Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content

Warren Stingley

Other Contra Costa County Exonerations
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/PublishingImages/Contra_Costa_County.jpg
On May 11, 2013, 40-year-old Warren Stingley was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest in Pittsburg, California.

Pittsburg police officer Michael Sibbitt accused Stingley of resisting when Sibbitt attempted to arrest him for an outstanding warrant.

On October 25, 2013, Stingley pled guilty to the charge in Contra Costa County Superior Court. He was sentenced to 20 days in jail.

On December 12, 2016, the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office filed a motion to vacate Stingley’s conviction as well as more than a dozen others. The motions were granted and the cases were dismissed.

The prosecution took the action because the police had failed to disclose to the prosecution—and ultimately to lawyers in the Contra Costa Public Defenders Office who were representing Stingley—that Sibbitt and another officer, Elisabeth Ingram, had been accused of beating suspects in other cases with flashlights. Defense attorneys could have used the information to challenge the officers’ testimony.

The action came after former Pittsburg police Lt. Wade Derby filed a lawsuit earlier in 2016 claiming that he had warned the department and provided memoranda to the Pittsburg police chief that the department was failing to turn over the records to the prosecution and to defense attorneys.

According to a lawsuit Sibbitt and Ingram filed against the Pittsburg police department, they were placed on administrative leave in June 2014 and resigned from the force “under duress” in August 2014. Their lawsuit claimed that other officers instructed them to falsify crime reports and not to report use of force during arrests in order to downplay crimes and present a portrait of a city with a lower crime rate.

– Maurice Possley

Report an error or add more information about this case.

Posting Date: 2/6/2017
State:California
County:Contra Costa
Most Serious Crime:Other Nonviolent Misdemeanor
Additional Convictions:
Reported Crime Date:2013
Convicted:2013
Exonerated:2016
Sentence:20 days
Race/Ethnicity:Black
Sex:Male
Age at the date of reported crime:40
Contributing Factors:Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:No