NCIP Exonerees

Mashelle Bullington
Wrongfully incarcerated for nearly four years
Thirteen years later, name and conviction record finally cleared

In 1995, Mashelle Bullington was wrongfully convicted of using a firearm in the commission of an auto burglary (called a personal use gun enhancement). She was pulled from her life and two small children and imprisoned for nearly four years. Ms. Bullington completed her prison term in 1998.  In the years since, she has reunited with her children and built a successful career as a project manager for a Silicon Valley technology support company.  Yet, despite her success, she continued to be plagued by the horror of that experience and the stigma of a violent felony conviction on her record.

Through the work of Deputy District Attorney David Angel of the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, and District Attorney Investigator David Hendrickson, it was uncovered that the victim in the case had either been seriously mistaken or had outright lied about the firearm. On November 20, 2008, NCIP attorney Kathryn (Katie) Ross, in collaboration with the Santa Clara County Office of the District Attorney, petitioned to have Ms. Bullington's gun enhancement vacated based on the newly discovered evidence.  Judge Douglas Southard of the Santa Clara County Superior Court granted the petition, vacated the gun enhancement, and reduced the case to a misdemeanor. A decade after she was released from prison for a crime she did not commit, Ms. Bullington's name was finally cleared.

NCIP wishes to salute the Santa Clara County Office of the District Attorney, particularly David Angel and David Hendrickson, for all of their work on Ms. Bullington's case.

Albert Johnson
Wrongfully incarcerated for over 11 years

Albert Johnson was arrested in 1992 for two rapes. From the moment of his arrest, Johnson maintained his innocence and requested DNA testing to prove it. Even though it was available and police had obtained rape kits, neither the prosecution nor Mr. Johnson’s attorney sought DNA testing. Finally in 2001, in response to Mr. Johnson’s motion under the new post-conviction DNA testing law, the court ordered testing. Those tests revealed that Mr. Johnson could not have been the perpetrator of one of the rapes, and the court reversed that conviction. A search of the DNA database identified that actual rapist, but he remains free because the statute of limitations has run so he can no longer be prosecuted.

Four days after Mr. Johnson’s release from prison, police re-arrested him, claiming he had to serve time for a one-year prison infraction for being caught with a knife in his prison cell. NCIP swiftly obtained Mr. Johnson’s exoneration for that conviction where prison documents revealed that Mr. Johnson had been wrongly held responsible because the weapon that was planted by a white supremacist gang.

Though Mr. Johnson has been exonerated of two crimes, he is precluded from proving his innocence in the other rape because prosecutors claim that the evidence has been destroyed.

Kenneth Foley
Wrongfully incarcerated for 12 years

On March 9, 1995, Foley and his co-defendant were charged with burglary with an arming allegation. During the trial the actual perpetrator testified that he was responsible for the crime and continued to take the blame for years. However, the jury chose not to believe him. After re-investigating Mr. Foley’s case, the Santa Clara County District Attorney recommended Mr. Foley’s sentence be recalled and later filed a Motion to Dismiss Priors. NCIP filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus seeking reversal of Mr. Foley’s burglary conviction. The court reversed Mr. Foley’s burglary conviction as NCIP had requested, struck all but one prior, and released Mr. Foley on his own recognizance. With the assistance of the law firm of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, NCIP is currently seeking compensation for Mr. Foley under Penal Code section 4900 et seq., which provides wrongfully convicted individuals $100 per day for each day of wrongful imprisonment.

Armando Ortiz
Wrongfully incarcerated for nearly six years

Armando Ortiz, age 16 at the time of his arrest for a double murder, was represented by a juvenile court attorney who discovered nine alibi witnesses who placed him at a party at the time of the murders. When Mr. Ortiz’s case was transferred to adult court, Mr. Ortiz was appointed a new attorney, Ernest Kinney, who ignored the overwhelming alibi evidence and put on virtually no defense. Though no physical evidence tied Mr. Ortiz to the murder scene and the circumstantial evidence was weak, a jury convicted Mr. Ortiz of the murders as well as two related robberies and an unrelated assault, and he was sentenced to two terms of life in prison. Appellate attorneys Cliff Gardner and Lazuli Whit, who had worked extensively on Mr. Ortiz’s behalf, referred his case to NCIP. NCIP attorneys and students convinced a judge to overturn his murder and robbery convictions based on ineffective assistance of counsel. The Innocence Project continues to pursue relief for Mr. Ortiz on the assault charge so that one day Mr. Ortiz may be free. The two murderers of the victims in this case remain unidentified.

Ron Reno
Wrongfully incarcerated for almost six years

Ron Reno was convicted of gun possession in 1997. When police arrested him he insisted that he knew nothing about the gun and that police should look for a man named Marsh. Mr. Reno maintained that Marsh had hidden the gun in a boot box. Neither police nor Mr. Reno’s own attorney made any effort to find Marsh. Mr. Reno was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life under California’s Three Strikes law. Several years into his sentence he encountered Mr. Marsh in prison, who freely admitted that the gun was his. Mr. Marsh felt it grossly unfair that Reno should be serving a life sentence for something he didn’t do, so he provided a declaration and met with the district attorney, reiterating that he had hidden the gun in the boot box without Mr. Reno’s knowledge. NCIP filed a writ of habeas corpus arguing that this new evidence proved Mr. Reno’s innocence and subsequently negotiated his release with the DA’s office.

Jeffrey Rodriguez
Wrongfully incarcerated for over five years

In 2002 Jeffrey Rodriguez was arrested for robbing an employee of Kragen’s Auto Supply in the loading dock of the store. Mr. Rodriguez’s first jury trial hung 11-1 in favor of acquittal; on retrial, the victim’s identification changed drastically and the prosecution used questionable physical evidence tied with expert testimony to place Mr. Rodriguez at the scene of the crime. The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. On appeal, Mr. Rodriguez’s conviction was overturned. NCIP student Curtis Macon assisted Santa Clara County Deputy Public Defender Andy Gutierrez in discovering new evidence that led to the dismissal of all charges against Mr. Rodriguez prior to his third trial. After serving over five years in prison for the crime, Mr. Rodriguez was released in 2007. The real perpetrator of the crime has yet to be identified. As in Mr. Foley’s case, NCIP is seeking compensation from the State for Mr. Rodriguez’s wrongful incarceration.

Peter Rose
Wrongfully incarcerated for nearly 10 years

In 1994, Peter Rose was arrested for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl who had been badgered by police to name someone as her assailant. She told law enforcement officers she could not identify the perpetrator. Following a coercive three-hour interrogation, the girl tentatively identified Mr. Rose as her rapist. When NCIP’s now-defunct Golden Gate University office began working on Mr. Rose’s case, officials maintained that all evidence had been destroyed. Students found one remaining piece of evidence at the lab that had originally conducted blood typing on the evidence and filed a motion for DNA testing. The DNA testing conclusively demonstrated that Mr. Rose was not the rapist. Mr. Rose’s conviction was reversed and he was released from prison. With the help of the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Rose received over $300,000 after filing a compensation claim with the State Board of Control for his wrongful conviction. The real perpetrator of the rape has still not been identified.

John Stoll
Wrongfully incarcerated for nearly 20 years

John Stoll’s case grew out of the 1980s child molestation hysteria that led to the convictions of scores of innocent people in Bakersfield, California, and other communities throughout the country. His 1985 conviction was based solely on the testimony of children who had been subjected to coercive interviewing techniques by Kern County social workers, sheriff’s officers, and other county authorities. Officials pressured six young children into falsely testifying they were sexually abused by Mr. Stoll and three other adults. No physical evidence corroborated their testimony. A jury convicted Mr. Stoll of 17 counts of child molestation, and the court sentenced him to 40 years in prison.

In 2002, NCIP and co-counsel California Innocence Project filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Mr. Stoll. Following full briefing, the Kern County Superior Court ordered an evidentiary hearing be held. During the hearing five of six former child witnesses recanted their testimony. The court found that Kern County had obtained Mr. Stoll’s convictions in violation of his constitutional right to due process because they were based on unreliable testimony procured by county employees’ improper interviewing techniques. This district attorney’s office admitted it could not retry him and dropped all charges. Subsequently, NCIP filed a compensation claim on behalf of Mr. Stoll, and the State of California awarded him over $700,000 for his wrongful conviction. The two California Innocence Projects, along with several civil rights attorneys, have filed a federal civil rights suit against Kern County and the others responsible for imprisoning Mr. Stoll. That suit is now pending.