Kathleen Culhane Update
UPDATE 5/1/07: Culhane Pleads Guilty, Faces Five Years
UPDATE to this update 2/21/07: Culhane Arrested, Charged With 45 Felonies
This article was published in March 2006 in the San Francisco Chronicle:
A former defense investigator suspected of fabricating juror statements in Michael Morales’ death penalty appeal has been linked to 14 more questionable declarations in two other capital cases.
Kathleen Culhane, who worked for the state-funded Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco until mid-2005, is already under investigation by the state attorney general’s office for the statements she submitted to Morales’ defense attorneys earlier this year.
Prosecutors accused Culhane of fabricating statements from five jurors and a witness against Morales, declarations that appellate attorneys have since withdrawn. Morales’ execution for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi has been put on hold on other grounds related to a defense challenge to lethal injections.
The latest suspicions about Culhane’s work came to light when Michael Laurence, head of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, sent letters to the state Supreme Court asking to withdraw 14 declarations she had submitted in support of appeals for two men on Death Row.
A former juror quoted in one of the statements told The Chronicle on Thursday that the declaration was a fake.
Culhane’s lawyer, Stuart Hanlon, said the statements were authentic.
“She maintains she in fact did everything correctly, never forged any signature, never did anything wrong or illegal while aggressively trying to help people on Death Row,” he said. “She is proud of her work; she doesn’t really know what’s happening here.”
In one of his letters, dated March 6, Laurence said he had learned that “five witnesses from whom Ms. Kathleen Culhane purportedly obtained signed declarations did not sign those declarations.”
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7 comments
IKNOW ONE OF THESE PERSON SHE SAYS SHE TOOK A STATEMENT FROM BUT DIDNT SHE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF HER SELF SHAME ON HER .
If anyone knows anything about the so-called “justice system” (and political agendas) and the corporate news media (and political agendas), then it should be immediately clear, at the least, that the story we are getting is spun (MEDIA SPIN) out of recognition.
Kathleen Culhane is a woman of integrity, deep compassion and kindness, and courage beyond what most people can fathom. The best I can take from media coverage is that very little truth (if any) is being broad-casted. This makes me feel deeply sad.
Kathleen Culhane is a woman of integrity . . .
Who just plead guilty to two counts of forgery, one count of perjury and one count of filing false documents . . . I’m pretty sure that doesn’t pass the smell test vis-a-vis integrity. (That’s the kind of conviction that gets brought up to attack credibility if someone like Ms. Culhane should ever take the stand.) Yeah. Lots of integrity.
When a person speaks of details and happenings of which he or she is ignorant, it is ignorance that person personifies.
she is guilty, you are just ignorant
I have rarely met anyone so worthy of respect as Kathleen. It is an honor to call her a friend.
You had better re-assess either your people evaluation skills or you values. I would not call a person with such a lack of integrity or honor a friend
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