Framed by the DA
Jack Ryan, a twenty-five-year-old half Hupa Indian, half Irish ranch hand with no criminal record, was sentenced to life in prison in 1928 after confessing and pleading guilty to a murder and two unrelated statutory rapes.
In 1925, Ryan was arrested for the murders of Henry Sweet and his girlfriend, Carmen Wagner in Humboldt County, California. Later that year, Ryan was tried and acquitted of the Wagner murder. In 1928, an unscrupulous district attorney, Stephen Metzler, fabricated rape charges against Ryan. Metzler’s men then extracted confessions from Ryan to the rapes and both murders. On successive days, Ryan pleaded guilty to the rapes and the Sweet murder and was sentenced to life in prison. (The Fifth Amendment barred another prosecution for the Wagner murder.)
Ryan won parole in 1953 after Metzler admitted that he had set Ryan up, and that another suspect likely committed the murders. In 1996, based on a reinvestigation of the case by Richard H. Walton, a Humboldt County detective, Governor Pete Wilson granted Ryan an unprecedented posthumous pardon, stating that he had been framed by Metzler. — Steve Art
Copyright — 2007, Center on Wrongful Convictions
