow and white jail clothes, Goldstein said he had been meditating to help ease the bitterness he felt toward those who tried him on the basis of two highly suspect witnesses.

Goldstein also indicated that he was considering a lawsuit against authorities.

Earlier in the day, Goldstein said he had been skeptical about whether authorities would set him free. He had been held even after a panel of three judges of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December that his constitutional rights had been violated and ordered his immediate release. After state and local officials failed to comply, the Justice Department initiated a criminal probe, which is pending in Los Angeles.

Goldstein’s attorneys said they were pleased at Friday’s outcome. But both expressed disgust that Goldstein had been imprisoned for so long on thin, unreliable evidence.

“They had nothing,” Rubin said. “No fingerprints. No forensic evidence. No gun.”

Linder said, “This was nothing but pure, outrageous false imprisonment.”

In continuing to push the case the last four months, the district attorney’s office engaged in “a display of prosecutorial chutzpah nearly equal to the mendacity it employed to secure the defendant’s original conviction,” Lindner declared outside the courtroom.

Sandi Gibbons, public information officer for Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, gave reporters a prepared three-paragraph statement that said Goldstein had been convicted by a jury, and that the verdict had been upheld by state appellate courts. The statement said the conviction had been overturned on the basis of the eyewitness -- Campbell -- “who, after two decades, recanted his identification of the defendant.”

“When jury verdicts are overturned, it is incumbent upon a public prosecutor to make sure the evidence is reinvestigated, witnesses are reinterviewed and all legal and investigative avenues are explored as a decision is made on a retrial,” the statement continued.

“In the Goldstein case, the available evidence was tested in court at this week’s hearing,” Gibbons said, referring to a Tuesday session at which Judge Pierce rejected the prosecution’s attempt to use the transcript of Campbell’s testimony from the 1980 trial.

Rubin contended that the testimony had been doubly discredited. Campbell had recanted, and the 9th Circuit ruling had held that Long Beach police had been “impermissibly suggestive” in helping Campbell identify Goldstein at trial.

“What the district attorney was trying to do was recycle the constitutional violations from 25 years ago and use them now to get a retrial against Mr. Goldstein, which does seem outrageous,” Rubin said Friday, referring to the argument he had made in court earlier.

Pierce agreed, finding that the transcripts were not reliable and were inadmissible.

Because of Pierce’s ruling, “we are unable to proceed with this case and asked the court to dismiss the murder charge against the defendant,” Gibbons said. “In making this decision, we pursued all legal avenues.”

After numerous appellate setbacks in the state courts -- his first job in prison was as a janitor, which gave him access to the prison library and its law books -- Goldstein’s long journey through the federal appellate system gained new life in July 1990.

At that time, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, after a yearlong investigation, issued a detailed report stating that, from 1979 to 1990, the district attorney’s office had tolerated suspected perjury by jailhouse informants as a way to win murder cases.

By doing so, the grand jury said, the district attorney’s office “failed to fulfill the ethical responsibilities required of a public prosecutor.”

Goldstein cited the grand jury’s report in appeals filed from prison. He said snitch Edward F. Fink had lied when he said Goldstein had confessed to him in jail.

Eventually, Goldstein persuaded a federal court that he was entitled to an attorney to investigate his case.

Federal public defender Sean Kennedy began representing Goldstein, and his investigator, Terry Rearick, tracked down Campbell, leading to the recanting of the testimony Campbell had given against Goldstein.

Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert N. Block eventually issued a 73-page opinion in November 2002, striking down Goldstein’s conviction.

Block’s opinion and the subsequent 9th Circuit ruling made it clear that Campbell’s recantation had not been the sole basis for the overturning of Goldstein’s conviction, as suggested by the formal statement from the district attorney’s office on Friday.

Beyond the problems with Campbell’s testimony, the federal judges emphasized the prosecution’s use of Fink, the jailhouse informant, who testified that Goldstein had confessed to the murder when the two were briefly incarcerated together in the Long Beach city jail.

Fink, a longtime informant with three felony convictions and a heroin habit, testified falsely that he had received nothing in return for his testimony.

In reality, prosecutors had agreed to drop one case against him and to reduce the charges in another case. The district attorney’s failure to tell the defense about the deal denied Goldstein a fair trial, Block said.

Block noted that Campbell had first told police he was “not sure” Goldstein was the man he had seen carrying a gun the night of the murder. Then, at the preliminary hearing and the trial, Campbell testified he was positive about his identification.

Twenty years later, after investigator Rearick tracked him down, Campbell signed a sworn declaration saying that “the photo of Mr. Goldstein differed from the person I saw.”

Before he testified, Campbell was told by police that Goldstein had failed a polygraph examination, which was not true, and that police were sure he was the killer.

At a hearing in 2002, Campbell said of his 1980 testimony: “Believing the police had arrested the right person ... and believing that the police wanted me to identify the photograph they had selected, I put my doubts aside and tentatively identified the photograph of Mr. Goldstein.”

Block said notes turned over by the district attorney’s office years later included a memo written by the prosecutor handling the case, who said, “This case was filed in great haste. Filing officers assure me that it will get stronger.”

But Block concluded, “It did not.”

His findings were upheld by U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian in Los Angeles and the three 9th Circuit judges.

“By obtaining Goldstein’s conviction through the use of testimony known to be false, the prosecution violated Goldstein’s rights to due process of law,” 9th Circuit Judges Kim M. Wardlaw, Betty B. Fletcher and Jerome Faris wrote.

They gave prosecutors 60 days to decide if they would retry Goldstein, sending the case back to Long Beach. Early in February, Superior Court Judge Arthur Jean dismissed the case against Goldstein, saying there was “at least the appearance ... of impropriety” in the prosecutors’ use of Fink.

Within hours, however, the district attorney’s office refiled the case against Goldstein and announced plans to retry him.

The case was then assigned to Judge Pierce, setting the stage for this week’s hearings.

Reached by phone Friday in Topeka, Kan., Goldstein’s mother, Geri, 76, was jubilant.

“You can’t imagine how I’m feeling,” she said. “What a wonderful gift for Passover. Freedom at last!”