Craig Richard Coley (born 1947) was convicted of a double murder in Los Angeles, California and spent 39 years in jail before he was pardoned in 2017 because advanced DNA tests not available at his original trial showed he was innocent.On November 11th 1978 24-year-old Rhonda Wicht and her 4-year-old son, Donald Wicht, were found dead in her apartment in Simi Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles, California. Donald Wicht had been suffocated and Rhonda Wicht had been raped, beaten and strangled. The police suspected Coley was the murderer because he had been Rhonda Wicht's boyfriend for two years and the couple had recently broken up.Coley, a restaurant night manager who had previously served in the US navy including three deployments to Vietnam in an aircraft carrier, was arrested the same day as the murders and charged with the double murder. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. The second trial in 1980 led to his conviction and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.After Coley lost his final appeal to his conviction, the judge ordered all evidence to be destroyed.Michael Bender, a serving Detective with Simi Valley Police Department, started to re-investigate Coley's case in 1989 and discovered there were problems with the case. Until his death, Coley's father, a retired police officer, had been trying to free his son. Simi Valley Police Chief Dave Livinstone PhD, requested a new investigation by Cold Case Detecitve Dan Swanson. Det. Swanson located the missing evidence and new DNA tests not available at the original trial showed there was no trace of Coly's DNA on the evidence material, but there was the DNA of other people. Investigators also disproved the testimony of a witness from the original trial who claimed to have seen Coley at the scene of the crime. In a report to the local police, three former and current police officers testified that the detective at the time of Coley's trial had “mishandled the investigation or framed Mr. Coley.” The local prosecutor felt the original detectives decided Coley was guilty too quickly (that they were victims of "tunnel vision").California governor Jerry Brown pardoned Coley on 22 November 2017 because the evidence showed he was innocent of the murders. In February 2018, the California Victims Compensation Board awarded Coley almost $2 million in compensation for his wrongful imprisonment for almost 40 years.