Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #381 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Daniel Villegas

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#381 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Daniel Villegas · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer. In Season one
0:07
Speaker 1: of False Confessions, we brought you the story of Daniel Viegas,
0:10
Speaker 1: a teenager from El Paso, Texas, who was coerced into
0:14
Speaker 1: giving a false confession to a double murder in nineteen
0:17
Speaker 1: ninety three. One of the people who ultimately helped free
0:20
Speaker 1: Daniel started out as a complete stranger to him. It's
0:24
Speaker 1: a story of real heroism that proves anyone can have
0:27
Speaker 1: an impact when they put in the effort. Now, we're
0:30
Speaker 1: pleased to tell you that since his acquittal in twenty eighteen,
0:33
Speaker 1: Daniel is living in that spirit. He's paying it forward,
0:36
Speaker 1: so to speak. Today he works with Proclaim Justice, an
0:40
Speaker 1: organization founded by Jason Baldwin, a member of the West
0:44
Speaker 1: Memphis III. Proclaimed Justice helps to free other innocent people
0:48
Speaker 1: across the country. Daniel also bravely shares his story on
0:51
Speaker 1: stage and on social media. He helps to raise awareness
0:55
Speaker 1: of this all too common miscarriage of justice. We need
0:59
Speaker 1: advocates like Daniel Vehegas and organizations like Proclaimed Justice to
1:03
Speaker 1: speak out against wrongful convictions, to tell the world that
1:07
Speaker 1: this really can happen to anyone. It's through their work
1:11
Speaker 1: that we can create a future where no innocent person
1:14
Speaker 1: ever spends another day in prison. Daniel, We thank you
1:18
Speaker 1: for your invaluable work. We're replaying this episode in your honor.
1:28
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
1:32
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drusy. Today we're going to tell you
1:35
Speaker 1: about a case that shows just how much ordinary people
1:38
Speaker 1: can help the wrongly convicted find real justice, even when
1:41
Speaker 1: they start out as strangers. In today's case, an unexpected
1:46
Speaker 1: hero fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending
1:50
Speaker 1: into one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations I've ever seen.
2:06
Speaker 1: Like so many of our cases at the Center on
2:08
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions, Steve first learned about Daniel Viegas through one
2:12
Speaker 1: of his infamous online searches. By this time, I actually
2:16
Speaker 1: had my own newsfeed, and so did our colleague Josh Tepfer.
2:19
Speaker 1: But Steve had his own reasons for being particularly excited
2:23
Speaker 1: about this case.
2:24
Speaker 2: So after all three of us read about a possible
2:28
Speaker 2: false confession case in Alpasso, it seemed like destiny for
2:31
Speaker 2: us to get involved in this case. You see, in
2:34
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, Alpasso was host to one of
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Speaker 2: the most important conferences in the history of false confessions
2:42
Speaker 2: that brought together many of the leading experts on the
2:45
Speaker 2: subject to the University of Texas.
2:48
Speaker 1: For people like us, this is basically the Olympics meets Coachella.
2:51
Speaker 2: Who was there? Well, Donald Connery, the author of Peter
2:55
Speaker 2: Riley's book, was there.
2:57
Speaker 1: Steve's talking about a book called Guilty Until Proven Innocent.
3:00
Speaker 1: We'll tell you that story in a later episode about
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Speaker 1: a false confession from nineteen seventy three.
3:05
Speaker 2: And Geezley good Johnson, the famed Icelandic detective turned psychology
3:11
Speaker 2: professor at King's College of London.
3:13
Speaker 1: You might remember Geasley from our last episode. His scientific
3:16
Speaker 1: expertise helped exonerate Tana Pora in New Zealand.
3:19
Speaker 2: Richard Offshe and Richard Leo and Saul Cassen, some of
3:23
Speaker 2: the leading experts in the United States on false confessions,
3:26
Speaker 2: were there.
3:27
Speaker 1: We're going to hear from Saul Cassen in another episode two.
3:30
Speaker 1: All of these guys are og experts in the world
3:33
Speaker 1: of false confessions. They're Steve's heroes and mine too. So
3:37
Speaker 1: if I've turned into a geek here, you know who
3:39
Speaker 1: to blame.
3:39
Speaker 2: This conference was a watershed moment in the history of
3:43
Speaker 2: false confessions and the idea of going back to El
3:46
Speaker 2: Paso to work on an actual false confession case, it
3:50
Speaker 2: just seemed like destiny to me.
3:54
Speaker 1: This story starts in El Paso, a border city in
3:57
Speaker 1: West Texas. Now. In the early nineteen nine El Casso
4:01
Speaker 1: was a different place than it is today. The crime
4:03
Speaker 1: rate was sky high. There was lots of gang activity.
4:06
Speaker 1: Street violence was a daily problem, and in some neighborhoods,
4:10
Speaker 1: shootings were regular occurrences. We start our story in the
4:14
Speaker 1: early morning hours of April tenth, nineteen ninety three. Good Friday.
4:18
Speaker 1: It's just after midnight, and four teenagers are walking home
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Speaker 1: from a party and they find themselves in a rough neighborhood.
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Speaker 1: Three of them, Manda Lazo, Juan Carlo's Medina, and Jesse Hernandez,
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Speaker 1: were seventeen years old. The fourth, Bobby England, was eighteen.
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Speaker 1: All of them were good kids, none of them were
4:36
Speaker 1: caught up in gangs or the street life. But they
4:38
Speaker 1: ran into trouble anyway. At the intersection of Electric Street
4:41
Speaker 1: and trans Mountain Road. That's where a maroon car with
4:45
Speaker 1: tinted windows rolls up behind them and starts following them. Slowly. Now,
4:51
Speaker 1: just as the four of them start to get scared,
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Speaker 1: the car takes off. It speeds away, but a few
4:56
Speaker 1: minutes later it comes back, and this time the driver
4:59
Speaker 1: turns off the headline light. Words are shouted from the
5:02
Speaker 1: car in Spanish, possibly an insult keeputos, and then a
5:06
Speaker 1: series of shots ring out, one right after another. Wan
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Speaker 1: and Jesse take off running as a matter of sheer instinct,
5:14
Speaker 1: and they think that their two friends are running away
5:16
Speaker 1: alongside them. But when jan and Jesse feel that they've
5:19
Speaker 1: run far enough that it's safe to slow down, they
5:22
Speaker 1: look around them and they don't see Mondo or Bobby
5:25
Speaker 1: with them at all. They take a deep breath, go
5:28
Speaker 1: back to the scene of the shooting, and they see
5:30
Speaker 1: police lights flashing. Bobby had been shot in the head
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Speaker 1: and died in the street. Mondo had been shot in
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Speaker 1: the stomach and the thigh. He made it one hundred
5:41
Speaker 1: yards to a house up the street, where he collapsed
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Speaker 1: in the front yard and died as the residents frantically
5:46
Speaker 1: dialed nine one one. Now, the police found six shells
5:49
Speaker 1: from a twenty two caliber handgun littered on the street
5:52
Speaker 1: right where the car had pulled over, but That's about it.
5:54
Speaker 1: In terms of evidence. There were no fingerprints, no DNA,
5:58
Speaker 1: nothing forensic to help them solve this crime. It was
6:01
Speaker 1: going to have to come down to confessions.
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Speaker 2: The Alpasso Police assigned one of the toughest cops on
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Speaker 2: the force to the Good Friday shooting, an officer whose
6:10
Speaker 2: name we can't share, but an officer who is known
6:13
Speaker 2: as a closer.
6:14
Speaker 1: This guy is so tough he's even been featured on
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Speaker 1: the TV show Cops.
6:18
Speaker 2: Now, what's a closer? A closer is someone who is
6:21
Speaker 2: very skilled at police interrogation. A good closer will gather
6:26
Speaker 2: evidence and then slowly reveal that evidence to a suspect,
6:31
Speaker 2: like peeling off layers of an onion, so that the
6:34
Speaker 2: suspect feels like he is nabbed, his goose is cooked,
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Speaker 2: and that leads the suspect to confess. But there are
6:41
Speaker 2: other kinds of closers. Closers who use brutality and threats,
6:47
Speaker 2: and they don't only use these tactics with suspects. Their
6:50
Speaker 2: modus operandi is to use these tactics with suspects, with
6:55
Speaker 2: witnesses and sometimes with victims, and they get statements, but
7:00
Speaker 2: those statements are coerced and false statements. This detective, he
7:05
Speaker 2: was in that second camp exactly.
7:07
Speaker 1: So the closer is brought in right this detective from
7:10
Speaker 1: the al Paso Police Force. He begins investigating the case
7:13
Speaker 1: and pretty soon he comes across a seventeen year old
7:17
Speaker 1: boy named David Rongel. David is brought into the police
7:21
Speaker 1: station in theory about a completely different case. The police
7:25
Speaker 1: had told his mom that they needed to talk to
7:27
Speaker 1: Davide about some telephone harassment complaints, but when questioning actually began,
7:33
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with telephone harassment. Police began
7:37
Speaker 1: accusing Davide of committing the Good Friday shootings. Now later on,
7:41
Speaker 1: Davide said that the police falsely told him during this
7:44
Speaker 1: interrogation that his friends had implicated him, and Davide himself
7:48
Speaker 1: was threatened. He says he was told that he was
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Speaker 1: a pretty white boy with green eyes who would be
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Speaker 1: raped in prison if he didn't confess. This scares David
7:58
Speaker 1: and eventually he starts offering some information. He tells police
8:02
Speaker 1: that his sixteen year old cousin, Daniel Viegos, had been
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Speaker 1: bragging about committing the Good Friday shootings, although he added
8:10
Speaker 1: that everyone was sure Daniel had been joking. You see,
8:13
Speaker 1: Daniel had a reputation as a jokester. He was the
8:16
Speaker 1: type of kid who always boasted about things he hadn't
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Speaker 1: actually done. Daniel had bragged about owning a waterbed when
8:22
Speaker 1: he didn't. He'd bragged about owning a fancy stereo when
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Speaker 1: he didn't. He'd even bragged about being descended from Italian
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Speaker 1: Royalty when he definitely wasn't.
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Speaker 2: I want to be descended from Italian Royalty.
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Speaker 1: Me too, but that kind of lucks just ain't for us.
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Speaker 1: Steve Anyway, when it came to the Good Friday shootings,
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Speaker 1: Davide never believed Daniel to be serious, not even for
8:40
Speaker 1: a minute. It just wasn't him. Daniel had nothing serious
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Speaker 1: like this in his background.
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Speaker 2: Just like criminals have a modus operandi, many times closures
8:49
Speaker 2: or interrogators have a modus operandi, And in David's case
8:54
Speaker 2: we saw evidence that we later were able to demonstrate
8:57
Speaker 2: was a modus operandi. Almost all this interrogator would tell
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Speaker 2: the suspect that his best friend or close associate had
9:04
Speaker 2: implicated him.
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Speaker 1: In the crime, even if that's untrue, right.
9:07
Speaker 2: Always untrue, right. He would threaten the suspect with the
9:10
Speaker 2: death penalty, and he also told the suspects or the
9:14
Speaker 2: witnesses or the victims in this case, that they were
9:18
Speaker 2: going to go to prison and they were going to
9:20
Speaker 2: be raped. I mean, if you're a seventeen year old kid,
9:23
Speaker 2: and most of these witnesses were teenagers, and you're told
9:27
Speaker 2: that you're looking at going to an adult jail where
9:30
Speaker 2: you're going to be a rape victim, you're going to
9:32
Speaker 2: say just about anything you need to get out of
9:35
Speaker 2: that interrogation.
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Speaker 1: It's terrifying stuff. And for David, the information he gave
9:39
Speaker 1: was that his cousin Daniel, had been joking about committing
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Speaker 1: the Good Friday shooting. He never believed Daniel to be serious,
9:45
Speaker 1: but this information was enough for the police. They asked
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Speaker 1: Devid to write out a statement describing what Daniel had said.
9:53
Speaker 1: David wrote that Daniel had bragged about using a shotgun
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Speaker 1: to commit the shootings, but the detective had David take
10:00
Speaker 1: that part out and write the statement a second time
10:02
Speaker 1: without mentioning the type of weapon, because remember, the shells
10:06
Speaker 1: at the scene had come from a twenty two, not
10:08
Speaker 1: a shotgun. Even with the detective's edits, da Vide's statements
10:12
Speaker 1: still contained errors. He remembered his cousin bragging about being
10:16
Speaker 1: in a black car, not a maroon car, and Davide
10:19
Speaker 1: said that Daniel described firing a few shots, then getting
10:22
Speaker 1: out of the car, chasing Mondo Lazo to the house
10:25
Speaker 1: and shooting him again. There, that's just not how this
10:28
Speaker 1: crime happened. The shots were all clustered together, not spaced out,
10:31
Speaker 1: and there were no casings found near Mondo's body. But
10:35
Speaker 1: none of us mattered. Now, this was a statement that
10:41
Speaker 1: David regretted giving. It haunted him for the rest of
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Speaker 1: his life that he'd implicated his own cousin in the
10:48
Speaker 1: Good Friday shootings, when even he didn't believe that Daniel
10:51
Speaker 1: was guilty. But it was a statement that he felt
10:53
Speaker 1: he had no choice but to give in light of
10:55
Speaker 1: the threats that he was encountering in the interrogation room.
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Speaker 2: So there errors, errors in Da VID's statement, errors in
11:02
Speaker 2: the statements of other witnesses, errors that the true perpetrator
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Speaker 2: would never have made. That's a red flag.
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Speaker 1: It's a huge red flag. But it doesn't stop these police.
11:12
Speaker 1: Within hours, three more people are brought in for questioning.
11:15
Speaker 1: Late at night on April twenty first, two friends of
11:18
Speaker 1: Daniel's Marcos Gonzalez and Rodney Williams and Daniel himself. They're
11:24
Speaker 1: all questioned, and when Daniel is interrogated, he denies involvement.
11:27
Speaker 1: He tells the police he was babysitting that night with
11:30
Speaker 1: a group of friends and they were all watching White
11:33
Speaker 1: Men Can't Jump on TV.
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Speaker 2: But here comes that modus operandi exactly.
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Speaker 1: Daniel reports being told that if he didn't confess, he
11:41
Speaker 1: would be taken to the desert to get beaten, and
11:44
Speaker 1: then to jail where he would be raped by old
11:46
Speaker 1: men then sentenced to death by the electric chair. This
11:50
Speaker 1: is how they scared Daniel. This is how they began
11:52
Speaker 1: reducing him down to this feeling of hopelessness. But if
11:55
Speaker 1: he confessed, on the other hand, he was told that
11:57
Speaker 1: he would get leniency because he was just a minor.
12:00
Speaker 1: And after about five hours of interrogation, Daniel ends up
12:03
Speaker 1: signing a confession typed out by detectives. It's about three
12:07
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning.
12:09
Speaker 2: He repeats the same errors that David Rangell had made,
12:12
Speaker 2: but he makes other mistakes too. First of all, what
12:15
Speaker 2: about the people in the car? Daniel says the driver
12:18
Speaker 2: was someone nicknamed Popeye, and that the front passenger was
12:21
Speaker 2: someone nicknamed Droopy, but the only known Popeye was incarcerated
12:25
Speaker 2: at the time, and the only known Droopy he was
12:28
Speaker 2: also on house arrest at the time. They could not
12:31
Speaker 2: possibly have been in the car the color of the car.
12:35
Speaker 2: Davide had said the car was black. Survivor Jesse Hernandez
12:39
Speaker 2: he had said the car was maroon. Daniel said they
12:41
Speaker 2: were in a white four door sedan at the time
12:44
Speaker 2: of the shooting. And finally, Daniel said that he had
12:48
Speaker 2: shot Bobby and Mondo in the back, but it was
12:52
Speaker 2: clear from the medical examiner's report that they had been
12:55
Speaker 2: shot from the front.
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Speaker 1: The more and more you study Daniel's confession, the more
12:59
Speaker 1: you start to a pattern. The only facts about this
13:03
Speaker 1: murder that he was able to get right are facts
13:05
Speaker 1: that had been publicized about the Good Friday shootings in
13:09
Speaker 1: the local paper, the El Paso Times. Now, this is
13:11
Speaker 1: a pretty big red flag when you can only get
13:13
Speaker 1: facts right when you've read about them in the newspaper.
13:16
Speaker 1: And there's another red flag in this case too. As
13:19
Speaker 1: soon as the interrogator left the room, Daniel immediately recants
13:24
Speaker 1: to a juvenile probation officer. I didn't do it, he said,
13:27
Speaker 1: and he explained that he only confessed because the cops
13:30
Speaker 1: kept harassing him. He said, I was tired, so I
13:34
Speaker 1: told them what they wanted to hear.
13:36
Speaker 2: And the police and prosecutors rang with that confession, even
13:40
Speaker 2: though it was filled with many false facts.
13:43
Speaker 1: And errors, Despite the red flags in his confession, despite
13:47
Speaker 1: the recantation, despite the lack of any physical evidence connecting
13:51
Speaker 1: him to the crime, Daniel Viegas is arrested and charged
13:55
Speaker 1: with capital murder. He's sixteen years old.
14:08
Speaker 2: Now.
14:08
Speaker 1: Daniel didn't come from a family with a lot of money,
14:11
Speaker 1: but his parents managed somehow to scrape together ten thousand
14:15
Speaker 1: dollars for an attorney. Daniel Viegas's first trial took place
14:19
Speaker 1: in December nineteen ninety four. At that trial, David Wrangle testified,
14:23
Speaker 1: but he maintained that Daniel had been obviously kidding when
14:26
Speaker 1: he'd bragged about the shooting. Rodney and Marcos, Daniel's friends, well,
14:30
Speaker 1: they'd given police statements implicating Daniel when they'd been questioned,
14:34
Speaker 1: but on the witness stand they said their statements were
14:36
Speaker 1: false and had been obtained through threats of prison, rape
14:39
Speaker 1: and other similar threats, and Daniel's attorney called eighteen defense witnesses,
14:45
Speaker 1: including several alibi witnesses who testified that Daniel was with
14:49
Speaker 1: them babysitting and watching TV at the time of the shooting. Right,
14:52
Speaker 1: white men can't jump, And Daniel's attorney argued strenuously about
14:57
Speaker 1: all these inconsistencies in Daniel's confession, how it just didn't
15:01
Speaker 1: match the facts of this crime, how it showed every
15:04
Speaker 1: indication of being false.
15:06
Speaker 2: He even called other witnesses who called into question the
15:10
Speaker 2: credibility of this detective, former prosecutors who had sought indictments
15:16
Speaker 2: for perjury.
15:17
Speaker 1: The defense mounted a huge fight. They made every argument
15:20
Speaker 1: they could. The trial lasted a week and at the
15:23
Speaker 1: end there was a hung jury eleven to one, but.
15:27
Speaker 2: It was eleven to one in favor of a conviction,
15:30
Speaker 2: which gave the district attorney some thought that this would
15:33
Speaker 2: be an easier case to convict the next time around.
15:36
Speaker 1: Sure enough, about nine months later, again, Daniel veegis Is
15:39
Speaker 1: tried for the murders of Mondo and Bobby. But the
15:43
Speaker 1: second trial was different. You see, Daniel's parents had spent
15:46
Speaker 1: every penny they had on the first trial, and they
15:50
Speaker 1: couldn't afford a lawyer for the second trial. This time around,
15:53
Speaker 1: Daniel was represented by a court appointed lawyer, someone who
15:56
Speaker 1: had been assigned the case only two months before the
15:58
Speaker 1: trial began, and so when the second trial rolled around,
16:02
Speaker 1: that lawyer called only one defense witness, no alibi witnesses
16:06
Speaker 1: at all. He hardly pointed to any problems with Daniel's confession,
16:10
Speaker 1: even though he had a blueprint for success in the
16:13
Speaker 1: form of the first trial, and.
16:14
Speaker 2: He didn't make a full frontal attack on the integrity
16:18
Speaker 2: and credibility of the police officer who got these unreliable statements.
16:23
Speaker 1: And so on August twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five, Daniel
16:27
Speaker 1: Viegas was convicted of capital murder. Because he'd been a
16:31
Speaker 1: juvenile at the time of the offense, he wasn't sentenced
16:34
Speaker 1: to death. Instead, he was given two life terms in prison,
16:39
Speaker 1: one for Bobby and one for Mondo. Daniel was a
16:42
Speaker 1: teenager when he went to prison, and he might still
16:45
Speaker 1: be there today if it weren't for a man named
16:48
Speaker 1: John Mimbella.
16:49
Speaker 2: What a man now.
16:50
Speaker 1: John is the head of a successful El Paso construction firm,
16:53
Speaker 1: a firm that hired a lot of formerly incarcerated people.
16:57
Speaker 1: Because John is a guy who believes in second chances.
17:00
Speaker 1: One day in two thousand and five, John Mabella walks
17:03
Speaker 1: into an El Paso bank and he ends up asking
17:06
Speaker 1: his teller, a woman named Lucy, out on a date.
17:10
Speaker 3: Six months later, we're buried. Lucy had three daughters with
17:14
Speaker 3: Daniel's brother, so Daniel was actually Lucy's ex brother in law.
17:20
Speaker 3: I adopted Lucy's daughters two years later, and that's when
17:24
Speaker 3: I learned more about Daniel's case.
17:26
Speaker 1: Now, Lucy often brought the girls to see their grandparents,
17:28
Speaker 1: who were Daniel's parents, and eventually John started coming along too.
17:33
Speaker 1: That's where he started to hear stories about their son, Daniel,
17:36
Speaker 1: who was serving life in prison for two murders he
17:39
Speaker 1: didn't commit.
17:40
Speaker 3: At first. I thought, you know, any parents gonna not
17:44
Speaker 3: want to accept that their son might be a killer.
17:48
Speaker 3: I had a lot of faith also in our system.
17:51
Speaker 3: You know, I always believe that if a jury found
17:54
Speaker 3: you guilty, it must have been because they had plenty
17:58
Speaker 3: of evidence against you. So I figured, hey, you know,
18:01
Speaker 3: they must have all kinds of evidence on this kid
18:04
Speaker 3: if they sentenced him to life.
18:06
Speaker 2: John was skeptical, but he saw how heartbroken the grandparents were,
18:10
Speaker 2: and he agreed to read through the court papers. Before
18:14
Speaker 2: long he was dumb struck. There was no reliable evidence
18:18
Speaker 2: tying Daniel to these shootings at all. And then John
18:22
Speaker 2: Manbela became a man possessed.
18:25
Speaker 3: I've got a couple of friends and I asked him
18:28
Speaker 3: if they could set up a meeting with our DA
18:31
Speaker 3: because I saw some serious problems in Daniel's conviction. Our
18:35
Speaker 3: DA happened to be high Miss Parsa and he personally
18:38
Speaker 3: tried Daniel. So I figured, you know what, if there's
18:42
Speaker 3: some mistake, if there's some doubt, you know, he's going
18:45
Speaker 3: to reopen this case. So we had the meeting and
18:48
Speaker 3: I told him, I go, you know what, I think
18:50
Speaker 3: Daniel's innocent. Something's wrong here, you know, we need to
18:53
Speaker 3: look into it. This DA fought us a lot just
18:57
Speaker 3: to get evidentry heering. After he told me the hire
19:00
Speaker 3: Good of Bills lawyer and opened up the case again,
19:03
Speaker 3: he fought as to the new.
19:04
Speaker 1: Now this really fired John up. It didn't make any sense.
19:08
Speaker 1: He starts paying for billboards around El Paso that say
19:11
Speaker 1: free Daniel Viegas. He starts organizing rallies and protests outside
19:15
Speaker 1: the courthouse, and he hired a private investigator.
19:19
Speaker 3: He read the transcripts and he was dumbfounded too. He goes, John,
19:23
Speaker 3: I was a homicide detective for twenty years. This case
19:26
Speaker 3: would never have gone to trial. I would never have
19:29
Speaker 3: presented this to my DA if this is all I had. Well,
19:32
Speaker 3: he was very upset, and he goes, yes, John, I'll
19:34
Speaker 3: take your case.
19:35
Speaker 1: John nan Bella's invested in Daniel's innocence and the work
19:39
Speaker 1: he would go on to do ended up costing him
19:40
Speaker 1: personally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
19:43
Speaker 2: He's the patron saint of the Daniel Viegis case. You know.
19:47
Speaker 2: I went down to l Passo shortly after John had
19:51
Speaker 2: hired lawyers and investigators to reopen Daniel's case, and when
19:56
Speaker 2: I went into the courthouse, there were like fifteen or
19:58
Speaker 2: twenty people walking around with signs saying free Daniel Viegas.
20:03
Speaker 2: You know, false confessions happened. Justice for Daniel Viegas. John
20:08
Speaker 2: had organized a rally right in front of the courthouse,
20:11
Speaker 2: and on the street in front of the courthouse was
20:14
Speaker 2: a truck that had billboards on both sides of it
20:17
Speaker 2: that was driving around the courthouse. So when you walked
20:20
Speaker 2: into the courtroom in Alpaso. You were just blitched by
20:24
Speaker 2: this notion that an injustice had occurred and that it
20:28
Speaker 2: needed to be fixed.
20:30
Speaker 1: Exactly, and John brought his entire community into this case too.
20:33
Speaker 1: There was a manager who worked at his construction company
20:36
Speaker 1: who was a songwriter, and he ends up writing a corrido,
20:39
Speaker 1: a traditional Mexican ballad, about the wrongful conviction of Daniel Viegas.
20:43
Speaker 2: John was so proud of that song that one of
20:46
Speaker 2: the first things he did when I was down in
20:48
Speaker 2: El Paso was to play that for me. It's on
20:58
Speaker 2: YouTube now if you want to hear it.
21:02
Speaker 1: John and the private investigator, right, they want to really
21:05
Speaker 1: find out what happened, and one of the first people
21:07
Speaker 1: they go to speak to is Jesse Hernandez, one of
21:11
Speaker 1: the survivors of the shooting. Of course, Jesse was now
21:15
Speaker 1: a grown man, and John shows Jesse for the first
21:18
Speaker 1: time a copy of Daniel's confession.
21:22
Speaker 3: Jesse's like, John, this is not what happened. This does
21:26
Speaker 3: not look like a confession from somebody who was there
21:31
Speaker 3: who took this confession down. And I told him. At
21:36
Speaker 3: that point, Jesse turns pale and he's like John, that
21:41
Speaker 3: same detective almost had me confessing to that crime. He
21:46
Speaker 3: shows up that night and he tells me, we know
21:49
Speaker 3: you shot your friends. Your buddy Juan Medina, I just
21:51
Speaker 3: told us that you did it. And Jesse says that
21:54
Speaker 3: he was just hysterical. He's like, wait a minute, these
21:57
Speaker 3: are my friends. I love my friends. I would never
21:59
Speaker 3: do it like that to my friends. He goes, well,
22:01
Speaker 3: maybe you blacked out, you know, and you shot them.
22:04
Speaker 2: You didn't even realize it.
22:06
Speaker 3: And at that moment, Jesse goes, well, man, you know,
22:08
Speaker 3: why would my friend say I shot them if I
22:09
Speaker 3: didn't shook them. Maybe I did do it, And he
22:12
Speaker 3: put his head down on the table and just crying uncontrollably.
22:17
Speaker 3: Had it not been for his mom that stepped in,
22:20
Speaker 3: he says, he was almost ready to confess. So Jesse's like,
22:24
Speaker 3: the last thing I want is somebody innocence spending the
22:28
Speaker 3: rest of their life in prison. That could have been me.
22:41
Speaker 1: This was an absolute bolt from the blue when John
22:44
Speaker 1: heard this story from Jesse Hernandez, and it only motivated
22:47
Speaker 1: him to continue pounding the pavement. Eventually, John hires a
22:50
Speaker 1: highly skilled El Paso trial lawyer, a man named Joe Spencer.
22:55
Speaker 1: Now Joe files a state petition for a writ of
22:57
Speaker 1: habeas corpus, arguing, among other things, that Daniel's lawyer at
23:01
Speaker 1: his second trial had been ineffective for failing to call
23:05
Speaker 1: Daniel's alibi witnesses. There's a hearing plan it's going to
23:08
Speaker 1: happen in twenty eleven, and in the run up to
23:11
Speaker 1: that hearing, that's when Steve and I first heard about
23:14
Speaker 1: this case.
23:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, we heard about it through our news feeds. And
23:17
Speaker 2: this time what made this special is it wasn't just
23:20
Speaker 2: me who came in to the office the next day.
23:23
Speaker 2: It was me and Laura, and so did our third attorney,
23:27
Speaker 2: Josh Tepfra That all three of us got this news
23:30
Speaker 2: feed at the same time, a case of a juvenile
23:34
Speaker 2: who had confessed to a crime he didn't commit and
23:36
Speaker 2: who was trying to reopen his case through a new hearing.
23:40
Speaker 1: At the hearing, Jesse Hernandez takes the stand for the
23:43
Speaker 1: first time. Jesse testifies that Daniel's confession didn't match what
23:47
Speaker 1: actually happened to him and his friends. Daniel's alibi witnesses
23:51
Speaker 1: also testified, saying that they were with Daniel on the
23:55
Speaker 1: night of the crime, and remember doctor Richard Leo One
23:58
Speaker 1: of the experts from that falsecon profession conference in El
24:01
Speaker 1: Paso back in two thousand and six. He took the
24:03
Speaker 1: stand to and testified that Daniel's statement showed every sign
24:08
Speaker 1: of being false. There was even evidence introduced that two
24:11
Speaker 1: other known gang members had threatened Mando Lazo's life right
24:15
Speaker 1: before the shooting, and they'd bragged about killing him afterwards.
24:19
Speaker 1: When one of those two gang members was called to testify,
24:22
Speaker 1: he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination and
24:25
Speaker 1: refused to answer anything.
24:27
Speaker 2: And Joe Spencer also mounted again a direct attack on
24:31
Speaker 2: the integrity of the detective who had taken the false
24:35
Speaker 2: witness statements, who had almost gotten a false confession from
24:39
Speaker 2: the crime victim, and who had gotten the confession from Daniel.
24:42
Speaker 2: And one of the things he discovered, which is pretty incredible,
24:46
Speaker 2: was that one of the tactics that this detective had
24:51
Speaker 2: used in another case was that he would enter an
24:54
Speaker 2: interrogation room dressed in a smock. Now, why would anybody
24:58
Speaker 2: wear a smock? Well, he tried to mislead the suspect
25:04
Speaker 2: into thinking that they were speaking to a medical person,
25:08
Speaker 2: a doctor, unbelievable, instead of a police officer. And when
25:12
Speaker 2: the judge heard that evidence, his eyes rolled back into his.
25:16
Speaker 1: Head, and eventually we had an opportunity to file an
25:19
Speaker 1: amicus brief about the unreliability of Daniel's confession and add
25:23
Speaker 1: that to everything that Joe Spencer was already doing in
25:25
Speaker 1: the courtroom, and we emphasized how vulnerable a teenager like
25:29
Speaker 1: Daniel would have been to making a false confession. The
25:32
Speaker 1: hearing concluded, and then we waited. The judge took nine
25:36
Speaker 1: months to reach a decision, but on August seventeenth, twenty twelve,
25:41
Speaker 1: Judge Sam Madrano recommended that Daniel Viegues receive a new trial.
25:47
Speaker 1: Judge Modrano concluded that Daniel's trial lawyer had provided ineffective
25:51
Speaker 1: assistance by failing to investigate or introduce evidence of the
25:54
Speaker 1: unreliability of Daniel's confession. Now, Judge Modrano's decision was a
25:59
Speaker 1: fabulous victory, but it was only a recommendation. It had
26:03
Speaker 1: to be adopted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
26:06
Speaker 1: It was at that point that we joined the team
26:08
Speaker 1: to craft a presentation to that court that we hoped
26:12
Speaker 1: it would accept. As that appeal process is ongoing, Daniel's lawyer,
26:17
Speaker 1: Joe Spencer, asked Judge Madrano to free Daniel on bond
26:21
Speaker 1: let him go home. As the appeal process dragged on,
26:25
Speaker 1: and on January fourteenth, twenty fourteen, after nearly two decades
26:30
Speaker 1: in prison, Daniel was released on bond, straight into the
26:34
Speaker 1: arms of John Mambella, who drove him home in a
26:37
Speaker 1: brand new, shiny red convertible.
26:41
Speaker 2: It was almost like a chick or tape parade. Daniel
26:45
Speaker 2: was free.
26:46
Speaker 1: He got started living right away. As soon as he
26:48
Speaker 1: was released. He got married to a woman named Amanda,
26:51
Speaker 1: whom he'd met when he was behind bars, and in
26:54
Speaker 1: short order they had two beautiful children. But even though
26:58
Speaker 1: Daniel was walking out of the prison into the arms
27:00
Speaker 1: of a crowd of supporters, that could have all been
27:02
Speaker 1: taken away from him.
27:03
Speaker 2: And the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas is a
27:06
Speaker 2: court that has a reputation of being hostile to defendant's claims,
27:12
Speaker 2: especially claims regarding their actual innocence, So it was anything
27:16
Speaker 2: but a sure thing that Judge Medrano's decision would be affirmed.
27:21
Speaker 1: Long story short, the High Court affirms Judge Madrano's ruling. Yes,
27:26
Speaker 1: Daniel Viegs deserves another trial and a chance to prove
27:30
Speaker 1: his innocence. But the DA didn't get around to the
27:33
Speaker 1: new trial until twenty eighteen. So for four years Daniel's
27:38
Speaker 1: living with a sword hanging over his head. If he
27:40
Speaker 1: goes to trial and loses, he'll be back in prison
27:43
Speaker 1: for life. This is enormously stressful. The months and years
27:48
Speaker 1: are ticking by. Daniel's starting a family. He's working at
27:52
Speaker 1: John Manbella's construction company, tasting freedom and cherishing it. What
27:57
Speaker 1: does the DA do? He asks Daniel to enter an
28:01
Speaker 1: Alfred plea stay free as long as you plead guilty.
28:06
Speaker 2: It's such a tempting offer, especially to somebody who was
28:10
Speaker 2: locked up for a crime they didn't commit as a
28:12
Speaker 2: teenager and had to spend two decades or more in
28:16
Speaker 2: prison suffering under the weight of that wrongful conviction. But
28:21
Speaker 2: now Daniel's got other people. He has to think about,
28:24
Speaker 2: his wife and their children.
28:26
Speaker 1: Daniel considered the Alfred Plea option seriously because it meant
28:29
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't have to go back to trial. You
28:31
Speaker 1: would be a convicted murderer, but at least he would
28:33
Speaker 1: have his freedom. Of course, he was tempted to put
28:36
Speaker 1: the whole thing behind him, But Daniel lived in El Paso, Texas,
28:40
Speaker 1: and El Paso had become home to a small community
28:43
Speaker 1: of wrongly convicted individuals. Among that community was a man
28:47
Speaker 1: named Jason Baldwin. Now that's a name that true crime
28:51
Speaker 1: junkies might recognize because Jason Baldwin was a member of
28:54
Speaker 1: the West Memphis III, a group of three teenagers from
28:58
Speaker 1: Arkansas who had been a hues of the nineteen ninety
29:01
Speaker 1: three killings of three eight year old boys. One of them,
29:04
Speaker 1: Jesse miss Kelly, had falsely confessed and the three of
29:07
Speaker 1: them were convicted, two sentenced to life in prison, and
29:10
Speaker 1: the third, Damien Eccles, sent a death row in Arkansas.
29:14
Speaker 1: They fought their case for seventeen years. Steve and I
29:18
Speaker 1: were fortunate enough to join Damien Eckles' legal team at
29:20
Speaker 1: the very end, and they were freed only when the
29:23
Speaker 1: State of Arkansas made them an offer. All three of
29:27
Speaker 1: you enter, Alfred, please say you're guilty of these crimes,
29:32
Speaker 1: and then we'll let you out. Now this is an
29:34
Speaker 1: easier decision when it came to Damien, he was on
29:37
Speaker 1: death row, but Jason, who had been sentenced to life
29:39
Speaker 1: in prison, wrestled with it. He didn't want to admit
29:42
Speaker 1: to a crime. He didn't commit even to secure his
29:44
Speaker 1: own freedom. Ultimately, he chose to accept the Alfred plea
29:48
Speaker 1: to help save Damien's life.
29:51
Speaker 2: One of the consequences of entering an Alford plea is
29:54
Speaker 2: that you can't get compensated through state compensation statutes. The
29:58
Speaker 2: Alfred plea is considered a plea of guilty, and that
30:02
Speaker 2: disqualifies you from recovering any compensation.
30:06
Speaker 1: Prosecutors dangle freedom so long as they can secure guilty
30:10
Speaker 1: please in return and prevent themselves from being sued down
30:13
Speaker 1: the road. It's a tool of injustice that happens way
30:16
Speaker 1: too often. It was used in the Robert Davis case,
30:19
Speaker 1: it was used in the West Memphis three case, and
30:21
Speaker 1: it almost worked on Daniel Viegas. You see, Jason Baldwin
30:25
Speaker 1: had moved from Arkansas to Texas, where he became involved
30:29
Speaker 1: in a wrongful conviction advocacy organization called Proclaim Justice and
30:34
Speaker 1: joined John Manbela's fight to free Daniel Viegas. Jason Baldwin
30:38
Speaker 1: became one of his closest friends and confidants. As Daniel
30:41
Speaker 1: wade whether to accept that Alfred play.
30:43
Speaker 3: Daniel told me, Johnny goes, if I take this deal,
30:46
Speaker 3: all this work that you did is for nothing. So
30:49
Speaker 3: we called Jason Bodwin for his advice, and he said,
30:54
Speaker 3: let's talk about it before you decide anything. And he
30:57
Speaker 3: tells Daniel, Noah, I can't tell you what to do.
31:01
Speaker 3: You have a family. But in my case, you know
31:05
Speaker 3: there's no way that I would do it again. It
31:09
Speaker 3: bothers me every day of my life. So just think
31:13
Speaker 3: hard about this because it could bother you the rest
31:16
Speaker 3: of your life too.
31:17
Speaker 1: And with Jason Baldwyn's counseling and support, Daniel Viegas found
31:22
Speaker 1: his courage and turned down that unjust Alfred plea offer.
31:27
Speaker 1: He decided to go to trial.
31:31
Speaker 2: The stakes were so high at this trial. Daniel had
31:35
Speaker 2: tasted freedom, he was starting to live the kind of
31:39
Speaker 2: life he had always dreamed of. But here he was
31:42
Speaker 2: back in that court, a place where the last time
31:46
Speaker 2: had ended in a conviction.
31:49
Speaker 1: Now this trial was very different because this time Daniel's
31:54
Speaker 1: team of lawyers we succeeded in getting his confession thrown
31:58
Speaker 1: out as involunteer and coerced and without that confession there
32:03
Speaker 1: is precious little evidence to go on. The state presented
32:07
Speaker 1: a case to the jury. The jury deliberated and in
32:09
Speaker 1: October of twenty eighteen, a verdict came out.
32:14
Speaker 2: The State of Texas versus Daniel Viegus.
32:16
Speaker 1: Now, this is one of the highest profile cases in
32:19
Speaker 1: the history of El Paso at this point, and the
32:22
Speaker 1: courtroom is packed with supporters of Daniel Viegas. Jason Baldwin
32:26
Speaker 1: of the West Memphis three is there, the local wrongful
32:29
Speaker 1: conviction advocacy organization Proclaimed Justice is there, and John and
32:34
Speaker 1: Lucy Membella sitting in the front row right behind Daniel
32:37
Speaker 1: and his lawyers. They are there.
32:39
Speaker 2: And when the judge asks Daniel to stand up for
32:42
Speaker 2: the verdict, his knees buckle. He almost collapses. He has
32:46
Speaker 2: to hear whether this beautiful life that he has started
32:50
Speaker 2: reconstructing is going to continue, where is it going to end?
32:55
Speaker 1: Daniel's lawyers actually have to help him stand up, and
32:58
Speaker 1: he was able to stand just long enough to hear
33:02
Speaker 1: the verdict.
33:02
Speaker 2: We the jury finally defended Daniel viegis not guilty of friend.
33:09
Speaker 1: Not guilty.
33:11
Speaker 2: And the courtland rupts in a sound of both cheers
33:16
Speaker 2: and incredible relief.
33:19
Speaker 1: And then he collapsed under the weight of a lifetime's
33:22
Speaker 1: worth of fighting. He had finally been exonerated. It was over.
33:28
Speaker 3: It was a feeling that I don't think I'm ever
33:31
Speaker 3: going to feel again in my life.
33:38
Speaker 4: Hey, Daniel, is that you? Yeah? Tell me about your kids?
33:42
Speaker 4: How many kids you got? Now? There's four all together.
33:44
Speaker 4: The man of my wife, to me short was pregnant.
33:46
Speaker 4: I remember, I told him, man, I'm told to be
33:48
Speaker 4: a dead and right at that time, my daughter got
33:51
Speaker 4: pregnant too, and I was like, oh man, you know,
33:53
Speaker 4: I'm pretty young to be a grandfather.
33:56
Speaker 1: What do you tell your kids about what happened to you?
33:59
Speaker 4: The two little one of the are too small to
34:01
Speaker 4: know about it. They don't understand yet. Like I love
34:04
Speaker 4: when they tell me life ain't fair. I tell him,
34:06
Speaker 4: tell me about the nineteen years in print, and tell
34:08
Speaker 4: me how life ran fair. Preenia Room, I know that
34:12
Speaker 4: the Wrongful Conviction podcast played an important role in your
34:16
Speaker 4: case too. Yes, Amanda, she's really into the Wrongful Conviction community, right,
34:21
Speaker 4: She's like the voted fans to Jason Plant. So when
34:25
Speaker 4: they came in with that offer flee, you know, they
34:27
Speaker 4: were just telling me by signing the sea the paper,
34:29
Speaker 4: that case is closed. So I was going to sign
34:31
Speaker 4: it almost and that's when Amanda jumped in and shea's like, no, no,
34:34
Speaker 4: I know all about this Alpha Please. You know Jason
34:36
Speaker 4: Plant told me about this. She educated me on that,
34:39
Speaker 4: and then that's when we decided not to take that
34:41
Speaker 4: pre deal.
34:50
Speaker 2: Daniel, You're an incredible human being. To see you as
34:55
Speaker 2: a free man at Innocence Network conferences, at events for
34:59
Speaker 2: proclaimed you justice, it makes my heart seek.
35:03
Speaker 1: You're a symbol of endurance. It's been our honor to
35:05
Speaker 1: know you and to tell your story today. Wrongful Conviction,
35:16
Speaker 1: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
35:19
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to
35:23
Speaker 1: our executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at Signal
35:26
Speaker 1: Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and
35:30
Speaker 1: Pope and additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Special
35:35
Speaker 1: thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing and for
35:38
Speaker 1: wrangling and writing like a mad woman. Our music was
35:41
Speaker 1: composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
35:45
Speaker 1: or Twitter at Laura Nywriter, and.
35:47
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
35:51
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongfulconviction podcast dot
35:54
Speaker 1: com and be sure to follow the show on Instagram
35:57
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction on Facebook, Get Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
36:02
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction