Investigator admitted forging documents to save lives of condemned inmates.
SACRAMENTO — A former private investigator who admitted forging documents to try to save the lives of four death row inmates — including one convicted in Orange County — was sentenced Thursday to five years in state prison.
Kathleen Culhane, 40, admitted that she repeatedly made up statements from real witnesses and jurors and forged their signatures to try to stop the executions. The fake statements were turned over to attorneys and filed with the courts and governor’s office as they considered whether to commute the men’s death sentences.
Culhane said she acted out of her moral opposition to the death penalty.
“I was very conscious that a life held in the balance, she told Sacramento County Superior Court Gary Ransom. “My crimes are crimes of conscience.”
She said she acted “not for personal benefit or gain but out of necessity” to influence a death penalty system she believes is dysfunctional.
But prosecutors said her actions threatened the same legal system she was sworn to support. State Attorney General Jerry Brown called Culhane’s actions the greatest fraud ever against the state’s criminal justice system.
Culhane pleaded guilty in April to two counts of forgery and single counts of perjury and filing false documents. By accepting a five-year prison deal, the former San Francisco-based investigator avoided a possible 19 years in prison on 45 counts.
She was immediately placed in handcuffs and led off to begin her prison sentence after Ransom imposed the sentence.
Her attorney, Stuart Hanlon, said she is likely to serve about two years and eight months behind bars before being paroled.
She was discovered after Michael Morales petitioned Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency as he was about to be executed last year for the 1981 rape and murder of a Central Valley teenager.
The other three death-row inmates are: Christian Monterroso, convicted by an Orange County jury for the 1991 murders of Tarsem Singh and Ashokkumar Patel and the attempted murder of Allen Canellas; Jose Guerra, convicted by a Los Angeles County jury for the 1990 rape and murder of Kathleen Powell; and Vicente Figueroa Benavides, convicted by a Kern County jury for the 1991 murder and rape of a 21-month-old child.
