Jofama Coleman and Abel Soto each spent two decades in jail before being exonerated earlier in 2024. “These people robbed me of years I should have had with my dad,” Coleman’s daughter, also a plaintiff, says.
LOS ANGELES – In May 2003, teenager Jose Robles was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting on the 1100 block of West 101st in Los Angeles. According to a new federal lawsuit filed today, that murder could have been solved decades ago, had Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputies not instead conspired to fabricate a case against two innocent men, one of them only 16 years old.
Today, attorneys for those two wrongfully convicted men— Jofama Coleman and Abel Soto—filed federal civil rights lawsuits against the County of Los Angeles, the L.A. Co. Sheriff’s Dept., and seven former or current law enforcement officers they say framed them for the murder.
Additionally, Mr. Coleman’s daughter Jocelyne Coleman—born the year Jofama was arrested—joins his suit as a plaintiff, seeking damages for the childhood she spent without a father at home.
“I was an adult before I ever got to spend time with my father outside a cage,” Ms. Coleman says. “These people robbed me of the years I should have had with my dad, and nothing can ever make up for that.”
There was not probable cause to implicate Coleman or Soto in Robles’s murder, the complaint contends. No physical or forensic evidence connected either man to the shooting, and in fact Coleman had a strong alibi supported by multiple witnesses and video evidence—which the complaint alleges the investigating officers suppressed or destroyed. The officers also deliberately chose to suppress evidence that pointed to alternate suspects, and instead fabricated a case against Coleman and Soto consisting of improper photo identification procedures, falsified reports, and allegedly coerced witnesses statements.
As the lawsuit contends, this behavior is part of a longstanding pattern of misconduct on behalf of the LASD.
“The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has repeatedly hidden evidence to secure unjust convictions,” says attorney Wally Hilke of the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy, which represents the plaintiffs. “Jofama and Abel are the innocent victims of the Department’s practices, and their lawsuit emphasizes the need for change.”
Following a jury trial—based on this fabricated case—Coleman was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life. Soto’s first trial ended in a mistrial, but at his second he was convicted and sentenced to more than 72 years in prison. He was only 16 at the time of his arrest.
The two men never gave up protesting their innocence and working towards their freedom. “I found myself incarcerated for a crime I did not commit,” Mr. Coleman said, upon his release earlier this year. “The weight of that injustice was a burden I carried every day, but I refused to let it define me.”
Coleman and Soto were exonerated based on an investigation led by accomplished postconviction attorney Ellen Eggers and investigator Jessica Jacobs. Eggers called the two men her “heroes” at a press conference earlier this year, and described how Coleman “transformed his cell into a classroom to master the law itself.” In January, Coleman and Soto were released and their convictions vacated by the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County. Both men were declared factually innocent of Robles’s murder, after they’d each spent 20 years wrongfully imprisoned.
Today, the plaintiffs are seeking some measure of justice for the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of these two men. The plaintiffs have filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, naming as defendants LASD officers Stephen Katz, Danny Smith, Michael Valento, Mark Lillienfeld, Cynthia Valencia, Norman Powell, and Daniel Rosenberg, as well as the LASD itself and the County of Los Angeles.
In their lawsuits, the plaintiffs document how the LASD “condoned and cultivated a culture of impunity” which contributed to Coleman and Soto’s wrongful convictions. For example, most of the case against the two men was fabricated out of LASD’s Lennox Station. This station, which was closed in 2010, was notorious for being the homebase of one of 10 “deputy gangs” mentioned in a scathing 2023 report from the LA County’s Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission. LA County deputy gangs have been tied to dozens of legal claims going back to the early 1990s, resulting in at least $59 million in settlement payouts to date.
Though such gangs were an open secret, tolerated within the department for decades, it was only in September of this year that the LASD announced new policy officially banning them, and requiring the LASD to investigate allegations of such groups and potentially refer them for prosecution.
“The corruption and abuses of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department are beyond troubling,” says attorney David B. Owens of Loevy + Loevy. “Jofama, Jocelyne, and Abel are proof of the human toll of a system that has tolerated and empowered police misconduct for far too long. Today, they are standing up together to hold everyone responsible accountable.”
In addition to Mr. Hilke and Mr. Owens, the plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Jon Loevy, Steve Art, and Megan Pierce of Loevy + Loevy.
Just last week, Mr. Owens and Ms. Pierce, along with other Loevy + Loevy attorneys, secured a $34 million verdict for Kirstin Blaise Lobato, which was the largest verdict ever awarded for a woman wrongfully convicted in U.S. History. That verdict followed a September verdict of $50 million which Loevy + Loevy helped secure for a man named Marcel Brown, which is the largest ever awarded to a single wrongfully convicted plaintiff in U.S. history.
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Click here for copies of the Coleman’s complaint and Mr. Soto’s complaint.
Contact:
David B. Owens, Partner, Loevy + Loevy, 312-590-5449, david@loevy.com
Jon Loevy, Partner, Loevy + Loevy, 773-354-2200, jon@loevy.com
Wally Hilke, Attorney, Loevy + Loevy, 872-772-1926, hilke@loevy.com
Michael McDunnah, Dir. of Communications, 312-371-5871, mcdunnah@alexzandra
