Six years of legal work frees innocent man who spent 18 years in prison

After six years of investigative work by a team of former prosecutors, law enforcement officials, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett attorneys and law school students who exposed a botched criminal prosecution, a man who spent the last 18 years in prison after being convicted of murder and robbery freely walked out of a Sacramento County courtroom earlier this month.

"This was not a strong prosecution case," said Superior Court Judge Steve White, who reversed defendant Jeremy Puckett's conviction on March 3, noting there was no physical evidence that tied Puckett to the crime or the crime scene.

Puckett's incarceration was a result of a perfect storm of perjury, government suppression of evidence and inadequate legal representation, said retired Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu-Towery, who volunteered with the Northern California Innocence Project to represent Puckett and win his release.

"His defense attorney let him down, the sheriff's office let him down, the coroner let him down," Sinunu-Towery said in a phone interview on Friday.

In 2002, Puckett was sentenced to life without possibility of parole for the 1998 murder and robbery of Anthony Galati, who was found dead on the side of a road, shot twice in the head and covered in abrasions.

Puckett was implicated in 2001 when another man who was already incarcerated for other crimes told a prison guard he had information about Galati's murder. Fearing he would face a lengthier sentence than what he was already serving, Israel Sept, who prosecutors now know committed the murder, partially confessed to it while telling authorities Puckett was involved. Sept was charged with the murder and robbery of Galati in 2000 and pled guilty in exchange for an 11-year sentence. Puckett was arrested the next year, convicted, and sentenced in 2002.

Puckett's writ of habeas corpus was denied in lower courts. But the state Supreme Court later issued an order to show cause and remanded his case the superior court. Puckett challenged several components of his conviction and claimed factual innocence. Under the state high court's direction, the superior court granted two of Puckett's claims and ordered a new trial, although his claim of factual innocence was not addressed.

Sacramento Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Rodney Norgaard said Friday that after reviewing the case, his office determined there was not sufficient evidence to re-try Puckett and sustain the original prosecution's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Our ethical obligation as prosecutors requires that we move the court to dismiss the charges if we believe we do not have a reasonable probability of meeting that burden of proof," Norgaard said in an email. "Consequently, we requested that the court dismiss the charges based on insufficient evidence."

Over the last six years, the Innocence Project and attorneys from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP worked on Puckett's behalf to uncover at least 700 pages of documents from the sheriff's office they say prosecutors and Puckett's original defense neglected to present during the trial -- documents that later proved his innocence.

The county coroner wrongly ruled Galati was murdered on a Friday when it in fact occurred the day before, documents obtained by Puckett's defense show. According to Sinunu-Towery, neither Puckett's original defense attorney nor the prosecution questioned the coroner's assessment. Puckett's defense says this is why jurors never heard his alibi evidence that he was at a family barbecue on the Thursday the murder was committed. In November 2019, the district attorney's conceded the coroner was wrong and Puckett had an alibi."Not only was it not a strong case for the prosecution, but we proved Jeremy was innocent," said Simpson Thatcher partner Buzz Frahn in a statement. Documents obtained by Puckett's defense also showed Sept, the man who implicated Puckett in the murder, recanted his original story to Puckett's defense attorney before trial, admitting Puckett was not involved. But this recantation was not presented at the trial.

Sinunu-Towery believes Puckett's defense attorney didn't provide this recantation to the jury because it was obtained through the use of an improper, unethical interview with Sept.

"You're not supposed to interview someone who's represented by an attorney in the same matter," she said.

In another twist, an accomplice who aided Sept in the 1998 murder later confessed that Puckett was not involved. But the jury never heard this either.

Sinunu-Towery also said a sheriff's detective who worked on the case co-mingled two cases' files, placing Puckett's investigation with another. She said the prosecution never investigated why there were two different police report numbers for the case, and that was a major fault.

"Prosecutors cannot rubber stamp what the police tell them," she said. "There's a system set up where the police do an investigation, then the DA reviews that investigation and decides whether or not to charge a crime. They have to be questioning what the police did. They have to be looking at the police files."

The Sacramento County sheriff's department did not respond to requests for comment.