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#554 Lauren Bright Pacheco with Pablo Velez · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: At two a m. On July fifteenth, two thousand four,
0:05
Speaker 1: a Houston pool hall emptied into its parking lot along
0:08
Speaker 1: with a young man named Jason Wooey and nineteen year
0:11
Speaker 1: old Adrian Pion was waiting outside to settle a score,
0:16
Speaker 1: but Pion and two friends only brought fists to a gunfight.
0:22
Speaker 1: Jason Wooley began to fire, as did two others who
0:25
Speaker 1: emerged near a gold Cadillac. Pion was wounded, while seventeen
0:30
Speaker 1: year old Emerson Boyorkeez, was fatally shot. Woolley and the
0:35
Speaker 1: other two assailants sped away in the Cadillac while witnesses
0:38
Speaker 1: jotted down the plate number, which led to the name
0:41
Speaker 1: on the registration twenty three year old Pablo Vallese, a
0:45
Speaker 1: trucker whose hobby of fixing up and reselling cars ultimately
0:49
Speaker 1: earned him thirty to life. This is wrongful conviction. The
1:01
Speaker 1: Fox Foundation is proud to support this episode of wrongful
1:04
Speaker 1: conviction and the work of After Innocence, a nonprofit that
1:08
Speaker 1: helps hundreds of people nationwide rebuild their lives after wrongful incarceration.
1:13
Speaker 1: Each year, innocent people are released after spending years behind
1:17
Speaker 1: bars for crimes they didn't commit. Nearly all of them
1:20
Speaker 1: leave prison with nothing more than the clothes on their backs,
1:23
Speaker 1: with no help or compensation from the state, as they
1:26
Speaker 1: face the steep challenges of rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment.
1:31
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1:36
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1:40
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1:45
Speaker 1: Since twenty sixteen, they've brought that help to more than
1:49
Speaker 1: eight hundred exoneries across forty six states, working tirelessly to
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Speaker 1: Learn more at a dash innocence dot org and join
2:03
Speaker 1: After Innocence to support exoneries as they rebuild their lives.
2:16
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Brt Pacheco. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction where
2:20
Speaker 1: we have a story out of Houston, Texas in which
2:23
Speaker 1: our guest's only crime was selling a car to an
2:26
Speaker 1: actual criminal. But before we get into all that, joining
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Speaker 1: us or is pro bono attorneys from Latham and Watkins,
2:33
Speaker 1: herman U and Alexandra van Dine. Thanks for having us, Yeah,
2:36
Speaker 1: thank you for featuring this story and calling in from
2:39
Speaker 1: the Texas Department of Corrections. Pablo Valles, thanks for joining us. So,
2:44
Speaker 1: Pablo grew up in an area of Houston called Houston Heights.
2:48
Speaker 2: I mean I grew up.
2:49
Speaker 3: Like most kids.
2:51
Speaker 2: Mom, dad, two older sisters. We all were pretty close
2:55
Speaker 2: in age, so we all went to the same schools,
2:58
Speaker 2: just doing the normal kid thing, going outside, plane, having
3:02
Speaker 2: a lot of friends. On the weekends, I would go
3:05
Speaker 2: work with my dad. My dad had two bars, so
3:08
Speaker 2: you know, as a kid, if I wanted video games
3:11
Speaker 2: or toys or anything, I have to go to my
3:13
Speaker 2: dad's bar on the weekends and clean up and fill
3:16
Speaker 2: the coolers up with beer and just all that stuff.
3:20
Speaker 1: And perhaps this work ethic led to an interest in
3:23
Speaker 1: trucking that was spurred on by one of his neighbors, Jackie.
3:27
Speaker 2: My neighbor Jackie, he was an older white man, cool
3:30
Speaker 2: as a fan man. Him and his wife doors. They
3:32
Speaker 2: lived three houses down from us, and across the street
3:35
Speaker 2: there was an empty lot, and as a kid, I
3:37
Speaker 2: would see him. He'd come in his atune with her
3:40
Speaker 2: a flatbed, and he'd always parked across the street and
3:43
Speaker 2: that empty lot, and we'd be over there in that lot,
3:46
Speaker 2: plane jumping onto the flatbed and what now. He didn't mind.
3:50
Speaker 2: As I got older, I was like, drive trucks. One
3:52
Speaker 2: day and he explained to me, get your DL book,
3:56
Speaker 2: study it, read it two or three times.
3:58
Speaker 4: If you have to.
3:59
Speaker 2: I did that and I ended up getting a CDL
4:01
Speaker 2: and just being able to be free. Man be away,
4:05
Speaker 2: be on that road, peaceful, especially out west in the mountains.
4:09
Speaker 4: Driving.
4:10
Speaker 2: I loved it, man, It's fun.
4:13
Speaker 1: But before his career he fell in love with cars.
4:17
Speaker 2: My dad's friends used to come over and they had motorcycles,
4:20
Speaker 2: and my dad had a smoke in the bended trends them.
4:24
Speaker 5: Started working at sixteen at the Mini keme Uffler. The
4:28
Speaker 5: owner there, Jimmy King, I'll never forget I went there.
4:31
Speaker 5: I had for an iron. He said, well, Dean, I
4:34
Speaker 5: how to work on brakes? And I said sometimes, and
4:37
Speaker 5: everybody busted out laughing.
4:39
Speaker 4: Right, he said sometimes, he said.
4:42
Speaker 5: You know what he said, man, just show up tomorrow.
4:45
Speaker 4: And he came in the job.
4:46
Speaker 2: Man.
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Speaker 5: They showed me how to well, they showed me how
4:48
Speaker 5: to fix breaks. They showed me how to work on vehicles,
4:52
Speaker 5: and I took flights from there. Man fell in level cars,
4:56
Speaker 5: sports cars. I would buy a car fixed it up,
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Speaker 5: man have it buy another woman piece it up in Samoa.
5:03
Speaker 1: And another neighbor of his, who is believed to be
5:07
Speaker 1: one of the assailants in this case, Ron Strandberg, purchased
5:11
Speaker 1: a car from Pablo.
5:12
Speaker 4: It was a ninety eight Cadillac Devil.
5:15
Speaker 5: Ron the guy actually sold the cars, and he lived
5:17
Speaker 5: down the street, on the same street as me, maybe
5:20
Speaker 5: about seven houses down from me. And so when I
5:23
Speaker 5: came up on a good deal on this Jaguar, I
5:25
Speaker 5: was like, man, I'm gonna sell this Cadillac. And Ronin
5:28
Speaker 5: had actually seen it, and he was like, I'll buy it.
5:31
Speaker 4: And ILL said, look, check this out.
5:33
Speaker 5: I'll make it even easier for you. Man, just finished
5:36
Speaker 5: paying it off. You don't got to pay me nothing,
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Speaker 5: just finish paint it off to this little car lot
5:40
Speaker 5: right here.
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Speaker 3: And he was like cool.
5:42
Speaker 5: And I never had time in the change the title because.
5:44
Speaker 1: I was never home every week Sunday through Friday. Pablo
5:48
Speaker 1: was on the road with his truck. So unfortunately the
5:51
Speaker 1: title of the car remained in his name through the
5:53
Speaker 1: incidents of July twelfth through the fifteenth, two thousand and four.
5:57
Speaker 1: Apparently alleged gang affiliates of On Strandberg, including a guy
6:02
Speaker 1: named Richard Shorty Cisnaro's, got into a fight with nineteen
6:06
Speaker 1: year old Adrian Pyon at a local club in Billiards
6:10
Speaker 1: Hall with a distractingly ridiculous name, the Perfect.
6:14
Speaker 5: Rack, the perfect rereg Now everybody from the neighborhoods in
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Speaker 5: the heights and surrounding neighborhoods, everybody goes is the perfect wreck.
6:23
Speaker 5: I wasn't a clevin person. I'd rather go change the
6:26
Speaker 5: whole on his you know what I mean, But his
6:29
Speaker 5: true he had been locked up before a gang related
6:32
Speaker 5: from what they said, and got into it with Richard
6:36
Speaker 5: Cis Narrows you know, and Jordie and they beat him
6:39
Speaker 5: on a Monday. He went to get back at them.
6:42
Speaker 1: According to Adrian Pion's girlfriend Claudia Beltron and her friend
6:46
Speaker 1: Nancy Elmanza, on Wednesday, July fourteenth, they were hanging out
6:50
Speaker 1: at the club on the lookout for Shorty or his
6:53
Speaker 1: known associates, Ron Strandberg and another guy named Jason Woolley.
6:57
Speaker 1: And while this confrontation was brewing in Houston. This is
7:01
Speaker 1: a Wednesday, so Pablo was on the road.
7:04
Speaker 6: Pablo has been training another guy, this guy LG. They
7:07
Speaker 6: have been driving through Oklahoma and Mississippi over a couple
7:11
Speaker 6: of days. Their generator has gone out. In Weatherford, Texas, we.
7:16
Speaker 2: Had a generator on the truck that ran the AC
7:20
Speaker 2: system so on our way till death. So we noticed
7:23
Speaker 2: we had a gas leak on the generator, so I
7:25
Speaker 2: called my dispatcher.
7:27
Speaker 4: He ended up.
7:27
Speaker 2: Calling another truck driver named Ray, and we met.
7:31
Speaker 4: Up in Weatherford, Texas.
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Speaker 2: We swapped loads. He continued to load back to Odessa,
7:36
Speaker 2: and I took his trailer back to Houston. We left
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Speaker 2: Weatherford around eight thirty pm that night and so back
7:43
Speaker 2: to Houston that it had him not been for that
7:45
Speaker 2: gas leak, I mean, I would never even went back
7:48
Speaker 2: to Houston. I'd have been on the road and killed Friday.
7:51
Speaker 6: So Pablo is sort of getting the trainee situated. He's
7:54
Speaker 6: getting home at one point thirty in the morning, getting
7:57
Speaker 6: a shower, getting some cereal, seeing his brothers, and then
8:01
Speaker 6: heads off to his ex girlfriend's house in sort of
8:04
Speaker 6: just the cab of the truck, which I imagine looked
8:06
Speaker 6: very interesting, sort of driving down the street and then
8:09
Speaker 6: in parallel, this other conflict is going on.
8:13
Speaker 1: At this point. Claudia and Nancy had spotted Jason Woolly
8:17
Speaker 1: and alerted Adrian pion So. At around the usual two
8:21
Speaker 1: am closing time, clubgoers were spilling out into the parking lot,
8:25
Speaker 1: including Claudia, Nancy, and Jason. Meanwhile, Adrian and his friends
8:30
Speaker 1: Stevan Rodriguez and seventeen year old Emerson Boyorkez pulled into
8:35
Speaker 1: the lot.
8:36
Speaker 6: And Emerson Biorkez is in the car. He's told you're seventeen, like,
8:39
Speaker 6: don't get involved in this. Stay in the car. They
8:42
Speaker 6: get out. Waiting for them is Jason Wooley in a
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Speaker 6: red shirt. He pulls a nine millimeter gun from his wasteland,
8:49
Speaker 6: shoots at the ground, and then someone pulls up in
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Speaker 6: this gold Cadillac Deville, the famous gold Cadillac. Other shooters
8:57
Speaker 6: come into this sort of ambush style attack. Adrian runs,
9:03
Speaker 6: Rodriguez runs.
9:05
Speaker 1: The police found three different calibers of shell casings at
9:08
Speaker 1: the scene and Wooly was responsible for one of them,
9:12
Speaker 1: and witnesses only described one other shooter who had emerged
9:16
Speaker 1: near the gold Cadillac, standing about five foot four, light hair,
9:21
Speaker 1: firing a long gun, wearing a blue shirt.
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Speaker 7: The descriptions of the blue shirted shooter right was a
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Speaker 7: gentleman who is shorter, stockier, heavier. That's not Pablo. Pablo
9:34
Speaker 7: is especially at the time, pretty in shape, tall guy.
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Speaker 7: He's like sick something.
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Speaker 1: It just doesn't fit, but it might fit a guy
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Speaker 1: nicknamed Shorty. Either way. Back to the shooting, Adrian Pyon
9:47
Speaker 1: was hit in the abdomen. He and Rodriguez took off running.
9:50
Speaker 1: Wooly chased them along with the blue shirted shooter, but
9:54
Speaker 1: eventually ran back to the gold Cadillac and sped off,
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Speaker 1: at which point Claudia Beltron Tilmanza allegedly chased after them
10:02
Speaker 1: in their.
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Speaker 6: Car, and Claudia and her friend Nancy, I believe, grab
10:07
Speaker 6: a bible and write down the license plate an eyeliner
10:11
Speaker 6: or something like that, and so they get the plate.
10:13
Speaker 6: But what everyone realizes during all of this paullabaloo as
10:18
Speaker 6: Adrian is shot but escapes, Rodriguez escapes, por Emerson bi
10:23
Speaker 6: Jorkez has gotten out of the car and he has
10:25
Speaker 6: been wounded fatally and dies And that is all happening
10:30
Speaker 6: in a parking lot in Houston at the perfect rack,
10:33
Speaker 6: and Pablo is elsewhere at his ex girlfriend's house having
10:37
Speaker 6: what sounds like a very serious conversation about their relationship.
10:40
Speaker 6: But it's just two totally different events happening in two
10:44
Speaker 6: totally different places.
10:46
Speaker 5: Ron calling me the night of the murder, you know,
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Speaker 5: asking me to the car's going, and you know, I
10:52
Speaker 5: have what happened as I man, I'll play you later,
10:55
Speaker 5: and I'm like, good, I'm just going to have you.
10:56
Speaker 5: Man said, I'm going to go to sleep, and I said,
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Speaker 5: I'm not taking a waight up night for the cups
11:01
Speaker 5: to show up because they're not biking come ride away,
11:04
Speaker 5: just because of carguts. So he was like all right.
11:07
Speaker 5: So the next morning he calls me back and he's like,
11:09
Speaker 5: did you report the carsons?
11:10
Speaker 4: And I'm not.
11:11
Speaker 5: He don't even worry about it, and I'm like, well,
11:13
Speaker 5: what happened? He's a man, It was nothing, And I
11:16
Speaker 5: was like whatever.
11:17
Speaker 7: You know.
11:18
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're telling me not to worried about it,
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Speaker 5: if you're not worried about it was gonna obviously, then
11:22
Speaker 5: it's not nothing serious. It's what I've got.
11:24
Speaker 1: But the license plate number led investigators to the gold Cadillac,
11:29
Speaker 1: which was still registered to Pablo Valaise. Now Pablo had
11:33
Speaker 1: never been booked before, so police pulled his driver's license
11:37
Speaker 1: photo in which Pablo was three years younger with a
11:40
Speaker 1: buzz cut, and they put it in a photo array
11:43
Speaker 1: for Claudia Beltron.
11:45
Speaker 7: The initial identification of Pablo by Claudia Beltran was a
11:48
Speaker 7: photo identification, right, It was just his face, no physical appearance,
11:53
Speaker 7: so she did not have the benefit of his overall
11:56
Speaker 7: body shaped type, and so she had no opportunity to
11:59
Speaker 7: recognize that Pablo looked nothing like the blue shirted shooter
12:03
Speaker 7: that she had seen in terms of the body shaved hype.
12:05
Speaker 1: And it turned out that the freezing of Claudia's alleged
12:09
Speaker 1: identification was very important, but that was not shared with
12:13
Speaker 1: the defense before trial, and we'll get into that later,
12:17
Speaker 1: but for now, investigators had obtained arrest warrants for both
12:21
Speaker 1: Jason Wooley and Pablo Vallez.
12:23
Speaker 5: I mean, swat was everywhere and there was at eight everywhere,
12:27
Speaker 5: guns drawn on me. And when they got me out
12:30
Speaker 5: the car, I'm like, man, what the hell, He's like,
12:33
Speaker 5: we got a photny warrant for you from murder and
12:35
Speaker 5: I'm like, from murder.
12:37
Speaker 4: Like, well, what did I do you know?
12:39
Speaker 5: Then of course they asked me all the questions and
12:41
Speaker 5: all that stuff, and I told them how much is
12:44
Speaker 5: my bond? And he's like twenty thousand and I'm like
12:46
Speaker 5: all right, well I'm getting out. I'm down on top
12:48
Speaker 5: of sea and he's like eight charges and I'm like, well,
12:52
Speaker 5: how many charges are?
12:53
Speaker 7: Like?
12:53
Speaker 5: He said, you know I saw with a daily weapon
12:56
Speaker 5: and murder, and I'm like, okay, sixty thousand, still bonding out.
13:01
Speaker 5: I'm done talking to you. He tried to give me
13:03
Speaker 5: not to bomb out, right, and he was like, well,
13:06
Speaker 5: why do you want to bond out if you didn't
13:07
Speaker 5: have nothing to do with this. You'll see the judge
13:10
Speaker 5: in the morning. He'll see that you had this. He'll
13:12
Speaker 5: let you go.
13:13
Speaker 1: As if only guilty people value their freedom.
13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm here on that. I just went to work
13:19
Speaker 2: every day and not knowing what was really going to happen.
13:22
Speaker 2: My attorney he kept telling me, don't worry about it,
13:24
Speaker 2: don't worry about it. If they don't have nothing on you,
13:26
Speaker 2: you weren't there. And so I had the mindset I
13:29
Speaker 2: didn't worry about it. Continued life, living my life, working,
13:33
Speaker 2: having fun, going to the racetrack, taking my cars down there.
13:37
Speaker 1: After all, he had an alibi. He'd been with his
13:40
Speaker 1: trucking trainee LG. Holmes until just shortly before the shooting,
13:44
Speaker 1: then at his mother's with his siblings before heading over
13:47
Speaker 1: to his girlfriend Annelle's in the cab portion of his
13:50
Speaker 1: eighteen wheeler. But as time war on pre trial, that
13:54
Speaker 1: relationship fizzled.
13:56
Speaker 5: She was mad and had a lot of anger towards
13:59
Speaker 5: Naki because she wanted to shadow down get married and.
14:03
Speaker 4: I didn't want to.
14:04
Speaker 5: I didn't want to because I had already got with
14:07
Speaker 5: somebody else.
14:08
Speaker 4: Right, So we ended up splitting up.
14:12
Speaker 2: But before that, when I got arrested and all that
14:14
Speaker 2: she had told me, and she said, man, don't worry
14:16
Speaker 2: about a year with me that night, so fast forward
14:19
Speaker 2: we split up. Of course, I told her like, hey,
14:21
Speaker 2: don't forget when I go to courtor, my attorney needs
14:24
Speaker 2: to talk to you, you know. And that's when she
14:26
Speaker 2: hit me with the oh, I don't I don't remember
14:30
Speaker 2: if it was that night, And I'm like, what the
14:33
Speaker 2: fuck you mean you don't remember? I'm at your house
14:35
Speaker 2: in a big red agent with her. What do you
14:37
Speaker 2: mean you don't remember? You know what I mean, that's
14:38
Speaker 2: the only time I ever went to your.
14:40
Speaker 4: House in this acing with her.
14:41
Speaker 1: And soon Pablo's new romantic partner became pregnant, so one
14:45
Speaker 1: can imagine that this may have strengthened Annelle's resolve not
14:49
Speaker 1: to participate in his defense, and perhaps Pablo's trial attorney,
14:53
Speaker 1: Ken MacLean would have done more to solidify Pablo's alibi.
14:57
Speaker 1: But he was enduring a may health crisis.
15:01
Speaker 7: His defense counsel is being treated for cancer. He's dying
15:04
Speaker 7: of cancer. He's obviously not going to be doing an
15:08
Speaker 7: adequate job representing Pablo. He didn't do the basic investigation
15:11
Speaker 7: of published phone records right, and we weren't able to
15:15
Speaker 7: retrieve all of his phone records given the passage of
15:17
Speaker 7: time when we were involved. But certainly his defense counsel
15:20
Speaker 7: would have been able to retrieve the phone records we did,
15:23
Speaker 7: and more that would have demonstrated his location, the infeasibility
15:27
Speaker 7: of him getting to the perfect rac and published communications
15:30
Speaker 7: with Nielle.
15:31
Speaker 5: When I was sitting and they bring in my guilphone
15:35
Speaker 5: and I'm like, what the pup?
15:37
Speaker 4: What is she doing here?
15:38
Speaker 5: And they're asking her questions and they're like, well, he
15:41
Speaker 5: said he was with you that night and this and whatnot,
15:43
Speaker 5: and she's like, no, he wasn't with.
15:44
Speaker 6: Me that night his ex girlfriend announce as we weren't
15:47
Speaker 6: even in contact in July, why would I have been
15:50
Speaker 6: talking to him all night? Put the phone record show
15:52
Speaker 6: that no, they were in fact in touch. They were
15:54
Speaker 6: talking at that time. So that would have, I think,
15:56
Speaker 6: lent credibility to Pablo's testimony as well in front of
15:59
Speaker 6: the jury. And then the phone records show he's not
16:02
Speaker 6: really in touch with any of these people, right, Like
16:05
Speaker 6: he's in touch with Strandberg once or twice related to
16:08
Speaker 6: this car because Strandberg suddenly needs to unload this car.
16:11
Speaker 7: Right.
16:12
Speaker 6: But when you look at the song records that the
16:14
Speaker 6: police did pull Ron and Jason, they're in touch. They're
16:17
Speaker 6: exchanging all these phone calls.
16:19
Speaker 7: Willy, Strandberg and Cin scenario exchanged twenty six calls before
16:24
Speaker 7: the shooting and then thirty eight calls after the shooting.
16:27
Speaker 6: Wow, that's right, And so you can tell the jury
16:31
Speaker 6: these guys are all talking to each other. Pablo Valz
16:34
Speaker 6: is really not talking to them other than with respect
16:37
Speaker 6: to this car that we have adduced other evidence about.
16:39
Speaker 7: Right.
16:40
Speaker 1: So, in addition to the damage and Nell did to
16:43
Speaker 1: Pablo's credibility as well as the lack of any further
16:46
Speaker 1: context that could have been derived from Jason Woolly's phone records.
16:50
Speaker 1: The judge limited the defense's ability to question witnesses about
16:53
Speaker 1: Ron Strandberg and Richard Cisnaro's even though the DA stated
16:58
Speaker 1: in her opening statement that they were likely involved with Woolley,
17:02
Speaker 1: and then they had to contend with Claudia Beltron's alleged identification.
17:07
Speaker 1: But curiously, the prosecutor, Iileen Bogar even said in her
17:12
Speaker 1: opening statement that she was not expecting an in court
17:16
Speaker 1: identification from Claudia.
17:18
Speaker 7: When Claudia Beltran sees Pablo Valles at his trial for
17:23
Speaker 7: the very first time, what does she say to the prosecutor?
17:25
Speaker 7: She says, that's not him. Despite that, the prosecutor goes on,
17:29
Speaker 7: she pushes forward. She forces Claudia to testify just about
17:34
Speaker 7: the photo array, not about her now realization that that
17:38
Speaker 7: is not Pablo. Sitting in the defense.
17:39
Speaker 2: Table when Claudia when they asked her, she wasn't able
17:43
Speaker 2: to pick nobody up. I was like, okay, I'm good
17:47
Speaker 2: and I'll be going home and this.
17:48
Speaker 1: Will be able with right, And then Detective Swainson gets
17:53
Speaker 1: up there and negates her testimony.
17:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, he pretty much he seld it to the jury.
18:01
Speaker 1: Man called the identification perfect, beautiful, positive.
18:08
Speaker 7: He gives those little flourishes, right, because those are the
18:11
Speaker 7: kinds of things that a jury's going to hear and
18:14
Speaker 7: think to themselves, Oh, if he's going to be so descriptive,
18:17
Speaker 7: surely he must have seen it, witness this identification.
18:20
Speaker 1: In addition, Adrian Pion also testified, saying that he'd seen
18:24
Speaker 1: Pablo at the Perfect Rack around ten PM, which was
18:28
Speaker 1: not only impeached by Pablo's trucking trainee LG. Holmes, but
18:32
Speaker 1: also that wasn't even part of the state's narrative. Importantly, however,
18:36
Speaker 1: Pion did not identify Pablo as one of the assailants.
18:40
Speaker 1: The defense also presented several witnesses that placed the gold
18:43
Speaker 1: Cadillac in ron Strandberg's possession in the days and weeks
18:48
Speaker 1: before and after the shooting, but it appears that they
18:52
Speaker 1: weren't enough to overcome Officer Swainson's description of the identification
18:57
Speaker 1: that he allegedly witnessed.
19:00
Speaker 2: When they came back with the guilty verdict, I remember
19:02
Speaker 2: turning around and my mom, my daughter's mother, and my cousin,
19:08
Speaker 2: some of my friends, my sisters, and everybody they were
19:12
Speaker 2: just in tears.
19:14
Speaker 4: My daughter was.
19:14
Speaker 5: Three weeks old when they convicted me, and they gave
19:17
Speaker 5: me thirty years.
19:35
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to expect, Like, now, okay, I'm
19:40
Speaker 2: not going home.
19:41
Speaker 4: I'm not going to be able to raise my daughter.
19:44
Speaker 2: Take care of my mom and my little brothers. Now
19:47
Speaker 2: I have to worry about taking care of myself. It's
19:50
Speaker 2: like going to a porough world country man. It's like
19:53
Speaker 2: a whole other world in here, and I had to
19:57
Speaker 2: learn to adjust quick. There's rules and laws in here
20:04
Speaker 2: amongst in mates, and life is the situation in here.
20:10
Speaker 2: It's a negative, evil face in here.
20:15
Speaker 5: I'm already at twenty years.
20:17
Speaker 4: That's on you.
20:18
Speaker 3: Earlier, my daughter was three weeks old and here she
20:20
Speaker 3: had a twenty As a little kid growing up, she
20:23
Speaker 3: would always tell everybody, I just want my daddy for Christmas.
20:26
Speaker 3: She came to me one day and I didn't it.
20:29
Speaker 5: And she said, Dad, She said, can I take you
20:31
Speaker 5: home with me? And I'm like, no, I can't.
20:34
Speaker 3: Go home, baby.
20:35
Speaker 7: You know.
20:35
Speaker 4: She was about seven years.
20:36
Speaker 5: Old, And I said again, and she said, you know,
20:41
Speaker 5: I'll put two in a box and I'll sink you up.
20:44
Speaker 4: And I said, so, I can't.
20:46
Speaker 5: I can't. And you know, man, she even said, she
20:48
Speaker 5: said I'll poke hop in and said you can breathe.
20:51
Speaker 4: I can't go home baby, you know, and you know,
20:55
Speaker 4: a real.
20:56
Speaker 5: Kid, innocent, not knowing.
20:58
Speaker 3: You know the seriousness of man.
21:00
Speaker 5: And you know kids are.
21:05
Speaker 7: I've got a daughter and a son. And if I
21:08
Speaker 7: were in Pablo's shoes and I wasn't able to see
21:10
Speaker 7: my kids, I mean, it would just kill me. I
21:13
Speaker 7: mean it would absolutely destroy me. Yeah.
21:16
Speaker 5: Even now, she'll cry, man, when we have to leave
21:19
Speaker 5: visit to cry.
21:20
Speaker 2: Man.
21:20
Speaker 5: And she would always tell me, She's like, Dad, I've
21:23
Speaker 5: never seen you cry.
21:24
Speaker 4: I said, believe me. I said, just because you don't
21:27
Speaker 4: see me.
21:28
Speaker 2: Cry doesn't mean I'm not crying.
21:30
Speaker 5: But I keep on pushing, man, I keep on pushing
21:33
Speaker 5: and knowing it.
21:34
Speaker 4: He man, I'll be home one day.
21:37
Speaker 7: You know.
21:39
Speaker 1: Pablo began writing to various innocence organizations, which you brought
21:43
Speaker 1: him an investigator named CJ. Connolly, who looked into the
21:46
Speaker 1: case and paid a visit to Pablo's co defendant, Jason Wooley.
21:50
Speaker 2: When he went to go visit Wooly. Now, mind you,
21:53
Speaker 2: Wooly didn't know CJ was coming to visit him or
21:55
Speaker 2: why he was even getting a visit and from said
21:58
Speaker 2: he said the moment that he told him, I'm here
22:00
Speaker 2: because of Pablo felt, Woolley immediately told him he had
22:03
Speaker 2: nothing to do with this, these inns he and had
22:06
Speaker 2: nothing to do with this, and CJ's wa Man, that's
22:09
Speaker 2: part to fire, and I mean to continue researching and investigating.
22:13
Speaker 2: CJ ended up reaching out to different attorneys and Lathan
22:17
Speaker 2: and Walking they ended up helping Man a lot of
22:20
Speaker 2: love and respect for them, guys and Laon and Walking.
22:22
Speaker 3: Man, what for each.
22:24
Speaker 1: Of you was the aha moment where you realized that
22:30
Speaker 1: you were looking at a wrongful conviction.
22:32
Speaker 7: For me, as to review the evidence and realized that
22:35
Speaker 7: the only reason Pablo was ever targeted by the Houston
22:39
Speaker 7: Police Department was because of a late change in the
22:43
Speaker 7: title of the gold Catillac that was a getaway vehicle.
22:46
Speaker 7: That's it. That is the only thing that ties any
22:49
Speaker 7: of this to Pablo.
22:50
Speaker 6: And the fact that a twenty three year old man
22:52
Speaker 6: didn't get the title to his car transferred right away,
22:55
Speaker 6: that seems eminently reasonable and understandable to me. So the
22:59
Speaker 6: fact that that sort of what this is all writing
23:01
Speaker 6: on is pretty wild The other two things that really
23:04
Speaker 6: stuck out to me were that his own council failed
23:06
Speaker 6: to get his phone records that really substantiated his alibi,
23:09
Speaker 6: obviously the egregious Brady violations.
23:13
Speaker 1: Latham and Watkins discovered a previously undisclosed photo array containing
23:17
Speaker 1: both Shorty and Pablo's photos with a signature next to
23:21
Speaker 1: Shorty's photo, which makes sense and lighted the initial description
23:25
Speaker 1: of the shooter in blue. And then they saw Officer
23:29
Speaker 1: King's previously undisclosed investigation notes which detailed what Claudia Beltran
23:35
Speaker 1: actually had said about Pablo when she viewed the photo array.
23:39
Speaker 7: So what King wrote in his notebook was Claudia Beltran
23:42
Speaker 7: said he looks like him, but guy in blue shirt
23:45
Speaker 7: had lighter hair. So that was a clear exculpatory description
23:50
Speaker 7: that made it very clear that Pablo was not the
23:55
Speaker 7: person that she had seen at the Perfect wreck. When
23:59
Speaker 7: that interview was inserted into the official HPD report, Claudia
24:04
Speaker 7: Beltran's testimony all of a sudden just becomes he looks
24:08
Speaker 7: like him, which is obviously a very different thing. And
24:11
Speaker 7: of course that makes sense because then when Claudia Bell
24:15
Speaker 7: trans sees Pablo Vallez at his trial she tells the
24:19
Speaker 7: prosecutor that is not the person I saw. And then
24:22
Speaker 7: the prosecutor relies on the testimony of Officer king An,
24:26
Speaker 7: Officer Slainsen, which wasn't just a vanilla identification.
24:30
Speaker 1: He says, it was a beautiful, perfect.
24:33
Speaker 7: That's absolutely right. I mean, surely he must have been there,
24:36
Speaker 7: he must have witnessed this identification when we went to they.
24:39
Speaker 2: Have an intereering. King He he don't even know why
24:43
Speaker 2: Swainson even said that, because he wasn't even in the
24:45
Speaker 2: room when she pointed at the picture. He was in
24:48
Speaker 2: another room talking to Adrian.
24:50
Speaker 7: Good lord, he was in the other room.
24:53
Speaker 1: So not only was it exposed that Claudia had never
24:57
Speaker 1: identified Pablo, but also that Officer Swainson was not even
25:02
Speaker 1: in the room to witness an identification that he called
25:05
Speaker 1: quote perfect, beautiful, positive end quote. And without that testimony,
25:11
Speaker 1: they had no identification. All they had was a Cadillac
25:14
Speaker 1: registered to Pablo Belez that was placed leaving the scene
25:18
Speaker 1: of the crime, but with someone else in it. And
25:21
Speaker 1: at this time, one of the victims, Adrian Pion, was
25:25
Speaker 1: willing to corroborate that.
25:27
Speaker 7: From our perspective, his recanting of his testimony was real.
25:31
Speaker 7: He was in that neighborhood, in that environment where fairly
25:35
Speaker 7: confident he knew the shooters and the shooters knew him.
25:37
Speaker 7: I think he testified in a way that kept him safe,
25:41
Speaker 7: and later on, many years later, I think at that
25:43
Speaker 7: point he felt safer in coming forward.
25:47
Speaker 5: He actually told them I know who did it, but
25:50
Speaker 5: not him, and I'm not going to tell y'all who
25:51
Speaker 5: did it.
25:52
Speaker 3: But it's not game.
25:53
Speaker 5: And my uncle Leo was a chief of police in
25:56
Speaker 5: the Arson Division at that time. He knew some of
25:58
Speaker 5: the other detectives and.
26:00
Speaker 3: DA's in there. And when we went back to court
26:03
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen, they told him Uncle, they.
26:06
Speaker 5: Said, oh, man, you'll be home by December. But shiit
26:10
Speaker 5: December came and went, you know, and still here.
26:31
Speaker 2: I worked in Metal Fad for nine years, so all
26:36
Speaker 2: of us guys that worked there at the Metal Fat
26:38
Speaker 2: pretty much see each other on a regular basis or
26:40
Speaker 2: know each other. So when I went back to Houston
26:44
Speaker 2: on that evidenier here in seventeen and I came back
26:47
Speaker 2: in eighteenth in March, I ran into one of the
26:50
Speaker 2: guys there Christmas and he was like just shooting the ship,
26:54
Speaker 2: like hey man, I ain't seen in a while and
26:56
Speaker 2: what not. And I told himself, I just got back
26:58
Speaker 2: to the benchmark, then back and he's like, you find
27:01
Speaker 2: your case. And I'm like yeah, I said, man, you
27:03
Speaker 2: don't remember hearing about the murder of the prefect right
27:06
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, And like he got all excited.
27:09
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, man, I was there that night.
27:11
Speaker 1: Man.
27:11
Speaker 2: Listen, Man, I'm listening to him and he's telling me
27:14
Speaker 2: everything that I've read in the transcripts and witnesses reports
27:20
Speaker 2: and whatnot. And I was like, there's no way he
27:22
Speaker 2: knows this stuff unless he was there, right, And he
27:24
Speaker 2: straight up told me he's like, man, Ron and Shorty.
27:27
Speaker 2: He said, Shorty was chasing Adrian. He said, Ron was
27:31
Speaker 2: shooting at that other dude, which was Anderson, and Otob
27:34
Speaker 2: the attorney's the same thing. And they came down here
27:36
Speaker 2: with the DA and some detectives. But that didn't go
27:40
Speaker 2: nowhere either.
27:41
Speaker 1: So now, on top of everything else that was exposed
27:43
Speaker 1: at the Evident Cherry hearing in twenty seventeen, they had
27:47
Speaker 1: a witness who was willing to name names. Meanwhile, they
27:51
Speaker 1: also discovered something else about how the investigation appears to
27:55
Speaker 1: have derailed.
27:56
Speaker 6: My understanding of it was a confidential informant came forward
28:00
Speaker 6: to the police, he said it was Ron, Shorty and Jason,
28:03
Speaker 6: and they're like, thank you very much for your service.
28:05
Speaker 6: We're going to do nothing with that information.
28:07
Speaker 7: And it just doesn't make any sense why they didn't
28:11
Speaker 7: follow up the identification of two gang bangers who also
28:15
Speaker 7: had a connection several days prior at the perfect ract
28:18
Speaker 7: with the same cast of characters. I don't think we,
28:21
Speaker 7: as a team at Latham ever understood why that was
28:25
Speaker 7: simply ignore it as a possible lead.
28:27
Speaker 1: Unless this is a familiar pattern we see consistently all
28:30
Speaker 1: over the country where investigators will turn a blind eye
28:34
Speaker 1: to actual criminals if those people are regularly helping them
28:38
Speaker 1: close cases. So perhaps Shorty and Ron are snitches.
28:44
Speaker 5: And if that's true, then I can understand why it
28:47
Speaker 5: went the way it went, because if you think about it,
28:49
Speaker 5: I don't work for the police. I drive FORORPS early right,
28:53
Speaker 5: But these guys, their informants, they're more of an asset
28:57
Speaker 5: to them than I am.
28:58
Speaker 1: It's absolutely not Where does the case stand now legally?
29:03
Speaker 7: So legally, we have exhausted all of Pablo's habeas options
29:10
Speaker 7: and we have no other legal recourse. Just to summarize
29:15
Speaker 7: the record, the first steps we took were to proceed
29:18
Speaker 7: with a habeas petition in Texas State Court, and that
29:22
Speaker 7: was what led to the evidentiary hearing in Harris County
29:25
Speaker 7: District Court. We appealed that all the way up to
29:28
Speaker 7: the Texas Criminal Court. We were denied there. We then
29:31
Speaker 7: filed a habeas petition in federal court. That petition was denied.
29:36
Speaker 7: We then sought to appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court
29:39
Speaker 7: of Appeals. Procedurally, you had to actually get permission. We
29:43
Speaker 7: were denied that permission to appeal on the merits to
29:46
Speaker 7: the Fifth Circuits, so we never actually got a chance
29:48
Speaker 7: to do that. And then at this point the only
29:51
Speaker 7: recourse that we had was to file a writ of
29:54
Speaker 7: ctiary with the United States Supreme Court. And so at
29:58
Speaker 7: this point we have no unfortunate other habeas options. If
30:02
Speaker 7: there were, we would still be fighting for him.
30:07
Speaker 1: Is there anything that people can do to help now?
30:10
Speaker 7: Obviously Pablo still has the opportunity to seek parole. To
30:13
Speaker 7: the extent that there would be opportunities for people to
30:17
Speaker 7: write and to support his parole application, I would certainly
30:21
Speaker 7: encourage folks to do that.
30:23
Speaker 2: I'm broke now and I'm not going to break and
30:25
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna let him break and keep on keep
30:28
Speaker 2: on fighting.
30:28
Speaker 1: So this season we're really talking about accountability. We know
30:33
Speaker 1: why wrongful convictions happen, but how do you stop them
30:37
Speaker 1: from happening in the future. What does accountability mean to
30:41
Speaker 1: you and what would it look like in your case?
30:44
Speaker 2: All of them should be hailed accountable. DA detectives, of course,
30:49
Speaker 2: the guy that did this, Mike's girlfriend, they should all
30:53
Speaker 2: be held accountable. And like, I know that will never happen,
30:56
Speaker 2: but like if the family had a paste.
30:58
Speaker 1: Of a quarter of speaking of where are Shorty and
31:03
Speaker 1: Ron now?
31:04
Speaker 2: I guess they're still in Houston. I don't know.
31:07
Speaker 7: There are a number of aspects to this right when
31:09
Speaker 7: when youre talking about accountability. There's accountability at the time,
31:11
Speaker 7: there's accountability after the fact. And look, police officers do
31:16
Speaker 7: so much to protect us. But Pablo's case highlights the
31:19
Speaker 7: fact that there are also instances where the police are
31:23
Speaker 7: not held accountable for providing testimony that is designed to
31:28
Speaker 7: take an open investigation off the books. There's accountability to
31:33
Speaker 7: the prosecutors who are all too willing to ram through
31:36
Speaker 7: a prosecution and not give the attention that they should
31:40
Speaker 7: give to their obligations as officers of the court to
31:44
Speaker 7: come forward with the truth, to come forward with exculpatory evidence,
31:48
Speaker 7: and to protect the constitutional rights of those who sit
31:53
Speaker 7: in the defense seat. Kim Ogg was the Hairs County
31:57
Speaker 7: District Attorney and she ran and in part on a
32:01
Speaker 7: platform of reform and accountability, taking a look at prior
32:06
Speaker 7: convictions and seeing where injustice had been done. We met
32:11
Speaker 7: with kim Ogg a team of us there or three
32:13
Speaker 7: of us. We had breakfast with kim Ogg. We presented
32:17
Speaker 7: our case story, We gave her a packet. Two of
32:19
Speaker 7: my partners came down from Washington, DC just to meet
32:21
Speaker 7: with her to impress upon her just how wrong the
32:26
Speaker 7: situation was. And we followed up and we pursued this
32:30
Speaker 7: with her office literally for years, and we never, from
32:35
Speaker 7: our perspective, Marion got the time of day. We did
32:37
Speaker 7: not feel that her office took a serious look at
32:40
Speaker 7: Pablo's case. And so you know, when you talk about accountabiity,
32:43
Speaker 7: there's accountability at so many levels.
32:45
Speaker 6: So there are some ways to build accountability into the
32:48
Speaker 6: system a little bit better. And you see this with
32:51
Speaker 6: in some other states, not Texas, but a discovery reform right,
32:55
Speaker 6: like really expanding the amount of information that prosecuted are
33:00
Speaker 6: required to hand over to the defense. Now, of course
33:02
Speaker 6: they're always required to handover exculpatory information under Brady versus Maryland.
33:08
Speaker 6: But you do have to wonder had Pablo's defense counsel,
33:12
Speaker 6: who did have his own issues, but had he had
33:15
Speaker 6: much greater access to the information being collected, could he
33:18
Speaker 6: have poke Tols in this case? Could he have said, Hey,
33:21
Speaker 6: isn't it a little odd that the police department didn't
33:24
Speaker 6: do this video lineup or didn't pursue X Y or
33:28
Speaker 6: Z thing and could have hammered that a lot better.
33:31
Speaker 6: So there are some systemic legal changes that you can
33:34
Speaker 6: call your representative about.
33:36
Speaker 1: So we will list to information in the episode description
33:40
Speaker 1: if anyone would like to reach out to the Texas
33:42
Speaker 1: Board of Pardons and Paroles on Pablo's behalf, and with that,
33:47
Speaker 1: I'll leave the mic open to all of you to
33:48
Speaker 1: share what you'd like our audience to take away from
33:51
Speaker 1: this conversation.
33:53
Speaker 7: We have had probably at least a dozen lawyers over
33:57
Speaker 7: the year's work on Pablo's case. This has been in
34:00
Speaker 7: a case that the firm has committed substantial resources to
34:06
Speaker 7: and we've done that because all of us, to the person,
34:09
Speaker 7: truly believe in Pablo's innocence. He is a stand up guy.
34:13
Speaker 7: He is somebody who would have been just a fantastic
34:17
Speaker 7: member of the community, and what has happened to him
34:20
Speaker 7: is just an absolute travesty. We continue as a firm
34:24
Speaker 7: to be frustrated with our inability to get Pablo the
34:28
Speaker 7: results that he deserves and the exoneration that he's entitled to.
34:33
Speaker 7: And look, we hope the listeners will recognizing justice has
34:38
Speaker 7: been done here and this will hopefully motivate them to
34:42
Speaker 7: do what they can in their own ways to help
34:45
Speaker 7: reform the criminal justice system and ensure that these kinds
34:48
Speaker 7: of injustices don't occur in the future.
34:51
Speaker 6: I mean, the American legal system, for a lot of
34:54
Speaker 6: good reasons, really does prioritize finality of convictions, finality of
35:01
Speaker 6: dispute resolution, finality, and that systemic preference really makes it
35:07
Speaker 6: hard to come back in and undo these convictions. And
35:11
Speaker 6: you have to think there is some middle ground between
35:14
Speaker 6: the system we have now and some free for all
35:17
Speaker 6: where everybody is challenging their convictions like frivolously right. There
35:21
Speaker 6: has to be some middle ground right where these really
35:23
Speaker 6: compelling facts can make a difference after a conviction, after
35:28
Speaker 6: a verdict has been rendered by a jury, and convicting
35:31
Speaker 6: somebody is not sort of to this broader point about justice,
35:36
Speaker 6: It's not justice if it's the wrong person, because that
35:39
Speaker 6: means a real criminal is out there on the streets
35:44
Speaker 6: terrorizing people. It means the victim has not actually seen
35:49
Speaker 6: the person responsible for their pain punished. It just means
35:54
Speaker 6: someone has gone to prison and someone will not get
35:57
Speaker 6: to see their child grow up. And that's how everybody I.
36:02
Speaker 2: Tell people all the time. You know, it's almost like
36:06
Speaker 2: you know, they say that they don't walk right. Well,
36:09
Speaker 2: here we are. We're walking, walking, living and breathing. You know,
36:13
Speaker 2: when someone passes away right throughout the years, people stop
36:17
Speaker 2: visiting that cemetery or that person, and eventually people forget.
36:23
Speaker 2: But in this situation, man, you know, by just cutting
36:28
Speaker 2: the story out there, man, and not just with my story, right,
36:31
Speaker 2: with everyone's story that's gone through something like this, for
36:34
Speaker 2: it not to be forgotten, right, because I mean once
36:37
Speaker 2: you forget, I mean it's over with.
36:39
Speaker 4: You know.
36:46
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
36:49
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Speaker 1: Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production team,
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Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kathe Think, as well as executive producers
37:02
Speaker 1: Jason Vlahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
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Speaker 1: music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
37:08
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
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