On January 15, 2021, Simpson Thacher and the North California Innocence Project (NCIP) secured an order from the Sacramento County Superior Court of California declaring Jeremy Puckett factually innocent of the murder for which he had been wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for eighteen years. In finding Mr. Puckett factually innocent, the Court ruled in favor of Simpson Thacher’s and NCIP’s arguments that the murder could not have happened on the date prosecutors contended at Mr. Puckett’s trial, that Mr. Puckett had an alibi for the actual date of the murder, and that the prosecution’s key witness lacked credibility—primarily due to multiple recantations of his accusations against Mr. Puckett that Simpson Thacher and NCIP uncovered.
In 2002, Mr. Puckett was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The Simpson Thacher team, working alongside NCIP co-founder Linda Starr and NCIP lawyer and former 30-year career county prosecutor Karyn Sinunu-Towery, filed several habeas petitions on Mr. Puckett’s behalf, the third of which prompted the California Supreme Court to order the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing on Mr. Puckett’s claims. After multiple hearings during fall of 2019, Simpson Thacher and NCIP secured Mr. Puckett’s release from prison on March 13, 2020 following the Superior Court’s grant of his habeas petition. In granting the habeas petition and vacating Mr. Puckett’s conviction, the Court accepted Simpson Thacher and NCIP’s arguments that prosecutors suppressed exculpatory evidence and that Mr. Puckett’s trial counsel rendered constitutionally deficient representation, but the Court did not decide the issue of whether Mr. Puckett had proven his innocence.
Simpson Thacher and NCIP subsequently moved the Court for a ruling on Mr. Puckett’s innocence claim under a statute that required Mr. Puckett to proactively prove his innocence. Although the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office chose not to retry Mr. Puckett after his release, it opposed his request for an innocence finding. Through additional briefing and another hearing, Simpson Thacher and NCIP successfully argued to the Court that the evidence of Mr. Puckett’s innocence outweighed the fatally flawed and unreliable testimony presented by prosecutors at his trial. The Court agreed with Simpson Thacher, declaring the District Attorney’s arguments “absurd.”
Alongside recognition from California’s legal system that Mr. Puckett never committed the crimes for which he was convicted, the Court’s finding of factual innocence enables Mr. Puckett to claim over $900,000 in compensation under California’s wrongful conviction laws.
The Simpson Thacher team includes Partner Buzz Frahn and Associate Jordan Lamothe, as well as former colleagues Jason Bussey, Elizabeth White, Jenny Palmer, Adam Crider and Casey Mathews.
The team was recognized as a “Litigator of the Week” finalist by the American Lawyer Litigation Daily. The case received media coverage by publications including Daily Journal, Law360, Bloomberg Big Law Business and San Francisco Chronicle.