Eyewitness blues
There is more than one case in which S.F.'s top cop allegedly framed a man for murder.

By A.C. Thompson

BY THE EVENING of June 18, the story was everywhere: fresh evidence suggested that three prominent local law enforcers – San Francisco police chief Earl Sanders, police inspector Napoleon Hendrix, and assistant district attorney George Butterworth – pressured a witness into giving bogus testimony during a 1990 murder trial that sent two men to prison.

The revelation, which made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, further undermines the already hole-filled case against Anton Goff and John J. Tennison, who are currently serving 27 and 25 years to life, respectively, for the 1989 slaying of Roderick "Cooley" Shannon.

But for Luther C. Brock Sr., the latest bombshell isn't particularly shocking.

Brock, a 56-year-old African American, claims Sanders and Hendrix also framed him – in his case, for a 1980 slaying.

The storied police duo, then homicide detectives, were instrumental in putting Brock away on a second-degree murder charge for killing his girlfriend Iris Southall, who was a patient at San Francisco General Hospital at the time of her death. But in 1985 the California Supreme Court reversed the conviction and cut Brock loose. In its published 13-page decision, the court highlighted what may have been crooked police work on the part of Hendrix.

"I had those years of my life taken away from me," said Brock, now an executive with a nonprofit agency, in an interview last week. "If the California Supreme Court hadn't overturned the sentence, I'd still be in prison for something I didn't do."

When you compare Brock's experiences to those of Tennison and Goff, who were also busted by Sanders and Hendrix, the parallels are chilling. Taken together, the two cases may be indicators of a broader, multidecade pattern of deceitful policing at the San Francisco Police Department, a scandal reaching as high as the chief (who is currently on medical leave). Or, on the other hand, they could represent nothing more than a few honest mistakes on the part of two hard-working cops.

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At the time of her death, Southall was being treated at General Hospital for an abscess caused by shooting speed. She and Brock were well known to police. A methamphetamine dealer who ran with the Hell's Angels, Brock had done time on an involuntary manslaughter beef, and he and Southall had recently been popped on drug charges.

When the coroner deduced that a dose of speed killed Southall, police, understandably, began looking at her drug-pusher boyfriend. Their theory: Brock intentionally shot up Southall with a lethal dose of methamphetamine and amphetamine as she lay in her hospital bed.

Medical experts later disagreed about whether Southall even died from a speed overdose – and if so, whether the drug was already in her system when she entered the hospital.

But Hendrix and Sanders constructed their case against Brock around the damning statements of a terminally ill woman who'd been in the hospital bed next to Southall. The witness, according to Hendrix's notes – as quoted by the state Supreme Court – overheard Southall talking to a black man about shooting drugs shortly before Southall died. "I don't see how shooting in my foot will help. I don't have a vein in my foot," the victim supposedly said, prompting the man to reply, "You have veins all over."

The witness, Hendrix claimed, then heard "what sounded like a syringe" being placed on a table.

But Hendrix's interview with the witness – which was not video- or audiotaped – didn't jibe with the notes taken by another cop who'd questioned her earlier. The other cop, the court pointed out, "reported that no words were spoken between Southall and her visitor" [the court's emphasis].

According to Hendrix's notes – again, as quoted by the court – the cop showed the witness a lineup of six photos of black men "and she picked out the photo of Luther C. Brock."

Later, however, when private investigator Seth Derish reinterviewed the witness, she said Hendrix had only shown her one mug shot – presumably of Brock – and she couldn't make a positive ID.

Derish, who was retained by Brock, also queried the witness on tape about the statements she supposedly made to Hendrix. The witness told the P.I. "she never heard a word" exchanged between Southall and her visitor, and informed Derish, "I didn't say some of the things" written in Hendrix's report. In short, according to the court, the witness "contradicted every incriminating observation contained" in Hendrix's notes.

Though the witness died before trial started, her purported statements to Hendrix were admitted into evidence and presented to the jury.

In its unanimous decision, the state high court – at the time staffed by outspoken liberals Rose Bird, Joseph Grodin, and Cruz Reynoso – determined Brock was denied "a meaningful opportunity for cross-examination" of the witness. The court didn't directly accuse the detective of fabricating evidence, but it did call his report "highly suspect."

By that time Brock had spent five years locked in a cell.

Perhaps there was nothing nefarious about the police work that led to People v. Luther C. Brock. Quite possibly, the witness offered inconsistent stories simply because she was heavily doped up on painkillers while suffering through the final stages of metastatic cancer. And any student of the criminal justice system will tell you that even under the best circumstances, eyewitness testimony can be sketchy.

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Still, the similarities between the Brock case and the prosecution of John J. Tennison and Anton Goff are undeniable. Both cases, notably, were built on a foundation of wobbly testimony from witnesses who were possibly unduly influenced by the homicide cops.

Teenagers at the time of their 1990 trial, Tennison and Goff were convicted of executing another teen, Roderick "Cooley" Shannon, with two shotgun blasts fired in the parking lot of a Visitacion Valley convenience store. At trial the star witnesses were a pair of middle school students who offered police a shaky, ever morphing account of the killing.

Last week's new development in Tennison and Goff's 13-year struggle to be exonerated came in the form of statements made by one of those key witnesses, Pauline Maulina, who now says, according to a declaration filed in federal court, "I did not witness this murder." Her sworn testimony on the witness stand "was a lie that I did not want to tell, but I felt pressured to do so by [the other star witness], the police – especially Inspector Hendrix – and the prosecutor, Mr. Butterworth."

The case is riddled with suspicious occurrences that have never been adequately explained by the SFPD – like the fact that police decided to release Lovinsky "Lovinsta" Ricard, the Hunters Point man who spontaneously confessed in 1990 to the killing.

Ricard's confession was corroborated by an anonymous witness to the slaying who was interviewed by the Bay Guardian in late 2000. The witness said Ricard, at least initially, boasted about the murder, claiming it "felt good."

Contacted for comment on the latest evidentiary twist, Tennison's lawyers, Elliot R. Peters and Ethan A. Balogh, declined to discuss the case, which is pending before federal Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland. Goff's attorney, Diana Samuelson, also declined to talk.

San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan was vague about how he plans to respond to the new charges. "This is an extremely sensitive case that has elicited many questions over a long period of time, and the district attorney will most certainly consider any new evidence," the D.A.'s spokesperson, Mark MacNamara, told the Bay Guardian. But MacNamara denied that prosecutor George Butterworth, who is still in the District Attorney's Office and is still trying homicides, engaged in any underhanded conduct. "It would be very inaccurate to say we ran roughshod over this witness in a mindless attempt to convict [Tennison and Goff]."

"Acting chief Fagan will, at the very least, look into these allegations" SFPD spokesperson Dewayne Tully said, adding, "These allegations fly in the face of their reputations as investigators. What Sanders and Hendrix have been accused of doing just doesn't sound typical for them. They are practically legends. They are extremely well thought of, extremely respected."

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After being released from prison, Brock got clean and went on to cofound Free at Last, an East Palo Alto-based drug and alcohol rehab program, before taking a management position at the AIDS Community Research Consortium, where he now works. At this point he's still waiting on his official pardon from Gov. Gray Davis, but figures "it should be coming any day now."

Brock, who now lives in the San Jose area, views his wrongful conviction as a cautionary tale no one noticed. "When I got out, I said, 'This is going to happen to somebody else.' "

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