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Man Suing Over His Wrongful 20-Year Imprisonment Says County Withholding Documents

A man who wrongly spent almost two decades in prison urged U.S. District Chief Judge Kimberly Mueller on Friday to hold three California government agencies in contempt for failing to produce documents in a civil case against them, Courthouse News reports. Two years ago, Jeremy Phillip Puckett sued three entities, Sacramento County and its sheriff’s department and district attorney’s office. He argues Sacramento County's “reckless and intentional misconduct” led to his wrongful 2002 convictions for murder and robbery, which were overturned in 2020 by the Superior Court of California of Sacramento County. His lawyers at the Northern California Innocence Project uncovered 700 pages of evidence that the government had withheld from Puckett. 


Since 2022, Puckett has struggled to get personnel and disciplinary documents from the agencies, his attorney Anna Veross told the court Friday. Deadlines to hand over documents have been pushed back twice. Calling the agencies' response "vague" and "devoid of sufficient information," a judge has issued seven orders compelling the agencies to provide the documents. Yet, based on the records received, Sacramento County has not turned over all relevant documents, including multiple yearly performance evaluations. County attorney John Whitefleet told Mueller that there's no evidence of missing documents.


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