Damage Suit Filed in Repressed-Memory Case

SAN FRANCISCO —  George Franklin, whose murder conviction based on his daughter’s repressed-memory testimony was overturned, filed a damage suit Monday accusing his daughter and prosecutors of conspiring to violate his rights.

In Franklin’s first public appearance since his release from prison a year ago, his lawyers reported that he had passed a lie detector test in which he denied murdering his daughter’s 8-year-old playmate.

“Because I was prosecuted for a crime that I did not commit, I lost all of my life savings and spent more than 6 1/2 years in prison,” the former San Mateo firefighter told reporters.

He said San Mateo County prosecutors, in conjunction with his daughter and psychiatric witnesses, “trampled on my rights and the truth.”

A call to the district attorney’s office was referred to Assistant Dist. Atty. Martin Murray, a defendant in the suit. Asked whether prosecutors had knowingly used perjured testimony, as alleged in the suit, he said: “That’s ridiculous.”

Franklin’s daughter, Eileen, had no comment when reached at her home in Washington state, said a friend, Lynne Crook. “She said she hasn’t been served [with notice] and she basically knows nothing about the case,” Crook said.

Franklin, 58, was convicted in 1990 of the 1969 murder of Susan Nason, who was beaten to death with a rock. The chief testimony against him came from his daughter, who said she suddenly remembered the killing in 1989 while looking at her own daughter.

U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen overturned the conviction in 1995, ruling that jurors were improperly told that Franklin had admitted the crime by remaining silent in the face of his daughter’s jailhouse accusation.