$12 Million for Former California Prisoner Exonerated After 17 Years
On June 18, 2024, City Commissioners in San Jose, California, voted to approve a settlement paying $12 million to Lionel Rubalcalva, 45, who spent 17 years wrongfully incarcerated for a 2002 gang shooting that he didn’t commit.
Rubalcalva was arrested on April 8, 2002, for a drive-by shooting three days earlier that left 19-year-old Raymond Rodriguez paralyzed from the waist down. A Norteño street gang member, Rodriguez told detectives that he had most likely been targeted by members of the rival Sureño gang. Both he and his mother said they didn’t suspect Rubalcalva, who was not a rival and had once belonged to another Norteño group. Cell tower data also confirmed Rubalcalva’s alibi—that he was driving to a movie date 45 miles away in Hollister at the time of the shooting.
Nevertheless, police pressured Rodriguez and three others to testify that Rubalcalva was the shooter, after which the officials also falsely claimed that the identification was made without coercion. When Rodriguez later began to waiver, they paid him off, moving him and his mother to a nicer neighborhood—details that the office of Santa Clara County District Attorney George Kennedy never shared with Rubalcalva’s defense attorneys.
Rubalcalva was convicted in 2003 and incarcerated in the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, where he remained until the California Innocence Project took up his case in 2018. The following year, the Conviction Integrity Unit of current District Attorney Jeff Rosen opened a reinvestigation, eventually joining a habeas corpus petition filed for the prisoner. In 2019, after 17 years of wrongful imprisonment, Rubalcalva was freed and obtained a finding of factual innocence from state superior court.
The next year, with the aid of attorney and University of San Francisco School of Law Prof. Lara Bazelon, plus co-counsel from Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, LLP in New York City, Rubalcalva sued the City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara, along with several of their officials, accusing them of violating his civil rights by fabricating the evidence used to convict him and withholding other evidence that supported his claims of innocence.
Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that the evidence did not support Rubalcava’s claims and, even if it did, that they were entitled to qualified immunity (QI). On March 27, 2024, the federal court for the Northern District of California largely denied the motion, rejecting Defendants’ claims to QI as well as claims that later eyewitness testimony was less persuasive than what was presented at trial on their behalf. See: Rubalcava v. City of San Jose, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55718 (N.D. Cal.).
The city then began negotiating the settlement agreement, which included costs and fees for Plaintiff’s attorneys. As noted by attorney Nick Brustin, no other arrests have ever been made in Rodriguez’s shooting, so “[n]either Lionel nor the victims were served by the corrupt police work that led to an innocent man being prosecuted and the true shooter going free.” See: Rubalcava v. City of San Jose, USDC (N.D. Cal.), Case No. 5:20-cv-04191.
Additional source: Los Angeles Times
Related legal case
Rubalcava v. City of San Jose
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (N.D. Cal.), Case No. 5:20-cv-04191 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Settlement |