The Tennison legacy

THE DAY BEFORE the San Francisco Police Commission announced that acting chief Alex Fagan would be given the department's top job, a federal judge ordered the release of John J. Tennison, a San Francisco man who had been serving 25 years to life in state prison for a murder someone else confessed to. The timing was almost exquisite in its irony: Mayor Willie Brown and the Police Commission have demonstrated by appointing Fagan they aren't going to make any significant changes in a department that's been roiled by scandal – including the scandalous behavior by retiring chief Earl Sanders that helped put an innocent Tennison behind bars.

As A.C. Thompson reported when he broke this story in the Bay Guardian Jan. 17, 2001(see "The Hardest Time"), Tennison and another man named Antoine Goff were charged with a 1989 murder, on the basis of inconsistent and unreliable statements two teenage girls gave to then-homicide inspectors Earl Sanders and Napoleon Hendrix. When the case went to trial, according to federal court records, Sanders and Hendrix, along with deputy district attorney George Butterworth, withheld from the defense key information that could have exonerated Tennison and Goff, including the fact that the eyewitnesses were coached – and that one was paid $2,500 from a secret SFPD slush fund. And the defense was never told another witness had come forward to exonerate the defendants (see "The Chief's Other Legal Problem," 3/5/03). In fact, another man had confessed to the crime – but Sanders, Hendrix, and Butterworth ignored that confession.

Tennison, who was 18, and Goff, 21, were convicted, and in 1990 began serving what would almost certainly be life sentences.

But public defender Jeff Adachi, who had represented Tennison as a young deputy, never gave up on the case. And after Thompson's story broke, demonstrating strongly that Tennison and Goff were innocent, a team of attorneys led by Elliot Peters and Ethan Balogh from the high-powered firm of Keker & Van Nest joined with Adachi and took up Tennison's cause, donating roughly $800,000 worth of free legal work to freeing him.

And because of the publicity the case generated – and the tireless work of three heroic lawyers (along with Goff's pro bono counsel, Diana Samuelson) – U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilkens, in a 103-page decision, ruled that Tennison's conviction was tainted by shoddy evidence and ordered him released. Tennison walked out the doors of Mule Creek State Prison last week.

That's a remarkable victory, a huge cause for celebration. It's also a rare exception: In California, as in most of the United States, the legal system makes it almost impossible for people wrongfully convicted to get a fair shot at justice. Appeals of this sort are prohibitively expensive for most defendants, and the courts have consistently limited the ability of prisoners to challenge their convictions. And Gov. Gray Davis has set a de facto policy of never releasing convicted murderers on parole – making it even harder for most prisoners like Tennison and Goff to have any hope of living outside of razor-wire fences and concrete walls.

So the story of Tennison and Goff is and ought to be a powerful lesson for judges and lawmakers: Not every person found guilty by a jury actually committed the crime. And until the barriers to appeals are removed, hundreds of innocent people will suffer the unimaginable hell of a lifetime in confinement – for no valid reason.

But even this case, with its encouraging outcome, leaves some very serious problems in its wake. Among them:

• This isn't the only example of Sanders, Hendrix, and the District Attorney's Office allegedly framing an innocent person for a crime. In at least one other case, the California Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man put in prison for murder by Hendrix and Sanders. The court found that Hendrix had presented "highly suspect" evidence against Luther Brock, who was freed after five years and now works for a nonprofit on the Peninsula. There may be many, many more cases like this – and District Attorney Terence Hallinan needs to immediately launch a full-scale investigation into whether the former police chief and his storied partner (who still works for the department) teamed up with local prosecutors to frame innocent people for serious crimes.

• Hallinan, who is running for reelection as a D.A. with "courage," has been largely missing in action on the Tennison-Goff case. Adachi has been asking him to reopen the case for six years, and Hallinan has done nothing. Instead, he allowed the state attorney general (who handles appellate-level cases for local D.A.s) to go into Wilken's court and repeatedly fight to keep Tennison locked up.

Now, to his credit, Hallinan says he asked the A.G. not to file new charges in the Tennison case and will work to ensure that Goff isn't stuck in prison, either. But Hallinan also needs to open a formal inquiry into the actions of Butterworth, who is still on his staff, to determine whether – as Wilkens strongly suggests in her ruling – the veteran prosecutor may have violated any policies, ethical codes, or laws in the Tennison case.

• The next mayor needs to recognize this case represents some serious, deep-rooted problems in the San Francisco Police Department. It's alarming that two homicide cops, Sanders and Hendrix, could twice be reprimanded by the courts for dubious, possibly illegal actions that put innocent people in prison – and the department did nothing. Sanders moved up through the ranks to become chief; Hendrix retired honorably and is now back, helping out on major cases. That's a representation of the systemic climate of corruption in the department – something that the appointment of Fagan will only perpetuate.

Although Sanders was formally, legally exonerated in the Fajitagate case, and charges against Fagan have been dropped, there's no question that both senior cops bear some responsibility for the attempted cover-up that happened (on their watch) after Fagan's son and two other cops allegedly beat up two San Francisco men and tried to steal their steak fajitas. Hallinan was too quick to let Sanders off the hook on that one, and there were problems with the way he handled the entire case. But at least he made an effort to hold some of the top cops accountable – something the mayor and the Police Commission have utterly failed to do.

Fagan is a part and product of the old-boy-network, code-of-silence climate at the Hall of Justice, and as long as he's in charge, the department will never regain the trust of the public. The next mayor needs a strong, independent chief – from the outside – to come in and clean up the mess (and voters need to pass the police-reform measure, Proposition H).

John J. Tennison is now a free man. But the stench of his wrongful conviction will hang around for much, much longer – until state and local officials start taking steps to make sure this kind of tragedy stops happening on a regular basis.