Riverside County sued after jailing innocent Desert Hot Springs man for 4 years
A Desert Hot Springs man says he was wrongfully jailed for a murder he didn't commit, and has filed a lawsuit against Riverside County claiming prosecutors knowingly locked up an innocent man.
Roger Parker was accused in a March 2010 murder in Desert Hot Springs. He said he was manipulated into a false confession by police, and that District Attorneys officials kept him behind bars for nearly 4 years despite indications that they shouldn't.
In a lawsuit filed last year, Parker said former Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach and three other DA officials insisted they prosecute Parker, despite multiple recommendations from their staff to dismiss the case because he was innocent.
Parker told KGTV despite evidence proving he wasn't involved in the murder, he was interrogated by Desert Hot Springs police for more than 15 hours.
The lawsuit says detectives were "encouraging him to admit that he had killed Stevenson in self-defense. Parker, who is developmentally delayed, denied killing Stevenson for several hours before ultimately confessing 'very sarcastically' because 'the detectives had told him [that] self-defense was legal and denial only landed him in jail.'"
"It took probably like 20 minutes just to get everything out, going back and forth," Parker said. "Stopping the tape, unstopping the tape, stopping the tape. Him yelling at me because I'm doing it wrong. Yeah, it took a lot of that."
Parker said investigators yelled at him because he confessed in a way they didn't like.
Asked why he confessed if he didn't do it, Parker said, "I gave up on the world. It was that or suicide, believe it or not."
The lawsuit says, "The first prosecutor assigned to the case, Deputy D.A. Lisa DiMaria immediately recognized that Parker's confession was a sham because it was both coerced and completely inconsistent with the physical evidence."
While Parker's preliminary hearing was delayed, he spent almost four years in jail. His attorney, Kimberly Trimble, said it's a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
"To have individual prosecutors say, 'We don't even have enough to arrest this guy,' and yet keep him in custody for nearly four years without ever going to a preliminary hearing or having an indictment or doing a trial is, I think, I can't think of something much more egregious than that," Trimble said.
Parker still lives in Desert Hot Springs and said he's suing for compensation and reform within the county.
Asked what he wants out of life, Parker said: "Freedom. It's simple, freedom.
Desert Hot Springs police confirmed to News Channel 3 the murder investigation is still ongoing.
In a statement to News Channel 3, a spokesperson for Riverside County said in part, "The County of Riverside’s mission is to support the safety, health and wellbeing of all Riverside County residents and visitors...
"As your inquiry pertains to ongoing legal matters, no additional information is available at this time."
