Federal appellate judges reverse kidnapping case based on use of informants

A 63-year-old man convicted of forcing an Anaheim bank teller to help him commit a robbery has won a new trial on kidnapping charges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Oct. 22 ruling granted exoneration to Charles Craig Clements on the abuse of a jailhouse snitch and references the Orange County jailhouse informant scandal that stemmed from the prosecution of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass murderer in Orange County history. .

Ninth Circuit Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, who wrote the majority opinion, sided with Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, while Judge Patrick J. Bumatay dissented.

Clements prevailed on the claim that prosecutors allowed the informant to falsely testify that he had not received special treatment in exchange for his assistance at trial.

Clements has also challenged his convictions on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct related to failure to turn over evidence, known as a Brady violation, and use of an informant to interrogate another inmate already by attorney is represented, which is called a Massiah violation.

Clements was sentenced in January 2012 to two life terms plus 18 years for two counts of kidnapping with intent to commit robbery and three counts of second-degree robbery.

The retrial on the kidnapping charges was granted based on what is known as a Napue violation.

The judges “found that the prosecutor violated Napue by allowing a jailhouse informant to testify that he had not received parole for his actions and that his motives for coming forward were altruistic, while the prosecutors knew or should have known that this was false.”

Clements was convicted on January 27, 2009, of posing as a package deliverer so he could kidnap Bank of the West employee Alison Lopez, who was seven and a half months pregnant and off work for the day. He pointed a gun at Lopez and told her “not to panic or do anything stupid” before “putting on gloves and a bandana over his face,” Kennelly wrote.

“Clements told Lopez that his 10-year-old son had been kidnapped by a gang who had him rob the bank where she worked,” Kennelly wrote.

He told her the gang would kill them, his son and the bank’s employees if she didn’t cooperate, Kennelly wrote.

Clements “also told Lopez that she should be the one to go to the bank to get the money, and that he would kill her if she didn’t cooperate,” Kennelly said.

The package he was carrying as a delivery person included a black trench coat, a black wig, a black laptop bag, zip ties, a black duffel bag and a second gun with a silencer, Kennelly said.

They drove to the bank in Lopez’s car with Clements behind the wheel, and when they got there, Lopez called a co-worker, Cindy Chin, to come outside, the judge wrote. Clements allowed Chin to stay with him and instructed Lopez to go into the bank vault and retrieve money, according to the opinion.

Lopez put money in the duffel bag, returned to the car and Clements drove to a bowling alley, where he said he would make the trade for his son, but he stopped on a side street and told the two bank tellers to go back to the bank. and waited 10 minutes before calling police as he fled with the money, Kennelly said.

After Clements was accused of the bank robbery, he was later also accused of wanting to kill the victims based on the accusations of traitor Donald Boeker.

The informant “testified that Clements became obsessed with killing Lopez and that he wanted her dead so she could not testify against him and no kidnapping charges would follow,” the ruling said.

“Boeker told Clements this would cost him, and Clements claimed he had money left over from the robbery and offered Boeker $10,000,” Kennelly wrote. “He testified that Clements wanted him to kill the woman’s husband and baby as well.”

Jurors deadlocked on the request for a murder charge, but it was later rejected.

Clements’ appeals failed in state and federal courts until the Orange County informant scandal broke when he filed a legal claim based on Boeker’s use in the trial, Kennelly wrote.

Records showed that sheriff’s deputies had used Boeker as a snitch since the mid-1990s, Kennelly wrote.

“The records also reflect coordination between the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and Anaheim police to put Boeker and Clements on a recorded bus ride, and that Boeker was handled at various times by officers involved in the informant scandal,” Kennelly wrote.

There was also evidence that Boeker had a “history of mental health issues beginning in 2008-2010,” Kennelly wrote.

Officers wrote that Boeker “requires mental medication, hears voices,” Kennelly wrote.

In 2012, there was a “notation that Boeker is ‘essentially mental’ and ‘a little crazy,’” Kennelly wrote.

Boeker was given a break with a lesser sentence and that investigators in the case were working to help him get the lighter sentence, Kennelly wrote.

“This included the lead detective, who had contacted Boeker’s parole agent at least twice and subsequently written to the parole board, imploring them to ‘consider a new parole hearing or a review of (Boekers ) current penalty for a possible reduction in time. ,” Kennelly wrote.

The public prosecutor was informed of the efforts in a memo, the judge wrote.

“Under these circumstances, the prosecutor knew or should have known that Boeker’s testimony was untrue and failed to fulfill its duty to correct it,” Kennelly wrote.

Kennelly noted that the victims were unable to pick out Clements in a lineup or identify him at trial, making Boeker’s testimony key to the convictions. Kennelly further notes in the judgment that a juror asked during the trial about previous statements Boeker made to a detective and that the jury twice asked to read his testimony.

“This strongly suggests that his testimony played a role in the jurors’ assessment of the more serious kidnapping charges,” Kennelly wrote.

The judges ruled that Clements did not meet the standards to prove a Massiah violation because, after setting aside Boeker’s testimony, a “reasonable legal scholar could determine that the other evidence, including the testimony of Lopez and Chin, as well as weapons recovered from Clements’ home that appeared to have been used during the crime, $36,000 in hundred-dollar bills in his safe, and DNA evidence from Lopez’s home, were sufficient to establish his guilt on the basis of all charges for which he was convicted.