Daniel Larsen was released from prison in 2013. After a lengthy battle with the state and federal courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Attorney General’s appeal.
In March of 2013, in Los Angeles, Federal Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal ordered Danny’s immediate release. Fourteen years after his wrongful imprisonment for possession of a knife, he finally became a free man.
In 1999, Daniel Larsen was convicted of possession of a concealed weapon after two police officers testified they saw him toss a knife under a nearby car in the parking lot of a bar. Unfortunately, Danny’s now-disbarred trial attorney failed to discover as many as nine percipient witnesses, including a former Chief of Police from North Carolina, who saw another man, not Danny, toss the knife. Danny’s trial attorney did not call a single witness, and as a result, Danny was convicted and sentenced to 27 years-to-life in prison pursuant to California’s Three Strikes Law (Danny had prior convictions that occurred nearly a decade earlier).
During our post-conviction investigation, we gathered statements from many of these witnesses and presented the evidence to the California courts who summarily denied each petition. Then, we went to federal court, and eleven years after his conviction, a federal district court took the case seriously, held an extensive hearing, reversed the conviction, and ordered him released.
The court found that Danny was innocent, the police officers who testified at his trial were not credible, and his trial attorney was constitutionally ineffective for failing to call witnesses on Mr. his behalf.
Before Mr. Larsen was released, the Attorney General appealed the judge’s ruling. The Attorney General’s main argument was that even if Danny was innocent, his conviction should not be reversed because he waited too long to file his petition. In other words, an innocent man should spend his life in prison due to a legal technicality.