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535: #535 Ben Bowlin with Reynaldo Munoz · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:03 Speaker 1: On September eighth, nineteen eighty five, in Humble Park, Chicago, sixteen year old Bernaldo Munoz got into a fight outside a party round three am, and two of his friends, Ivan Mina and Bobby Garcia broke it up. About an hour later, Mena and Garcia were being rushed to the hospital with gunshot wounds, but only Garcia survived. Unfortunately, he could not describe the shooter. However, three weeks later, Disgrace Chicago detectives showed Bobby Garcia a lineup from which he confidently chose someone whom he should have been able to describe the night of the shooting. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongfol Conviction, where we have another story about known corrupt detectives. We're talking about Rinaldo Gavara and Ernest Halverson at a time when Halverson had another partner and Gavara was still just an officer with the gang Crimes Unit. However, their corrupt patterns and practices were already present at this time. Today we are with another one of their survivors, Rinaldo Munos Ray. Thanks for joining us today. You're welcome, and to help tell this story, we have a returning champion of these survivors, Jennifer Bonjean, welcome back. 00:01:41 Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. 00:01:42 Speaker 1: So, Ray, let's start with your life before all of this happened. 00:01:48 Speaker 2: Well. 00:01:48 Speaker 3: I was born in Chicago. I have two older sisters and an older brother. I'm the youngest. My siblings were born in Puerto Rico. I was born in Chicago. I grew up basically middle My mom and dad worked very hard, sometimes two jobs to provide for us. My siblings were straight A students. My brother has his own business. My older sister she's a GC you know. My younger sister has a certified CPA. She runs her tax business. Even myself, I just strayed the wrong direction. I grew up in a humble park environment. Most of the neighborhoods there was gang infestation, and my mom and dad they tried to deter from that, so we had to move from neighborhood to neighborhood to try to find somewhere better to live. But everywhere you go in a humble park there's gangs, so you had to deal with it. And sometimes guys would pick on you and try to tell you what you'd be or this or that, and then if you're not on nothing. 00:02:46 Speaker 4: They didn't want to believe that. Sometimes you would get jumped. 00:02:49 Speaker 3: Sometimes your life was in danger because if you lived in one area and you were not hooked up, then somebody else that lived in another area they was hooked up. There was the opposition would say, oh, this guy, he lives in neighborhood, he's a this or that. 00:03:02 Speaker 2: If you lived on this block and it was a Latin King block, you were a Latin King. 00:03:06 Speaker 3: Whether you were in it or whether you were not in it, they didn't care. So it's like the innocent always ended up paying the price. So when we moved to where I got hooked up at, I got jumped a couple of times over there, I got chased. So then I started hanging out with the guys in the neighborhood, and then you know, I became hooked up with the gang that I was with, you know. 00:03:28 Speaker 1: And that gang was called the Insane Unknowns. Unfortunately, as we have seen through our coverage of other cases out of Humboldt Park in particular, the Chicago police saw gang affiliation very much the same way as the gangs did, so, regardless of anyone's actual involvement, If there was any involvement at all, anybody and everyone could be lumped into the gang that was active in their neighborhood. And at the time of the investigation of this crime was penned on Ray, there were already a number of incidents that police thought were also associated with this gang. The Insane Unknowns. 00:04:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, they threw them in like three lineups. That's part of the big problem is that even people who avoided gang membership, if the police are already going to assume you are in a gang by virtue of what block you live on, These young Hispanic kids from Humble Park and these outlying areas were fungible. They were interchangeable, and that has to be incredibly demoralizing when you're already working so hard to take a path that your parents want you to in some cases, or that you know is good for you, and you're getting it from all ends, from the gang members in the community that are, like, you know, either harassing you or just sometimes it was about wanting to have friends, you know, because there was so much gang activity that having friends sometimes meant associating with gang members, and the police are going to assume you are anyway. 00:05:02 Speaker 1: So this is the context in which this investigation transpired in the aftermath of a shooting that occurred around four fifteen am on September eighth, nineteen eighty five. But let's rewind to a few hours before, on the evening of September seventh. 00:05:20 Speaker 3: Well, I was invited to this party. It was in the neighborhood. It was the older gentleman. His wife was throwing the party for him, and I was invited to one of my friend's mother. 00:05:29 Speaker 4: So it was not again related party. It was a family party. 00:05:33 Speaker 3: And my wife today Wanda, she lived in the neighborhood, so she was going to be at the party, so I was trying to hook up with her. So I get to the party. You know, they have live music, drinks and stuff and food. I had a couple of beers and then one of the guys that was in the band started pass out drinks, so he had like a trade and I went to grab a beer and the guy started talking crazy and I was like, okay, I'll buy my own beer. The guy started talking shit, oh, I beat your ass and all this and that. I'm like, listen, you're not gonna do nothing, go about your business and leave me the fuck alone and I just brusted off. He kept running his mouth, so I told my guy, I said, man, let's go outside. I don't want to be arguing and disrespecting these people's house. So we went to the front. I'm sitting down on the hood of a car. I need my business talking to my guy, and the guy comes around the back of the alley trying to snake me. So my guy's like, hey, watch out, so I jump off the car. He comes at me. So I hit the guy a couple of times and I come on the ground. He gets back up. He's very drunk, so he comes at me again and tries to wrestle me. I hit him a couple of times with an uppercut and he falls again. I put my knee on his chest and I say, listen, man, you're drunk. I said, take it easy, bro. 00:06:46 Speaker 1: And this fight happened around three am, over an hour before the shooting. The only reason that this altercation is relevant is this the two eventual shooting victims in this case, I haven't made it. I'm Bobby Guria. They helped break the fight up. 00:07:02 Speaker 3: So the two victims break me and the guy up, so they're like, are you okay this and that. I'm like, yeah, I'm good man, do this not he's the one that's all drunk and started talking shit. I didn't even want to start no trouble with. They're like, oh whatever. So then the guy somebody else gives him a ride, so as he's leaving, he's like, I'll be back, motherfucker. 00:07:20 Speaker 4: So then he leaves. 00:07:22 Speaker 3: So we're there talking and then go around the neighborhood trying to find some weed. Nobody was out, so then my guy's like, hey, I'm tired, I'm gonna go home. 00:07:30 Speaker 4: I'm like all right. 00:07:31 Speaker 3: Then I proceeded to walk to my house, which maybe about five minutes give her take. So when I get to my house and I'm like, hey, mom, i'm home, she starts telling me, Oh, why you getting home so late? 00:07:41 Speaker 4: Oh, you smell like liquor. 00:07:42 Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I had some beer and stuff, and I went to my room and I went to sleep. 00:07:48 Speaker 1: And this is the same account that Rey has maintained since nineteen eighty five that he was holed by three thirty a up and then around four twenty am on West Potomac Avenue around the corner from the party, Bobby Garcia was shot in the leg and Ivan Mana was fatally shot. 00:08:06 Speaker 2: The way the evidence came in is that they go to the car get some cigarettes and it does seem that they were going to come back to the party and on their way back, somebody is in the gangway and Claire ambush, Ivan Mana is shot, Bobby Garcia is shot. Nine one one is called kind of almost immediately, and within minutes of the shooting, there's a nine to one one call from a woman who talks about seeing these guys running to a silver Cadillac that might have been responsible. She describes them, she gets like a plate number, and the question of whether that is just a coincidence is Unfortunately, when detectives don't do good investigations, it's hard to really know one way or the other. But that car was pulled over, they were detained for a period of time, and the reports suggest that they were brought to the hospital to be viewed by Bobby Garcia and that he didn't identify them. However, we'd opposed one or two of the guys that were in that car and they said that they were never brought to Bobby Garcia or viewed by Bobby Garcia. 00:09:16 Speaker 1: However, the reports that Jennifer just mentioned were not made by the initial detectives on scene, Johnson and Jaglowski. 00:09:25 Speaker 2: And one thing I've noticed about these Area five cases is that sometimes the detectives that went out to the scene, the initial field investigations, they seem to be the guys that were not necessarily going to do the dirty work that someone like Gavarro would do. So I have always found that those initial reports, to the extent they are reliable at all, they're the most reliable because those are the guys that aren't going to come in and close the case just on any kid. In any event, Bobby Garcia told the first responding detectives he could not see anything and could not provide a description, couldn't even say ethnicity, nothing. All the objective evidence that we have about the circumstances of the shooting would not lead anyone to think that Bobby Garcia, who is going to be focused of course on his friend he's getting injured, that being able to see the offender would have been very difficult. The offender is like in some gangway shooting in the dark. 00:10:22 Speaker 1: The term gangway refers to the narrow walkways between houses, and the shooter's obscured vantage point is supported by the bullets having traveled from right to left, and it appears that after questioning folks who had been at the party, the police had heard about this fight between the guy from the band and Ray, whose nickname was Scoopy. They had also heard that Ivan and Bobby had broken this fight up. 00:10:47 Speaker 2: Listen, that's a reasonable lead to explore. You know, you hear about a fight at the party, maybe that could potentially be a motive. Let's go check it out. 00:10:55 Speaker 3: The following day, some police come and pick me up and start questioning me about the party. So I'm like, yeah, I went to the party. I told him I had to fight. Yeah, I don't have I didn't have anything to hide. 00:11:05 Speaker 2: And Ray's like, yeah, Bobby and Ivan split us up. I don't have any beef with Bobby or Ivan, Like the fight was with someone totally different. So they bring him back home. 00:11:14 Speaker 1: So it seems that Ray's story checked out for Johnson and Jawlowski, But then Ernest Halverson and his partner at the time, Edwin Dickinson, took over along with at that time Gain Crimes Unit officer Rinaldo Gulvara, and what. 00:11:31 Speaker 2: I suspect, in keeping with their pattern, is that they look at the reports and instead of just sort of starting from scratch, they're just like, ah, who seems like you know someone we can put this on that's already in the reports. And they figure out that there's this fight between one of the guys in the band and Scooby and Ray. Shortly before he is arrested, he's walking down the street and Govera picks him up and doesn't realize he is Scooby. He throws him in the back seat of his car and says, listen, I'm looking for a guy named Snake Scooby. Uh g man. He doesn't realize he has Scooby. Gavera knows all the gang members right in these neighborhoods. The fact that he doesn't know Ray tells you that Ray is not someone who is very active, and Ray obviously does not say, oh, hey, I'm Scooby. 00:12:30 Speaker 3: So Gavera proceeded to ask me about myself and two other guys, and I told him I didn't know those guys. 00:12:37 Speaker 4: I didn't know who you were talking about. 00:12:39 Speaker 2: And Gavara is like, oh, really like socks him in the face in the back seat of his car. 00:12:43 Speaker 3: He gave me, you know, he slagged me and my mom. I see, He's like, you're gonna tell me what I want to know or what else. 00:12:48 Speaker 2: They take him to Rival gang Territory. 00:12:51 Speaker 3: He took me out. There was a bunch of Imperial gangsters out there. Then he uncuffed one of my hands. He had the other cuff and he's like, tell me what I want to know. I'm going to feed you to the dogs. I said, man, I don't know anything. A couple of the guys that were there, they started spitting on me and some of them got sucker punches behind my head. All I was worried about if he did let me go, which way was I going to run to try to get away? And they're like, you know, you think I'm playing with you. I'm like, man, I told you I don't know any of those guys. So then I called his bluff. He put the cuff back on me, put me back in the car, took me back to where he picked me up, and told me tell Scooby Snake and gee man, I'm looking for them. 00:13:41 Speaker 5: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 00:13:58 Speaker 1: Somewhere between hanging Ray out of the car on September tenth and raise later arrest on September twenty sixth, Gavarro found out that he had had Scooby in his car and unwittingly let him go. Meanwhile, viable leads were still coming in. 00:14:15 Speaker 2: About three weeks after the shooting. There's a nine to one to one call that comes in another one and someone says, there are these guys hanging out in the neighborhood. The guy that did the shooting is hanging out on this block. Gives a description, nicknames, and the police show up, find the guys, bring them to the twenty fifth district, which is that Area five. So they called Barby Garcia and they say, we want you to come down to Area five and look at a lineup. According to Helverson, Bobby Garcia says, no, I don't need to come look at a lineup. Actually, it's Ray Munos that did this. I know I didn't tell you that before, but I was scared for some reason which we don't know why never explains it. What's crazy about that is what was he just waiting for the police to randomly call him one day to tell what he knew that who killed his friend? It made it made no sense. But Halverson chose a polaroid of Ray Munos and Bobby Garcia says, yeah, I know who Scooby is. 00:15:16 Speaker 1: So Ray was arrested for murder and attempted murder at the age of sixteen. 00:15:22 Speaker 2: H I think about these parents a lot. They were not English speakers. Can you imagine trying to navigate a system. They would go down to the police station, They're told their son isn't there. They're sent to another police station. They're given the run around. 00:15:37 Speaker 1: He is a child, and their child was being moved around. After all, he was from the insane Unknown's territory, so he was sent over to the gang crimes unit. 00:15:48 Speaker 3: When I was tranferred to Beaumont and Western, Gavera was there. He said, schoolvieh. So they're already put this murder. I mean when they try for me to Baumont and Western, they put me in another lineup for another murder and three up tent murders. It was an unknowns that did that murders and those three attent murders. So they were trying to say, he's all known, let's put this other murder on him too, fuck him. 00:16:11 Speaker 1: But he was only identified for the one incident by Bobby Garcia. All of which begs the question, how does Bobby flip from not being able to describe a shooter to yes, it's definitely this sixteen year old Ray Munos, who we knew from the neighborhood. 00:16:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Bobby Garcia is deceased, so you know, we're piecing this together a little bit. But Garcia knew who Ray Munos was, a sixteen year old kid. It was never credible that Bobby Garcia was afraid to tell anybody. It made no sense. It's our belief that, consistent with the long pattern and practice of these detectives, that they probably told Garcia. Listen, we know who did it. The streets are talking. We know it was Scooby. I've been doing these cases a really long time, and what I have found over and over again that people, when they see their friends shot down dead in front of them, they want to believe the police. They want to know that the perpetrator has been caught and sometimes they're willing to go along with what the police are telling them, even though they never saw anything. I would also point out that there is some suggestion that Bobby Garcia was in a gang, and there's a certain level of coercion and fear that you don't go along and help me out with closing this case. Your next buddy. He ultimately identifies Ray Munos. But Ray made bond. I mean, his family pulled together every bit of money they could from other family members. Again, this was a family that was truly committed, believed in his innocence, and knew he was innocent. 00:17:47 Speaker 1: So Ray was out on bond from late September nineteen eighty five until his trial that following November. 00:17:54 Speaker 3: I had two States attorney on my case, and they were so keen to get rid of me that they did my t on Thanksgiving Day, November twenty fifth of nineteen eighty six and found me guilty within two hours. Bobby had tried testified against me and said that they had went to Ivan's car and as they were coming back from retrieving the cigarettes, and as they were going back towards the party towards se Keiler on Potomac, he said, I was crunched down and he pointed me out. He says that I came out in front of him ten to fifteen feet and I raised my hand and I began to shoot. But mind you, the evidence show that whoever shot him shot him from the gangway, you know, So things don't make sense. 00:18:32 Speaker 1: Bobby and Ivan were shot from right to left, not from the front, which was pointed out on cross as was his initial statement where he said he could not initially describe the shooter. He responded that he feared retaliation from the insane unknowns. Then Ivan's mother testified about hearing the gunshots around four fifteen am, calling nine to one one and finding Ivan fatally shot in the street. But then Ray and his parents took the stand to testify to his alibi. 00:19:04 Speaker 2: Obviously, when you have your parents backing you up, it's not always the strongest alibi because jury's will assume that your parents will lie for you. But he's been very consistent about what time he got home that night. 00:19:16 Speaker 3: I left the party at three twenty, give her a take, and they got shot at four something, So mind you, I was already at home sleeping. 00:19:27 Speaker 2: There was a rebuttal witness who testified under very suspicious circumstances. She had never said anything about having seen anything, never implicated Scooby or Ray. 00:19:37 Speaker 3: Five was that she said she seen me and two of my guys coming out of the alley towards where the party was. 00:19:43 Speaker 1: But no one else at the party saw Ray after three twenty am let alone after the shooting, or with two other guys. 00:19:50 Speaker 2: And again not really anything else, really no real corroboration to this. But we are talking about the mid eighties. Gangs have a strangle on the communities. There's a lot of gang fear. You have prosecutors tapping into that gang fear. 00:20:06 Speaker 4: They made me look like a real monster. 00:20:08 Speaker 3: They told the jury that I was a gang member and this vicious killer. That I didn't want anybody taking my phone, and that the two victims took my fun when they separated me from this fight, and that that made me angry and stuff like that, so that that was the motive for me to shoot these guys, and the jury just ate it up and believed it. 00:20:28 Speaker 2: He is convicted. He sentenced to a total of sixty years for the murder and the attamp murder. 00:20:34 Speaker 3: It was unbelievable, you know, my parents were screaming, my siblings. When I got found guilty and I went to the penecentrary, my wife was three months pregnant. 00:20:44 Speaker 4: It was. 00:20:47 Speaker 3: It's real hectic getting found guilty for something you didn't do. It was like the world came down. The judge, I had a real jack off judge. He gave me a consecutive sentence, meaning that he wanted me to do forty years for the murder and twenty years for the attempted murder, so i'd had to do half of both sentences. So I did a total of thirty years. I ended up going to Joliet. I stayed there for ten years because you had to do ten years behind the wall until you got transferred to a medium, which was Danville. And then I got tranferred to Ileinois River. It was closer for my parents to go visit me and stuff and my wife and I did a couple of years there, and then I got tranferred to Dixon Correctional and I did most of my time in Dixon. The anything that I did while I was there, I educated myself, you know, and I kept busy. Educate yourself, learn about yourself, stay focused, and try to get. 00:22:07 Speaker 4: Out and survive out of that unknown. 00:22:09 Speaker 3: World, because that's a whole different world in there, and some of us don't make it out of life. It's unfortunate for some of the guys that are innocent had to die in there and not proving their innocence. 00:22:21 Speaker 1: Raised direct appeals in the late eighties and throughout the nineties, as well as his first post conviction petition in two thousand and one. These were all denied, so we focused on obtaining some kind of new evidence. 00:22:34 Speaker 3: Throughout my incarceration, I was always trying to find information about my case and documents because I knew that there was more out there about my case that I didn't see other than when my lawyer showed me. I knew that I wasn't guilty of this crime, so I said, there has to be something else. 00:22:52 Speaker 2: It starts doing for your requests, and eventually, in two thousand and five, he starts getting some hadweight with that. He's getting four responses. He's getting some police reports, but they're heavily redacted. Good chunks of it are blacked out. He's trying to make sense of it, and he gets a report that he's never seen before, and it's a report that is prepared by Halverson after he's been charged, and the names are all blacked out, but you can piece together that it appears as if a witness has come in to say, wait a second, I saw the shooting. I know who Scooby is because I work in the neighborhood and it's not him. I know that kid, and I know the kid that I did see do the shooting. So this report gets made. There's an inventory list when police reports go into the investigative file. It never made its way into that file. It never made its way to the criminal justice system. And it is a report prepared by Haliverson. Essentially, he and his partner Dickinson were responsible for ensuring that that report made its way to the criminal justice system. It is classic Brady material, meaning it is exculpatory. It is material, and it should have been made available to him to use in his defense, and instead it was concealed. 00:24:04 Speaker 1: So now Ray was trying to get a hold of the unredacted report. 00:24:08 Speaker 3: But again I had a jag off judge, my trial judge to him, and I would submit paperwork requesting these documents and he would deny them. 00:24:16 Speaker 4: So I would try to go. 00:24:17 Speaker 3: Through the Freedom from Information Act. I would write to the police station anywhere that I could try to get these documents, and every time I would get denied. So then I started thinking about trying to hire an investigator, and I spoke to my sister Oilier to see if you can get an investigator to try to help me get these documents. 00:24:36 Speaker 2: And I think in two thousand and seven, this investigator ultimately gets unredacted copies. 00:24:42 Speaker 1: So, in addition to the drop leads from the Silver Cadillact that were allegedly ruled out by Bobby Garcia, this unredacted police report from Halverson tells the story about a potential suspect nicknamed Shorty. 00:24:57 Speaker 2: There was this butcher in the neighborhood walking home on the night of the shooting and sees Shorty with a weapon right before the shots. And he knows this kid, Shorty, because he hangs out in front of this store where he's a butcher. And we know that he ultimately told Halverson about what he saw, and Halverson shit cans it. 00:25:17 Speaker 1: So he files a post conviction motion with this bombshell Brady material and it's denied in two thousand and eight, but in twenty ten, it was remanded for a hearing on appeal, and he received some pro bono help around twenty fourteen. Unfortunately that ended up not being so helpful. 00:25:37 Speaker 2: I've had a couple of clients, Ray is amongst them, that was represented by someone who was understood to be a competent lawyer who cared about wrongful convictions. And what I found to be the case, certainly for Ray and another client of mine, is that her style of trying to get relief was to basically go to the prosecutor and say, Hey, I think this guy I might be innocent, go investigate it. And I got about eight other cases that I want you to look at and let me know which one you want to reverse on. And then, because sometimes deals are made like that, the prosecutor's office will be like, Okay, we like this one, we'll reverse this one, and then everyone else is fucked. So there was no real litigation in Race case by his prior lawyer. His prior lawyer withdraws. It's never clear on the record why, but my guess is it has to do with the fact that the conviction integrity units, such as it was, was not willing to affirmatively vacate and she wasn't willing to litigate, And. 00:26:38 Speaker 1: By twenty sixteen, Cook County was touting its conviction Integrity Unit as a beacon of hope to those who knew all too well how unjust the system there a bit, I have. 00:26:49 Speaker 2: No reservations about saying what my experiences and what I saw, and the Conviction Integrity Unit at this time was horseshit. And when they did decide to reverse convictions, it seemed like it had nothing really to do with whether justice was served by that decision. Seemed to have a little bit more to do with favors and wheeling and dealing. And I've confronted the conviction Integrity Unit about this and Ray and another client's case. I was like, how are you making these decisions? It sure seems like it depends on who the lawyer is that these decisions are getting made, not based on whether your investigation showed that someone is actually innocent. So I was very clear on that, and frankly, I still don't want the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Cook County States Attorney's Office touching my cases. My experiences, they go out there and they try to fuck up your case. 00:27:42 Speaker 1: And we've seen that tread in municipalities all around the country where a case will be admitted for reinvestigation, everyone shares their files, and despite case upending evidence, nothing is done. The case goes back to court where new witnesses can be core first interviewees, words can be misconstrued, or years can simply be wasted away while the wheels of justice or operating at a snail's pace, And we have to ask who was this for? What agenda does this serve? 00:28:15 Speaker 2: We going to do a whole podcast on this. They take grant money from places to have these conviction integrity units, and they really use them as an investigative arm to keep the conviction in place. Of all my exonerations, not a single one came from the conviction integrity unit doing an investigation and saying, yeah, we agree with you, you don't need to litigate. I always had to litigate. I've wrecked up quite a few exonerations. And the fact that not once has the Cook County State's Attorney's office initially agreed that one of my cases required that result. I always was forced to fight them, says everything. 00:28:53 Speaker 1: So Ray's conviction remained in place through his parole hearing in twenty sixteen, where it was finally represent by Jennifer Bonjean and Ashley Cohen, and Ray refused to bend the knee for this parole board. 00:29:06 Speaker 3: I did admit to anything and told him that I didn't commit this murder, and I got paroled. 00:29:11 Speaker 4: We stood in Chicago for. 00:29:12 Speaker 3: A few days, so we celebrated my release at my niece's house. They did a party for me, and then we had a gathering at my sister's house, Noelia, who lives downstairs from my mom and dad's house, and Jenny and Ashley came over. We had family there, my parents and my siblings, my cousins, and my nieces and nephews, some of my wife's family. 00:29:35 Speaker 2: He's married to the woman who was his high school sweetheart at the time, Wanda, and they had a child together. They divorced, they were with other people, she had two other kids, and then they reconciled. So they have a really nice story. And she's a wonderful person. 00:29:50 Speaker 3: She's my childhood sweetheart. She's the mother of our oldest daughter. I couldn't have her just doing time with me and not living her life. But she came back and to my life. 00:30:01 Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, while Ray was still in prison, they remarried, and then when he was paroled, they were finally united along with their daughter, who was in utero when Ray was convicted. 00:30:13 Speaker 2: It's your whole life, you know. You have an infant going in when you're seventeen and you come out to a thirty year old woman. 00:30:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, she's here with us. I have two step kids, which I considered on my kids as well. I have a twenty five year old girl who lives with us, and our twenty year old boy who lives with us. Borrowedest daughter she lives with my son Ala and our grandbaby. So we have a beautiful granddaughter that's just a spinning image of her when she was a baby. 00:30:40 Speaker 1: We gotta imagine Ray, You're pouring all your love into this child. Yeah, yeah, I hope it helps with it. 00:30:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, it does. 00:30:50 Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Jenny and Ashley began the legal battle to clear Rai's name. This culminated in an evidentiary hearing in the summer of twenty twenty one, starting with the Brady violation involving the identification of Shorting, which they supported with an affidavit from the witness the butcher who still supports the statement that he gave Halverson all those years ago. But that's not all. 00:31:16 Speaker 2: There was another piece of Brady material that I will just quickly point out that there was a shooting of a guy named roy Croft. It was the same weapon involved. They were able to connect the ballistics, and it was in the same area. The shootings occurred a couple weeks apart, and when Halverson was investigating that murder, he put Ray in a photo array again, just throwing him in there, and the witness was like, no, I know, Scooby, he wasn't the shooter. So ultimately Ray is not charged for that. But they never disclosed to Ray Munos's defense attorney that the weapon that was used to kill Ivan Mayna was used in another murder. Like that's exculpatory, you can go find out, you can investigate. That's a lead that the police didn't follow, but you should have at least given him the opportunity to have his attorney and investigators follow that. 00:32:08 Speaker 1: In addition to the Brady material, they presented pattern and practice evidence of misconduct that had been collected over time by Bonjin Law Group and others, where the focus had previously been on Govara and Ray's. 00:32:21 Speaker 2: Case has become exceedingly important because it's the first case where we had a judge saying that this pattern in practice wasn't just a Ragavra problem. His partner was unquestionably engaging in the same type of misconduct that resulted in the wrongful convictions of other people. 00:32:40 Speaker 1: So they put Ray on the stand as well as a man who had been beaten by Halverson into a false confession, and then a retired detective named Bill Dorsh whose signature was forged by Halverson in an entirely different case. Our audience might recall dors from our coverage of Fabian Santiago. 00:32:59 Speaker 4: That's my cousin. 00:33:00 Speaker 2: What I know. Isn't that crazy? 00:33:02 Speaker 1: Or maybe not so crazy? Considering that they both fell into the crosshairs of Ernest Halverson, who by the time of this hearing was deceased and unavailable for testimony. But thankfully Jenny had already had Halverson under oath in twenty sixty We. 00:33:18 Speaker 2: Were able to present Halverson's testimony at Ray's hearing via a prior deposition that I had taken of him in Armando Serrano's case, and he was another Gavera frame up case. That was my first Goavera case. I put Gavera on the stand in his case, me and Russell Ainsworth, who represented the co defendant. Together we were the first lawyers that were there when Gavara invoked the fitth Amendment and he's never come off. So during our Motto Serrano's Civil Rights action, we deposed Ernie Halverson, who was still alive at the time, and I confronted him with the allegations of Ray Munos, including whether or not he fabricated the identification testimony of Bobby Garcia, whether he suppressed exculpatory material, all of that, and Halverson not just Gavara. Halverson invoked his fit the Amendment right to remain silent to every single question that was asked of him, and that was presented during the post conviction hearing. 00:34:19 Speaker 1: And so on February twenty second, twenty twenty two, Judge Sophia Atcherson issued her ruling vacating the conviction and ordering a. 00:34:27 Speaker 2: New trial, and the Circuit Court judge issued a fifty four page decision finding that he was actually innocent, that Halverson and Gavera engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct that resulted in this wrongful conviction that there had been two separate Brady violations and that his constitutional rights were violated at every turn. And what was really compelling about this decision is that usually judges don't want to go out on a limb and make decisions that they don't need to make. She could have found that he was entire to a new trial on a single claim and left everything alone. But she went out of her way to find that his constitutional rights were violated on every claim we raised. 00:35:12 Speaker 4: It was amazing. It was like the world was lifted off my shoulders. 00:35:18 Speaker 3: Finally, I said, you know, it's like I believe, you know, it's in God's time. 00:35:28 Speaker 4: It's not our timing. 00:35:29 Speaker 3: No matter what happens in life, nobody knows what's gonna happen, when, or why or how. But God, that's the only one that has purpose. And anything that happens in our life, no matter where you come from or how you raise, anything could happen to anybody at any given moment. 00:35:50 Speaker 1: It's pretty wild to see how all of these moving parts finally come together to deliver long overdue justice, Like how Jennifer Bongjin had the forethought to ask Halverson about Ray's case in an unrelated case before he died, or that she had worked for years to be in a position to do that, or how the breedy materials were finally uncovered despite the state's best efforts, or that this was all revealed in front of a circuit judge that wasn't going to let the state wiggle free. So now they had to decide whether or not they'd go forward with another trial or drop the charges. 00:36:28 Speaker 2: They had them coming back and forth from court for like nine months, and I was very disappointed with the Cook County State's Attorney's office at the time, because despite it all, they're like, Okay, well, maybe we'll just try to put Bobby Garcia's testimony into evidence through a transcript. And I was like, how could you possibly rely on this? It was such bad faith. And the circuit court judge I think, I'm just reading, you know, into her expressions and her statements on the record, But she seemed befuddled that after all this, you were just going to try to stand on the same bad evidence. I don't know what happened there. Eventually they saw the air of their ways and dismiss the case. And then he received a certificate of innocence without much pushback at that point. 00:37:14 Speaker 1: That was April twenty twenty three. He received state compensation, but they're still waiting on the civil suit that they have filed that made that's over two years ago. In whatever amount of billible hours are footed by Illinois taxpayers. 00:37:30 Speaker 3: All the money they're spending on these attorneys to protect the scum, to say the least, they should invest that money into finding the real killers behind all these cases that were wrongfully convicted so they could bring closure to victims families. The state's attorneys and the city don't give a reds ask about them, us or anybody, and they continue to protect these people and spending, like you said, taxpayers money, and it's going to get worse. It's going to be in the billions of dollars when it's all over that and done. 00:38:01 Speaker 1: And with that, Ray, thank you so much for sharing your story and getting it out to the world with us. Today, we're going to go to our closing statements here and we want to give the last words to you. So this is Rinaldo Munos and Jennifer Boonjee. 00:38:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, Ray's case is a very special case to me, obviously, we fought really hard. We had a full hearing that again resulted in a really nice ruling from a circuit court judge who acknowledged the miscarriage of justice. We don't always get that, and I think it was important for him to hear that. I wish it had happened earlier. I think his case exemplifies how the system doesn't work in terms of not just the wrongful conviction occurring in the first place, but how long it takes to correct it. He did his entire sentence, but he learned of the exculpatory evidence over ten years before he's ultimately released. It shouldn't take that long. It shouldn't take a decade once you find out about something so stunningly exculpatory that unquestionably would have made a difference at your trial. That it still took ten years to get him out. That to me is a lesson about his case, one of the troubling lessons. But I guess one of the upsides is that he's a wonderful human being. He didn't let prison ruin him. He has worked, He's been a consistent presence in his daughter's life. He's a grandfather, you know, he's a really good family man. He's a good husband. They're wonderful people, and I'm really proud of him because I don't know if I could have come out and survived in this world having gone in at sixteen and not have been so bitter as to let it eat me up. And I don't know if I could have done it, but he's really been impressive. 00:39:53 Speaker 3: People need to wake up and stop voting for all these crooked politicians and learn about what's going on. Because I said this could happen to whoever. It doesn't matter where you come from. When there's corruption in the government, there's nothing that can be done unless we as a people put a stop to it. I'm just wandering for people and if they have a family member or an individual that's incarcerated. False league, don't give up. You need to find the truth. Everything that's done in darkness will come to the light no matter what, no matter how long it takes, the truth show Prevailed to fight, never give up. 00:40:35 Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Watis, and Jeff Cliber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason flamm Wrawful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. 00:41:15 Speaker 3: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.