Day of Reckoning

There are more than 7,500 inmates at Men’s Central Jail. Plenty of them are older than Harold Hall. Many have spent more time behind bars. But none has been locked up at County Jail longer than he has.

For nearly 12 years, Hall has been held at the jail, first as an 18-year-old robbery suspect, then after confessing to seven murders in two separate and savage incidents in South Los Angeles.

But not long after his confessions, Hall recanted, insisting that his statements were coerced during a grueling interrogation by four LAPD detectives. And over the years, all but one of the murder charges against Hall have either been dismissed or overturned on appeal.

Today, Hall, now 30, faces sentencing for the remaining charge, the 1985 stabbing death of Nola K. Duncan, 35. And if he receives the maximum sentence possible, he will finally leave County Jail to spend the rest of his life in state prison.

Hall’s long odyssey is remarkable in an overcrowded jail system in which the average inmate is held only 36 days. And it has drawn impassioned arguments from those who believe Hall is either a ruthless killer or a victim of injustice.

Prosecutors and police contend that there has always been sufficient evidence linking Hall to Duncan’s sexual assault and murder. They say it includes not only his confession to police but statements made to a jailhouse informant who provided notes showing that Hall admitted to the crime.

“The jails are full of people who claim they are innocent,” Deputy Dist. Atty. David Demerjian says of Hall’s case.

Hall and his supporters point out that he retracted his confession and that the informant eventually acknowledged in court that he had altered his notes.

In the nearly 12 years Hall has been in County Jail, his case has drawn the attention of various attorneys, church leaders and community activists who contend that Hall would have been freed long ago were it not for his confession.

“There is absolutely nothing in life to tie him to that case. . . . He did not know the people. He had no motive. And there was no physical evidence,” said Geri Silva of Mothers Reclaiming Our Children, a support group for people with loved ones in the criminal justice system. “What they had was his confession. And . . . you [must] understand that some people are put in the position where they are forced to confess because of the threat they will be charged with a crime anyway.”

Hall, reached by phone this week at jail, said: “I know I have to obtain my freedom and prove I did not commit this crime. I know that one day I am going to be free.”

The last time Hall was a free man was the summer of 1985.

Arrested on suspicion of robbery, he was sent to County Jail, where he was ready to enter a plea of no contest to that charge. Los Angeles police, acting on a jailhouse tip, came to question him about the brutal murders of Duncan and her brother, David Rainey, 26. The two were found dead--at separate locations--within hours of each other on the morning of June 27, weeks before Hall was first taken into custody. Both had been stabbed to death; Rainey slumped in the driver’s seat of his MG convertible, his sister dumped partially nude in an alley, her body contorted in a way that suggested a sexual encounter.

During an interrogation that would span hours, Hall not only confessed to those murders but to complicity in a notorious October 1984 gang shooting that took five lives and came to be known as the 54th Street Massacre. (Hall was one of those slightly injured in the panic that followed the 54th Street shooting, in which two carloads of gang members opened fire on a group of party-goers outside a house.)

Authorities have long contended that Hall spoke knowledgeably about the killings of Duncan and Rainey because he was clearly involved in them. And, they noted, a jury not only heard evidence that Hall confessed to police but that he also exchanged notes about the Duncan and Rainey murders with a police informant at County Jail.

“There was his confession . . . and his handwritten notes [to the informant] which also corroborated his confession,” Demerjian said. “So there was plenty of evidence to convict him at trial.”

But Hall and his attorneys have argued that he only “confessed” to detectives as a statement of convenience--cooperating because he was exhausted by the questioning and because he was hoping to build a relationship that would protect him and his family after he testified for the prosecution in the 54th Street shooting. (Hall contends that he was a guest at the 54th Street party, but in his now-repudiated confession he said he was among the attackers.)

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In 1992, seven years after Nola Duncan and her brother died, Hall was convicted of killing them.

While that case was on appeal, the district attorney’s office dismissed charges against Hall in connection with the 54th Street slayings. And three years ago, an appeals court reversed Hall’s conviction in the slaying of Rainey, ruling there was insufficient evidence to tie him to that killing.

Those developments freed Hall’s attorneys to focus on trying to win a new trial for him in the slaying of Duncan. After the jailhouse informant recanted his testimony against Hall, Superior Court Judge Alexander Williams III--the same judge who presided over Hall’s trial--agreed Hall was entitled to a new trial.

But prosecutors appealed Williams’ ruling and won, leaving Hall to await sentencing today before Williams.

“If anybody had courage enough to give him a new trial, then we could prove the evidence is not there,” said attorney Karl Henry, who is co-counsel for Hall with Rosalie Rakoff.

At today’s proceeding, the two attorneys will again begin the process of appealing Hall’s murder conviction, this time on several grounds, including Hall’s contention that his confession was coerced.

“He was a . . . kid and he was led to believe that by cooperating with police, he would get some protection,” said Henry, who with Rakoff has argued that Hall was not a suspect in any slayings until he ended up in the County Jail’s “snitch tank” and agreed to cooperate with police to protect himself after the 54th Street Massacre.

“There is no question that there was manufactured evidence in this case and justice does really does cry out for this young many to get a new trial,” Henry said.

Hall occupies himself in a solitary cell by writing letters and making phone calls to plead his innocence.

“When they [originally] booked me for murder, I thought, ‘People are going to see that the statement won’t match the evidence.’ . . . I believed that the system would prove me innocent,” Hall said this week. “But that didn’t happen.

“I guess I was watching too much TV. I figured that when people saw the facts of the case, they would say, ‘No, he didn’t do it.’ I was naive. I thought justice was blind.”