The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s decision to vacate Frank Gable’s murder conviction.
Gable, who has been out of custody pending appeal, was charged with the 1989 killing of Michael Francke, the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections.
“The facts on appeal are extraordinary,” Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote in the opinion on Thursday. “Since trial, nearly all the witnesses who directly implicated Gable have recanted. Many explain they intended to frame Gable after hearing he was a police informant. They attribute their false testimony to significant investigative misconduct, which the State—remarkably—does not dispute.
“As Gable’s expert explained, the investigators used widely discredited polygraph and interrogation techniques as a ‘psychological club’ to elicit the statements against Gable. The prosecution then built their entire case on that tainted foundation.”
The appeals court panel noted that another man, John Crouse, had confessed multiple times to killing Franke, but the trial court excluded that evidence. The court determined, therefore, that Gable’s due process rights had been violated.
The appeals court’s ruling upholds a 2019 ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Acosta, which vacated Gable’s sentence.
A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice said the agency was reviewing the court decision. Attorneys for the state could opt to appeal the ruling to a review by a full panel of appeals court judges or the U.S. Supreme Court. The state could also opt to retry the case.
For three decades, Gable was been behind bars and always maintained his innocence, according to his attorneys.
“Although he will never get back the three decades of his life that he lost, this decision vindicates his steadfast claim of innocence and powerfully exposes the systemic flaws that led to his wrongful conviction,” assistant federal public defender Nell Brown, the lead attorney on the case, said in a statement Thursday.
“The Ninth Circuit decision makes clear that, with the full story told, no reasonable jury would convict him ... I hope my client will finally be able to enjoy the life he has created for himself in the community without this case hanging over him.”
Gable’s original conviction was highly controversial. Prosecutors never found DNA evidence tying him to the scene of the murder. More recently, the Oregon Innocence Project studied the case at the request of Gable’s lawyers and questioned how evidence and potential witnesses were handled.
Janis Puracal, executive director of the Forensic Justice Project, also worked on Gable’s case.
“Mr. Gable’s case is a prime example of how our criminal justice system can get it wrong and we end up convicting an innocent person,” Puracal wrote in an email. “We don’t always have DNA to prove it, especially in these older cases, but when we have such overwhelming evidence of innocence, we can’t just ignore it. The court’s ruling recognizes that.”
Related: Judge orders release of Frank Gable, convicted in notorious 1989 murder