Gable’s attorneys, ODOJ in settlement talks for wrongful conviction

Published 10:00 am Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Attorneys for falsely convicted murderer Frank Gable and the Oregon Department of Justice are discussing settling a $2 million claim for being wrongly convicted and imprisoned.

Gable was convicted of killing Oregon Corrections Director Michael Francke in 1991 and served nearly 30 years in prison before his conviction was overturned by four federal judges. His attorneys filed a Petition for Compensation for Wrongful Conviction in Marion County Circuit Court on Nov. 15, 2023.

News of the discussions came up during a status conference on the case proceeding before Marion County Circuit Court Judge Lindsay Partridge on Tuesday, Feb. 27. Partrige gave ODOJ a 30-day extension to either file its formal response or present a settlement agreement. ODOJ had previously been granted a 60-day extension to respond, but missed that Feb. 19 deadline.

Attorneys representing ODOJ said the delay was caused by the complexity of the case and the fact that it had previously been handled by different lawyers in different department.

“We intend to file a response, but the record is voluminous,” said attorney Michele Enfield on behalf pf ODOJ.

Gable’s attorney disputed that claim, saying the case was straightforward.

“The case is not complex. The complaint is detailed and the allegations are easy to identify,” said Megan Pierce, representing Gable. She noted they include allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that ODOJ has never disputed.

The new filing deadline is March 27. Partridge set the next status conference for April 22, which would give Gable’s attorneys time to respond to ODOJ’s response if there is no settlement agreement.

Under Oregon law, falsely imprisoned individuals are entitled to compensation if they can meet several conditions by a preponderance of evidence, including that they did not commit the crime and their conviction was later reversed.

Gable can also file a civil rights case for false conviction and imprisonment in federal court.

Francke’s brothers Kevin and Patrick have long believed Gable was innocent, They believe Michael was killed by corrupt corrections officials who feared he was investigating them. They have repeatedly called on ODOJ and the Marion County District Attorney’s Office to reopen the investigation, saying the case is now officially an unsolved murder. Instead, ODOJ may be preparing to fight Gable’s claim of being wrongly convicted if no settlement agreement is reached.

Gable’s long road to justice

Francke was stabbed to death the outside the corrections department headquarters in Salem on Jan. 17, 1989. No one was charged with the crime until Gable, a low-level Salem criminal, was indicted fior murder on April 6, 1990. He was convicted by a Marion County jury on June 27, 1991, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Gable has always maintained his innocence and no physical evidence connected him to the crime scene. He exhausted all of his appeal rights in Oregon courts before filing in federal court, where he was represented by federal public defenders who reinvestigated his case, and documented his alibi and the fact that virtually all witnesses against him were coerced to commit perjury and have since recanted.

Oregon U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge John Acosta first ruled that Gable was wrongly convicted in 2019. His ruling was upheld by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which wrote, “The facts on appeal are extraordinary. Since trial, nearly all the witnesses who directly implicated Gable have recanted. Many explain they intended to frame Gable after hearing he was a police informant. They attribute their false testimony to significant investigative misconduct, which the State — remarkably — does not dispute.”

Despite that, the ODOJ appealed Acosta’s ruling all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. That sent the case back to Acosta, who dismissed the 1990 Marion County grand jury indictment against Gable “with prejudice” on May 8, 2023. Acosta also ordered that the State of Oregon and all of its political subdivisions are barred from rearresting, reindicting, or retrying Gable for Francke’s murder.

The Nov. 15 filing by the Chicago-based law firm of Loevy and Loevy includes many of the facts documented by Gable’s federal public defenders and cited by the two federal courts that ruled in his favor. They include that Gable was home the night of the murder, investigators coerced false testimony from witnesses with threats and abusive lie detector tests, and the confessions of another suspect named Johnny Crouse were prevented from being introduced at his trial. Crouse repeatedly told investigators he accidentally stabbed Francke to death during a botched car robbery with information that had not been publicly released.

In his first interview since being released from prison during the state’s appeals of the federal rulings, Gable told the Portland Tribune that nothing can replace the 30 years that he served in prison.

“I went into prison a young, cocky man and came out an old man with health problems. Nothing can give me those years back,” Gable said.

Since he was released, Gable has been living with his wife Rain in Kansas, where he has worked off and on. Despite the stability, Gable told the Portland Tribune he struggles with his feelings over what happened to him almost every day.

“People might think he’s out, he’s free, he must be happy. But I saw so many bad things in prison. I saw people shot, stabbed, murdered right in front of me. I have dreams about being back in prison or being killed in prison every week. Sometimes I’m angry about the people who testified against me, but other times I can’t blame them because I know the pressure they were under,” Gable said.

Gable, who is Indigenous, has legally changed his name to Franke J. Different Cloud but is using Gable in court filings.