Los Angeles to pay $24 million to 2 men wrongly convicted of murder

A locked cell block in a Los Angeles jail.

(Image credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 20 January 2016

Two men who say they were wrongfully convicted of murder after detectives ignored evidence pointing to their innocence and falsified evidence of their guilt will receive more than $24 million from the city of Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay the money in order to settle lawsuits from Kash Delano Register and Bruce Lisker, who both spent decades in prison. Register was freed in 2013, and his lawyers said the $16.7 million he will receive is the largest settlement in an individual civil rights case in the city's history, the Los Angeles Times reports. In his case, lawyers and students from Loyola Law School challenged the testimony of a prosecution witness. Lisker, who spent 26 years in custody after being convicted of killing his 66-year-old mother in 1985, was released from prison in 2009 after the Times investigated his case. He will receive $7.6 million.

Based on eyewitness testimony, Register was convicted in 1979 of the armed robbery and murder of a 78-year-old man. The Times reports none of the fingerprints found at the crime scene matched Register's, no murder weapon was ever found, and his girlfriend testified that she was with him at the time of the shooting. A witness picked Register out of a lineup and said she saw him running from the scene, but two of her sisters said they told police she wasn't telling the truth. "I can't get these 34 years back, but I hope my case can help make things better for others, through improving the way the police get identifications," Register said in a statement.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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