Five years for abolitionist’s fraud in California

As detailed in this post, last year it was discovered that a former criminal defense investigator, Kathleen Culhane, forged statements from jurors and others involved in death penalty cases.  Culhane was prosecuted for fraud and, as noted in this Los Angeles Times article, received a five year sentence earlier this week.  The Times piece reviews her crime and sentencing, and here are some interesting snippets:

As she was led off to prison in handcuffs Thursday, former inmate advocate Kathleen Culhane had few regrets about falsifying documents in an attempt to spare the lives of four convicted murderers.  Earlier during a brief hearing — shortly before she was sentenced to five years in prison — Culhane had called capital punishment “a brutal legacy of lynching,” adding that “I cannot have remorse for a government that kills at midnight and invests millions of dollars in the process.”…

[In an earlier interview], Culhane said she felt “betrayed by former colleagues” who “rolled over for the prosecution” and actively assisted in the case against her.  “I didn’t expect that,” she said.

Culhane says she is prepared for prison.  “After I turned myself in [in February, 2006], the guards referred to me as a celebrity case, which was a drag because the other prisoners didn’t like that,” she recalled. “But when I told one prisoner what I’d done, she said, ‘Right on.’ “

Crime and Consequences has more on this case here.