Lee v. City of Los Angeles
Opinion
Lead Opinion
Pregerson, J.
ORDER WITHDRAWING OPINION AND OPINION
ORDER
The mandate issued April 5, 2001, is hereby recalled. The Opinion filed February 14, 2001 is withdrawn.
OPINION
This case arises out of the wrongful arrest, extradition, and incarceration of Kerry Sanders, a mentally disabled Los Angeles resident. Employees of the City of Los Angeles (“City”) and New York State Department of Correctional Services (“NYSDCS”) incorrectly identified Kerry Sanders as the fugitive Robert Sanders, a convicted embezzler who absconded from a New York state-prison work-release program. As a result, Kerry Sanders was extradited from California to New York in October 1993 and incarcerated in a New York state prison until October 1995, when NYSDCS officials learned that the real Robert Sanders had been arrested by federal drug enforcement agents in another jurisdiction. Had defendants at any time *677 compared Kerry Sanders’s fingerprints or other identifying characteristics with those of Robert Sanders, or had defendants in any other way verified the identity of the man they had in custody, Kerry Sanders would not have been arrested, extradited, or incarcerated as Robert Sanders.