03/19/2010 - I received another few emails from Ms. Culhane asking that the personal message in her email be removed...done & done. The only section I left is the attachment of her statement to the sentencing court.
I received the following email from someone purporting to be an ex-investigator I previously posted about by the name of Kathleen Culhane. She is the investigator who was caught fabricating affidavits on the Michael Morales Death Penalty case in 2007.
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I received the following email from someone purporting to be an ex-investigator I previously posted about by the name of Kathleen Culhane. She is the investigator who was caught fabricating affidavits on the Michael Morales Death Penalty case in 2007.
Ms. Culhane, the only person that helped the prosecution in the case against you was...you.
If you have any interest in reading more about her, you can go to the Los Angeles Times, PD Stuff, or my last post about her.
****AT MS. CULHANE'S REQUEST - MESSAGE FROM HER EMAIL HAS BEEN DELETED****
Statement of Kathleen Marie Culhane to Sentencing Court
Sacramento, CA August 16, 2007
Your Honor,
Thank you for this opportunity to address the Court today. Much has been said today and in the past about myself and my conduct, which brings me before your Honor to be sentenced. I would like to clarify first and foremost that I personally and professionally understand and deeply value the importance and necessity of truth in our courts and in our legal system. I believe this is a duty of all involved. As one who breached that duty, I accept full and sole responsibility for my conduct.
It is with that same desire for truth in this Court, that I must state clearly and with the utmost candor:
I did these acts not in any attempt, nor with any intent, to debase the value of truth in our courts, nor to harm the legal system. I have worked throughout my life to advocate for a legal system that equitably strives to protect all citizens. Nor did I do these acts with any desire, nor attempt, to impose any version of personal morality on others.
My acts were nonviolent efforts to prevent state executions. I defied the law within a severely dysfunctional system solely and totally to protect and safeguard lives. The system of death penalty appeals in California is ridden with egregious problems, arbitrariness, and error. Effective legal relief is unlikely, and often impossible. It is a great momentary salve that executions are temporarily halted; but that does not cure the endemic dysfunction in the legal process that makes relief nearly impossible on appeal. And lack of legal relief means eventual death.
As an investigator who worked solely in late stage appeals in death penalty cases, I faced little chance of effectively protecting lives, and I saw it important to defy the law in order to thwart governmental killing. My actions were an attempt to delay the march to execution so that the condemned prisoners could avail themselves of any eventual, more permanent relief that might become available down the line. That is the truth.
The California State Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly stated that this case is not about the death penalty, that this is about playing the game by the rules. I disagree. I took my profession very seriously. I put heart and my soul into this work. I was conscious and thoughtful that a life hung in the balance. I was also constantly regardfully and thoughtful, in my job, of the victims of capital murder. I have very heartfelt compassion and empathy for the family members of clients and the family members of victims in the death penalty cases I worked on. Throughout my work on death penalty cases, I was constantly and thoroughly concerned about their welfare, their grief, their sorrow, their loss, and the hardship that they suffer throughout the legal process of post-conviction and pre-execution appeals.
None of this was, or is, a game; not to these families of victims, not to the condemned, not to the families of condemned prisoners nor, I would presume, to most of those who work within the system of death penalty appeals. It was, and is, deadly serious. I took my job and my duty to my clients, very seriously.
I also took my decision to defy the law very seriously. Lives were on the line, and I believed I needed to act to protect them.
So the contention that my prosecution and my case, is simply a criminal case is inaccurate. I defied the law to prevent the calculated destruction of human life or, more succinctly, killing by the state. Because at the end of the day, that’s what this is about. As Albert Camus said, we couch executions, lynchings, lethal injection, with padded words but what we are dealing with in the end is just that: killing.
This killing done by our government and facilitated by our legal system has been determined to be in violation of international human rights laws. It is a brutal legacy of lynching in our country. It is an anachronism that is as out of place in modern society as other forms of torture. Most of the rest of the world has long moved on, rejecting executions as unnecessary and cruel and unusual punishment that does nothing to prevent crime, nor provides redress or closure to victims’ loved ones. Yet Californiaremains in the dark ages, killing at midnight and investing millions of dollars into that process. It is legally, morally and ethically by most world standards, an archaic and barbaric act. Actual killing aside, the procedural and systemic problems of the death penalty appellate legal system also cause harm and pain and also, provide little or no redress to victims.
I cannot in good conscience, therefore, stand here today and express remorse for my conduct to the State of California. I cannot have remorse to a government that kills its own, and does so through a legal procedure that in its ineffectiveness and arbitrariness is also cruel. I believe that some day the State of California should be held accountable for the harm it has done not only to condemned prisoners, but to the families of their victims who suffer through this process, as well as to the families of the condemned. And to each of us residents of the state of California who look to our government and legal system for equitable and strident enforcement and protection of rights. We who righteously look to our government, to do no harm.
I do regret any harm I have caused to any other parties involved. I did not intend to do so with my acts, and I am very heartily sorry for any and all pain or hardship. I am deeply grateful to my family and friends for their courageous support, and to my advocates for their courageous counsel.
We do need another system than the current one; we need to offer people, many of whom inequitably suffer the horror and grief of violent crime, a better and more just alternative; one that does not systemically bring greater harm to them, to others, and to the legal system itself. We need a system that does not inequitably put to death African-Americans Latinos, and the poor more than anyone else. If Californians were presented with alternatives, ones that equitably provide more restorative rather than retributive justice, would they still endorse the death penalty? We don't know, because no one, not our government, not the legal profession, has ever cared to seriously study, explore, and present alternatives. There is seemingly no political will. I hope one day there will be.
Your honor, I defied the law not to commit a crime, not for personal benefit but out of necessity to protect life. As someone who deeply values the importance of truth, I accept the punishment you deem necessary. But despite the illegality of my actions, I was guided by the moral beliefs of many. I have led a law-abiding life and my crimes are crimes of conscience. Mine is not just a criminal case any more than any other case involving citizens who defy bad laws. The death penalty and its corresponding legal procedure are bad laws. Laws rejected by millions around the world and laws that cause irreparable harm and the calculated destruction of human life. I hope for the benefit of everyone, including our government and all of us in this room, that the death penalty and the death penalty system will be abolished.
Thank you very much for your consideration of my case.
Kathleen Culhane
August 16, 2007.
Ms. Culhane:
Maybe you can explain to to me where I contributed, "to less than insightful discourse and negative misinformation to contribute to the prosecution of another." I'm re-posting the last portion of the ONLY post I ever wrote about you for your reference. It seems like you may have just been doing a cut & paste job with the letters you've been emailing people with, but I assure you I wanted the allegations against you to be proven false.
I didn't know who you were prior to this case so it was never anything personal. YOU did make it personal with me and hundreds of others when your actions came to light. There is no difference between what you did and what a dirty cop would do by falsifying reports or evidence to put the nail in the coffin of our clients.
I agree with your views on the Death Penalty but clearly not on your manner of trying to change the system. I wish you the best in whatever you end up doing, I just pray that I'm never asked to work on a case with you.
-Sancho
Please read below to see the last portion of what I actually posted back in February 2007:
You should fight for your client until your eyes and hands bleed and you should always fight within the guidelines of the law. Fabricating declarations/interviews is obviously unethical, at the very least cowardly, and mostly...it could end up costing someone their life.
If Culhane is guilty of what she is accused of doing (I hope none of the allegations are true), it sends our image and cause back into the stone age...one might argue that we're already losing the battle against the death penalty why should this hurt?
Well, when it causes witnesses to think twice about talking to us in the field because they can't trust that we won't twist their stories around, when a member of a jury has it in their head that when we (defense investigators) testify, it's known that we'll do anything (legal or illegal) to get a client off and we can't be believed...you get the idea. It will hurt us all.
This Culhane matter is not going to be the end of us PDI's or PI's. We still have work to do and we still have to keep doing it with as much integrity as possible. When in doubt, talk to your attorney about ethical questions or dilemma's, talk to your Chief Investigator about ethical questions and dilemmas. Consider running some training in your office regarding situations you'll run across in the field, in the office with headstrong attorneys and maybe even situations in which you run across an unethical investigator.
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