LA Will Pay over $24m to Wrongfully Convicted Men Who Spent Decades in Jail

While the two cases were independent of one another, they share a common complaint against the Los Angeles Police Department. Detectives concocted evidence against Register and Lisker, each man’s overturned conviction and lawsuit against the city stated.

“I can’t get these 34 years back, but I hope my case can help make things better for others, through improving the way the police get identifications or other reforms,” Register said in a statement released by his attorneys Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Register’s settlement may be the biggest sum of its kind in the history of Los Angeles, his lawyers contend.

Register was released in December 2013, after 34 years in prison for a 1979 murder in West LA. He was 19 years old when wrongfully convicted. While police accepted one neighbor’s claim to have heard gunshots and seen Register fleeing the scene, contradictory evidence was dismissed.

One of the neighbor’s sisters told police that account was a lie, while a second sister told police they had the wrong suspect. The first sister, Sheila Vanderkam, typed Kash Register’s unusual name into a registry search decades later, then upon seeing he was still in jail, contacted Register’s lawyers, leading to a reopening of the case and his clearing.

Lisker won his freedom back in August 2009, after 26 years behind bars for a 1983 murder in Sherman Oaks. At the age of 17, he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his 66-year-old mother, who was stabbed in the back inside her own home. Lisker always claimed he saw her motionless on the floor through a window, then broke in the house to help.