Sacramento County imprisoned an innocent man for 19 years. Now they’re failing him again | Opinion

In 2002, Jeremy Puckett of Sacramento was sentenced to life in prison for murdering 19-year-old Anthony Galati off White Rock Road in Rancho Cordova.

He spent the next 19 years behind bars, but he always maintained his optimism and innocence. Lawyers from the Northern California Innocence Project proved his case, and Puckett was finally able to go home to a family that hadn’t held him in nearly two decades, just six days before Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down the state for COVID precautions in March of 2020.

Opinion

Now, today’s Sacramento County’s prosecutors and officials are only adding insult to injury by again withholding evidence; delaying the inevitable — and large — financial reward Puckett is due, thanks to the original prosecutors withholding hundreds of pages of exonerating evidence.

Sacramento County is slow-walking Puckett’s lawsuit seeking justice — and the judge has had enough of their games.

The sham murder trial

In March of 1998, Galati was found murdered on the side of a road in Sacramento County, with two gunshots to his head. Puckett had no ties to Galati and even had a strong alibi for his whereabouts that night: He said he was at a family barbecue, then went home to care for his sick son.

But after another man implicated in the crime, Israel Sept, named Puckett as an accomplice in an attempt to lessen his sentence, Sacramento police targeted the father of two and ignored all evidence to the contrary — even Sept’s recantation.

Eventually, police arrested Puckett in 2001. Sept’s testimony, along with other evidence, including a diary that implicated the true accomplice, were never shown to the jury.

“Puckett was convicted of murder and robbery in a jury trial in which deliberations lasted almost as long as the trial itself,” writes the Northern California Innocence Project about the case on their website.

On March 14, 2002, after jury deliberations that took nearly as long as the trial itself, Puckett was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

For the next 18 years, Puckett remained incarcerated. All that time, he steadfastly maintained his innocence. Then, his case came to the attention of the Innocence Project.

Its investigation found more than 700 pages of materials that the Sacramento County government had withheld from Puckett and his original lawyers, which corroborated Sept’s recantation, implicated others in the murder-robbery and provided evidence against the prosecution’s trial witnesses.

In March 2020, Puckett’s murder conviction was overturned and he walked free. Now, he’s suing the county, the district attorney’s office, the sheriff’s office and others. But it’s going about as well as the first time.

“I have not had any case in my experience, either as a litigator or on the bench, where I’ve had a public entity or observed a public entity be so reluctant to engage in the discovery process,” Judge Deborah Barnes said at the last trial hearing, where she fined the county’s lawyers.

Barnes has repeatedly called out the defendants’ conduct as “absurd,” “without merit” and “unwarranted.” Because the defendants abused the discovery process, the judge has now ordered the defendants to pay monetary sanctions to Puckett’s lawyers four times, totaling tens of thousands of dollars.

County lawyers avert justice

Puckett has every right to sue Sacramento County for the 18 years he spent in prison and the year he spent in jail awaiting trial, for a murder he did not commit and for withholding evidence that would have exonerated him.

The defendants in this civil lawsuit are the County of Sacramento, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office; the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office; Deputy District Attorney Marjorie Durenberger; Sheriff’s Office detectives Marci Minter, Lori Gregersen, Willard Bayles, Robert Bell and Kay Maulsby; forensic pathologist Dr. Donald Henrikson; and 50 unnamed “Doe” defendants who participated in the case.

But instead of settling with Puckett — as he deserves — lawyers from Porter Scott, representing the county and other defendants, have done nothing but stall. They have repeatedly ignored court orders and incurred tens of thousands of dollars in fines — money coming directly out of Sacramento County taxpayer funds.

According to the Risk Management Division annual report for the fiscal year 2022-2023, Sacramento County paid more than $1.9 million to Porter Scott for their legal services last year. The county is personally liable for up to $2 million, after which their insurance policy pays out up to $25 million.

“I want to get it over with,” Puckett said. “I’ve done 19 years for something I didn’t do. I have to keep reliving that every time I go to court.”

Neither Sacramento County nor representatives for Porter Scott returned a request for comment, only stating they could not publicly discuss ongoing litigation.

“The way that the county and the other defendants have approached this entire case is just basically back of the hand … salt in the wound,” said Puckett’s lawyer, Harrison “Buzz” Frahn. “They’ve never acknowledged the injustice that was done to (Puckett), they’ve never acknowledged the shortcomings in the original trial and investigation.”

Puckett’s civil trial is in the discovery phase, where each side shares information about the witnesses and evidence they will present at trial. Puckett’s team has repeatedly asked the county’s lawyers to provide information about the original case, but the county has provided only a “smattering” of documents, claiming they’ve done the required searches without actually providing any evidence of that.

“What are they fighting?” Puckett asked. “I feel like I almost have prison on me still, because of the stalling tactics.”

“Every time I go in there I feel every feeling, sitting there and dealing with this nonsense every week,” he said. “Why do we have to keep doing this? I’ve been through this, and every time my innocence is proven. Why are you fighting this so hard?”

Puckett deserves restitution

Puckett told me he just wants to keep his job at a distribution center in Sacramento and reconnect with his children who grew up without him; a son, 26, and a daughter, 24. They were just children when their father was sent to prison.

“(Puckett is) the most humble, grateful and hopeful individual, even though our society treated worse than anybody ever deserves to be treated, he maintained that core of integrity, humility and hopefulness,” Frahn said. “(If you or) I were put in that same position, we’d become incredibly bitter and lash out. He found a centered part of himself that allowed him to have hope and to have gratitude. That’s what got him through.”

Wrongful conviction lawsuits like this would typically pay millions. According to the Innocence Project, federal compensation laws should provide $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration. In California, the state provides a maximum of $140 per day of wrongful incarceration, including any time spent in custody before incarceration, as well as $70 per day served on parole. Puckett received $968,800 in 2021 from the California Victim Compensation Board for spending nearly 7,000 days in prison.

Frahn says cases like this are typically resolved in the tens of millions. Sacramento County owes Puckett restitution, and every day they spend delaying payment is a further injustice inflicted upon an innocent man.

What is the county hiding?

We already know Puckett was wrongfully convicted, and we know something had to have gone terribly wrong in the county government in 2001. But it’s 2024 now. It’s time to apologize and punish the illegal behavior of the then-district attorney, sheriff and detectives — and pay up. The county can’t even seem to acknowledge it did anything wrong.

“When I tell people I was wrongfully convicted, I (either) get sympathy or ‘Did you really do it?’” Puckett said. “I feel like I will always have people looking at me like I did the crime and got away with it. It’s hard to open up and tell people who I am; I don’t want to walk around like a convict.”

There’s a hearing almost every week downtown on the case, where both sides come together often only to find that the county still has not complied with the judge’s orders. In August, Judge Barnes has ordered the county to come forward with evidence as to why it should not be held in contempt of court.

Puckett goes to every court hearing, even though he often works a night shift directly after.

“This is my life,” he said. “I’m showing up and standing up for my life.”