The headline ran a week ago in The (San Jose) Mercury News:
Santa Clara County to pay $400,000 to Palo Alto family
Sounds like a lot of money, doesn't it? Just look for the family driving new BMWs.
But as is often the case, there is more to the story than cold hard cash.
In this case, the rather substantial sum of money reported in the headline represents a family's 12 1/2-year effort to clear their father's good name — and considering they spent $800,000 to do it, from a strictly fiscal standpoint it was hardly profitable.
But it was what accompanied the 400-grand that makes it worthwhile.
An apology.
On official stationery signed by County Executive Peter Kutras Jr., the County of Santa Clara (Calif.) formally apologized to the family of the late Nelson Galbraith for sloppy work by the police, the coroner and the prosecutor's office that conspired to put Mr. Galbraith on trial for murdering his wife.
And now Nelson Galbraith can finally rest in complete peace.
I first brought this story to the attention of Deseret News readers three years ago when chances of the above happening hovered between slim and none.
A BYU professor and friend of mine, Richard Galbraith, had told me of problems he and other family members were having in making headway with the lawsuit they were pursuing against Santa Clara County on behalf of their father.
The suit contended that Nelson Galbraith's civil rights had been trampled when he was charged with murder after his wife, 76-year-old Josephine Galbraith, was found dead in a guest bedroom of their Palo Alto home in the fall of 1995.
Distraught because of failing health, Josephine had strangled herself with a bathrobe sash, but after an autopsy, county coroner Angelo Ozoa ruled that the death was not a suicide, but a homicide, which led to Josephine's husband, already dealing with one nightmare, being led away from his wife's side in handcuffs to face another.
The murder charge didn't stick — Nelson Galbraith was found not guilty in a 1997 jury trial that easily exposed the coroner's work as complete incompetence, thereby dismantling the foundation of the case — but the trauma did.
Nelson would lay awake nights wondering how the government, his government, could be allowed to get away with the kind of ineptitude and subsequent cover-ups that led to him being falsely accused and imprisoned in the first place.
With the support of his family, and fueled by a determination to spare others a similar ordeal, he filed suit against Santa Clara County and Ozoa.
After Nelson Galbraith died in 2002, at the age of 83, his family vowed to continue on.
But fighting city hall is never easy.
"We were up against a bureaucracy," said Richard Galbraith. "They said the odds were about 1,000 to one. There wasn't one day of it that wasn't hard."
Here in Utah, Richard Galbraith solicited help wherever and whenever he could. A BYU law school professor, Michael Goldsmith, became the family's lead lawyer, joined by a team that included some of the country's top civil rights lawyers, many of whom (including Goldsmith) waived or greatly reduced their fees. Todd Grey, the Utah state medical examiner, agreed to perform a second autopsy on Josephine Galbraith, a procedure that helped
further expose the erroneous conclusion of the first autopsy.
Through hours and weeks and months and years of depositions, court hearings, dismissals, appeals and reversals, the battle surged on and nobody blinked.
Then, just like that, it was over, and the Galbraiths got a settlement offer that contained everything they asked for.
An apology, an admission of wrongdoing, the changing of "manner of death" on Josephine Galbraith's death certificate from homicide to suicide, and a check.
And while it's true that the settlement amount, as eye-popping as it looks in a headline, will only pay half what they owe to their lawyers, Richard Galbraith pointed out that's not the point.
"My dad is the winner and still champion," he said. "We always loved him and knew he was innocent and now we're hoping this will help other kids' dads too."
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.