Frank Gable on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against 24 police officers, claiming their improper tactics led to his wrongful conviction in the 1989 killing of Oregon’s prisons chief.
The suit alleges officers with Oregon State Police and the Salem Police Department engaged in malicious prosecution and violated his due process rights, resulting in his 29 years and 81 days of imprisonment for the murder of Michael Francke, director of Oregon’s Department of Corrections.
An officer “choked” Gable during one interrogation “until he lost consciousness” and others used “selective recordings to falsely suggest” that he made statements incriminating himself, the suit alleges. It also alleges the officers suppressed evidence that would have undermined his prosecution.
“They went to a lot of extreme ends to coerce a confession from Mr. Gable, but he’s maintained his innocence throughout,” his attorney Megan Pierce said.
Gable, a local methamphetamine dealer at the time, was sentenced in 1991 to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Francke’s murder.
Francke, 42, bled to death from stab wounds and was found dead on the north porch of the Dome Building, where he worked in Salem. The door of his nearby state-issued Pontiac stood open.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta threw out Gable’s conviction in 2019, ruling that he didn’t get a fair trial. Acosta noted that another man’s confession to the crime was excluded during Gable’s trial.
Acosta found that no reasonable juror would have convicted Gable in light of another man’s multiple confessions to Francke’s killing and because nearly all the witnesses in the case had recanted their testimony since the trial. Acosta also found that Gable’s conviction resulted from improper interrogation of witnesses by investigators and flawed polygraphs that further shaped witness statements to police.
In May 2023, Acosta ordered the state to “completely expunge” all records of Gable’s prosecution, citing the extraordinary circumstances of his “constitutionally invalid” conviction. He also granted Gable unconditional release from custody and barred the state from retrying him in the case after ordering Marion County to dismiss his murder indictment with prejudice, meaning the state couldn’t bring future charges against Gable.
“Plaintiff spent almost 30 years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” Pierce wrote in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene. “Defendants built a case against Plaintiff based on nothing but false, fabricated evidence that was the product of unlawful investigative techniques.”
The suit alleges the officers engaged in an unconstitutional conspiracy to deprive Gable of his rights, failed to intervene and halt the improper tactics and were negligent in their investigation and supervision of officers to prohibit misconduct.
Pierce said everyone named as defendants was “directly involved in misconduct that resulted in Mr. Gable’s wrongful prosecution.” They were identified as defendants in the suit in place of the state, which is shielded by immunity from such damages in federal court.
It seeks unspecified damages for Gable’s claims.
Gable separately is seeking more than $2 million from the state of Oregon to compensate him for the time he spent in prison. The state, so far, is challenging the compensation. It has argued unsuccessfully in prior court hearings that Gable and his lawyers failed to meet the legal threshold for showing Gable didn’t commit the fatal stabbing in 1989.
Gable was released from Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas on June 28, 2019. He lives with his wife in Kansas and is working to rebuild his life, Pierce said. He will turn 65 next month.
“He’s still struggling with all the physical and emotional damage and injury he suffered from three decades of incarceration in harsh and difficult conditions,” Pierce said. “The issue of Mr. Gable’s innocence has been litigated thoroughly in post-conviction proceedings. We are really hopeful the state will do the right thing and make Mr. Gable whole for the injuries the defendants in this case caused him.”
Gable has since changed his name to Franke J. Different Cloud, but has used his former name in the legal filings.
The dismissal of all charges against Gable has left Francke’s killing unsolved.
-- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.
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