AP Wire | 02/21/2007 | State charges investigator who helped condemned inmates: "The California attorney general on Wednesday charged a private investigator with filing bogus documents to aid four death row inmates, calling the case one of the largest frauds ever perpetrated on the state's criminal justice system.
Kathleen Culhane was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento on 45 felony counts of forgery, filing false documents and perjury.
'This is fraud at the highest level,' Michael Farrell, a senior assistant attorney general, said after the arraignment. 'This is someone who is trying to undermine the system.'
Among the inmates for whom Culhane allegedly lied while working as a staff investigator for the Habeas Corpus Resource Center was Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder of a Central Valley teenager.
Questions about the San Francisco private investigator arose a year ago when Morales petitioned the governor for clemency and prosecutors challenged the authenticity of several documents Culhane submitted on his behalf. His execution eventually was stayed over the state's lethal injection method, a matter unrelated to Culhane.
The attorney general's criminal complaint alleges that between November 2002 and February 2006 Culhane filed at least 23 fraudulent documents designed to aid Morales and three ot"
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