Lionel Rubalcava was incarcerated17 years for a 2002 shooting before the Northern California Innocence Project took on his case and helped secure his freedom.
SAN JOSE — A wrongful conviction lawsuit from a man incarcerated 17 years for a San Jose drive-by shooting — based on flimsy witness identifications that were later recanted — has been allowed to proceed toward trial by a federal judge.
Attorneys and students with the project convinced the Santa Clara County district attorney and public defender offices to revisit the conviction, whichOn Wednesday, federal Judge Beth Labson Freeman allowed claims against three San Jose police officers at the time — Topui Fonua, Joe Perez and Steven Spillman — to head toward trial, rejecting city legal arguments to toss the lawsuit. Several other officers initially named in the lawsuit have since been dropped from the case, as was the city.
“It should have been obvious from the beginning that the police had the wrong person in custody, but instead they fabricated evidence and got witnesses to falsely identify our client,” attorney Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting our evidence to a jury and obtaining vindication for Mr. Rubalcava.”
Three primary witnesses whose accounts formed the basis of Rubalcava’s arrest and attempted murder conviction, both during the trial and 20 years later in civil depositions, asserted that they weren’t certain that Rubalcava was the shooter, were pushed into making a positive identification, or outright denied that he was at the crime scene.
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