Los Angeles will pay more than $24 million to
two men who spent decades in prison after
they were wrongfully convicted of murder,
officials said.
Kash Delano Register won his freedom in
2013 after lawyers and students from Loyola
Law School doubted a key prosecution
witness’s testimony.
He was awarded $16.7 million by the Los
Angeles City Council on Tuesday. It is the
largest settlement in an individual civil rights
case in the city’s history, according to
reports.
Bruce Lisker, who was released from prison in
2009 after a Los Angeles Times investigation
into his conviction, will walk away with $7.6
million.
Though their cases were unrelated, both men
maintained that detectives ignored evidence
that proved their innocence.
City Councilman Paul Krekorian told reporters
on Tuesday the two cases were the “very
unfortunate” result of police misconduct in the
past, but did not reflect how the department
operates today.
“It’s just regrettable that these two
individuals spent the better part of their
lives in prison as a result of the
inadequacy of the investigations that
happened back then,” said Krekorian,
who heads the budget committee that
weighs settlement payments.
Register, now 55, was arrested and charged in
the 1979 armed robbery and murder of Jack
Sasson, 78, after eyewitness testimony put
him at the scene at the time of the shooting,
the Times wrote.
Witness Brenda Anderson reportedly told
police she heard gunshots and that she saw
Register running from the scene.
Anderson picked him out of a photo lineup,
officials said, but her sisters told police that
her accounts were untrue.
Despite there being no recovered murder
weapon, no fingerprints lifted and Register’s
girlfriend’s insistence that he was with her at
the time of the shooting, he spent 34 years
behind bars for the crime.
Anderson’s sister, Sheila Vanderkam,
reportedly testified that she tried to tell a
detective that her sister had lied about seeing
Register, but the investigator put a finger to
his lips, meaning she should stay quiet.
Her other sister, Sharon Anderson, said that
she, too, was ignored by police.
Register’s attorneys claimed that Anderson
picked out Register under the threat of being
prosecuted for credit card forgery and a
recent theft if she didn’t choose someone.
Register was finally freed after a fresh
examination of his case, spurred on after
Vanderkam read many years later that he was
still imprisoned. He was ultimately freed in
2013.
“After almost 37 years, I am more than
ready to try to put this all behind me and
move on with my life,” he told reporters.
Lisker, now 50, also said he was ready to
move forward after spending 26 years in
prison for the murder of his 66-year-old
mother, Dorka.
Though happy to be vindicated, he told the
Times:
“How can one place a monetary figure
on a lifetime of stolen freedom, of
crushed aspirations and a shattered
reputation, on my mother’s tragic murder
going unsolved and neglected for 33
years and counting? There are no
words…”
At the time of the murder, Lisker, who had a
reputation for fighting with his mother and a
history of drug abuse, told police he saw her
lying in the foyer and broke into the home to
help her. They did not believe him.
A Times investigation in 2005 raised
questions about the case against Lisker,
pointing to details that showed the murder
investigation was "sloppy and incomplete."
During a hearing in federal court challenging
Lisker’s conviction, key elements of the
prosecution’s case were undermined or
disproved, including that a bloody print found
in the bathroom was not in fact made by
Lisker’s shoes as it was once thought to be.
His attorneys also said that the lead detective
ignored evidence that Lisker’s friend may
have been a possible suspect.
Since his release, Lisker has married.
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