In 1980, a jury found the man, Craig Coley, guilty in the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Rhonda Wicht, 24, and her 4-year-old son, Donald, a crime he said he did not commit. In 2017, Coley, 71, was pardoned by Jerry Brown, the governor at the time, and released from prison after investigators found new DNA evidence that proved he was not the killer.
A statement from the city Saturday said that the settlement was reached to avert litigation, a long and costly process. “While no amount of money can make up for what happened to Mr. Coley, settling this case is the right thing to do for Mr. Coley and our community,” Simi Valley’s city manager, Eric Levitt, said in the statement. “The monetary cost of going to trial would be astronomical, and it would be irresponsible for us to move forward in that direction.”
In an interview Monday, Levitt said that Coley and his representatives informed the city last year of their intent to sue Simi Valley for wrongful imprisonment. Levitt said the city’s legal representatives warned it could be forced to pay as much as $80 million if the city lost at trial. “It was better for him, and for us, to put it behind us,” he said.
Attempts to reach Coley on Monday were not successful. Representatives for the Simi Valley Police Department and the district attorney’s office did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
Coley’s prison term was the longest one overturned in California, according to the statement, which cited the Police Department’s initiative to reopen the case that led to the discovery of DNA evidence that proved Coley innocent. The city said it would pay about $4.9 million of the $21 million settlement, with the remainder coming from insurance and other sources.
Coley was arrested Nov. 11, 1978, after Wicht was found beaten and strangled at her home in Simi Valley, apparently with a macramé rope. Her son had been smothered. Coley’s first trial ended in a hung jury in 1979, but he was found guilty the next year and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 2017, though, District Attorney Gregory D. Totten of Ventura County and Chief David M. Livingstone of the Simi Valley police said they would support a clemency appeal Coley made two years earlier, citing new DNA tests that proved his innocence. The DNA testing was part of a yearlong investigation opened in October 2016 at the behest of police officers who had doubts about Coley’s guilt.
Coley, who had no criminal record at the time of his arrest, was a “model” inmate during his decades in prison, Brown said in the pardon at the time.
Investigators found in a private laboratory biological samples that had been believed to be discarded or missing. New tests showed that the DNA found on a key piece of evidence did not match Coley’s. “We no longer have confidence in the weight of the evidence used to convict Mr. Coley,” Totten and Livingstone said in a statement at the time. The two called the case “tragic,” adding, “Craig Coley has spent 39 years in custody for a crime he likely did not commit.”
On Monday, Levitt said that the Police Department was still pursuing leads in the deaths of Wicht and her son.
Last year, California authorities awarded Coley $1.95 million — $140 for each day he spent in prison.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.