Appeals court affirms decision to vacate Frank Gable’s murder conviction

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s decision to vacate Frank Gable’s murder conviction.

Gable, who has been out of custody pending appeal, was charged with the 1989 killing of Michael Francke, the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections.

“The facts on appeal are extraordinary,” Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote in the opinion on Thursday. “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.

“As Gable’s expert explained, the investigators used widely discredited polygraph and interrogation techniques as a ‘psychological club’ to elicit the statements against Gable. The prosecution then built their entire case on that tainted foundation.”

The appeals court panel noted that another man, John Crouse, had confessed multiple times to killing Franke, but the trial court excluded that evidence. The court determined, therefore, that Gable’s due process rights had been violated.

This story will be updated.

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