George Franklin
San Mateo
County, California
Date of Crime: September 22, 1969
“In January 1989, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker was playing with
her young daughter, Jessica, and as the child turned toward her, a memory of
another girl in just such a pose sprang into Franklin-Lipsker's mind. The
memory was of her childhood best friend, eight-year-old Susan Nason, being
raped and killed by Franklin-Lipsker's father nearly 20 years earlier.”
“Until that moment in 1989, Franklin-Lipsker had had no recollection of
being a witness to this horrible scene. Now, suddenly, it came flooding back
in graphic and gruesome detail. ‘Her hands flew up to her head,’ she later
said. ‘The next thing I heard was two blows. It sounded terrible.’”
“This, at least, was the story that Franklin-Lipsker began to tell her
friends and family, and eventually the police. After taking a statement from
her, the police arrested her father, George Franklin, on November 29, 1989,
for the murder. At his home they found a number of pornographic magazines
and pictures, including those of young children.”
“Twenty years earlier, in September 1969, young Susan Nason disappeared from
her town of Foster City, California. Her body was discovered outdoors a few
months later, showing signs of a violent death, including a crushed skull
and a smashed ring that seemed to indicate she was warding off a blow. A
bloodstained rock was found nearby. The press reported these and other
facts, but police never made an arrest for her murder. Franklin and others
were questioned at the time, and Franklin went to visit Susan's graveside on
the first anniversary of her death.”
“Ten years later, Franklin's wife asked him if he had murdered Susan. During
their divorce proceedings Franklin-Lipsker's mother said that Franklin had
abused his own children, including Eileen, both verbally and physically.”
“Now, 20 years after Susan's death, Franklin-Lipsker claimed that she
remembered being with her father and Susan on the day of the murder. She
said that she had watched her father rape and kill Susan, and that he had
threatened her, too.”
“‘He said that if I told anyone,’ she testified, ‘he would have to kill me.
I believed him.’ Because of the shock of what she had witnessed and her
total belief in her father, according to several psychiatrists who were
questioned, she had repressed her memories of that day for years. Not until
she saw her own daughter in a pose similar to Susan's two decades later, she
said, did they resurface.”
“The trial opened in late October 1990, and Franklin-Lipsker became the star
witness. The prosecution's case revolved almost totally on her account based
on the resurfacing of her repressed memories. Leading psychiatrists and
psychologists testified on behalf of both the prosecution and defense. The
prosecution witnesses explained the theory of the repression of traumatic
memories; the defense witnesses argued that Franklin-Lipsker did not fit the
profile of those who had such memories, and, indeed, called into question
the accuracy of such memories in any event. The defense also argued that all
of the facts to which Franklin-Lipsker testified had been reported in the
papers; she therefore could have known what had happened without being an
eye-witness to the murder.”
“Trial judge Thomas McGinn Smith prevented the defense from introducing
newspaper accounts that mentioned the facts that Franklin-Lipsker revealed.
However, he did allow the admission of what some would call circumstantial
evidence. When Franklin-Lipsker went to visit her father in prison before
the trial and asked him to tell the truth, Franklin had said nothing,
instead pointing to a prison sign that warned inmates that officials might
monitor their conversations. Franklin's silence, said prosecutor Elaine
Tipton, in the face of this accusation, was ‘worth its weight in gold’ as an
implied admission of guilt.”
“On November 30, 1990, the jury found Franklin guilty of Susan's murder,
although the prosecution had not produced any physical evidence to connect
him with her death. The conviction rested almost totally on
Franklin-Lipsker's testimony, despite her estrangement from him and the
psychologists who challenged the veracity of her claims. On January 29,
1991, Judge Smith sentenced Franklin to life imprisonment, the maximum
sentence possible under the law at the time of the 1969 murder. However, in
1995, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction, finding that Judge
Smith should have allowed Franklin to challenge his daughter's testimony by
being able to introduce the newspaper articles as evidence. The court also
found that using Franklin's silence as evidence of an admission of guilt
violated his constitutional right to remain silent. Finally, the court noted
that the entire subject of repressed memory was a highly controversial one
whose accuracy was still subject to debate. Franklin later sued his daughter
and the psychologists who had testified against him for conspiracy to
present false testimony, but the courts ultimately rejected this suit.”
“While memories of past events are often used as evidence in civil and
criminal trials, the heavy reliance on repressed memory in the Franklin case
was unique in American criminal law. Trial courts had long recognized that
memories could be faulty, especially when they were of events from far in
the past. The federal appeals court here found that the repressed memories
of Franklin-Lipsker were no different from other types of memories, and it
criticized the trial court for refusing to let the defense test these
memories, as it would have been able to test any others.”
“After being imprisoned for six years, George Franklin was released from
jail when his conviction was overturned.” –
Buckner F. Melton, Jr.
________________________________
Reference:
Franklin v. Duncan
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
San Francisco Bay Area Cases
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