Los Angeles County Pays $24 Million to Two Former Prisoners Wrongly Convicted as Teens of 1997 Murder
by Matt Clarke
On May 7, 2024, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $24 million settlement for two California men who were wrongly convicted as teenagers of a 1997 murder, based on an unreliable jailhouse snitch’s testimony and falsified evidence.
On June 28, 1997, John Klene and Eduardo Dumbrique, then 18 and 15, were watching a heavyweight championship boxing match—during which Mike Tyson famously bit off a piece of Exander Holyfield’s ear—on a television at the Klene family home. They were surrounded by friends. Meanwhile, a drive-by shooting in Hawthorne resulted in the death of a man using a pay phone outside a tire store. The man, Antonio Alacron, 25, was the leader of a gang known as “Lil’ Watts.” Three witnesses at the scene saw shots fired from a dark-colored car full of people. One witness said it was a black Honda Accord.
Three days later, police arrested Santo “Payaso” Alvarez, a member of the “Lawndale 13” gang, on drug and weapons charges. He told police that, as he rode by them on a bicycle the day of the shooting, he had overheard Klene, Dumbrique and another man plotting a murder. He claimed to have heard them bragging about it when he rode by them again later the same day.
According to court documents, he later admitted to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) staff that he was “just trying to talk his way out of jail.” Also, some of the claims Alvarez made did not pan out. For instance, he told police that he saw Klene and Dumbrique driving around in another man’s green Ford Escort all weekend, but a check showed that the man hadn’t owned that car for months. Nonetheless, Alvarez was released from jail a few hours after implicating Klene and Dumbrique.
Alvarez’s unsupported statement wasn’t enough evidence to arrest the teens, so police reinterviewed one of the witnesses, the owner of the tire store, and showed him a photo lineup. He told them that he hadn’t seen the shooter very well. Then, according to court documents, deputies pointed out the photos of the teens and told him to pick them.
In mid-July 1997, police pulled over a light-green four-door Honda. Dumbrique was a passenger, so investigators decided that it must be the murder car and fabricated a witness statement to that effect. Within weeks, Alvarez and Chad Landrum, a fellow Lawndale 13 member and the man who actually shot Alacron, were implicated in the murder of a transient. Instead of calling Alvarez’s credibility into question, the LASD conspired to pin that murder on an innocent woman, Susan Mellen.
Mellen was exonerated and released in 2014, after 17 years in prison, and the state awarded her $597,200 for her wrongful incarceration. She and her three children filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department detective who had withheld exculpatory evidence. A year after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the detective qualified immunity (QI) in Mellen v. Winn, 900 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. 2018), the City of Los Angeles reportedly settled the lawsuit for $12 million in 2019.
The two teens, Klene and Dumbrique, were also convicted based on falsified evidence. Klene was sentenced to life without parole in 1999, while Dubrique was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Both were turned over to the custody of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
In 2012, a dying Landrum admitted in writing—and later under oath—that he committed the murder, adding that Klene and Dumbrique had no part in it. They were exonerated in 2021. After spending over two decades incarcerated, Klene was released from Pleasant Valley State Prison on February 19, 2021, and Dumbrique was released exactly a month later from Centinela State Prison. In March 2022, the state awarded them $140 per day they spent wrongfully imprisoned—a total over $1.2 million.
With the assistance of attorneys Deirdre O’Connor and Nick Brustin, Klene and Dumbrique then filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court for the Central District of California, seeking damages from the County for their wrongful conviction and imprisonment.
“The lies behind John Klene and Ed Dumbrique’s decades-long imprisonment were exposed before their criminal trial began when a witness described how a [LASD] detective made up the evidence against them,” said O’Connor and Brustin in a joint statement. “But the detectives lied again to cover up their misconduct, and the [LASD] let them.” The $24 million settlement included legal costs and fees. See: Klene v. Riggs, USDC (S.D. Cal.) Case No. 2:22-cv-08313.
Additional source: Los Angeles Times
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login