The Man Who Unsolved a Murder

For CalMatters, Anat Rubin reports that poor people accused of crimes—who make up at least 80 percent of criminal defendants—are routinely convicted in California without anyone investigating the charges against them. This statewide failure stems largely from the lack of dedicated public defense investigators. In this piece, Rubin recounts the 1976 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Willie Cook, a Siskiyou County case that went unsolved for 32 years until a man came forward to say he had witnessed the child’s kidnapping when he was 10 years old. In this gripping narrative, Rubin exposes deep flaws in the state’s criminal justice system.

The lack of investigators affects counties throughout the state, from poor, rural areas like Siskiyou to the state’s largest and most well-funded public defense offices. Los Angeles employed just 1 investigator for every 10 public defenders — one of the state’s worst ratios, according to the most recent data from the California Department of Justice. Only seven California counties met the widely accepted minimum standard of 1 investigator for every 3 attorneys.

Maurice Possley, the exoneration registry’s senior researcher, said that a failure to investigate is at the heart of most of the registry’s 3,600 cases.

When he looks at the evidence that overturned these convictions, he’s astounded the defense didn’t find it when the case was being prosecuted.

“If someone had just made the effort,” he said. “This was all sitting there.”