Keith Hart

On March 6, 1978, three masked men broke into a home in Newark, California. The robbers terrorized the homeowners and their visiting neighbors, and left with $12,000 worth of jewelry and appliances, as well as their victims’ identification cards, credit cards, blank checks, and car. According to the victims, all of the robbers were Black. In the weeks after the robbery, one of the victims, a 30-year-old white woman, received a series of threatening phone calls.

According to reporting by the Oakland Tribune, later in the spring of 1978, 34-year-old Keith Hart, an Amtrak employee, happened to turn onto the street where this robbery had occurred. He noticed a house with a “For Sale” sign, which, unbeknownst to him, was next door to the house that had recently been robbed. Interested in the house for sale, Hart parked and got out of his car to take a better look. The neighbors were on high alert after the robbery and threatening calls. A neighbor noticed Hart, who was Black, looking around at the house and called police, reporting Hart’s license plate number to them. No action was taken by police at that time.

Several days later, the female robbery victim reported to police that she had been abducted when leaving work. She said her abductor was a Black man whose voice she recognized as one of the robbers. She said he took her for a wild ride in his car, then raped and sodomized her at gunpoint, rebuking her for going to the police.

Following this abduction and assault, police traced the license plate number that had been previously called in by the neighbor, and this led them to a used car dealer to whom the vehicle was registered. The dealer was Keith Hart’s brother-in-law. After speaking with police, the brother-in-law called Hart to ask why the police were looking for him, and Hart assumed it was about a child support dispute with his ex-wife. Later that day, after police spoke to Hart’s brother-in-law, another threatening phone call came in to the victim, seemingly supporting police’s theory that Hart was making the calls.

Newark police arrested Hart on May 4, 1978. The female victim identified Hart. Hart’s appellate attorney, Doron Weinberg, would later say that this identification happened after the victim had already failed to pick Hart out of a lineup and had then had a 45-minute conversation with police.

Although few details are available, records reflect that the victim had previously identified a different Black man as the robber then later recanted her identification.

The court appointed attorney Jerry Murphy to represent Hart. Prior to trial, Murphy met with Hart just twice. Hart said he was innocent and pleaded with Murphy to give him a polygraph examination and hire an investigator. He would later say that Murphy seemed uninterested in pursuing either avenue.

Hart went to trial in Alameda County Superior Court later in 1978. Assistant District Attorney Clifford Campbell prosecuted the case, and Murphy represented Hart. Judge Harold Hove presided over the trial. The victim identified Hart at trial as the robber and the rapist. The local telephone records showing police contacting Hart’s brother-in-law, and then the brother-in-law contacting Hart prior to the threatening call, were introduced as evidence.

However, Murphy had not obtained Hart’s long-distance phone records, which Hart said showed he had contacted his mother and his brother, who was in law school, after receiving his brother-in-law’s calls, to talk through concerns that this police contact had been spurred by his ex-wife and custody disputes. Since the records had not been obtained, Hart was not able to offer his phone records into evidence.

The jury deliberated for two days before finding Hart guilty of nine felonies, including robbery, rape, and sodomy. Judge Hove sentenced Hart to 10 years in prison.

After his conviction, Hart hired San Francisco attorneys Doron Weinberg and James Larson to handle his case. Weinberg and Larson hired investigator Cathy Kornblith to look into Hart’s claims of innocence. Kornblith spoke with the victim, who admitted she had hesitated in identifying Hart’s photograph. She told Kornblith, “‘Cause you’re right, they basically all look alike.” The defense also learned that the victim had spoken at length with a police officer after she was first hesitant to identify a photo, then had returned to the photo lineup and identified Hart.

Weinberg hired a polygrapher who sometimes worked for the Oakland Police Department to administer two polygraph examinations on Hart. The results of both indicated Hart was being truthful about his innocence.

Kornblith found significant similarities between the Newark robbery and a string of other violent robberies in the area, attributed to a violent gang of robbers led by brothers Kenneth and David Moore. This gang operated in the East Bay area, which sprawled from Oakland down through Newark.

As part of Weinberg’s and Kornblith’s investigation, they learned that some of the checks and identification cards stolen from the victim’s house had been located in San Jose, California, when a woman named Sarah Pullum attempted to use them. Pullum was arrested for use of false identification, and she told police in a sworn statement that an acquaintance named David Moore had given her these stolen items. Pullum said she also told an Alameda district attorney that she had gotten the stolen items from Moore.

The Moore brothers had recently been convicted of two murders, as well as 58 other serious crimes. District Attorney Jim Anderson led the prosecution of the Moores. After the conviction, Anderson had a large tape-recording machine, which had been stolen by the Moores’ gang, sitting on his desk as potential trial evidence. The owners of the machine had never been identified during the investigation. Anderson spotted the sunlight hitting an engraved identification number on the machine that no one had previously noticed. Looking into this number, Anderson realized it matched the driver’s license number of the homeowner in the Newark robbery.

Judge Stanley Golde had presided over the Moore brothers’ trial, so Anderson asked him to hear Hart’s habeas corpus motion because of Golde’s familiarity with the Moore case. Golde agreed and released Hart from prison on March 28, 1980, pending a full evidentiary hearing.

This release by Golde led to a public dispute between Golde and Judge Hove—the original trial judge—who did not agree with Hart’s release. Neither did Campbell, the original prosecutor on the Hart case. Hove and Campbell took the position that Hart could have been the unidentified third person who had assisted the Moore brothers in the robbery and then later assaulted the female victim.

Hove ordered Hart be arrested on May 20, 1980, and sent him back to prison on the basis of a sentencing error. After a hearing on May 30, Hove resentenced Hart to 10 years in prison and scheduled a hearing on Hart’s habeas petition.

A three-judge appellate panel of the California Court of Appeals reviewed Hove’s decision in June 1980. The panel, in an opinion signed by Justice James B. Scott, found Hove’s re-jailing of Hart to be improper. The panel sent the case back to the Superior Court for review and ordered Hart released again on June 26, 1980.

As this unfolded in court, Weinberg, Larson, and Kornblith continued investigating, trying to find evidence to show that Hart was not the unidentified accomplice of the Moore brothers. They learned that the Moore brothers’ father, Eldridge Moore, was a Baptist deacon and deeply religious man whose opinion was important to Kenneth, the younger of the brothers. Weinberg met with Eldridge and explained that his sons were in the position to clear an innocent man’s name by telling the truth about their third accomplice. Eldridge told Weinberg to meet with Kenneth in prison and tell Kenneth that his father said he should talk to Weinberg and tell the truth.

Weinberg relayed this information to Alameda County District Attorney D. Lowell Jensen, who was supportive of Weinberg meeting with Kenneth. Jensen arranged the meeting and had Deputy District Attorney Don Whyte attend as well. In the meeting, Kenneth said he had never met Hart and Hart was not involved in any crimes with him and his brother. Kenneth declined to provide the name of the unidentified accomplice.

On November 12, 1980, all nine felony charges against Hart were dismissed by Superior Court Judge Martin Pulich at the request of Whyte.

Of his exoneration, Hart said it may “help me get my son back once I have money to support him. And it might help explain to him why his father was in jail—to understand what the system is like. He still thinks everything is above board with it.”

In September 1981, Hart, his wife, and his teenage son filed a lawsuit against the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, Alameda County, and the Newark chief of police. Hart and his family claimed that the district attorney’s office suppressed evidence that had cleared him of the crimes. Available records do not include the outcome of this lawsuit.

Posting Date: 03-16-2026

Last Update Date: 03-24-2026