KATHLEEN CULHANE THE CON-WOMAN!

            Kathleen Culhane will always be remembered as the most dishonest Anti-Death Penalty Activist ever. The next time, we will use her as a great example of how dishonest ACLU Demons like her can be. We will post information about her from several news sources:

In early 2006, lead defense attorney David Senior hired former Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr to be one of Morales' attorneys on the appeals. Immediately prior to Morales' execution date, Senior filed papers claiming that five out of the 12 jurors had doubts about sentencing him to death. However, prosecutors alleged that the documents were forgeries, and accused investigator and anti-death penalty activist Kathleen Culhane of falsifying the documents. Senior and his team soon withdrew the documents. Ultimately, clemency was denied, but the falsified documents were not used in the rationale. Eventually, Culhane was criminally charged with forging the documents and, under a plea agreement, was sentenced to five years in prison. At her sentencing hearing, Culhane refused to express remorse to the State of California, stating her acts were crimes of conscience against Morales' execution and the death penalty.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SACRAMENTO-5-year-term-for-investigator-in-2598253.php

SACRAMENTO / 5-year term for investigator in forgery case

Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 

  

Defense investigator Kathleen Culhane, right, listens during her arraignment at the Sacramento County main jail courtroom on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007, in Sacramento, Calif. Culhane, 40, was arraigned Wednesday on 45 felony counts of forgery, filing false documents and perjury. Culhane is accused of filing at least 23 fraudulent documents between November 2002 and February 2006. (AP Photo/Sacramento Bee, Kevin German) **MAGS OUT, TV OUT, INTERNET OUT, NO SALES ** Ran on: 02-22-2007 Kathleen Culhane, at her Sacramento arraign- ment. She assisted in death sentence challenges. MAGS OUT, TV OUT, INTERNET OUT, NO SALES

2007-05-01 04:00:00 PDT Sacramento -- A former criminal defense investigator accused of forging statements from jurors, witnesses and others in death penalty cases pleaded guilty to four charges Monday and accepted a five-year prison sentence.

Kathleen Culhane, 40, said outside a Sacramento courtroom that she filed incorrect documents on behalf of five condemned inmates because she believes that capital punishment is wrong.

"I believe that the death penalty is illegal," she said. "It is barbaric and an atrocity. Any acts I committed are out of a firm belief against the state killing these people."

Culhane, who had worked on death penalty appeals since 1999, will likely go to prison in August when she is formally sentenced.

A prosecutor said Culhane's feelings on capital punishment were irrelevant and said filing false documents is "about as serious as it gets."

"It doesn't matter whether you're for or against the death penalty, you have to play by the rules," said Michael Farrell, senior assistant attorney general in state Attorney General Jerry Brown's office.

Culhane was charged in February with 45 criminal charges involving 23 declarations she filed with courts and the governor's office from 2002 to 2006. In the plea bargain with Brown's office, she admitted to one count of perjury, two counts of forgery and one count of filing a false document. Authorities say Culhane made up stories and forged the signatures of witnesses and jurors to benefit clients' appeals.

The first allegations against her came to light in February 2006 when lawyers for Death Row inmate Michael Morales of Stockton withdrew declarations from five jurors and a witness supporting his petition for clemency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The statements quoted the witness as saying police had browbeaten her into testifying falsely against Morales, and quoted the jurors as saying they favored clemency or would not object to it. An attorney general's investigator said all of them denied signing the documents or ever being contacted by anyone working on Morales' behalf.

Morales lost his bid for clemency from the governor but later won a stay of execution from a federal judge in a lawsuit over the state's lethal injection procedures. That case is ongoing.

Culhane worked as an investigator for the state-funded Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco and later in private practice. As an investigator, Culhane's job was to locate and interview witnesses and jurors who participated in death penalty cases, and obtain signed declarations favorable to the inmates' legal defense and pleas for clemency.

The center withdrew about 100 declarations she submitted and cooperated with prosecutors.

In addition to Morales, the condemned inmates Culhane worked for and submitted false documents for are Vicente Figueroa Benavides, Christian Monterroso, Jose Guerra and Richard Clark, according to Farrell.

Farrell said attorneys for the condemned inmates are redoing Culhane's work, which will add considerable time to the appeals process.

Culhane's attorney, Stuart Hanlon, called the five-year sentence -- she could get out in 2 years and 8 months if she behaves in prison and earns good-time credits -- a "very stiff consequence."

Hanlon noted that Culhane has always worked to help others, spending seven years in El Salvador helping war refugees before beginning her work on death penalty cases.

"She has taken responsibility for what she did," he said.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/17/local/me-culhane17

Death penalty foe gets five years in prison

A former defense investigator faked documents to try to delay four executions.

August 17, 2007|Louis Sahagun | Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO -- As she was led off to prison in handcuffs Thursday, former inmate advocate Kathleen Culhane had few regrets about falsifying documents in an attempt to spare the lives of four convicted murderers.

Earlier during a brief hearing -- shortly before she was sentenced to five years in prison -- Culhane had called capital punishment "a brutal legacy of lynching," adding that "I cannot have remorse for a government that kills at midnight and invests millions of dollars in the process." When she left the courtroom of Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gary E. Ransom, she held her head high.

For The Record

Los Angeles Times Saturday, June 27, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 75 words Type of Material: Correction
Death penalty foe: An article in the California section on Aug. 17, 2007, about former defense investigator Kathleen Culhane being sentenced to five years in prison for faking documents to try to delay four executions, said she had worked as an investigator for prisoner rights programs, sometimes tracking down subjects in Haiti and West Africa. In fact, Culhane worked for human rights groups in Latin America. The error was recently brought to the newspaper's attention.

To prosecutors, Culhane had committed one of the largest frauds against the legal system in California history. A law school graduate and former San Joaquin County resident, Culhane worked as an investigator for lawyers appealing the cases of death row inmates.

What possessed her to invent declarations that were dispatched to the California Supreme Court, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the defense attorneys she worked for?

In an interview last week as she awaited sentencing, she said she was acting on principle when she committed what she called an act of civil disobedience. "I felt I had to try something proactive to bring about a sure, or at least a very likely, delay in order to slow down the march toward execution," said Culhane, 40.

Was she successful?

On a gray and windy afternoon at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, Culhane, a petite woman with brown hair, blue eyes and an easy smile, acknowledged, "I don't think I made a ping in the legal system."

Defense attorneys as well as prosecutors said they were shocked by Culhane's actions, which they said only compounded the suffering of friends and family of the condemned men and their victims by, as one put it, "trying to win on lies."

"What she did is an affront to the entire legal system," said Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Mike Farrell. "The scariest people are the ones who think the ends justify the means -- that's Kathleen Culhane."
Also burned was former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who in February 2006 joined the effort to delay the execution of Michael Morales.

Morales was sentenced to death in 1983. His execution has since been postponed amid legal challenges to California's application of lethal injections.

Starr declined to comment on Culhane's sentencing, except to say, through a spokeswoman, that her case was "ineffably sad."

Culhane's closest friends and relatives portray her as a compassionate woman who has always been eager to help those in need. In high school, Culhane joined a group that assisted disadvantaged people in Mexico.

Of her falsehoods, Culhane's lifelong friend Mary Keelty said, "Legally, it's wrong. But morally, we have to ask: Why is taking a life through execution righteous, and defying the law to save a life egregious?"

Later, Culhane worked as an investigator for prisoner rights programs, sometimes tracking down relatives and witnesses in the slums and hinterlands of Mexico, Central America, West Africa and Haiti.

In 2002 she went to work for the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco.

In a frustrating legal world where the chances of winning a reversal in a capital case are nearly nil, Culhane said, "a delay was a win because it meant more years of life for the defendant."

The pressure to stall was especially intense in the case of Morales, 47, of Stockton, who was convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of Terri Winchell, 17, a Lodi high school student.

In January 2006, a month before Morales was to be executed, his lawyers received support from a highly unusual source: The judge who had condemned him to die asked Schwarzenegger to grant clemency.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath said in a letter to the governor that he believed the conviction was based on false testimony from a jailhouse informant.

Armed with McGrath's letter, Culhane tracked down the jurors who had convicted Morales in hopes they would agree with the judge. They didn't.

Frustrated and desperate, Culhane said she holed up in an Oxnard hotel room and "spent a few all-nighters" composing a series of bogus affidavits and declarations to suggest that five jurors questioned whether Morales was guilty.

"I turned them in to the defense team over the course of a week," she said. "The lawyers seemed pleased."

But not for long. The scheme unraveled when the five jurors told prosecutors under oath that they had never been contacted by anyone from the Morales legal team and had no idea who Culhane was.
Culhane also said in sworn declarations that she had met several times with a key witness in the case, Patricia Felix, in January 2006 at her Stockton home.

Felix had not lived at the address Culhane cited since 2005.

Initially, defense attorney David Senior refused to believe that his investigator had lied. But after reviewing the evidence provided by prosecutors, Senior recalled, the truth sank in.

"It took us one hour and 45 minutes to withdraw anything associated with her from our case files," Senior said.

A one-year investigation culminated in a 45-count, 17-page complaint against her. Under terms of a settlement deal, Culhane pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery, one count of perjury and one count of filing false documents.

Looking back, Culhane said she felt "betrayed by former colleagues" who "rolled over for the prosecution" and actively assisted in the case against her.

"I didn't expect that," she said.

Culhane says she is prepared for prison.

"After I turned myself in [in February 2006], the guards referred to me as a celebrity case, which was a drag because the other prisoners didn't like that," she recalled. "But when I told one prisoner what I'd done, she said, 'Right on.' "

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.lodinews.com/news/article_79dfda8f-89ab-55f3-a63d-99231c0e1af4.html

Morales investigator sentenced

Posted: Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:00 pm

Associated Press | 

  

Former private investigator Kathleen Culhane listens during her arraignment at the Sacramento County main jail courtroom on Feb. 21 in Sacramento. (Courtesy photo)

A former private investigator who admitted forging documents to try to save the lives of local killer Michael Morales, as well as three other death row inmates, was sentenced Thursday to five years in state prison.

Kathleen Culhane, 40, admitted that she repeatedly made up statements from real witnesses and jurors and forged their signatures to try to stop the executions. The case came to light when she filed a number of false files in the case of Morales, who was sentenced to die for the 1981 rape and murder of Terri Lynn Winchell, a 17-year-old Tokay High School student.

The fake statements were turned over to attorneys and filed with the courts and governor's office as they considered whether to commute the men's death sentences.

Culhane said she acted out of her moral opposition to the death penalty.

"I was very conscious that a life held in the balance," she told Sacramento County Superior Court Gary Ransom. "My crimes are crimes of conscience."

She said she acted "not for personal benefit or gain but out of necessity" to influence a death penalty system she believes is dysfunctional.

But prosecutors said her actions threatened the same legal system she was sworn to support. State Attorney General Jerry Brown called Culhane's actions the greatest fraud ever against the state's criminal justice system.

"It's very important that the public have faith and confidence in the judicial system," Senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Farrell told the judge. "There's a real danger that people may inflict street justice. There's a real danger that suspects can get killed. That's the real irony here."

Culhane pleaded guilty in April to two counts of forgery and single counts of perjury and filing false documents. By accepting a five-year prison deal, the former San Francisco-based investigator avoided a possible 19 years in prison on 45 counts. She was immediately placed in handcuffs and led off to begin her prison sentence after Ransom imposed the sentence.

Her attorney, Stuart Hanlon, said she is likely to serve about two years and eight months behind bars before being paroled.

Culhane originally was charged with filing false documents under the names of 11 jurors, two witnesses, two court interpreters and one police officer.

She was discovered after Morales petitioned Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency as he was about to be executed last year for Winchell's death.

San Joaquin County prosecutors challenged six documents provided by Culhane. Their investigators found jurors who swore they had never spoken with Culhane and said they supported Morales' death sentence.

Investigators subsequently found that Culhane filed at least 23 fraudulent documents to help Morales and three other death row inmates between November 2002 and February 2006.

Morales' execution has since been stayed because of concerns about the state's lethal injection method, an issue that was not related to Culhane.

Winchell's mother, Barbara Christian, said Culhane offended her when Christian told her by phone that she did not want to talk, but then Culhane showed up at her home.

"When Kathleen Culhane lied and forged documents in order to support Michael Morales and other murderers, she stepped on the hearts of victims who have been waiting many years for justice for their murdered loved ones," Christian said in a written statement.

The other three death-row inmates are: Jose Guerra, convicted by a Los Angeles County jury for the 1990 rape and murder of Kathleen Powell; Vicente Figueroa Benavides, convicted by a Kern County jury for the 1991 murder and rape of a 21-month-old child; and Christian Monterroso, convicted by an Orange County jury for the 1991 murders of Tarsem Singh and Ashokkumar Patel and the attempted murder of Allen Canellas.

Each remains on death row with pending appeals.

Under Culhane's plea agreement, prosecutors dropped forgery charges related to the case of a fifth condemned inmate, Richard Clark. He was convicted of murdering Rosie Grover, 15, who was walking home from a bus stop in Ukiah when Clark abducted, raped and fatally stabbed her in 1985.

Morales' attorneys had hired Culhane, but in the other three cases she was working as a staff investigator for the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco. The center has withdrawn all the declarations she submitted.