George Thomas Franklin v. Jim Fox Martin Murray Robert Morse Bryan Cassandro John Cuneo, Sergeant Eileen Franklin-Lipsker

In 1989, Defendant Eileen Franklin-Lipsker (“Franklin-Lipsker”) informed the police that she had been an eyewitness to the 1969 sexual molestation and murder of her eight-year-old best friend, Susan Na-son. She implicated her father, Plaintiff George Franklin (“Franklin”), in the twenty-year-old unsolved case; a San Mateo County, California jury convicted him of first degree murder. Franklin served five years of a life sentence before a federal district court granted him a writ of habeas corpus due to unconstitutional errors in his state court trial. Franklin v. Duncan, 884 F.Supp. 1435 (N.D.Cal.1995). We affirmed. Franklin v. Duncan, 70 F.3d 75 (9th Cir.1995) (per curiam) (adopting the district court opinion and supplementing the factual record).

On the heels of his release, Franklin sued in federal district court, alleging claims arising under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law. See Franklin v. Fox, 107 F.Supp.2d 1154 (N.D.Cal.2000). He appeals the district court’s final order of summary judgment in favor of defendants with respect to two claims: (1) Franklin alleges that Franklin-Lipsker conspired with detectives Robert Morse (“Morse”) and Bryan Cassandro (“Cassandro”) to arrest…