Loyola Marymount University graduate Franky Carrillo, who spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, emphasized the need for criminal justice reform at an Aug. 4 news conference on campus.
Carrillo’s remarks in LMU’s Life Sciences Building auditorium were his first public statements since settling a $10 million lawsuit last month with Los Angeles County.
His message was multi-faceted: “It’s about restorative justice, it’s about healing, it’s about these dialogs that we need in our lives,” Carrillo said, surrounded by his family, friends, attorneys and relatives of Donald Sarpy, the man Carrillo was wrongfully accused of murdering in 1991.
“For too long, I was marginalized as the murderer, the person without a voice, the person who deserves to be punished,” he said. “I’m grateful that … the truth has finally come out. We’ve always known that I was innocent, but for the Sheriff’s Department, for the courts, for the state of California to acknowledge that, it really means a lot to me.”
The Sheriff’s Department recently apologized to Carrillo in a statement, saying “every defendant deserves due process under the law,” and “with regard to Mr. Carrillo’s 1992 conviction, the court ruled that this burden was not met and ordered his release from custody.”
Carrillo enrolled at LMU after his release and graduated in May.
The event was covered by NBC4, ABC7, KCAL9 and La Opinion, among other news outlets.
