Simi Valley, Ca., reached a $21-million settlement with Craig Coley, who spent more than 38 years wrongfully incarcerated in the brutal 1978 murders of a woman and her 4-year-old son, reports the Los Angeles Times. Coley, 71, was released from prison in 2017 after he was pardoned by Gov. Jerry Brown, who said DNA evidence and a painstaking re-investigation of the murders proved his innocence. The city will pay about $4.9 million of the settlement, with the rest paid by insurance and other sources said. Last year, Brown approved a $1.95-million payment for Coley — $140 for each day he was wrongfully behind bars. It was the largest payout by the state’s Victim Compensation Board for an erroneous conviction.
The victims were discovered by a relative who grew concerned when Rhonda Wicht, 24, didn’t show up for a family get-together. She had been strangled with an 11-foot macrame rope, her son, Donald, smothered in his bed. Coley, a Vietnam War veteran who was going through a breakup with Wicht, was charged with the two murders. He did not have a prior criminal record. Wicht’s next-door neighbor said she heard banging noises and saw Coley’s truck parked outside the morning of the murders. At Coley’s first trial, jurors spent deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of guilt. A second jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder in 1980, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. he always maintained his innocence. A retired detective named Mike Bender was instrumental in pushing law enforcement agencies to reexamine the case. A piece of Wicht’s bedsheet the night she was found dead contained another man’s sperm. Coley’s DNA was not found on the sheet.