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After 24 Years, man freed from prison:
Kansas City native was convicted in California killing
by Henry Weinstein and Christiana Sciaudone, Los Angeles Times
appeared in The Kansas City Star, Monday, April 5, 2004, page A3
LONG BEACH, Calif. -- A Kansas native imprisoned for murder for 24
years has been freed after prosecutors conceded they had no case
against him.
"I'm nervous and anxious and uncertain about the future, but I am glad
to be out," Thomas Lee Goldstein, 55, said Friday outside the Long
Beach courthouse moments after his release.
Goldstein has maintained his innocence in the November 1979 shotgun slaying of John
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 Los Angeles County
district attorney's office in 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 last week, Pierce
dealt a critical blow to the prosecution's case when he ruled that it
could not present testimoney 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," said
Patrick Connolly, a deputy district attorney.
Goldstein looked numb as his nearly quarter century in custody came to an end after a brief hearing.
After Connolly dismissed the charges, defense attorney Charles
Linder asked the judge to rule that the district attorney's office
could not charge Goldstein again because this marked the second time
this year that a Superior Court judge had dismissed the case. Connolly
said he has no objection, and the judge agreed.
Goldstein's lead attorney, Dale Rubin, drove Goldstein to a Veterans
Affairs center to emet with social workers. Rubin hopes it will help
with Goldstein's re-entry into society.
Goldstein said he hoped to have a nice meal as his first taste of
freedom, and said he planned to move back to Kansas, where his mother
lives.
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 9th U.S. Curcuit Court of Appeals ruled in December
that his consitutional rights had been violated and ordered his
immediate release.
After state and local officials failed to comply with the 9th
Circuit order, the Justice Department, at the request of a federal
judge, initiated a criminal inquiry, which is pending in Los Angeles.
Goldstein's attorneys expressed disgust that he had been imprisoned for so long on thin, unreliable evidence.
Sandi Biggons, public information officer for District Attorney
Steve Cooley, issued a news release saying that Goldstein had been
convicted by aj ury and that its verdict had been upheld by state
appellate courts. The release said the conviction had been overturned
on "the basis of an eyewitness (Campbell) who, after two decades,
recanted his identification of the defendant."
Reached by phone Friday in Topeka, Goldstein's 76-year-old mother, Geri, was jubilant.
"You can't imagine how I'm feeling," she said. "Finally, finally,
finally, this has happened. What a wonderful figt for Passover. Freedom
at last." |
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