Key witness in $8M Innocence Project victory recants after prison love affair with lawyer
Convicted murderer Marritte Funches says he lied to get Maurice Caldwell exonerated of murder by the Northern California Innocence Project. In the process Caldwell’s attorney and Funches fell for each other.
In 1991, Maurice Caldwell, then 23, was convicted of murder for a San Francisco drug deal gone bad. Nearly two decades later, a young lawyer at the Northern California Innocence Project, Paige Kaneb, helped win his release from prison. The victory hinged largely on declarations from Marritte Funches, Caldwell’s friend, who took blame for the killing and identified someone else as his accomplice. After Caldwell won his freedom, he went on to win an $8 million settlement from the city for his two decades behind bars—the second largest payout the city has ever made in such a case.
Now, though, Funches says he lied about Caldwell’s innocence. What’s more, he says Kaneb has known about his lie but continues to represent the case publicly as an example of the truth triumphing in the end.
