June 17, 2024 • 42 mins
On April 28th, 1989, 18-year-old Francisco Benitez was having a normal day. He picked up his paycheck, got a haircut, then went to his friend’s house to watch Beetlejuice on HBO. That same night two teenage boys were shot and killed. An eyewitness said as the shooter ran from the scene, she noticed that he had a fresh haircut. Despite no other similarities between Frank and her description of the shooter, not to mention no physical evidence, Frank was ultimately convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life without parole.
The prison environment was violent and dangerous, Frank says he often wondered “is this the day that I’m going to die in prison?” But his mother Betty was steadfast in her love and her belief in Frank’s innocence. She told him over and over to never give up, even after 34 years, to keep believing that a brighter day is coming.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
Francisco Benitez Go Fund Me: https://www.gofundme.com/f/innocent-man-exonerated-after-34-years
University of Chicago Law School Exoneration Project: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/clinics/exoneration
Loevy & Loevy Civil Rights Law Firm: https://www.loevy.com/
Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pacheco is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the US have
been wrongfully convicted and are being held in captivity for crimes,
even as they adamantly maintain their innocence. What's it like
to be one of those imprisoned people, and what's it
like to be their ally, the one outside committed to
fighting for their freedom. I'm Lauren Bride Pacheco, and this
(00:27):
is wrongful conviction. On the evening of April twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty nine, in Chicago, Illinois, two teenage boys were
shot and killed. Based on eyewitness description, police created a
photo array that contained a photo of eighteen year old
(00:49):
Frank Benitez, who loosely fit the assailant's description. Frank was
selected out of the lineup and ultimately coerced in designing
a false confession, despite no evidence, physical or otherwise tying
him to the crime. Frank was sentenced to life without
parole for murders he did not commit. His mother, Betty,
(01:11):
would fight for his release for thirty four long years,
and they are both joining us today to share their
experiences and thoughts. Thank you, Betty and Frank so much
for joining me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
How you doing no problem?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So tell me before any of this started. I'd just
love to hear about what life was before all of
this took place. So Frank, tell me a little bit
about when and where you were born.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I was born in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Where were we at, mom when you were born? Yeah,
we were living on Lowell.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah. All four of us were born in the same hospital.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Same doctor, same hospital.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
So you grew up with three.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Siblings, two brothers and a sister.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
And where were you and that rundown?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I'm the oldest.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So when this happened, you were just eighteen. What kind
of social circle were you running around with? What kind
of friends did you have?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I think I had some okay friends. I might might
have not had the best of friends, but they were
okay for a little while. I was running with some
bad people. I mean it was a mistake on my part.
But for the most part, our neighborhood was pretty quiet.
There wasn't a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
What were your goals at the age of eighteen? Where
did you see yourself in the future.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I really wanted to be an actor. My father was
trying to push me to be an actor, and I
was in a couple of plays when I was in school,
that's what I really wanted to do. I wanted to
be an actor, or I wanted to play sports. I
want to play football. And at eighteen, I didn't know
what I wanted to do. I know that I wanted
to be somebody. I wanted to get out of their neighborhood.
I wanted to get my family out of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So take me to why you wanted to get your
family out of the neighborhood. What was the dynamic like
in the eighties, How would you describe the neighborhood and
what was it that you wanted to get away from.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I mean, when we first moved there, it was really
a nice place to live. You can leave your bicycle outside.
But then after a while started getting worse and worse,
and there was a little more crime. It was still quiet,
but you could see the riding on the wall that
it was going to be bad.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So things were getting increasingly more dangerous. It was just
not improving, all right. So take me to the night
all of this went down. At about eight forty five
on April twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine, two fourteen year
old boys left their home on North Harding Avenue in Chicago, Illinois,
to walk to a corner store one block north, but
(03:50):
unfortunately they never arrived. Both were shot in the head
before they got there. One was found right outside the
family home and the other was found a bit further
up the block, and neither one survived. When did you
hear that this had happened, frank And where were you
at the time it went down?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Well, I was at this one woman's house that I
had known for a little while. I used to stay
at her house all the time, and I used to
hang out with her daughter. You know, good people to
be around. And later on that night one of my friends,
his sister, came by and said, hey, be careful, there
was just a shooting. We just heard about a shooting.
We didn't know there was a murder or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
How far were you physically, Like, how far was the
house you were watching television at from where the shooting
took place.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Maybe three or four blocks so close? Yeah, it was close, Betty.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Do you remember when you heard about the shooting.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, I heard about it the next afternoon because, uh,
Frankie was getting ready to go to the flea market
when police officers came knocking on the door. No big deal,
no big deal, and Frankie was more than willing to go.
I mean, you you hear and see how people run
(05:12):
hide everything. But no, Frankie was coming out of his
room and one of the police officers says, hey, you
want to come with us. We're doing a lineup or something.
And the police said we'll bring him back when we're done.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay. So the police came to your family's home and
just said that they needed your assistance.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
They were just they were just asking you for assistance,
a little help. That was it.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And tell me how that unfolded from your side of
the story, frank I.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Mean they came and knocked on the door. I was
getting ready, like my mom said, for to go to
the flea market, and my little brother came said hey,
there's something. You know, there's a policeman at the door
looking for you. I'm like, okay, I'll go up there.
And he started asking did you hear about this? And
you'll know anything about it? I'm like, I don't know
anything about it. I heard there was something going on,
but as far as if I heard anybody, you know,
(06:08):
if anybody had done it or like that, I didn't
know anything. And next thing, you know, he was like,
come on, we need to take you down to get
in the lineup. I'm like, okay, I had nothing to hide.
I was one hundred percent confident that I was going
to be released later that day after the lineup.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So what was your first lineup.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
After the lineup? When they told me they had picked
me out of lineup? No, that's impossible. I had nothing
to do with it. They questioned me. They asked me
where I was at. At first, it was just general
questions and then the pressure starts and as we know
you did it, you got picked out. I'm like, no,
that's impossible. They're lying. Oh they're lying. Yet you're wrong.
You're the one line. I'm like, no, i'm not. Where
(06:46):
were you at? And I told them where I was
at and they were like, no, you're lying. And it
was just constant pressure.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Are you asking to go home? Are you asking for
your mother?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Are you asking for Yeah, I'm definitely asking for my mom.
Like I want to talk to my mom, Like no,
you can't talk to her. You're never going to see
her again. I guess that's the kind of psychological games
that they.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Play, and what kind of tactics were used against you.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I didn't suffer any physical abuse, thankfully, but I think
the mental abuse was even worse because they pick on
something and then they just drive it. I guess they figured, Okay,
this is a mama's boy, let's go with the mom. Now.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's not like this went on for half an hour
or an hour.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
No, I got to the station. Well, they picked me
up around twelve thirty, and then I was there all night.
From what I remember, I signed the core statement at
four three thirty, four to thirty in the morning. So
you're talking about, you know, sixteen plus hours.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
The two detectives who questioned you apparently already had a
history of doing this in terms of coercing false confessions.
But did they have you write out something? Did they
write it out?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
How?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
What did you sign?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
They wrote everything out. They wrote everything out. They said,
we're going to prepare a statement for you that is
self defense. You'll sign it and you'll go home that
right after you sign it, we're going to get the
stage attorney over there so she can witness it, and
you're good to go.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
It didn't happen, so they made it sound like it
was just kind of a formality and that they were
going to make it look like it wasn't your fault anyway.
You just sign it, you get to go home, right?
Did you get to go home?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Obviously not. I spent thirty four years and four months
in prison, Betty.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What's going on on your end while your son's being
held overnight? What are you thinking?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, when he didn't come home by eleven o'clock at
night that night, that Saturday night, me and my mother
in law, we just started calling the police station. Every
police station we called, they said, who, We don't have
nobody here by that name. We couldn't even locate him.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And you have to remember this is before cell phone though,
it's hard to get in contact with people.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I called so many police stations that it was unreal.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So you must have been panicked. You're like desperately trying
to find your son.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, my mother, my mother in law, she was crying
because we couldn't find Frankie. It was just like, where
could he have been? Because he wouldn't stay out that late.
Frankie would come home at a decent time so that
we wouldn't worry about him.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
So when did you next connect with your mom?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
When I got to the Kokanie jail, I was able
to make a phone call. I called the house and
I can't remember what do you remember what time it was? Mom?
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Oh, it was late because we were still trying to
find you.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Right, And I know when I talked to my grandmother,
she was like, what happened? What's going on? I'm like, why,
what are you talking about? She says, you were just
all over the news and I'm like, well, so I said,
let me talk to mom and I explain it to you.
And I asked my mom what was going on? She said, yeah,
you're all over the news. And like, no, it can't
be right.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I mean, no, wait, So Betty, you found out that
your son was arrested on the news on the news.
What was that like for you?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
It was like what? Because at the same time we
were listening to it on the news, Frankie was calling
us and Frankie told me, he goes, Mom, I've been
arrested for murder. And I'm going what. My mother in
law is screaming, my father in law is trying to
console her. It was just a mess. And I had
(10:58):
told Frankie, I said, we've been trying to find you
all night. What happened?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
How do you even explain that when you're eighteen, frank
how do you even explain to your mother that you've
signed a confession?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I mean I automatically told her I was scared, and
they told me I was going to go home, and
you know, she called me stupid, of course, but I
didn't know anybotter. I was eighteen and.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
You'd asked for your mother. Yes, you didn't have a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
No, no, So what goes through your.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Head at that point? Betty as like a mom of
four kids. They've made a mistake. You want your son back.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, And it was like, now, this is what I
found out afterwards when I was calling the police stations
to find out where Frankie was at, they said they
never had him until they booked him. They didn't even
know anything. So it was it was it was difficult.
(12:03):
And then when I found out that he had been
booked for murder, I'm asking, Okay, what's what's the next step.
We didn't know anything about any of these processes. We
I mean, we're hillbilly's. I'm a hillbilly. I'm from the South.
(12:24):
My husband and his parents were from Mexico. I mean,
I always grew up with the knowledge that the cops
were good, and then this happened.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, but I mean, I can't even imagine. Look if
this happened to me tomorrow, even knowing everything that I know,
You're not just up against one person, it's not a mistake.
You're up against an entire system, an entire system and
the media.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah. I still have the paper clipping from the trial
that they did on my son. I've kept it for
thirty four years.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
How did you get through that? Finding out your son
was in prison, that he's confessed to a crime that
he didn't commit, that nobody is going to help you
get him out.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
It was real hard because we didn't know nobody. If
you don't know lawyers, or if you don't know the
ins and outs of things, it's like, what do I
do now? What do I do now? It's hard, It's
very hard.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
So take me to the first time you physically saw
each other after this happened, because that's what really hit me.
As a mother of a son who's now about to
turn twenty, he's still a kid on some levels, and
I just can't imagine not being able to hug him.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right right when we went to the bail hearing for him.
I saw him for about two minutes. He walked out
from the back, stood in front of the judge. The
state was there, the public defender was there, and the
judge said no bail. And that's when they said he's
(14:20):
being charged with two counts of murder in the first degree.
The only thing I could do was cry. I couldn't
do anything. Oh and from there I saw him and
then they took him back to the back. Then we
(14:40):
went to the bond hearing and they said no bond
and we left there and it's like, what do we
do now? I mean, the next step, of course, is
to get a lawyer. They assigned a public defender to him.
At the first time I met that public defender, the
(15:03):
public defender says, they're going to look for the death penalty,
and I'm going what. And then he says, you know,
your best bet is having plead guilty. They'll give him
life in prison without the possibility of parole, but he'll
be alive. And I asked the lawyer, why would I
want to tell Frankie to confess to something he didn't
(15:25):
even do. After that, my husband and I we went
home and my mother in law asked me what happened,
and I told her we thought she was going to
have a heart attack. She was screaming and crying so hard.
We had to call other parts of our family to
(15:46):
come and help her because we didn't know what to do.
So then my husband, he had a few friends that
worked for the Cook County sheriffs, so a couple of
them said, Okay, I will give you some names of lawyers,
and you know, go from there. But if you don't
(16:07):
know lawyers, if you don't know what they're good at,
you just try to find what you can afford and
go with it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Had you ever felt that kind of helplessness before?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
No? No, And here I am. I have to go
to work in order to feed my family, help pay
the bills. When all this was going on, and I
had talked to my employers and I told them I'm
going to have to be going to court for my son,
(16:43):
and we made an agreement because at that time, I
was like payroll, that was my job and I was
the only one who did it. There was no backup.
So I would go to court with him every six
weeks because that's how they scheduled his court dates and
(17:05):
every time we would go to court, they would say,
we're not ready at we're still gathering evidence, we're doing this,
we're doing that, And every time we'd go it was
a different person from the state his visitation. He was
housed at what they used to call.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Max one Division one.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Division one at eighteen and that's the prison that was
crumbling that they're tearing down or replaced. Now.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, it was the original jail.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I mean, it wasn't call you on the phone anytime
you wanted. You had thirty minutes. They gave you a
list of what you could bring in, which was basically close.
That was about it.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
What was that transition like for you for that to
become your day to day reality.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I mean it was kind of rough. I'm being thrown
in a place where I know I don't belong, so
I mean I had to act like I was kind
of tough, and I'm not really tough. It's just every
day surrounded by people that probably did what they're locked
up for, and mostly murderers. I mean, back then there
(18:17):
was no internet, so you didn't know if these guys
were charged with sex offenses or anything like that. But
most of the guys there were locked up for murder.
They were going to trial for murder. So I used
to think to myself, you know, what am I doing here?
What led me to this? And it was just it
was hard. I mean there were times when I was
by myself that I would cry.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, I mean eighteen and talk about wanting to be
an actor. Suddenly you have to act to stay alive.
Basically I was.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I was in the role for my life. I had
to act as a certain part and it was kind
of hard because that's not me at all, you know, Yeah,
I'm bad, you know, leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So you're held for almost a year and a half
before trial.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I got locked up in April of eighty nine and
then the trial was in August of ninety one, so
a little over two years.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
So your mama described the place you were being held
awaiting trial is kind of crumbling. But what was that
like physically and what kind of a cell were you in?
Did you have a cell mate?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah? I had a cell mate. Yeah, it's close quarters
and division one. They didn't have bunk beds, so you're
laying basically side by side with somebody else. So being
in the cell with somebody, they're using a washroom and
you know, doing what they do. It's just it's hard.
You're living in your own bedroom.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I can imagine Betty that every single time you went
to visit him, he was growing older and more mature
and kind of a heartbreaking way.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Heading into the trial, did you still have the hope
that this was all a nightmare mistake?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yes? Yes, it was a three day court trial with
a jury of twelve. One of the alternate jurors she
came out and says, there is nothing there. There is
absolutely nothing there at all. That kind of gave me hope.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So, Frank, just in terms of your defense, you have
proof that it was a coerced confession because it doesn't
align with the way in which the eyewitnesses testified to
the crime unfolding of an alibi. You have all of
(21:03):
the things you did during that day. You must have
felt like, how can they find me guilty? I'm innocent
and I can prove it.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah, it's kind of hard. I mean, remember this is
back in the eighties, and everything that the police said,
the state's attorney said, people are gonna go with it.
They didn't have the cell phone cameras, they didn't have
people coming forward like they do now. And the whole
trial was frustrating. I mean, knowing that you're innocent, you
want to scream at the top of your lung, I'm innocent,
do not find me guilty.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
What was it like though, to realize that the system
wasn't playing by the rules. For you both to sit
in that trial and know that officers of the law
were misrepresenting the truth.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It was frustrating because you're sitting there listening to people lie,
lie on top of lie, and there's nothing you can
do it because the lawyers are saying, hey, we can't
point out their lives because it's just going to make
you look like a liar. So it's frustrating, and.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You had an airtight alibi. If we can just go
back quickly and describe your whereabouts that day, you picked
up a paycheck, You went to the mall, Then you
went to the barber shop to get a haircut, and
that's important, I want to bring that back up. Then
(22:29):
you went to your friend's house where you watched television.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, I still remember that. I still remember the movie
and the channel was on. There's Beetlejuice on HBO. I'll
never forget it.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And then you guys walked to the corner store to
buy limes, a TV guide, dish soap, and you were
back by seven forty five. I just thought it was
so interesting because one of the eyewitness statements that the
police turned around was that this woman saw the gunman
running and thought, he looks like he just had a haircut. Yeah,
(23:03):
I know, right, which just seems like such a frame
job to me. Who looks at somebody running by and goes, wow,
they look like they just had a haircut. It was
such a random thing to throw in there. So when
the jury headed into deliberations, were you both still confident
(23:24):
that this was a runaway train and the brakes were
going to get put on and this nightmare would be over?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean from what I heard in the courtroom,
all the evidence that they put forth, everything that they said,
nothing matches. How can you find a person guilty if
everything doesn't match. The state is saying this, your lawyers
(23:58):
are saying this, and the two don't match at all.
It's like, how can this be?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
There has to at least be reasonable doubt, right, right, right?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
And when the jury went to deliberate an hour and
twenty five minutes and that's including lunch.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Rank. Now take me to the moment of the verdict.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I just had a feeling that it was going to
be bad, just the feeling. And then when they read
the guilty verdict, all I can hear was my sister
in the courtroom, just I've never heard of cry.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Like that, Betty. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Heartbreaking? So hard?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, it was hard.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I cannot imagine the definition of powerless better defined. There's
nothing you can do, no, nope.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And then it's like, now what do I do because
you're still you're still naive but na to not understand
what the next steps will be because there's no rhyme
(25:55):
or reason to anything, because you've never had these problems before.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Take me to the sentencing.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well, it's another court appearance and you go before the judge,
and the judge basically reads what the sentence is going
to be.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And Judge Barbara Disco denied the prosecution's request to impose
the death penalty correct and sentenced Frank to life in
prison without parole twice. Two life sentences.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Correct correct, two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pacheco. You
can listen to this and all the LoVa for Good
podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to
Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast Gusts.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Then that's when they placed you in different prisons, and
his first stop was Minard. It's an eight hour drive
from Chicago to Monards and you have to have a car,
you have to have gas money, food money, and travel time.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, Frank, how does your day to day change immediately?
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I mean, now you know you're surrounded by people that
are bad, I mean gangs ran the prisons back.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Then, you're in prison for life. How did you process
that mentally physically both of you?
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Me personally, I always went into it where I'm coming
home one day.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
I lived every day I'm coming home. I'm coming home.
And my mom was my biggest cheerleader. All my family was,
but especially my mom. She used to tell me all
the time, you're coming home, You're coming home, Just give
us some time. Yep.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I didn't know it was going to take this much
time though.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, So how does life change immediately for both of you?
After that sentencing? Betty, You've already said. Now it's pretty
much a day's journey there and back to go see
your son.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, we would leave on a Friday night and we
would come home on a Sunday because of the long drive.
It would take one paycheck just to do that, and
I had to start sending him money so he could
buy snacks, necessities that he needed and stuff. And back
(28:58):
then it was collect calls. It's not like it is now.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
So you're now fairly isolated in terms of access to
your family, and you're now trying to adjust a feeling
like in even smaller fish in a bigger, more dangerous sea,
because Menard is not known for being warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Nope, No, there was a lot of racism down there.
I had it easier because I look like I'm white,
and yeah I'm half white and half Mexican. But they
seen the white side and that's the way it was.
I mean, there was a lot of racism in.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Minarn So what do you think was the biggest learning
curve for you once you got there? What was the
most difficult thing for you to navigate how.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
To try to fit in? Because for me to be
kind of like them as a whin lady for me,
because I'm not that guy. It's you have to act
a certain way, and if not, you're going to get
eating the they'll they'll take your stuff or try to
do things, beat you up, or whatever it is. And
I'm glad I made it. It was tough. It was
(30:10):
not a day that went by that is this the
day that I'm going to die in prison?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Betty.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
You having to hold down a job and and and
raise three other kids while you're trying to be present
and supportive of your son who's wrongfully convicted facing life
at this point, how do you, guys then have the bandwidth?
(30:36):
How do you even begin to go about fighting to
get him out?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
On top of that, well, I started asking around about
are there organizations that can help. At that time there
there wasn't much help there because back then it was
you're guilty in jail. There ain't nothing we can do.
(31:03):
We had to start looking for other lawyers that would
right brief so that you could start going through the
other court processes to try to get the case back
into court, but none of them worked either. So then
I started looking to see if there was other people
(31:25):
out there trying to do the same thing. Trying to
find ways to help their members of their family who
they said were wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
And you have to remember one thing, this is before
all these exoneration projects and innocent projects came about.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Right, The one that really really stood out, which gave
me hope was the Rolando Cruz.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Because Cruise was exonerated in nineteen ninety five after having
been wrongfully convicted in nineteen eighty five of murder, rape, kidnapping,
and burglary, also in Illinois.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It was the first time I had heard and he
spent so much time on death row itself, and it
was like, if he can prove that he didn't do it,
then there has to be a way that we can
prove that Frankie didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
So in September nineteen ninety five, the first District Illinois
Appellate Court upheld Frank's convictions and sentence. Right, how difficult
was that?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That hurt? That hurt because the lawyer had showed that
there was still inconsistencies in the original trial which should
have raised eyebrow. It did not, So then we just
like we just keep trudging and trudging and trudging.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
How and when did you guys first hear about the
Exoneration project at the University of Chicago Law School and
the process heading up to that for you, like, where
are you getting the information of who to write, when
to write them, how to write them?
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Just talking to different people that are locked up with me,
Like I just got in contact with these people and
they want to help, and I'm like, well, let me
get that information. So I mean, I've written to Northwestern
and University of Illinois or place in New York. I've
written a berry shehck to a lot of people. I've
written to Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas. I've written everywhere, and everybody
(33:37):
said the same thing. Well, unfortunately, we have too many
cases as it is, and it would be a disservice
to our clients now we took any more cases.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So what were the darkest moments for both of you
during that time? Because it had to be like there
were these little glimmers of light in the distance that
maybe this may be that right.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
It was just never giving up. You really have to
keep in your head there has to be something you
are missing, that there's something that you haven't found yet
that will work.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
But that said, was there a point where either one
of you thought I can't do this, that this is
just too much for me.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
There was, I mean, and for me it was.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
When did you know that frank was going through the
dark period?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
When I would talk to him, you could always hear
it in his voice. You could always tell in the
way he was saying things. And I kept telling him,
don't ever give up. There has to be something, Betty.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I see how upset you are, even when you're telling him,
no matter what, don't give up. Were you afraid that
he would?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yes? Yes, because it was like he wasn't seeing the
light at the end of the tunnel. There was nights
that I would sleep, no sleep because I had talked
to Frankie and he would be saying, Mom, I can't
(35:22):
do this no more. And I would just kind of
yell at him and tell him you can't give up.
I told him he had to believe because if you
give up, that's it. And I wouldn't let him do
(35:46):
that period.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And then you get a voice at the end of
that phone call telling you that you've got one minute left.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. We had a lot of those.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Did did your mom screaming at you help? In other words,
have you ever told her, what kept you going?
Speaker 3 (36:09):
So I tell her all the times. She's the one
that coming on.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, my sisters, my kids, and they tell me the
same thing.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Mom.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
You tell him, don't give up, don't give up, don't
give up. We're gonna kick his ass. And I don't, Frankie,
don't you give up. I'm gonna kick your ass when
you come home. Didn't I tell you that, Frankie all
the time, All the time.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I kept telling him. God has a reason for everything
he does. He may not be the fastest, but he
gets there in his time.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Take me to the turning point, Frankie. In twenty twenty two,
represented by attorneys Joshua Tepfer from the Honooration Project at
the University of Chicago Law School and a non Swamenoffen
of the firm Lov and Lov, they filed a post
conviction petition seeking to overturn the convictions, and the petition
(37:12):
cited statements from two new witnesses who said they saw
the shooting and that frank was not the gunman. The
petition also noted that Bagookie and Schalk, who were the
two detectives who were also involved in your case, had
been involved in the wrongful murder conviction of a thirteen
year old Thaddeus Jimenez and testified falsely at his trial.
(37:37):
Take me to the moment. August twenty ninth, twenty twenty
three probably sticks out to you both as an important day.
Can you a.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Bunch of us have it tattooed on us?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Really?
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:55):
My daughter, Frankie, my son, my daughter in law, even
my daughter in law's parents got it tattooed on their arms.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Oh gosh, I love that.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Me and the grandma's we went together. We call it
our senior citizen outing because the other grandmas are in
the sixties and I'm in the seventies. Ray, they were yours.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Wow, Frankie, do you have the largest one of the family.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
No, my other son I think has the largest one
on the back of his leg. Wow.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
So you know, we just discussed, Betty, how the whole
family was sentenced. It must be that August twenty ninth
you were all freed in a different way, and frank
just take me to that day and how that played out.
So Judge Atcherson vacated your convictions and frank you were
(38:53):
released on bond pending a retrial. You had spent thirty
two years and fourteen days in print, thirty four more
than thirty four years in custody from the date of
your arrest.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes, he was picked up on April twenty ninth, nineteen
eighty nine. He was released on August twenty ninth of
twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
And when did you realize you were walking out?
Speaker 3 (39:23):
When the judge started talking, I was kind of like, yeah,
I might be coming out, and then she's like, no
cash bond. I'm like, oh, I'm going home.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
What was it like walking out?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Everybody was crying.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Different kinds of tears this time. Oh yes, yep, so Frank,
tell me walking out.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
I mean, who it was a relief. And then to
see the sea of people out there when I came out,
it was I finally get to tell my story.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And Betty, what was the first thing you said once
he was outside to him?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Thank God? I said, Remember I told you never give
up hope. As long as there's family and love, you
have it all.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
And then in September of twenty twenty three, Cook County
prosecutors formally drop the charges against you, Frank. And then
in December of twenty twenty three, you were awarded a
certificate of innocence and now get to set about living
your life finally again.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
What are your.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Goals and your hopes and your dreams for the.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Future right now? I just take it by day by
day and I just live life. That's all I'm gonna
do is just enjoy everything, everything that I can and
try to do everything.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler,
and Kevin Wardis, as well as our producers Annie Chelsea,
Kathleen Fink, and Jackie Pauley. This series is produced, edited,
(41:27):
and hosted by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Our senior producer
is Kara Kornhaber. Story editing by Hannah Bial, research by
Shelby Sorels, mixing and sound design by Nick Massetti, with
additional production by Jeff Clyborne. Our theme music is by
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social
media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
(41:51):
You can also follow me on all platforms at Lauren
Bright Pachecko. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with the sicknes No company Number
one
Tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the US have
been wrongfully convicted and are being held in captivity for crimes,
even as they adamantly maintain their innocence. What's it like
to be one of those imprisoned people, and what's it
like to be their ally, the one outside committed to
fighting for their freedom. I'm Lauren Bride Pacheco, and this
(00:27):
is wrongful conviction. On the evening of April twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty nine, in Chicago, Illinois, two teenage boys were
shot and killed. Based on eyewitness description, police created a
photo array that contained a photo of eighteen year old
(00:49):
Frank Benitez, who loosely fit the assailant's description. Frank was
selected out of the lineup and ultimately coerced in designing
a false confession, despite no evidence, physical or otherwise tying
him to the crime. Frank was sentenced to life without
parole for murders he did not commit. His mother, Betty,
(01:11):
would fight for his release for thirty four long years,
and they are both joining us today to share their
experiences and thoughts. Thank you, Betty and Frank so much
for joining me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
How you doing no problem?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So tell me before any of this started. I'd just
love to hear about what life was before all of
this took place. So Frank, tell me a little bit
about when and where you were born.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I was born in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Where were we at, mom when you were born? Yeah,
we were living on Lowell.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah. All four of us were born in the same hospital.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Same doctor, same hospital.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
So you grew up with three.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Siblings, two brothers and a sister.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
And where were you and that rundown?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I'm the oldest.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So when this happened, you were just eighteen. What kind
of social circle were you running around with? What kind
of friends did you have?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I think I had some okay friends. I might might
have not had the best of friends, but they were
okay for a little while. I was running with some
bad people. I mean it was a mistake on my part.
But for the most part, our neighborhood was pretty quiet.
There wasn't a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
What were your goals at the age of eighteen? Where
did you see yourself in the future.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I really wanted to be an actor. My father was
trying to push me to be an actor, and I
was in a couple of plays when I was in school,
that's what I really wanted to do. I wanted to
be an actor, or I wanted to play sports. I
want to play football. And at eighteen, I didn't know
what I wanted to do. I know that I wanted
to be somebody. I wanted to get out of their neighborhood.
I wanted to get my family out of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So take me to why you wanted to get your
family out of the neighborhood. What was the dynamic like
in the eighties, How would you describe the neighborhood and
what was it that you wanted to get away from.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I mean, when we first moved there, it was really
a nice place to live. You can leave your bicycle outside.
But then after a while started getting worse and worse,
and there was a little more crime. It was still quiet,
but you could see the riding on the wall that
it was going to be bad.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
So things were getting increasingly more dangerous. It was just
not improving, all right. So take me to the night
all of this went down. At about eight forty five
on April twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine, two fourteen year
old boys left their home on North Harding Avenue in Chicago, Illinois,
to walk to a corner store one block north, but
(03:50):
unfortunately they never arrived. Both were shot in the head
before they got there. One was found right outside the
family home and the other was found a bit further
up the block, and neither one survived. When did you
hear that this had happened, frank And where were you
at the time it went down?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Well, I was at this one woman's house that I
had known for a little while. I used to stay
at her house all the time, and I used to
hang out with her daughter. You know, good people to
be around. And later on that night one of my friends,
his sister, came by and said, hey, be careful, there
was just a shooting. We just heard about a shooting.
We didn't know there was a murder or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
How far were you physically, Like, how far was the
house you were watching television at from where the shooting
took place.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Maybe three or four blocks so close? Yeah, it was close, Betty.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Do you remember when you heard about the shooting.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, I heard about it the next afternoon because, uh,
Frankie was getting ready to go to the flea market
when police officers came knocking on the door. No big deal,
no big deal, and Frankie was more than willing to go.
I mean, you you hear and see how people run
(05:12):
hide everything. But no, Frankie was coming out of his
room and one of the police officers says, hey, you
want to come with us. We're doing a lineup or something.
And the police said we'll bring him back when we're done.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay. So the police came to your family's home and
just said that they needed your assistance.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
They were just they were just asking you for assistance,
a little help. That was it.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And tell me how that unfolded from your side of
the story, frank I.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Mean they came and knocked on the door. I was
getting ready, like my mom said, for to go to
the flea market, and my little brother came said hey,
there's something. You know, there's a policeman at the door
looking for you. I'm like, okay, I'll go up there.
And he started asking did you hear about this? And
you'll know anything about it? I'm like, I don't know
anything about it. I heard there was something going on,
but as far as if I heard anybody, you know,
(06:08):
if anybody had done it or like that, I didn't
know anything. And next thing, you know, he was like,
come on, we need to take you down to get
in the lineup. I'm like, okay, I had nothing to hide.
I was one hundred percent confident that I was going
to be released later that day after the lineup.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So what was your first lineup.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
After the lineup? When they told me they had picked
me out of lineup? No, that's impossible. I had nothing
to do with it. They questioned me. They asked me
where I was at. At first, it was just general
questions and then the pressure starts and as we know
you did it, you got picked out. I'm like, no,
that's impossible. They're lying. Oh they're lying. Yet you're wrong.
You're the one line. I'm like, no, i'm not. Where
(06:46):
were you at? And I told them where I was
at and they were like, no, you're lying. And it
was just constant pressure.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Are you asking to go home? Are you asking for
your mother?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Are you asking for Yeah, I'm definitely asking for my mom.
Like I want to talk to my mom, Like no,
you can't talk to her. You're never going to see
her again. I guess that's the kind of psychological games
that they.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Play, and what kind of tactics were used against you.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I didn't suffer any physical abuse, thankfully, but I think
the mental abuse was even worse because they pick on
something and then they just drive it. I guess they figured, Okay,
this is a mama's boy, let's go with the mom. Now.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's not like this went on for half an hour
or an hour.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
No, I got to the station. Well, they picked me
up around twelve thirty, and then I was there all night.
From what I remember, I signed the core statement at
four three thirty, four to thirty in the morning. So
you're talking about, you know, sixteen plus hours.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
The two detectives who questioned you apparently already had a
history of doing this in terms of coercing false confessions.
But did they have you write out something? Did they
write it out?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
How?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
What did you sign?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
They wrote everything out. They wrote everything out. They said,
we're going to prepare a statement for you that is
self defense. You'll sign it and you'll go home that
right after you sign it, we're going to get the
stage attorney over there so she can witness it, and
you're good to go.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
It didn't happen, so they made it sound like it
was just kind of a formality and that they were
going to make it look like it wasn't your fault anyway.
You just sign it, you get to go home, right?
Did you get to go home?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Obviously not. I spent thirty four years and four months
in prison, Betty.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What's going on on your end while your son's being
held overnight? What are you thinking?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, when he didn't come home by eleven o'clock at
night that night, that Saturday night, me and my mother
in law, we just started calling the police station. Every
police station we called, they said, who, We don't have
nobody here by that name. We couldn't even locate him.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And you have to remember this is before cell phone though,
it's hard to get in contact with people.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I called so many police stations that it was unreal.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So you must have been panicked. You're like desperately trying
to find your son.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, my mother, my mother in law, she was crying
because we couldn't find Frankie. It was just like, where
could he have been? Because he wouldn't stay out that late.
Frankie would come home at a decent time so that
we wouldn't worry about him.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
So when did you next connect with your mom?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
When I got to the Kokanie jail, I was able
to make a phone call. I called the house and
I can't remember what do you remember what time it was? Mom?
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Oh, it was late because we were still trying to
find you.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Right, And I know when I talked to my grandmother,
she was like, what happened? What's going on? I'm like, why,
what are you talking about? She says, you were just
all over the news and I'm like, well, so I said,
let me talk to mom and I explain it to you.
And I asked my mom what was going on? She said, yeah,
you're all over the news. And like, no, it can't
be right.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I mean, no, wait, So Betty, you found out that
your son was arrested on the news on the news.
What was that like for you?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
It was like what? Because at the same time we
were listening to it on the news, Frankie was calling
us and Frankie told me, he goes, Mom, I've been
arrested for murder. And I'm going what. My mother in
law is screaming, my father in law is trying to
console her. It was just a mess. And I had
(10:58):
told Frankie, I said, we've been trying to find you
all night. What happened?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
How do you even explain that when you're eighteen, frank
how do you even explain to your mother that you've
signed a confession?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I mean I automatically told her I was scared, and
they told me I was going to go home, and
you know, she called me stupid, of course, but I
didn't know anybotter. I was eighteen and.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
You'd asked for your mother. Yes, you didn't have a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
No, no, So what goes through your.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Head at that point? Betty as like a mom of
four kids. They've made a mistake. You want your son back.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, And it was like, now, this is what I
found out afterwards when I was calling the police stations
to find out where Frankie was at, they said they
never had him until they booked him. They didn't even
know anything. So it was it was it was difficult.
(12:03):
And then when I found out that he had been
booked for murder, I'm asking, Okay, what's what's the next step.
We didn't know anything about any of these processes. We
I mean, we're hillbilly's. I'm a hillbilly. I'm from the South.
(12:24):
My husband and his parents were from Mexico. I mean,
I always grew up with the knowledge that the cops
were good, and then this happened.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, but I mean, I can't even imagine. Look if
this happened to me tomorrow, even knowing everything that I know,
You're not just up against one person, it's not a mistake.
You're up against an entire system, an entire system and
the media.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah. I still have the paper clipping from the trial
that they did on my son. I've kept it for
thirty four years.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
How did you get through that? Finding out your son
was in prison, that he's confessed to a crime that
he didn't commit, that nobody is going to help you
get him out.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
It was real hard because we didn't know nobody. If
you don't know lawyers, or if you don't know the
ins and outs of things, it's like, what do I
do now? What do I do now? It's hard, It's
very hard.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
So take me to the first time you physically saw
each other after this happened, because that's what really hit me.
As a mother of a son who's now about to
turn twenty, he's still a kid on some levels, and
I just can't imagine not being able to hug him.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right right when we went to the bail hearing for him.
I saw him for about two minutes. He walked out
from the back, stood in front of the judge. The
state was there, the public defender was there, and the
judge said no bail. And that's when they said he's
(14:20):
being charged with two counts of murder in the first degree.
The only thing I could do was cry. I couldn't
do anything. Oh and from there I saw him and
then they took him back to the back. Then we
(14:40):
went to the bond hearing and they said no bond
and we left there and it's like, what do we
do now? I mean, the next step, of course, is
to get a lawyer. They assigned a public defender to him.
At the first time I met that public defender, the
(15:03):
public defender says, they're going to look for the death penalty,
and I'm going what. And then he says, you know,
your best bet is having plead guilty. They'll give him
life in prison without the possibility of parole, but he'll
be alive. And I asked the lawyer, why would I
want to tell Frankie to confess to something he didn't
(15:25):
even do. After that, my husband and I we went
home and my mother in law asked me what happened,
and I told her we thought she was going to
have a heart attack. She was screaming and crying so hard.
We had to call other parts of our family to
(15:46):
come and help her because we didn't know what to do.
So then my husband, he had a few friends that
worked for the Cook County sheriffs, so a couple of
them said, Okay, I will give you some names of lawyers,
and you know, go from there. But if you don't
(16:07):
know lawyers, if you don't know what they're good at,
you just try to find what you can afford and
go with it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Had you ever felt that kind of helplessness before?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
No? No, And here I am. I have to go
to work in order to feed my family, help pay
the bills. When all this was going on, and I
had talked to my employers and I told them I'm
going to have to be going to court for my son,
(16:43):
and we made an agreement because at that time, I
was like payroll, that was my job and I was
the only one who did it. There was no backup.
So I would go to court with him every six
weeks because that's how they scheduled his court dates and
(17:05):
every time we would go to court, they would say,
we're not ready at we're still gathering evidence, we're doing this,
we're doing that, And every time we'd go it was
a different person from the state his visitation. He was
housed at what they used to call.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Max one Division one.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Division one at eighteen and that's the prison that was
crumbling that they're tearing down or replaced. Now.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, it was the original jail.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I mean, it wasn't call you on the phone anytime
you wanted. You had thirty minutes. They gave you a
list of what you could bring in, which was basically close.
That was about it.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
What was that transition like for you for that to
become your day to day reality.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I mean it was kind of rough. I'm being thrown
in a place where I know I don't belong, so
I mean I had to act like I was kind
of tough, and I'm not really tough. It's just every
day surrounded by people that probably did what they're locked
up for, and mostly murderers. I mean, back then there
(18:17):
was no internet, so you didn't know if these guys
were charged with sex offenses or anything like that. But
most of the guys there were locked up for murder.
They were going to trial for murder. So I used
to think to myself, you know, what am I doing here?
What led me to this? And it was just it
was hard. I mean there were times when I was
by myself that I would cry.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, I mean eighteen and talk about wanting to be
an actor. Suddenly you have to act to stay alive.
Basically I was.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I was in the role for my life. I had
to act as a certain part and it was kind
of hard because that's not me at all, you know, Yeah,
I'm bad, you know, leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So you're held for almost a year and a half
before trial.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I got locked up in April of eighty nine and
then the trial was in August of ninety one, so
a little over two years.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
So your mama described the place you were being held
awaiting trial is kind of crumbling. But what was that
like physically and what kind of a cell were you in?
Did you have a cell mate?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah? I had a cell mate. Yeah, it's close quarters
and division one. They didn't have bunk beds, so you're
laying basically side by side with somebody else. So being
in the cell with somebody, they're using a washroom and
you know, doing what they do. It's just it's hard.
You're living in your own bedroom.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I can imagine Betty that every single time you went
to visit him, he was growing older and more mature
and kind of a heartbreaking way.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Heading into the trial, did you still have the hope
that this was all a nightmare mistake?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yes? Yes, it was a three day court trial with
a jury of twelve. One of the alternate jurors she
came out and says, there is nothing there. There is
absolutely nothing there at all. That kind of gave me hope.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So, Frank, just in terms of your defense, you have
proof that it was a coerced confession because it doesn't
align with the way in which the eyewitnesses testified to
the crime unfolding of an alibi. You have all of
(21:03):
the things you did during that day. You must have
felt like, how can they find me guilty? I'm innocent
and I can prove it.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah, it's kind of hard. I mean, remember this is
back in the eighties, and everything that the police said,
the state's attorney said, people are gonna go with it.
They didn't have the cell phone cameras, they didn't have
people coming forward like they do now. And the whole
trial was frustrating. I mean, knowing that you're innocent, you
want to scream at the top of your lung, I'm innocent,
do not find me guilty.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
What was it like though, to realize that the system
wasn't playing by the rules. For you both to sit
in that trial and know that officers of the law
were misrepresenting the truth.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It was frustrating because you're sitting there listening to people lie,
lie on top of lie, and there's nothing you can
do it because the lawyers are saying, hey, we can't
point out their lives because it's just going to make
you look like a liar. So it's frustrating, and.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You had an airtight alibi. If we can just go
back quickly and describe your whereabouts that day, you picked
up a paycheck, You went to the mall, Then you
went to the barber shop to get a haircut, and
that's important, I want to bring that back up. Then
(22:29):
you went to your friend's house where you watched television.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, I still remember that. I still remember the movie
and the channel was on. There's Beetlejuice on HBO. I'll
never forget it.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And then you guys walked to the corner store to
buy limes, a TV guide, dish soap, and you were
back by seven forty five. I just thought it was
so interesting because one of the eyewitness statements that the
police turned around was that this woman saw the gunman
running and thought, he looks like he just had a haircut. Yeah,
(23:03):
I know, right, which just seems like such a frame
job to me. Who looks at somebody running by and goes, wow,
they look like they just had a haircut. It was
such a random thing to throw in there. So when
the jury headed into deliberations, were you both still confident
(23:24):
that this was a runaway train and the brakes were
going to get put on and this nightmare would be over?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean from what I heard in the courtroom,
all the evidence that they put forth, everything that they said,
nothing matches. How can you find a person guilty if
everything doesn't match. The state is saying this, your lawyers
(23:58):
are saying this, and the two don't match at all.
It's like, how can this be?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
There has to at least be reasonable doubt, right, right, right?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
And when the jury went to deliberate an hour and
twenty five minutes and that's including lunch.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Rank. Now take me to the moment of the verdict.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I just had a feeling that it was going to
be bad, just the feeling. And then when they read
the guilty verdict, all I can hear was my sister
in the courtroom, just I've never heard of cry.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Like that, Betty. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Heartbreaking? So hard?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, it was hard.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I cannot imagine the definition of powerless better defined. There's
nothing you can do, no, nope.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And then it's like, now what do I do because
you're still you're still naive but na to not understand
what the next steps will be because there's no rhyme
(25:55):
or reason to anything, because you've never had these problems before.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Take me to the sentencing.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well, it's another court appearance and you go before the judge,
and the judge basically reads what the sentence is going
to be.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And Judge Barbara Disco denied the prosecution's request to impose
the death penalty correct and sentenced Frank to life in
prison without parole twice. Two life sentences.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Correct correct, two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pacheco. You
can listen to this and all the LoVa for Good
podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to
Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast Gusts.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Then that's when they placed you in different prisons, and
his first stop was Minard. It's an eight hour drive
from Chicago to Monards and you have to have a car,
you have to have gas money, food money, and travel time.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, Frank, how does your day to day change immediately?
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I mean, now you know you're surrounded by people that
are bad, I mean gangs ran the prisons back.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Then, you're in prison for life. How did you process
that mentally physically both of you?
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Me personally, I always went into it where I'm coming
home one day.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
I lived every day I'm coming home. I'm coming home.
And my mom was my biggest cheerleader. All my family was,
but especially my mom. She used to tell me all
the time, you're coming home, You're coming home, Just give
us some time. Yep.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I didn't know it was going to take this much
time though.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, So how does life change immediately for both of you?
After that sentencing? Betty, You've already said. Now it's pretty
much a day's journey there and back to go see
your son.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, we would leave on a Friday night and we
would come home on a Sunday because of the long drive.
It would take one paycheck just to do that, and
I had to start sending him money so he could
buy snacks, necessities that he needed and stuff. And back
(28:58):
then it was collect calls. It's not like it is now.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
So you're now fairly isolated in terms of access to
your family, and you're now trying to adjust a feeling
like in even smaller fish in a bigger, more dangerous sea,
because Menard is not known for being warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Nope, No, there was a lot of racism down there.
I had it easier because I look like I'm white,
and yeah I'm half white and half Mexican. But they
seen the white side and that's the way it was.
I mean, there was a lot of racism in.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Minarn So what do you think was the biggest learning
curve for you once you got there? What was the
most difficult thing for you to navigate how.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
To try to fit in? Because for me to be
kind of like them as a whin lady for me,
because I'm not that guy. It's you have to act
a certain way, and if not, you're going to get
eating the they'll they'll take your stuff or try to
do things, beat you up, or whatever it is. And
I'm glad I made it. It was tough. It was
(30:10):
not a day that went by that is this the
day that I'm going to die in prison?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Betty.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
You having to hold down a job and and and
raise three other kids while you're trying to be present
and supportive of your son who's wrongfully convicted facing life
at this point, how do you, guys then have the bandwidth?
(30:36):
How do you even begin to go about fighting to
get him out?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
On top of that, well, I started asking around about
are there organizations that can help. At that time there
there wasn't much help there because back then it was
you're guilty in jail. There ain't nothing we can do.
(31:03):
We had to start looking for other lawyers that would
right brief so that you could start going through the
other court processes to try to get the case back
into court, but none of them worked either. So then
I started looking to see if there was other people
(31:25):
out there trying to do the same thing. Trying to
find ways to help their members of their family who
they said were wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
And you have to remember one thing, this is before
all these exoneration projects and innocent projects came about.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Right, The one that really really stood out, which gave
me hope was the Rolando Cruz.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Because Cruise was exonerated in nineteen ninety five after having
been wrongfully convicted in nineteen eighty five of murder, rape, kidnapping,
and burglary, also in Illinois.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It was the first time I had heard and he
spent so much time on death row itself, and it
was like, if he can prove that he didn't do it,
then there has to be a way that we can
prove that Frankie didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
So in September nineteen ninety five, the first District Illinois
Appellate Court upheld Frank's convictions and sentence. Right, how difficult
was that?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That hurt? That hurt because the lawyer had showed that
there was still inconsistencies in the original trial which should
have raised eyebrow. It did not, So then we just
like we just keep trudging and trudging and trudging.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
How and when did you guys first hear about the
Exoneration project at the University of Chicago Law School and
the process heading up to that for you, like, where
are you getting the information of who to write, when
to write them, how to write them?
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Just talking to different people that are locked up with me,
Like I just got in contact with these people and
they want to help, and I'm like, well, let me
get that information. So I mean, I've written to Northwestern
and University of Illinois or place in New York. I've
written a berry shehck to a lot of people. I've
written to Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas. I've written everywhere, and everybody
(33:37):
said the same thing. Well, unfortunately, we have too many
cases as it is, and it would be a disservice
to our clients now we took any more cases.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So what were the darkest moments for both of you
during that time? Because it had to be like there
were these little glimmers of light in the distance that
maybe this may be that right.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
It was just never giving up. You really have to
keep in your head there has to be something you
are missing, that there's something that you haven't found yet
that will work.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
But that said, was there a point where either one
of you thought I can't do this, that this is
just too much for me.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
There was, I mean, and for me it was.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
When did you know that frank was going through the
dark period?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
When I would talk to him, you could always hear
it in his voice. You could always tell in the
way he was saying things. And I kept telling him,
don't ever give up. There has to be something, Betty.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I see how upset you are, even when you're telling him,
no matter what, don't give up. Were you afraid that
he would?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yes? Yes, because it was like he wasn't seeing the
light at the end of the tunnel. There was nights
that I would sleep, no sleep because I had talked
to Frankie and he would be saying, Mom, I can't
(35:22):
do this no more. And I would just kind of
yell at him and tell him you can't give up.
I told him he had to believe because if you
give up, that's it. And I wouldn't let him do
(35:46):
that period.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And then you get a voice at the end of
that phone call telling you that you've got one minute left.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. We had a lot of those.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Did did your mom screaming at you help? In other words,
have you ever told her, what kept you going?
Speaker 3 (36:09):
So I tell her all the times. She's the one
that coming on.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, my sisters, my kids, and they tell me the
same thing.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Mom.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
You tell him, don't give up, don't give up, don't
give up. We're gonna kick his ass. And I don't, Frankie,
don't you give up. I'm gonna kick your ass when
you come home. Didn't I tell you that, Frankie all
the time, All the time.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I kept telling him. God has a reason for everything
he does. He may not be the fastest, but he
gets there in his time.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Take me to the turning point, Frankie. In twenty twenty two,
represented by attorneys Joshua Tepfer from the Honooration Project at
the University of Chicago Law School and a non Swamenoffen
of the firm Lov and Lov, they filed a post
conviction petition seeking to overturn the convictions, and the petition
(37:12):
cited statements from two new witnesses who said they saw
the shooting and that frank was not the gunman. The
petition also noted that Bagookie and Schalk, who were the
two detectives who were also involved in your case, had
been involved in the wrongful murder conviction of a thirteen
year old Thaddeus Jimenez and testified falsely at his trial.
(37:37):
Take me to the moment. August twenty ninth, twenty twenty
three probably sticks out to you both as an important day.
Can you a.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Bunch of us have it tattooed on us?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Really?
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:55):
My daughter, Frankie, my son, my daughter in law, even
my daughter in law's parents got it tattooed on their arms.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Oh gosh, I love that.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Me and the grandma's we went together. We call it
our senior citizen outing because the other grandmas are in
the sixties and I'm in the seventies. Ray, they were yours.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Wow, Frankie, do you have the largest one of the family.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
No, my other son I think has the largest one
on the back of his leg. Wow.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
So you know, we just discussed, Betty, how the whole
family was sentenced. It must be that August twenty ninth
you were all freed in a different way, and frank
just take me to that day and how that played out.
So Judge Atcherson vacated your convictions and frank you were
(38:53):
released on bond pending a retrial. You had spent thirty
two years and fourteen days in print, thirty four more
than thirty four years in custody from the date of
your arrest.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes, he was picked up on April twenty ninth, nineteen
eighty nine. He was released on August twenty ninth of
twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
And when did you realize you were walking out?
Speaker 3 (39:23):
When the judge started talking, I was kind of like, yeah,
I might be coming out, and then she's like, no
cash bond. I'm like, oh, I'm going home.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
What was it like walking out?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Everybody was crying.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Different kinds of tears this time. Oh yes, yep, so Frank,
tell me walking out.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
I mean, who it was a relief. And then to
see the sea of people out there when I came out,
it was I finally get to tell my story.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And Betty, what was the first thing you said once
he was outside to him?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Thank God? I said, Remember I told you never give
up hope. As long as there's family and love, you
have it all.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
And then in September of twenty twenty three, Cook County
prosecutors formally drop the charges against you, Frank. And then
in December of twenty twenty three, you were awarded a
certificate of innocence and now get to set about living
your life finally again.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
What are your.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Goals and your hopes and your dreams for the.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Future right now? I just take it by day by
day and I just live life. That's all I'm gonna
do is just enjoy everything, everything that I can and
try to do everything.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler,
and Kevin Wardis, as well as our producers Annie Chelsea,
Kathleen Fink, and Jackie Pauley. This series is produced, edited,
(41:27):
and hosted by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Our senior producer
is Kara Kornhaber. Story editing by Hannah Bial, research by
Shelby Sorels, mixing and sound design by Nick Massetti, with
additional production by Jeff Clyborne. Our theme music is by
Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social
media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
(41:51):
You can also follow me on all platforms at Lauren
Bright Pachecko. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with the sicknes No company Number
one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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