Factual Innocence Found Under Penal Code 1473.7(a)(2)
In 2021, the California legislature amended Penal Code § 1473.7, known as allowing for a motion to vacate a conviction due to a prejudicial error damaging a non-citizen’s ability to meaningfully understand the adverse immigration consequences of the conviction, to add a provision at 1473.7(a)(2) to allow someone to seek a judicial order of factual innocence based on “[n]ewly discovered evidence of actual innocence exists that requires vacation of the conviction or sentence as a matter of law or in the interests of justice.”
Previously, a petition for factual innocence under Penal Code § 851.8 was barred after two years from the date of the arrest. The new law at 1473.7(a)(2) had no such time limit, although the statute does state at § 1473.7(c) that the motion “shall be filed without undue delay from the date the moving party discovered, or could have discovered with the exercise of due diligence, the evidence that provides a basis for relief under this section . . .”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke II recently granted such a motion for factual innocence in his new post at the Clara Shortridge Foltz criminal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Judge Jacke had been in the Compton Superior Court for decades earlier.
The case involved two men, Dupree Class and Juan Rayford, Jr., who were each sentenced to eleven consecutive life terms under a “Kill Zone” theory of attempted murder plus 220 years on the firearm enhancements (20 years on each count under 12022.53(c) and (e)). The judge, Robert Perry, stayed the sentence on the gang enhancements and on count 12, shooting at an inhabited dwelling.
Mr. Glass was seventeen years old at the time of the shooting; Rayford was 18. The two young men had been involved in a fight prior to the shooting. During the fight, someone pulled out a gun and shot into an inhabited house. There were eleven people in the house.
Mr. Class and Mr. Rayford were arrested and in 2004, tried in Lancaster Superior Court.
The two men were convicted of eleven counts of attempted murder involving the discharge of a firearm into an inhabited building (Penal Code § 246). The jury further found that both men committed the offenses for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a criminal street gang (Penal Code § 186.22(b)) and that each personally discharged a firearm (Penal Code § 12022.53(c) and (e)(1)).
The convictions relied upon the testimony of two witnesses who later recanted their stories.
On June 16, 2020, after 16 years of being in prison, their convictions were overturned by the Second District Court of Appeal. When this ruling was reached, it was big news and our office wrote an article, Article 1284, linked below, which summarized the decision.
In brief, the Second Appellate District Court found that the jury instructions misstated the law on a “Kill Zone” theory of murder or attempted murder. See People v. Canizales (2019) 7 Cal.5th 591.
Since their release, Glass, now age 36, and Rayford, now age 37, found work as drivers for Walmart. They both also became fathers to baby girls.
A new trial then took place. During the new trial, which began in October, 2022, Chad McZeal, who is serving a life sentence for an unrelated homicide, testified that he was the actual shooter, not Mr. Class or Mr. Rayford.
The two men then brought their motion for factual innocence and it was assigned to Judge Jacke, who granted the motion. Attorneys for both men believe this ruling is the first one in the State of California under § 1473.7(a)(2).
Under a separate new law, the State of California is required to pay the two men compensation for the time they spent in prison. They will each receive $140 for every day they were behind bars, which adds up to about $900,000 for each man.
We present this article because this case has historical value for California criminal law and, more importantly, may restore the reader’s faith in our legal system. Our laws, after all, are made by people, people who generally do their best. Such laws are then applied by judges and juries who do their best, generally, but who are influenced by witnesses who may lie in court. It is nice to see that, in this case at least, justice prevailed, although it took almost twenty years to fix the wrong.
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