An El Dorado County Superior Court judge on Friday formally acquitted a late Oregon woman of lying about a brutal murder that took place decades ago in the Sierra Nevada foothills that cost her two lives. It ended with an adult son who was still a child when she was imprisoned for a crime.
“The public often thinks it’s the prosecutor’s job to do nothing but step in and try to get people out,” said El Dorado County Assistant District Attorney Lisette Suder. “That’s not the case at all. Our job. Our job is to seek justice.
She told the judge: “We are asking the court to legally undo the mistake. It took almost 40 years to make but it was wrong.
Connie Dahl died of heart disease in March 2014 at the age of 48.
(played by Jared Lange)
In 1985, 19-year-old Connie Dahl returned from a night of partying with her then-boyfriend Ricky Davis to find the desecrated body of a guest in an upstairs bedroom.
Police quickly viewed Davis and Dahl as suspects rather than witnesses. But they were not charged and went their separate ways.
In 1999, investigators reopened the cold case and interrogated Dahl ruthlessly. Although Dahl initially maintained her innocence, investigators pressured her to adopt what they believed was the true version of the crime, that Dahl helped Davis carry out the killing.
El Dorado County Assistant District Atty. Lisette Suder listens to Ricky Davis’ statement in court Friday.
(José Luis Villegas/The Times)
Davis was convicted in 2005, largely because of Dahl’s false testimony, and sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. In 2020, DNA testing exonerated him and he was acquitted. DNA also helped police find the real killer, who pleaded no contest to the 2022 murder and is currently in jail. The same evidence proved that Dahl was not involved in the crime, but she died in 2014 and no one was willing to clear her name.
A Times reporter told the El Dorado County Dist. Atty. It was Vern Pearson’s oversight that Dahl’s children were never informed that she was no longer considered guilty. Pierson quickly asked the court to quash her conviction and declare Dahl effectively innocent.
Pearson gathered with her two sons, Nick and Jared Lange, at the El Dorado County Courthouse on Friday. Davis joined them.
Before the hearing, Jared and Nick stood outside the courtroom and met Davis for the first time. A colorful figure emerged wearing a bright pink tie, a leather motorcycle vest, and riding a red Harley-Davidson—exactly the kind of man their mother would have fallen in love with, they agreed.
Ricky Davis (left) talks with the El Dorado County District. Atty. Vern Pearson appeared in court Friday.
(José Luis Villegas/The Times)
“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” Jared told Davis.
“Look, I’ve never been really angry,” Davis told the brothers. “That was a malleable time in your mother’s life.”
Davis, who spent years reviewing Dahl’s interrogation transcripts to try to understand why she implicated them both in crimes they had nothing to do with, added, “I believe she was indoctrinated.”
“Yeah, she started questioning herself,” Jared said.
Later, Davis told the judge: “I would like to see her vindicated. She was as innocent as I was. She was tied down in a different way.
The men arrived at the courthouse at about the same time on Friday morning and passed through metal detectors one by one. Even the district attorney had his belt removed by an officer who did not recognize him. They put their seatbelts back on and stood awkwardly greeting each other before walking up the wide staircase and waiting outside Judge Larry E. Hayes’ courtroom.
Ricky Davis spoke in court Friday.
(José Luis Villegas/The Times)
Then they filed in: the Lange brothers, who had flown in from Oregon and sat in the front row; Davis sat behind them. Other lawyers and family members of the defendants who were in court in unrelated cases looked on in amazement.
“My condolences go out to the family and to the people who have been traumatized by this whole incident,” the judge said. “But I hope that when you walk out of the courtroom, justice has finally been served the right way.”
The Lange brothers sat expressionless. Nick, the father of one-year-old twin boys, hesitated when the judge asked them if they wanted to speak.
Finally, he stood up: “I just wish she could be here. She has been gone for more than 10 years, and she was very bad most of the 20 years I was with her. So I wish she could just be here.” Get the help she deserves.
Judge Larry E. Hayes presided over the hearing and acquitted Connie Dahl.
(José Luis Villegas/The Times)
Earlier, Jared and Nick described how their mother’s arrest had ruined their lives.
They move from relative to relative with little sense of stability and no understanding of the reasons for their mother’s death. When she was finally released in 2006 and allowed to return to Oregon for probation, her record made it nearly impossible for her to find a job or housing. For a time, they were homeless and living in tents.
After the hearing, the Lange brothers said they had a sense of closure. Nick said it wasn’t until a meeting with a New York Times reporter in April 2023 that they learned the full story of what happened to her. He added that since then he had been thinking about how much his mother had been through and the impact the wrongful conviction had on them all.
“Who knows what life will be like, but it can be better in almost every way,” Jared said.
District Attorney Pierson apologized.
“We can’t take back or bring back the time she spent in custody here … and the negative consequences it had on her life and your lives,” Pearson told the Lange brothers in court. “But we can take responsibility for it. responsibility and seek to do better in the future.”
Ricky Davis approaches the podium to address the court as Connie Dahl’s children Nick Lange (left) and Jared Lange (right) sit with victim witness attorney Julie Ehrlich El Dorado County Courthouse.
(José Luis Villegas/The Times)
Pearson also pledged to ensure something like this never happens again. The case convinced him that the authorities’ methods of interrogating suspects were outdated and could lead to false confessions and wrongful convictions.
Since Davis’ exoneration, he has sought to change the way detectives are trained so that California and the country move toward what he calls an evidence-based strategy that pursues truth and facts rather than confessions. In 2021, he supported legislation to bar Dahl from such interrogations. But the bill was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who pointed to the high cost of retraining detectives across the state.
Pierson worked with the Innocence Project to successfully introduce a second piece of legislation banning lying to suspects under the age of 18.
District attorneys have also declined to prosecute any cases in their jurisdiction where confessions were obtained using the technology and are arranging scientific methods-based training for investigators across the state.
“My goal has always been to change the way we train police officers to conduct interviews and interrogations,” he said.
On Friday morning, the Lange brothers walked out of the dim courthouse and into the bright Northern California sunshine. They were surprised to find how pleasant Placerville looked, with all the charm of a summer gold rush town.
“She always told us that at some point, we were going to be the only thing any of us had,” said Nick Lange (his brother, at right). “She’s right.”
(Isaac Wasserman/The Times)
Their mother had found pleasure in this strip of shops and bars on the high street – a carefree young woman who didn’t understand how precarious her freedom was until it was gone.
They wish they could have been here under different circumstances, and she could have been too. Acquittal is important and even healing, but it is not justice.
“I’m glad this is over,” Jared said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
