Stanislaus County Agrees to Pay $22.5 Million to Settle a High-Profile Malicious Prosecution Case

Attorneys in Oakland representing a now-deceased high-profile criminal defense attorney announced a $22.5 million settlement on Thursday, ending a decades-long attempt to clear his and seven others’ names in what they allege was a malicious prosecution.

The settlement — which may be the largest civil rights settlement in state history, according to the attorneys — stems from the 2012 death of 26-year-old Korey Kauffman, a Turlock resident whose body hunters found the following year in Stanislaus National Forest. He was last seen alive at a property next to the home of prominent criminal defense attorney Frank Carson, who authorities arrested in 2015 and charged with Kauffman’s death, along with Carson’s wife, stepdaughter and three former California Highway Patrol officers.

All told, the Stanislaus District Attorney’s Office charged eight people in connection with Kauffman’s death. The preliminary hearing — an early finding of fact that usually only takes hours or a few days to complete — stretched out over 18 months, with the defendants held on millions of dollars of bond as prosecutors alleged they were all part of a murder-for-hire plot against Kauffman over some petty thefts from Carson’s property.

At the end of the preliminary hearing, Judge Barbara Zuniga said it was “not difficult” to dismiss murder charges against Georgia DeFilippo, Carson’s wife, and accessory to murder charges against Christina DeFilippo, Carson’s stepdaughter.

At a press conference on Thursday in Oakland, Georgia DeFilippo said the whole ordeal devastated her family, causing them to lose their business and home.

“We lost our faith in the system and our faith in the people of the county,” she said. “It just broke our hearts, broke our spirit, and it’s just something I don’t think I’m ever going to get over.”

Carson and brothers Daljit Atwal and Baljit Athwa were tried beginning in April 2018. Fourteen months later, all three were acquitted of all charges.

But DeFilippo said being in custody created irreparable damage to Carson’s body. He was diabetic, but she said he didn’t test his blood sugar because he didn’t want authorities to have a sample of his blood, fearing it could be planted as evidence against him.

As a result, “his blood pressure went sky high. His kidneys burned out,” DeFilippo said.

“He was just miserable,” she said. “We were both pretty disheartened by the whole thing. He lost his sense of humor. He lost so much weight, and he was so fragile.”

Carson died in August 2020, not long after the civil suits were filed. He was 66.

In lawsuits against the county, Carson and his co-defendants alleged that the charges brought against them were retaliation for Carson’s wins in court opposite the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.

Jayme Walker, one of the lawyers representing Carson’s estate, said depositions for the civil case exposed “all the lies that were told again and again.”

“What was most shocking throughout this civil case is that the defendants maintained that they were right … and the jury got it wrong,” she said. “Now with this enormous settlement on behalf of all eight people who were wrongfully arrested, finally Stanislaus County has taken some accountability for the lives that were destroyed in their political vendetta.”

The county employees behind the criminal charges are no longer with their respective offices, attorneys said.

J. Gary Gwilliam, another attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the case was about the government — specifically employees of the Stanislaus County sheriff and district attorneys offices and the Modesto Police Department — going after someone for political reasons, something that is “very topical of what’s going on in our country.”

“Why did they go after Frank Carson? Because he was a very good defense attorney. He’d taken them on, he’d beaten them, and they decided to frame him, quite frankly, and go after him in years and years of litigation,” Gwillliam said. “And I guess, in one way, they may have won their battle, because ultimately it cost him his life and it ruined his family.”

In a statement to KQED, Stanislaus County Counsel Thomas Boze said the county agreed to settle the cases “to avoid further protracted litigation and to eliminate the risk associated with a trial.”

County supervisors approved the settlement during a closed session of their April 15 meeting. The trial was scheduled to begin on Monday.