Jessica Jacobs Dirschel teamed up with Jofama Coleman to free him from prison - Los Angeles Times
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He served 19 years for a crime he didn’t commit. His exoneration could restore your faith in humanity.

Jofama Coleman kisses his 19-year-old daughter Jocelyne after he was exonerated.
Jofama Coleman, right, who served 19 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, kisses his 19-year-old daughter Jocelyne after he was exonerated on Feb. 27.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
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Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Saturday, March 2. I’m Harriet Ryan, an investigative reporter at the L.A. Times. Here’s what you need to know to start your weekend:

    He served 19 years for a crime he didn’t commit. On Tuesday, his freedom became official.

    In downtown L.A.’s criminal courts building last week, a prosecutor crossed paths with a convicted murderer in a crowded hallway.

    She hugged him, and then shook hands with his daughter.

    This was one of several head-spinning scenes that played out Tuesday as a 41-year-old man named Jofama Coleman was formally exonerated of the 2003 drive-by murder of a South L.A. teenager.

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    Courtrooms are rarely happy places, but a sense of joy permeated the proceedings. Deputy Dist. Atty. Lara Bazán and other prosecutors greeted Coleman and his lawyer, Ellen Eggers, like old friends and treated his family like honored guests, with one D.A. supervisor asking relatives in the spectator’s gallery, “Can you guys see OK?”

    The audience erupted in applause as a smiling Superior Court Judge William Ryan pronounced Coleman “factually innocent” of the murder. As a beaming Coleman left court, he stopped to embrace a petite woman in jeans who was neither a relative nor an attorney.

    “It’s official,” Jessica Jacobs Dirschel said, her eyes wet with tears.

    A hippie Topanga Canyon mom partnered with Coleman to fight for his freedom

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    The only-in-L.A. partnership between Coleman and Dirschel, a hippie mom from Topanga Canyon, led to his exoneration and the freeing of a second man.

    It starts in the early days of the COVID pandemic when Dirschel, like so many of us, was staving off boredom with Netflix. She ended up binge-watching a series about wrongful convictions and sensing a deep connection with Eggers, a former public defender featured on the program who had a track record of springing innocent men from prison.

    I want to help, Dirschel told Eggers in a cold call.

    The veteran lawyer didn’t know what to make of Dirschel. Eggers worked on cases for free at her dining room table and people just didn’t call her up to lend a hand. In fact, it was just the opposite. She had a stack of letters from inmates begging for help.

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    One of those was from Coleman, who was convicted in 2007 of the murder of 16-year-old Jose “Chino” Robles in the rough neighborhood of Westmont, sometimes called “Death Alley.” After additional pestering from Coleman’s brother, Eggers asked her eager new volunteer to take a look at the evidence.

    Trigger warning, the rest of the story may restore your faith in humanity.

    “It’s almost like a fairy tale,” Dirchel’s husband, John, told me. The “almost” qualification was necessary, he said, because “it should never have been told” in the first place.

    Even with criminal justice reforms, exonerations are rare

    The push in recent years to address mass incarceration in California has led to several new paths for prisoners to get out early, such as the resentencing of youth offenders and those convicted of felony murder.

    Exonerations remain rare, though. George Gascon, arguably the country’s most progressive district attorney, has helped free 10 people who were wrongfully convicted since his 2020 election.

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    Now in a tough race for reelection, Gascon stood side by side with Coleman at a news conference Wednesday touting the exoneration. It was part of his office’s effort, he said, “to right the wrongs of the past.”

    Read more here: She binged true crime on Netflix. Then she helped free two men from prison.

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    Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

    Harriet Ryan, investigative reporter
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