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[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 14 April 2007 Ray Huard, the staff writer for the Union-Tribune wrote that in San Diego:
“The smell of coffee in the morning.
The song of a bird in his backyard.
Just being able to listen to music when no one else is around.

Timothy Atkins said those things remind him he's no longer in prison after spending 23 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit.”

Huard wrote “I told myself a long time ago I wasn't going to die in prison, so I was determined to get out,” Atkins had told students at California Western School of Law in San Diego. Atkins had been freed from a Los Angeles jail in February after the law school's Innocence Project went to court to have his 1987 murder conviction overturned. The report said that Innocence Project director Justin Brooks and others who had been involved in Atkins' case said that they will file a claim with the state Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board for $713,100 to compensate Atkins for the time he spent in prison.

It said that State law allows those wrongly convicted to recover up to $100 a day for every day they've spent in prison, according to the Innocence Project assistant director Jeff Chinn. Apparently, the board in March 2006 had approved a claim of $756,000 – the largest ever granted – for Kenneth Marsh, a Rancho Peñasquitos man wrongly imprisoned for 21 years for the 1983 death of his girlfriend's toddler. Marsh received the money in April 2006. Los Angeles prosecutors had announced that they will not retry Atkins for the 1985 death of florist Vincente Gonzalez during a carjacking in Venice, because they did not have enough evidence to proceed after a key witness recanted.

“These are the great moments,” Brooks told students who came to meet Atkins. “If you have a moment like this in your career, you will be incredibly lucky.” Atkins said that since his release from prison, he has been working for a social service agency founded by a childhood friend to help teenagers who get caught up in drugs and gangs. He said he has enrolled in California State University Los Angeles to take courses on gang intervention.

“I know for right now, I want to work with young people,” said Atkins, who was 17 when he was arrested in connection with the Venice carjacking and slaying. “I feel if somebody had stepped in and helped me, my life would have been different. I had dropped out of school. I was in a gang. And I was doing drugs.” The report said that Atkins was among 5 wrongfully convicted people who have been freed from prison through the Innocence Project since it began at California Western in 2000.

Each year, project lawyers and students review up to 1,000 cases from Southern California courts, including those in San Diego, Imperial, Riverside and Los Angeles counties, Chinn was reported to have said. Apparently, the project can take on about 60 to 70 cases for more detailed investigation. Atkins drew their attention because his conviction was based on the testimony of 3 people: a witness who barely caught a glimpse of the shooter, a Venice homeless woman who appeared for a preliminary hearing but disappeared for the trial, and a jailhouse informant.

The break in the case came in January 2005 when Wendy Koen, who was a California Western law student at the time, tracked down the homeless woman who in 1987 told police that she had heard Atkins bragging about the crime. The woman was staying in a drug rehabilitation center and was eager to take back the story she told police, and the preliminary hearing testimony she gave against Atkins, Koen said. “She was carrying this load of guilt for 20 years”.

Working with Koen and Innocence Project lawyers, law students Jacob Grillot and Alissa Bjerkoel helped prepare and present the case that led to Atkins' release. Bjerkoel said she will never forget the day Atkins walked free. “He just came out with the biggest grin,” she said.

Source: By Ray Huard: Union-Tribune Staff Writer

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