April 1, 2020 • 35 mins
How can one man save the life of a perfect stranger?
The case of Daniel Villegas shows how ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference in the fight against wrongful convictions. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell the story of an unexpected hero who fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending in one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations ever seen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
and I'm Steve Drissen. Today we're going to tell you
about a case that shows just how much ordinary people
can help the wrongly convicted find real justice, even when
they start out as strangers. In today's case, an unexpected
hero fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending
(00:23):
in one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations I've ever seen.
Like so many of our cases at the Center on
Wrongful Convictions, Steve first learned about Daniel Viegas through one
(00:45):
of his infamous online searches. By this time, I actually
had my own news feed, and so did our colleague
Josh Tepfer. But Steve had his own reasons for being
particularly excited about this case. So after all three of
us read about a possible false confession case in El Paso,
it seemed like destiny for us to get involved in
(01:06):
this case. You see, in two thousand and six, Alpasso
was host to one of the most important conferences in
the history of false confessions that brought together many of
the leading experts on the subject to the University of Texas.
For people like US. This is basically the Olympics meets Coachella.
Who was there? Well, Donald Connery, the author of Peter
(01:28):
Riley's book, was there. Steve's talking about a book called
Guilty Until Proven Innocent. We'll tell you that story in
a later episode about a false confession from three and Easy.
Good Johnson, the famed Icelandic detective turned psychology professor at
King's College of London. You might remember easily from our
last episode his scientific expertise helped exonerate Tana Pora in
(01:51):
New Zealand. Richard off She and Richard Leo and Saul
Casson some of the leading experts in the United States
on false confessions. We're there. We're going to hear from
salcasm in another episode two. All of these guys are
o G experts in the world of false confessions. They're
Steve's heroes and mine too. So if I've turned into
a geek here, you know who to blame. This conference
(02:14):
was a watershed moment in the history of false confessions
and the idea of going back to El Paso to
work on an actual false confession case. It just seemed
like destiny to me. This story starts in El Paso,
a border city in West Texas. Now, in the early
nine nineties, El Paso was a different place than it
(02:35):
is today. The crime rate was sky high. There was
lots of gang activity. Street violence was a daily problem,
and in some neighborhoods, shootings were regular occurrences. We start
our story in the early morning hours of April tenth,
Good Friday. It's just after midnight and four teenagers are
walking home from a party and they find themselves in
(02:56):
a rough neighborhood. Three of them, Mando Lazo, Juan Carlos Medina,
and Jesse Hernandez, were seventeen years old. The fourth, Bobby England,
was eighteen. All of them were good kids. None of
them were caught up in gangs or the street life.
But they ran into trouble anyway. At the intersection of
Electric Street and trans Mountain Road. That's where a maroon
(03:17):
car with tinted windows rolls up behind them and starts
following them slowly. Now, just as the four of them
start to get scared, the car takes off its speeds away,
But a few minutes later it comes back, and this
time the driver turns off the headlights. Words are shouted
from the car in Spanish, possibly an insults, and then
(03:39):
a series of shots ring out, one right after another.
Juan and Jesse take off running as a matter of
sheer instinct, and they think that their two friends are
running away alongside them. But when Juan and Jesse feel
that they've run far enough that it's safe to slow down,
they look around them and they don't see Mondo or
Bobby with them at all. They take a deep breath,
(04:01):
go back to the scene of the shooting and they
see police lights flashing. Bobby had been shot in the
head and died in the street. Mondo had been shot
in the stomach and the thigh. He made it a
hundred yards to a house up the street, where he
collapsed in the front yard and died as the residents
frantically dialed Now. The police found six shells from a
(04:22):
twenty two caliber handgun littered on the street right where
the car had pulled over. But that's about it in
terms of evidence. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing
forensic to help them solve this crime. It was going
to have to come down to confessions. The El Paso
police assigned one of the toughest cops on the force,
to the Good Friday shooting. An officer whose name we
(04:44):
can't share, but an officer who was known as a closer.
This guy is so tough he's even been featured on
the TV show Cops. Now, what's a closer? A closer
is someone who is very skilled at police interrogation. A
good closer will gather at it and then slowly revealed
that evidence to a suspect, like peeling off layers of
(05:05):
an onion, so that the suspect feels like he is nabbed,
his goose is cooked, and that leads the suspect to confess.
But there are other kinds of closers. Closers who use
brutality and threats, and they don't only use these tactics
with suspects. Their modus operandi is to use these tactics
(05:27):
with suspects, with witnesses and sometimes with victims, and they
get statements, but those statements are coerced and false statements.
This detective, he was in that second camp exactly, so
the closer is brought in right, This detective from the
Al Paso Police Force. He begins investigating the case and
(05:47):
pretty soon he comes across a seventeen year old boy
named David Wrangel DaVita is brought into the police station
in Theory about a completely different case. The police had
told his mom that they needed to talk to David
about some telephone harassment complaints, but when questioning actually began,
it had nothing to do with telephone harassment. Police began
(06:10):
accusing David of committing the Good Friday shootings. Now later on,
David said that the police falsely told him during this
interrogation that his friends had implicated him, and Davite himself
was threatened. He says he was told that he was
a pretty white boy with green eyes who would be
raped in prison if he didn't confess. This scares David
(06:31):
and eventually he starts offering some information. He tells police
that his sixteen year old cousin, Daniel Viegas, had been
bragging about committing the Good Friday shootings, although he added
that everyone was sure Daniel had been joking. He see
Daniel had a reputation as a jokester. He was the
type of kid who always boasted about things he hadn't
(06:51):
actually done. Daniel had bragged about owning a water bed
when he didn't He bragged about owning a fancy stereo
when he didn't. He even bragged about being ascended from
Italian Royalty when he definitely wasn't. I want to be
descended from Italian Royal to me too, But that kind
of looks just ain't for us, Steve, anybody. When it
came to the Good Friday shootings, Davite never believed Daniel
(07:12):
to be serious, not even for a minute. It just
wasn't him. Daniel had nothing serious like this in his background.
Just like criminals have a modus operandi, many times closures
or interrogators have a modus operandi, and in David's case,
we saw evidence that we later were able to demonstrate
was a modus operandi. Almost always, this interrogator would tell
(07:34):
the suspect that his best friend or close associate had
implicated him in the crime, even if that's untrue, right
always untrue. He would threaten the suspect with the death penalty.
And he also told the suspects, or the witnesses or
the victims in this case, that they were going to
go to prison and they were going to be raped.
I mean, if you're a seventeen year old kid, and
(07:57):
most of these witnesses were teenagers, and you're told that
you're looking at going to an adult jail where you're
going to be a rape victim. You're gonna say just
about anything you need to to get out of that interrogation.
It's terrifying stuff. And for David, the information he gave
was that his cousin Daniel, had been joking about committing
the Good Friday shooting. He never believed Daniel to be serious,
(08:18):
but this information was enough for the police. They asked
David to write out a statement describing what Daniel had said.
David wrote that Daniel had bragged about using a shotgun
to commit the shootings, but the detective had David take
that part out and write the statement a second time
without mentioning the type of weapon, because remember, the shells
(08:39):
at the scene had come from a twenty two, not
a shotgun. Even with the detective's edits, David's statements still
contained errors. He remembered his cousin bragging about being in
a black car, not a maroon car, and Davite said
that Daniel described firing a few shots, then getting out
of the car, chasing Mondo Lazo to the house and
shooting him again. There that's just not how this crime happened.
(09:02):
The shots were all clustered together, not spaced out, and
there were no casings found near Mondo's body, But none
of us mattered. Now, this is a statement that David
regretted giving. It haunted him for the rest of his
life that he'd implicated his own cousin in the Good
Friday shootings, when even he didn't believe that Daniel was guilty.
(09:24):
But it was a statement that he felt he had
no choice but to give in light of the threats
that he was encountering in the interrogation room. So there
are errors, errors in da vide statement, errors in the
statements of other witnesses, errors that the true perpetrator would
never have made. That's a red flag. It's a huge
red flag. But it doesn't stop these police. Within hours,
(09:46):
three more people are brought in for questioning late at
night on April one, two friends of Daniel's, Marcos Gonzalez
and Rodney Williams, and Daniel himself. They're all questioned and
when Daniel is interrogated, he'd and eyes involvement. He tells
the police he was babysitting that night with a group
of friends and they were all watching white men can't
(10:06):
jump on TV. But here comes that modus operanda exactly.
Daniel reports being told that if he didn't confess, he
would be taken to the desert to get beaten, and
then to jail where he would be raped by old men,
then sentenced to death by the electric chair. This is
how they scared Daniel. This is how they began reducing
him down to this feeling of hopelessness. But if he confessed,
(10:29):
on the other hand, he was told that he would
get leniency because he was just a minor. And after
about five hours of interrogation, Daniel ends up signing a
confession typed out by detectives. It's about three o'clock in
the morning. He repeats the same errors that David Wrangel
had made, but he makes other mistakes too. First of all,
what about the people in the car. Daniel says the
(10:50):
driver was someone nicknamed Popeye and that the front passenger
was someone nicknamed DROOPI. But the only known Popeye was
incarcerated at the time, and the only known Droopie he
was also on house arrest at the time. They could
not possibly have been in the car. The color of
the car. Da Vine had said the car was black,
survivor Jessie Hernandez, he had said the car was maroon.
(11:14):
Daniel said they were in a white four door sedan
at the time of the shooting. And finally, Daniel said
that he had shot Bobby and Mando in the back,
but it was clear from the medical examiner's report that
they had been shot from the front. The more and
more you study Daniel's confession, the more you start to
see a pattern. The only facts about this murder that
(11:36):
he was able to get right are facts that had
been publicized about the Good Friday shootings in the local paper,
the El Paso Times. Now, this is a pretty big
red flag when you can only get facts right when
you've read about them in the newspaper. And there's another
red flag in this case too. As soon as the
interrogator left the room, Daniel immediately recants to a juvenile
(11:57):
probation officer. I didn't do it, he said, and he
explained that he only confessed because the cops kept harassing him.
He said, I was tired, so I told them what
they wanted to hear. And the police and prosecutors ran
with that confession, even though it was filled with many
false facts and errors, despite the red flags in his confession,
(12:19):
despite the recantation, despite the lack of any physical evidence
connecting him to the crime, Daniel Viegas is arrested and
charged with capital murder. He's sixteen years old. Now, Daniel
(12:42):
didn't come from a family with a lot of money,
but his parents managed somehow to scrape together ten thousand
dollars for an attorney. Daniel viegass first trial took place
in December. At that trial, da Vida Rangel testified, but
he maintained that Daniel had been obviously kidding when he'd
bragged about the shooting. Rodney and Marcos, Daniel's friends, well,
(13:03):
they had given police statements implicating Daniel when they've been questioned,
but on the witness stand they said their statements were
false and had been obtained through threats of prison, rape
and other similar threats. And Daniel's attorney called eighteen defense witnesses,
including several alibi witnesses, who testified that Daniel was with
them babysitting and watching TV at the time of the shooting. Right,
(13:25):
white men can't jump, and Daniel's attorney argued strenuously about
all these inconsistencies in Daniel's confession, how it just didn't
match the facts of this crime, how it showed every
indication of being false. He even called other witnesses who
called into question the credibility of this detective, former prosecutors
(13:47):
who had sought indictments for perjury. The defense mounted a
huge fight. They made every argument they could. The trial
lasted a week and at the end there was a
hung jury eleven to one, but it was eleven to
one in favor of a conviction, which gave the district
attorney some thought that this would be an easier case
(14:08):
to convict the next time around. Sure enough, about nine
months later, again Daniel Viegas has tried for the murders
of Mondo and Bobby. But the second trial was different.
You see, Daniel's parents had spent every penny they had
on the first trial, and they couldn't afford a lawyer
for the second trial. This time around, Daniel was represented
by a court appointed lawyer, someone who had been assigned
(14:30):
the case only two months before the trial began, and
so when the second trial rolled around, that lawyer called
only one defense witness, no alibi witnesses at all. He
hardly pointed to any problems with Daniel's confession, even though
he had a blueprint for success in the form of
the first trial, and he didn't make a full frontal
attack on the integrity and credibility of the police officer
(14:53):
who got these unreliable statements, and so on August, Daniel
Viegas was convicted of capital murder. Because he'd been a
juvenile at the time of the offense, he wasn't sentenced
to death. Instead, he was given two life terms in prison,
one for Bobby and one for Mondo. Daniel was a
(15:15):
teenager when he went to prison, and he might still
be there today if it weren't for a man named
John Mabella. Now, John is the head of a successful
El Passo construction firm, a firm that hired a lot
of formerly incarcerated people because John is a guy who
believes in second chances. One day in two thousand five,
John Mabella walks into an El Passo bank and he
(15:39):
ends up asking his teller, a woman named Lucy, out
on a date. Six months later, we were buried. Lucy
had three daughters with Daniel's brother, so Daniel was actually
Lucy's ex brother in law. I adopted Lucy's daughters two
years later, and that's when I learned more about Daniel's case. Now,
(15:59):
Lucy and brought the girls to see their grandparents, who
were Daniel's parents, and eventually John started coming along too.
That's where he started to hear stories about their son, Daniel,
who was serving life in prison for two murders he
didn't commit. At first, I thought, you know, any parents
gonna not want to accept that their son might be
(16:20):
a killer. I had a lot of faith also in
our system. You know, I always believe that if a
jury found you guilty, it must have been because they
had plenty of evidence against you. So I figured, hey,
you know, they must have all kinds of evidence on
this kid if they sentenced him to life. John was skeptical,
(16:40):
but he saw how heartbroken the grandparents were and he
agreed to read through the court papers. Before long, he
was dumb struck. There was no reliable evidence tying Daniel
to these shootings at all. And then John Manbella became
a man possessed. I've got a couple of friends and
I asked them if they could set up a meeting
(17:02):
with our d A because I saw some serious problems
in Daniel's conviction. Our DA happened to be high Miss Barsa,
and he personally trialed Daniel. So I figured, you know what,
if there's some mistake, if there's some doubt, you know,
he's going to reopen this case. So we had the
meeting and I told him, I go, you know what
I think, Daniels, it isn't something stronger. You know, we
(17:26):
need to look into it. This d A fought us
a lot just to get evid entry hearing. After he
told me the higher good appeals lawyer and opened up
the case again, he fought us to the nee. Now
this really fired John up. It didn't make any sense.
He starts paying for billboards around El Paso. That's a
free Daniel Viegas. He starts organizing rallies and protests outside
(17:49):
the courthouse, and he hired a private investigator. He read
the transcripts and he was dumbfounded too. He goes to John,
I was a homicide detective for twenty years. This case
would never have gone to trial. I would never have
presented this to my d A if this is all
I had. He was very upset and he goes, yes, John,
I'll take your case. John, Manbella is invested in Daniel's
(18:10):
innocence and the work he would go on to do
ended up costing him personally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He's the patron saint of the Daniel Viegas case. You know,
I went down to El Paso shortly after John had
hired lawyers and investigators to reopen Daniel's case, and when
I went into the courthouse, they were like fifteen or
(18:31):
twenty people walking around with signs saying free Daniel Viegas.
You know, false confessions happened. Justice for Daniel Viegas. John
had organized a rally right in front of the courthouse,
and on the street in front of the courthouse was
a truck that had billboards on both sides of it
that was driving around the courthouse. So when you walked
(18:53):
into the courtroom and El Paso, you were just blitzed
by this notion that an injust just had occurred and
that it needed to be fixed exactly. And John brought
his entire community into this case too. There was a
manager who worked at his construction company who was a songwriter,
and he ends up writing a corrido, a traditional Mexican
ballad about the wrongful conviction of Daniel Viegas. John was
(19:17):
so proud of that song that one of the first
things he did when I was down in al Passa
was to play that for me. It's on YouTube now
if you want to hear it. John and the private investigator, right,
(19:37):
they want to really find out what happened, and one
of the first people they go to speak to is
Jesse Hernandez, one of the survivors of the shooting. Of course,
Jesse was now a grown man, and John shows Jesse
for the first time a copy of Daniel's confession. Jesse's like, John,
this is not what happened. This just not look like
(20:02):
a confession from somebody was there who took this confession down?
And I told him. At that point, Jesse turns pale
and he's like, John, that same detective almost had me
confessing to that crime. He shows up that night and
he tells me, we know you shot your friends, your
(20:23):
buddy Kuan Mead, and I just told us that you
did it, and Jesse says that he was just hysterical.
He's like, wait a minute, these are my friends. I
love my friends. I would never do anything like that
to my friends. He goes, well, maybe you blacked out,
you know, and you shot them and you didn't even
realize it. And at that moment, Jesse goes, well, man,
you know, why would my friends say I shot them
if I didn't showed them. Maybe I did do it,
(20:45):
And he put his head down to the table and
just crying uncontrollably. Had it not been for his mom
that stepped in, he says, he was almost ready to confess.
So Jesse's like, the last thing I want is somebody
innocence spinning the rest of their life in prison. That
could have been me. This was an absolute bolt from
(21:16):
the blue when John heard this story from Jesse Hernandez,
and it only motivated him to continue pounding the pavement. Eventually,
John hires a highly skilled El Paso trial lawyer, a
man named Joe Spencer. Now Joe files a state petition
for a wit of habeas corpus, arguing, among other things,
that Daniel's lawyer at his second trial had been ineffective
(21:37):
for failing to call Daniel's alibi witnesses. There's a hearing
plan it's going to happen in two thousand eleven, and
in the run up to that hearing. That's when Steve
and I first heard about this case. Yeah, we heard
about it through our news feeds. And this time what
made this special is it wasn't just me who came
in to the office the next day. It was me
and Laura, and so did our third attorney, Josh Kept.
(22:01):
All three of us got this news feed at the
same time, a case of a juvenile who had confessed
to a crime he didn't commit and who was trying
to reopen his case through a new hearing. At the hearing,
Jesse Hernandez takes the stand for the first time. Jesse
testifies that Daniel's confession didn't match what actually happened to
(22:21):
him and his friends. Daniel's alibi witnesses also testified, saying
that they were with Daniel on the night of the crime.
And remember Dr Richard Leo, one of the experts from
that false confession conference in El Paso back in two
thousand six. He took the stand too, and testified that
Daniel's statement showed every sign of being false. There was
(22:42):
even evidence introduced that two other known gang members had
threatened Mando Lazo's life right before the shooting, and they
bragged about killing him. Afterwards, when one of those two
gang members was called to testify, he invoked his Fifth
Amendment right against self incrimination and refused to answer anything.
And Joe Spencer also mounted again a direct attack on
(23:04):
the integrity of the detective who had taken the false
witness statements, who had almost gotten a false confession from
the crime victim, and who had gotten the confession from Daniel.
And one of the things he discovered, which is pretty incredible,
was that one of the tactics that this detective had
used in another case was that he would enter an
(23:27):
interrogation room dressed in a smock. Now, why would anybody
wear a smock? Well, he tried to mislead the suspect
into thinking that they were speaking to a medical person,
a doctor, instead of a police officer. And when the
judge heard that evidence, his eyes rolled back into his head.
(23:50):
And eventually we had an opportunity to file an amicus
brief about the unreliability of Daniel's confession and add that
to everything that Joe Spencer was already doing in the courtroom,
and we pha size how vulnerable a teenager like Daniel
would have been to making a false confession. The hearing concluded,
and then we waited. The judge took nine months to
reach a decision, but on August seventeenth, two thousand twelve,
(24:14):
Judge Sam Madrono recommended that Daniel Viegas received a new trial.
Judge Madrono concluded that Daniel's trial lawyer had provided ineffective
assistance by failing to investigate or introduce evidence of the
unreliability of Daniel's confession. Now, Judge Madrono's decision was a
fabulous victory, but it was only a recommendation. It had
(24:36):
to be adopted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
It was at that point that we joined the team
to craft a presentation to that court that we hoped
it would accept. As that appeal process is ongoing, Daniel's lawyer,
Joe Spencer, asked Judge Madrono to free Daniel on bond
let him go home as the appeal process dragged on,
(24:58):
and on January four, to thousand fourteen, after nearly two
decades in prison, Daniel was released on bond, straight into
the arms of John Mabella, who drove him home in
a brand new, shiny red convertible. It was almost like
a kicker tape parade, Daniel was free, he got started
(25:20):
living right away. As soon as he was released. He
got married to a woman named Amanda, whom he met
when he was behind bars, and in short order they
had two beautiful children. But even though Daniel is walking
out of the prison into the arms of a crowd
of supporters, that could have all been taken away from them.
And the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas is a
court that has a reputation of being hostile to defendant's claims,
(25:45):
especially claims regarding their actual innocence. So it wasn't anything
but a sure thing that Judge Medrano's decision would be affirmed.
Long story short, the High Court affirms Judge Madrono's ruling. Yes,
Niel Viegas deserves another trial and a chance to prove
his innocence. But the d A didn't get around to
(26:06):
the new trial until eighteen So for four years Daniel's
living with a sword hanging over his head. If he
goes to trial and loses, he'll be back in prison
for life. This is enormously stressful. The months and years
are ticking by. Daniel's starting a family. He's working at
John Manbella's construction company. Tasting freedom and cherishing it. What
(26:30):
does the d A do? He asks Daniel to enter
an Alfred plea, stay free as long as you plead guilty.
It's such attempting offer, especially to somebody who was locked
up for a crime they didn't commit as a teenager
and had to spend two decades or more in prison
(26:50):
suffering under the weight of that wrongful conviction. But now
Daniel's got other people, yes to think about his wife
and their children. Daniel consider the Alfred plea option seriously
because it meant that he wouldn't have to go back
to trial. You would be a convicted murderer, but at
least he would have his freedom. Of course, he was
tempted to put the whole thing behind him. But Daniel
(27:12):
lived in El Paso, Texas, and El Paso had become
home to a small community of wrongly convicted individuals. Among
that community was a man named Jason Baldwin. Now that's
a name that true crime junkies might recognize, because Jason
Baldwin was a member of the West Memphis Three, a
group of three teenagers from Arkansas who had been accused
(27:33):
of the killings of three eight year old boys. One
of them, Jesse mss kelly, had falsely confessed, and the
three of them were convicted, two sentenced to life in prison,
and the third, Damian Eccles, sent a death row in Arkansas.
They fought their case for seventeen years. Steve and I
were fortunate enough to join Damian eccles legal team at
(27:53):
the very end, and they were freed only when the
State of Arkansas made them an offer. All three of
you enter Alfred, please say you're guilty of these crimes,
and then we'll let you out. Now, this is an
easier decision when it came to Damien, he was on
death row. But Jason, who had been sentenced to life
in prison, wrestled with it. He didn't want to admit
(28:15):
to a crime he didn't commit, even to secure his
own freedom. Ultimately, he chose to accept the Alfred plea
to help save Damien's life. One of the consequences of
entering an Alfred plea is that you can't get compensated
through state compensation statutes. The Alfred plea is considered a
plea of guilty, and that disqualifies you from recovering any compensation.
(28:39):
Prosecutors dangle freedom so long as they can secure guilty,
please and return and prevent themselves from being sued down
the road. It's a tool of injustice that happens way
too often. It was used in the Robert Davis case,
it was used in the West Memphis three case, and
it almost worked on Daniel Viegas. You see, Jason Baldwin
had moved from Arkansas to Texas, where he became involved
(29:02):
in a wrongful conviction advocacy organization called Proclaim Justice and
joined John Mabella's fight to free Daniel Viegas. Jason Baldwin
became one of his closest friends and confidence As Daniel
wade whether to accept that Alfred play. Daniel told me,
Johnny goes, if I take this deal, all this work
that you did is for nothing. So we called Jason
(29:24):
Bodwin for his advice, and he said, let's talk about
it before you decide anything. And he tells Daniel, no,
I I can't tell you what to do. You have
a family. But in my case, you know there's no
way that I would do it again. It bothers me
every day of my life. So just think hard about
(29:47):
this because it could bother you the rest of your
life too. And with Jason Baldwin's counseling and support, Daniel
Viegas found his courage and turned down that unjust Alfred
Plea offer. He decided to go to trial. The stakes
were so high at this trial. Daniel had tasted freedom,
(30:09):
he was starting to live the kind of life he
had always dreamed of. But here he was back in
that courtroom, a place where the last time had ended
in a conviction. Now this trial was very different because
this time Daniel's team of lawyers we succeeded in getting
(30:30):
his confession thrown out as involuntary and coerced. And without
that confession, there is precious little evidence to go on.
The state presented a case to the jury, the jury deliberated,
and in October of eighteen, a verdict came back us
Daniel Viegas. Now this is one of the highest profile
(30:51):
cases in the history of El Paso at this point,
and the courtroom was packed with supporters of Daniel Viegas.
Jason Baldwin of the Western that this three is there,
the local wrongful conviction advocacy organization Proclaim Justice is there,
and John and Lucy Mabella sitting in the front row
right behind Daniel and his lawyers. They are there, and
(31:12):
when the judge asks Daniel to stand up for the verdict,
his knees buckle. He almost collapses. He has to hear
whether this beautiful life that he has started reconstructing is
going to continue. Where is he going to end? Daniels
lawyers actually have to help him stand up, and he
was able to stand just long enough to hear the verdict.
(31:35):
They finally defended Daniel viegas not guilty, not guilty, and
the courtroom erupts in a sound of both cheers and
incredible relief, and then he collapsed under the weight of
a lifetime's worth of fighting. He had finally been exonerated.
(31:59):
It was it was a feeling that I don't think
I'm ever going to feel again in my life. Hey, Daniel,
got you? Yes, tell me about your kids? How many
kids you got? Now? There's four all together? A man
of my wife. I remember I told her man, I'm
(32:20):
told to be a dead and right at that time,
my daughter got pregnant too, and I was like, oh man,
you know I'm too young to be a grandpa. What
do you tell your kids about what happened to you?
The two little ones are too small to know about it. Uh,
they don't understand yet. Like I love when they tell
me life saying fair. I don't tell me. Everybody do
nineteen years in print and tell me how life be fair.
(32:42):
Clean your room. I know that the Wrongful Conviction podcast
played an important role in your case too. Yes, a
man of chieved really into the Wrongful Conviction community. Right,
She's like, don't vote a fan to change the plant.
So when they came to me with that offer, pleading
they will just call me by signing to see the
paper cake it close. So I was going to sign
(33:04):
it almost and that's when Amanda jumped into like, no, no,
I know all about yourself and please you know Jason
Flom told me about this. She educated me on that,
and then that's when we decided not to take that
pre deal. Daniel, you're an incredible human being. To see
(33:27):
you as a freeman at Innocence Network conferences, at events
for Proclaimed Justice, it makes my heart sink. You're a
symbol of endurance. It's been her honor to know you
and to tell your story today. That's the story of
Daniel Viegas. Join us next week when we'll tell you
(33:50):
about Honed Hyatt, a California man falsely accused of terrorism
based on one of the most outlandish confessions I've ever
heard until then. Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for
(34:11):
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Special
thanks to our executive producer Jason Flom and the team
at Signal Company Number one Executive producer Kevin Wardace, Senior
Producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by Connor Hall.
Special thanks to jog Hammer for additional script editing and
for wrangling and writing like a madwoman. Our music was
(34:35):
composed by j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
or Twitter at Laura night Rider and you can follow
me on Twitter at s Drizzen. For more information on
the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com and be
sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
(34:56):
wrong Conviction
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
and I'm Steve Drissen. Today we're going to tell you
about a case that shows just how much ordinary people
can help the wrongly convicted find real justice, even when
they start out as strangers. In today's case, an unexpected
hero fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending
(00:23):
in one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations I've ever seen.
Like so many of our cases at the Center on
Wrongful Convictions, Steve first learned about Daniel Viegas through one
(00:45):
of his infamous online searches. By this time, I actually
had my own news feed, and so did our colleague
Josh Tepfer. But Steve had his own reasons for being
particularly excited about this case. So after all three of
us read about a possible false confession case in El Paso,
it seemed like destiny for us to get involved in
(01:06):
this case. You see, in two thousand and six, Alpasso
was host to one of the most important conferences in
the history of false confessions that brought together many of
the leading experts on the subject to the University of Texas.
For people like US. This is basically the Olympics meets Coachella.
Who was there? Well, Donald Connery, the author of Peter
(01:28):
Riley's book, was there. Steve's talking about a book called
Guilty Until Proven Innocent. We'll tell you that story in
a later episode about a false confession from three and Easy.
Good Johnson, the famed Icelandic detective turned psychology professor at
King's College of London. You might remember easily from our
last episode his scientific expertise helped exonerate Tana Pora in
(01:51):
New Zealand. Richard off She and Richard Leo and Saul
Casson some of the leading experts in the United States
on false confessions. We're there. We're going to hear from
salcasm in another episode two. All of these guys are
o G experts in the world of false confessions. They're
Steve's heroes and mine too. So if I've turned into
a geek here, you know who to blame. This conference
(02:14):
was a watershed moment in the history of false confessions
and the idea of going back to El Paso to
work on an actual false confession case. It just seemed
like destiny to me. This story starts in El Paso,
a border city in West Texas. Now, in the early
nine nineties, El Paso was a different place than it
(02:35):
is today. The crime rate was sky high. There was
lots of gang activity. Street violence was a daily problem,
and in some neighborhoods, shootings were regular occurrences. We start
our story in the early morning hours of April tenth,
Good Friday. It's just after midnight and four teenagers are
walking home from a party and they find themselves in
(02:56):
a rough neighborhood. Three of them, Mando Lazo, Juan Carlos Medina,
and Jesse Hernandez, were seventeen years old. The fourth, Bobby England,
was eighteen. All of them were good kids. None of
them were caught up in gangs or the street life.
But they ran into trouble anyway. At the intersection of
Electric Street and trans Mountain Road. That's where a maroon
(03:17):
car with tinted windows rolls up behind them and starts
following them slowly. Now, just as the four of them
start to get scared, the car takes off its speeds away,
But a few minutes later it comes back, and this
time the driver turns off the headlights. Words are shouted
from the car in Spanish, possibly an insults, and then
(03:39):
a series of shots ring out, one right after another.
Juan and Jesse take off running as a matter of
sheer instinct, and they think that their two friends are
running away alongside them. But when Juan and Jesse feel
that they've run far enough that it's safe to slow down,
they look around them and they don't see Mondo or
Bobby with them at all. They take a deep breath,
(04:01):
go back to the scene of the shooting and they
see police lights flashing. Bobby had been shot in the
head and died in the street. Mondo had been shot
in the stomach and the thigh. He made it a
hundred yards to a house up the street, where he
collapsed in the front yard and died as the residents
frantically dialed Now. The police found six shells from a
(04:22):
twenty two caliber handgun littered on the street right where
the car had pulled over. But that's about it in
terms of evidence. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing
forensic to help them solve this crime. It was going
to have to come down to confessions. The El Paso
police assigned one of the toughest cops on the force,
to the Good Friday shooting. An officer whose name we
(04:44):
can't share, but an officer who was known as a closer.
This guy is so tough he's even been featured on
the TV show Cops. Now, what's a closer? A closer
is someone who is very skilled at police interrogation. A
good closer will gather at it and then slowly revealed
that evidence to a suspect, like peeling off layers of
(05:05):
an onion, so that the suspect feels like he is nabbed,
his goose is cooked, and that leads the suspect to confess.
But there are other kinds of closers. Closers who use
brutality and threats, and they don't only use these tactics
with suspects. Their modus operandi is to use these tactics
(05:27):
with suspects, with witnesses and sometimes with victims, and they
get statements, but those statements are coerced and false statements.
This detective, he was in that second camp exactly, so
the closer is brought in right, This detective from the
Al Paso Police Force. He begins investigating the case and
(05:47):
pretty soon he comes across a seventeen year old boy
named David Wrangel DaVita is brought into the police station
in Theory about a completely different case. The police had
told his mom that they needed to talk to David
about some telephone harassment complaints, but when questioning actually began,
it had nothing to do with telephone harassment. Police began
(06:10):
accusing David of committing the Good Friday shootings. Now later on,
David said that the police falsely told him during this
interrogation that his friends had implicated him, and Davite himself
was threatened. He says he was told that he was
a pretty white boy with green eyes who would be
raped in prison if he didn't confess. This scares David
(06:31):
and eventually he starts offering some information. He tells police
that his sixteen year old cousin, Daniel Viegas, had been
bragging about committing the Good Friday shootings, although he added
that everyone was sure Daniel had been joking. He see
Daniel had a reputation as a jokester. He was the
type of kid who always boasted about things he hadn't
(06:51):
actually done. Daniel had bragged about owning a water bed
when he didn't He bragged about owning a fancy stereo
when he didn't. He even bragged about being ascended from
Italian Royalty when he definitely wasn't. I want to be
descended from Italian Royal to me too, But that kind
of looks just ain't for us, Steve, anybody. When it
came to the Good Friday shootings, Davite never believed Daniel
(07:12):
to be serious, not even for a minute. It just
wasn't him. Daniel had nothing serious like this in his background.
Just like criminals have a modus operandi, many times closures
or interrogators have a modus operandi, and in David's case,
we saw evidence that we later were able to demonstrate
was a modus operandi. Almost always, this interrogator would tell
(07:34):
the suspect that his best friend or close associate had
implicated him in the crime, even if that's untrue, right
always untrue. He would threaten the suspect with the death penalty.
And he also told the suspects, or the witnesses or
the victims in this case, that they were going to
go to prison and they were going to be raped.
I mean, if you're a seventeen year old kid, and
(07:57):
most of these witnesses were teenagers, and you're told that
you're looking at going to an adult jail where you're
going to be a rape victim. You're gonna say just
about anything you need to to get out of that interrogation.
It's terrifying stuff. And for David, the information he gave
was that his cousin Daniel, had been joking about committing
the Good Friday shooting. He never believed Daniel to be serious,
(08:18):
but this information was enough for the police. They asked
David to write out a statement describing what Daniel had said.
David wrote that Daniel had bragged about using a shotgun
to commit the shootings, but the detective had David take
that part out and write the statement a second time
without mentioning the type of weapon, because remember, the shells
(08:39):
at the scene had come from a twenty two, not
a shotgun. Even with the detective's edits, David's statements still
contained errors. He remembered his cousin bragging about being in
a black car, not a maroon car, and Davite said
that Daniel described firing a few shots, then getting out
of the car, chasing Mondo Lazo to the house and
shooting him again. There that's just not how this crime happened.
(09:02):
The shots were all clustered together, not spaced out, and
there were no casings found near Mondo's body, But none
of us mattered. Now, this is a statement that David
regretted giving. It haunted him for the rest of his
life that he'd implicated his own cousin in the Good
Friday shootings, when even he didn't believe that Daniel was guilty.
(09:24):
But it was a statement that he felt he had
no choice but to give in light of the threats
that he was encountering in the interrogation room. So there
are errors, errors in da vide statement, errors in the
statements of other witnesses, errors that the true perpetrator would
never have made. That's a red flag. It's a huge
red flag. But it doesn't stop these police. Within hours,
(09:46):
three more people are brought in for questioning late at
night on April one, two friends of Daniel's, Marcos Gonzalez
and Rodney Williams, and Daniel himself. They're all questioned and
when Daniel is interrogated, he'd and eyes involvement. He tells
the police he was babysitting that night with a group
of friends and they were all watching white men can't
(10:06):
jump on TV. But here comes that modus operanda exactly.
Daniel reports being told that if he didn't confess, he
would be taken to the desert to get beaten, and
then to jail where he would be raped by old men,
then sentenced to death by the electric chair. This is
how they scared Daniel. This is how they began reducing
him down to this feeling of hopelessness. But if he confessed,
(10:29):
on the other hand, he was told that he would
get leniency because he was just a minor. And after
about five hours of interrogation, Daniel ends up signing a
confession typed out by detectives. It's about three o'clock in
the morning. He repeats the same errors that David Wrangel
had made, but he makes other mistakes too. First of all,
what about the people in the car. Daniel says the
(10:50):
driver was someone nicknamed Popeye and that the front passenger
was someone nicknamed DROOPI. But the only known Popeye was
incarcerated at the time, and the only known Droopie he
was also on house arrest at the time. They could
not possibly have been in the car. The color of
the car. Da Vine had said the car was black,
survivor Jessie Hernandez, he had said the car was maroon.
(11:14):
Daniel said they were in a white four door sedan
at the time of the shooting. And finally, Daniel said
that he had shot Bobby and Mando in the back,
but it was clear from the medical examiner's report that
they had been shot from the front. The more and
more you study Daniel's confession, the more you start to
see a pattern. The only facts about this murder that
(11:36):
he was able to get right are facts that had
been publicized about the Good Friday shootings in the local paper,
the El Paso Times. Now, this is a pretty big
red flag when you can only get facts right when
you've read about them in the newspaper. And there's another
red flag in this case too. As soon as the
interrogator left the room, Daniel immediately recants to a juvenile
(11:57):
probation officer. I didn't do it, he said, and he
explained that he only confessed because the cops kept harassing him.
He said, I was tired, so I told them what
they wanted to hear. And the police and prosecutors ran
with that confession, even though it was filled with many
false facts and errors, despite the red flags in his confession,
(12:19):
despite the recantation, despite the lack of any physical evidence
connecting him to the crime, Daniel Viegas is arrested and
charged with capital murder. He's sixteen years old. Now, Daniel
(12:42):
didn't come from a family with a lot of money,
but his parents managed somehow to scrape together ten thousand
dollars for an attorney. Daniel viegass first trial took place
in December. At that trial, da Vida Rangel testified, but
he maintained that Daniel had been obviously kidding when he'd
bragged about the shooting. Rodney and Marcos, Daniel's friends, well,
(13:03):
they had given police statements implicating Daniel when they've been questioned,
but on the witness stand they said their statements were
false and had been obtained through threats of prison, rape
and other similar threats. And Daniel's attorney called eighteen defense witnesses,
including several alibi witnesses, who testified that Daniel was with
them babysitting and watching TV at the time of the shooting. Right,
(13:25):
white men can't jump, and Daniel's attorney argued strenuously about
all these inconsistencies in Daniel's confession, how it just didn't
match the facts of this crime, how it showed every
indication of being false. He even called other witnesses who
called into question the credibility of this detective, former prosecutors
(13:47):
who had sought indictments for perjury. The defense mounted a
huge fight. They made every argument they could. The trial
lasted a week and at the end there was a
hung jury eleven to one, but it was eleven to
one in favor of a conviction, which gave the district
attorney some thought that this would be an easier case
(14:08):
to convict the next time around. Sure enough, about nine
months later, again Daniel Viegas has tried for the murders
of Mondo and Bobby. But the second trial was different.
You see, Daniel's parents had spent every penny they had
on the first trial, and they couldn't afford a lawyer
for the second trial. This time around, Daniel was represented
by a court appointed lawyer, someone who had been assigned
(14:30):
the case only two months before the trial began, and
so when the second trial rolled around, that lawyer called
only one defense witness, no alibi witnesses at all. He
hardly pointed to any problems with Daniel's confession, even though
he had a blueprint for success in the form of
the first trial, and he didn't make a full frontal
attack on the integrity and credibility of the police officer
(14:53):
who got these unreliable statements, and so on August, Daniel
Viegas was convicted of capital murder. Because he'd been a
juvenile at the time of the offense, he wasn't sentenced
to death. Instead, he was given two life terms in prison,
one for Bobby and one for Mondo. Daniel was a
(15:15):
teenager when he went to prison, and he might still
be there today if it weren't for a man named
John Mabella. Now, John is the head of a successful
El Passo construction firm, a firm that hired a lot
of formerly incarcerated people because John is a guy who
believes in second chances. One day in two thousand five,
John Mabella walks into an El Passo bank and he
(15:39):
ends up asking his teller, a woman named Lucy, out
on a date. Six months later, we were buried. Lucy
had three daughters with Daniel's brother, so Daniel was actually
Lucy's ex brother in law. I adopted Lucy's daughters two
years later, and that's when I learned more about Daniel's case. Now,
(15:59):
Lucy and brought the girls to see their grandparents, who
were Daniel's parents, and eventually John started coming along too.
That's where he started to hear stories about their son, Daniel,
who was serving life in prison for two murders he
didn't commit. At first, I thought, you know, any parents
gonna not want to accept that their son might be
(16:20):
a killer. I had a lot of faith also in
our system. You know, I always believe that if a
jury found you guilty, it must have been because they
had plenty of evidence against you. So I figured, hey,
you know, they must have all kinds of evidence on
this kid if they sentenced him to life. John was skeptical,
(16:40):
but he saw how heartbroken the grandparents were and he
agreed to read through the court papers. Before long, he
was dumb struck. There was no reliable evidence tying Daniel
to these shootings at all. And then John Manbella became
a man possessed. I've got a couple of friends and
I asked them if they could set up a meeting
(17:02):
with our d A because I saw some serious problems
in Daniel's conviction. Our DA happened to be high Miss Barsa,
and he personally trialed Daniel. So I figured, you know what,
if there's some mistake, if there's some doubt, you know,
he's going to reopen this case. So we had the
meeting and I told him, I go, you know what
I think, Daniels, it isn't something stronger. You know, we
(17:26):
need to look into it. This d A fought us
a lot just to get evid entry hearing. After he
told me the higher good appeals lawyer and opened up
the case again, he fought us to the nee. Now
this really fired John up. It didn't make any sense.
He starts paying for billboards around El Paso. That's a
free Daniel Viegas. He starts organizing rallies and protests outside
(17:49):
the courthouse, and he hired a private investigator. He read
the transcripts and he was dumbfounded too. He goes to John,
I was a homicide detective for twenty years. This case
would never have gone to trial. I would never have
presented this to my d A if this is all
I had. He was very upset and he goes, yes, John,
I'll take your case. John, Manbella is invested in Daniel's
(18:10):
innocence and the work he would go on to do
ended up costing him personally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He's the patron saint of the Daniel Viegas case. You know,
I went down to El Paso shortly after John had
hired lawyers and investigators to reopen Daniel's case, and when
I went into the courthouse, they were like fifteen or
(18:31):
twenty people walking around with signs saying free Daniel Viegas.
You know, false confessions happened. Justice for Daniel Viegas. John
had organized a rally right in front of the courthouse,
and on the street in front of the courthouse was
a truck that had billboards on both sides of it
that was driving around the courthouse. So when you walked
(18:53):
into the courtroom and El Paso, you were just blitzed
by this notion that an injust just had occurred and
that it needed to be fixed exactly. And John brought
his entire community into this case too. There was a
manager who worked at his construction company who was a songwriter,
and he ends up writing a corrido, a traditional Mexican
ballad about the wrongful conviction of Daniel Viegas. John was
(19:17):
so proud of that song that one of the first
things he did when I was down in al Passa
was to play that for me. It's on YouTube now
if you want to hear it. John and the private investigator, right,
(19:37):
they want to really find out what happened, and one
of the first people they go to speak to is
Jesse Hernandez, one of the survivors of the shooting. Of course,
Jesse was now a grown man, and John shows Jesse
for the first time a copy of Daniel's confession. Jesse's like, John,
this is not what happened. This just not look like
(20:02):
a confession from somebody was there who took this confession down?
And I told him. At that point, Jesse turns pale
and he's like, John, that same detective almost had me
confessing to that crime. He shows up that night and
he tells me, we know you shot your friends, your
(20:23):
buddy Kuan Mead, and I just told us that you
did it, and Jesse says that he was just hysterical.
He's like, wait a minute, these are my friends. I
love my friends. I would never do anything like that
to my friends. He goes, well, maybe you blacked out,
you know, and you shot them and you didn't even
realize it. And at that moment, Jesse goes, well, man,
you know, why would my friends say I shot them
if I didn't showed them. Maybe I did do it,
(20:45):
And he put his head down to the table and
just crying uncontrollably. Had it not been for his mom
that stepped in, he says, he was almost ready to confess.
So Jesse's like, the last thing I want is somebody
innocence spinning the rest of their life in prison. That
could have been me. This was an absolute bolt from
(21:16):
the blue when John heard this story from Jesse Hernandez,
and it only motivated him to continue pounding the pavement. Eventually,
John hires a highly skilled El Paso trial lawyer, a
man named Joe Spencer. Now Joe files a state petition
for a wit of habeas corpus, arguing, among other things,
that Daniel's lawyer at his second trial had been ineffective
(21:37):
for failing to call Daniel's alibi witnesses. There's a hearing
plan it's going to happen in two thousand eleven, and
in the run up to that hearing. That's when Steve
and I first heard about this case. Yeah, we heard
about it through our news feeds. And this time what
made this special is it wasn't just me who came
in to the office the next day. It was me
and Laura, and so did our third attorney, Josh Kept.
(22:01):
All three of us got this news feed at the
same time, a case of a juvenile who had confessed
to a crime he didn't commit and who was trying
to reopen his case through a new hearing. At the hearing,
Jesse Hernandez takes the stand for the first time. Jesse
testifies that Daniel's confession didn't match what actually happened to
(22:21):
him and his friends. Daniel's alibi witnesses also testified, saying
that they were with Daniel on the night of the crime.
And remember Dr Richard Leo, one of the experts from
that false confession conference in El Paso back in two
thousand six. He took the stand too, and testified that
Daniel's statement showed every sign of being false. There was
(22:42):
even evidence introduced that two other known gang members had
threatened Mando Lazo's life right before the shooting, and they
bragged about killing him. Afterwards, when one of those two
gang members was called to testify, he invoked his Fifth
Amendment right against self incrimination and refused to answer anything.
And Joe Spencer also mounted again a direct attack on
(23:04):
the integrity of the detective who had taken the false
witness statements, who had almost gotten a false confession from
the crime victim, and who had gotten the confession from Daniel.
And one of the things he discovered, which is pretty incredible,
was that one of the tactics that this detective had
used in another case was that he would enter an
(23:27):
interrogation room dressed in a smock. Now, why would anybody
wear a smock? Well, he tried to mislead the suspect
into thinking that they were speaking to a medical person,
a doctor, instead of a police officer. And when the
judge heard that evidence, his eyes rolled back into his head.
(23:50):
And eventually we had an opportunity to file an amicus
brief about the unreliability of Daniel's confession and add that
to everything that Joe Spencer was already doing in the courtroom,
and we pha size how vulnerable a teenager like Daniel
would have been to making a false confession. The hearing concluded,
and then we waited. The judge took nine months to
reach a decision, but on August seventeenth, two thousand twelve,
(24:14):
Judge Sam Madrono recommended that Daniel Viegas received a new trial.
Judge Madrono concluded that Daniel's trial lawyer had provided ineffective
assistance by failing to investigate or introduce evidence of the
unreliability of Daniel's confession. Now, Judge Madrono's decision was a
fabulous victory, but it was only a recommendation. It had
(24:36):
to be adopted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
It was at that point that we joined the team
to craft a presentation to that court that we hoped
it would accept. As that appeal process is ongoing, Daniel's lawyer,
Joe Spencer, asked Judge Madrono to free Daniel on bond
let him go home as the appeal process dragged on,
(24:58):
and on January four, to thousand fourteen, after nearly two
decades in prison, Daniel was released on bond, straight into
the arms of John Mabella, who drove him home in
a brand new, shiny red convertible. It was almost like
a kicker tape parade, Daniel was free, he got started
(25:20):
living right away. As soon as he was released. He
got married to a woman named Amanda, whom he met
when he was behind bars, and in short order they
had two beautiful children. But even though Daniel is walking
out of the prison into the arms of a crowd
of supporters, that could have all been taken away from them.
And the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas is a
court that has a reputation of being hostile to defendant's claims,
(25:45):
especially claims regarding their actual innocence. So it wasn't anything
but a sure thing that Judge Medrano's decision would be affirmed.
Long story short, the High Court affirms Judge Madrono's ruling. Yes,
Niel Viegas deserves another trial and a chance to prove
his innocence. But the d A didn't get around to
(26:06):
the new trial until eighteen So for four years Daniel's
living with a sword hanging over his head. If he
goes to trial and loses, he'll be back in prison
for life. This is enormously stressful. The months and years
are ticking by. Daniel's starting a family. He's working at
John Manbella's construction company. Tasting freedom and cherishing it. What
(26:30):
does the d A do? He asks Daniel to enter
an Alfred plea, stay free as long as you plead guilty.
It's such attempting offer, especially to somebody who was locked
up for a crime they didn't commit as a teenager
and had to spend two decades or more in prison
(26:50):
suffering under the weight of that wrongful conviction. But now
Daniel's got other people, yes to think about his wife
and their children. Daniel consider the Alfred plea option seriously
because it meant that he wouldn't have to go back
to trial. You would be a convicted murderer, but at
least he would have his freedom. Of course, he was
tempted to put the whole thing behind him. But Daniel
(27:12):
lived in El Paso, Texas, and El Paso had become
home to a small community of wrongly convicted individuals. Among
that community was a man named Jason Baldwin. Now that's
a name that true crime junkies might recognize, because Jason
Baldwin was a member of the West Memphis Three, a
group of three teenagers from Arkansas who had been accused
(27:33):
of the killings of three eight year old boys. One
of them, Jesse mss kelly, had falsely confessed, and the
three of them were convicted, two sentenced to life in prison,
and the third, Damian Eccles, sent a death row in Arkansas.
They fought their case for seventeen years. Steve and I
were fortunate enough to join Damian eccles legal team at
(27:53):
the very end, and they were freed only when the
State of Arkansas made them an offer. All three of
you enter Alfred, please say you're guilty of these crimes,
and then we'll let you out. Now, this is an
easier decision when it came to Damien, he was on
death row. But Jason, who had been sentenced to life
in prison, wrestled with it. He didn't want to admit
(28:15):
to a crime he didn't commit, even to secure his
own freedom. Ultimately, he chose to accept the Alfred plea
to help save Damien's life. One of the consequences of
entering an Alfred plea is that you can't get compensated
through state compensation statutes. The Alfred plea is considered a
plea of guilty, and that disqualifies you from recovering any compensation.
(28:39):
Prosecutors dangle freedom so long as they can secure guilty,
please and return and prevent themselves from being sued down
the road. It's a tool of injustice that happens way
too often. It was used in the Robert Davis case,
it was used in the West Memphis three case, and
it almost worked on Daniel Viegas. You see, Jason Baldwin
had moved from Arkansas to Texas, where he became involved
(29:02):
in a wrongful conviction advocacy organization called Proclaim Justice and
joined John Mabella's fight to free Daniel Viegas. Jason Baldwin
became one of his closest friends and confidence As Daniel
wade whether to accept that Alfred play. Daniel told me,
Johnny goes, if I take this deal, all this work
that you did is for nothing. So we called Jason
(29:24):
Bodwin for his advice, and he said, let's talk about
it before you decide anything. And he tells Daniel, no,
I I can't tell you what to do. You have
a family. But in my case, you know there's no
way that I would do it again. It bothers me
every day of my life. So just think hard about
(29:47):
this because it could bother you the rest of your
life too. And with Jason Baldwin's counseling and support, Daniel
Viegas found his courage and turned down that unjust Alfred
Plea offer. He decided to go to trial. The stakes
were so high at this trial. Daniel had tasted freedom,
(30:09):
he was starting to live the kind of life he
had always dreamed of. But here he was back in
that courtroom, a place where the last time had ended
in a conviction. Now this trial was very different because
this time Daniel's team of lawyers we succeeded in getting
(30:30):
his confession thrown out as involuntary and coerced. And without
that confession, there is precious little evidence to go on.
The state presented a case to the jury, the jury deliberated,
and in October of eighteen, a verdict came back us
Daniel Viegas. Now this is one of the highest profile
(30:51):
cases in the history of El Paso at this point,
and the courtroom was packed with supporters of Daniel Viegas.
Jason Baldwin of the Western that this three is there,
the local wrongful conviction advocacy organization Proclaim Justice is there,
and John and Lucy Mabella sitting in the front row
right behind Daniel and his lawyers. They are there, and
(31:12):
when the judge asks Daniel to stand up for the verdict,
his knees buckle. He almost collapses. He has to hear
whether this beautiful life that he has started reconstructing is
going to continue. Where is he going to end? Daniels
lawyers actually have to help him stand up, and he
was able to stand just long enough to hear the verdict.
(31:35):
They finally defended Daniel viegas not guilty, not guilty, and
the courtroom erupts in a sound of both cheers and
incredible relief, and then he collapsed under the weight of
a lifetime's worth of fighting. He had finally been exonerated.
(31:59):
It was it was a feeling that I don't think
I'm ever going to feel again in my life. Hey, Daniel,
got you? Yes, tell me about your kids? How many
kids you got? Now? There's four all together? A man
of my wife. I remember I told her man, I'm
(32:20):
told to be a dead and right at that time,
my daughter got pregnant too, and I was like, oh man,
you know I'm too young to be a grandpa. What
do you tell your kids about what happened to you?
The two little ones are too small to know about it. Uh,
they don't understand yet. Like I love when they tell
me life saying fair. I don't tell me. Everybody do
nineteen years in print and tell me how life be fair.
(32:42):
Clean your room. I know that the Wrongful Conviction podcast
played an important role in your case too. Yes, a
man of chieved really into the Wrongful Conviction community. Right,
She's like, don't vote a fan to change the plant.
So when they came to me with that offer, pleading
they will just call me by signing to see the
paper cake it close. So I was going to sign
(33:04):
it almost and that's when Amanda jumped into like, no, no,
I know all about yourself and please you know Jason
Flom told me about this. She educated me on that,
and then that's when we decided not to take that
pre deal. Daniel, you're an incredible human being. To see
(33:27):
you as a freeman at Innocence Network conferences, at events
for Proclaimed Justice, it makes my heart sink. You're a
symbol of endurance. It's been her honor to know you
and to tell your story today. That's the story of
Daniel Viegas. Join us next week when we'll tell you
(33:50):
about Honed Hyatt, a California man falsely accused of terrorism
based on one of the most outlandish confessions I've ever
heard until then. Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for
(34:11):
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Special
thanks to our executive producer Jason Flom and the team
at Signal Company Number one Executive producer Kevin Wardace, Senior
Producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by Connor Hall.
Special thanks to jog Hammer for additional script editing and
for wrangling and writing like a madwoman. Our music was
(34:35):
composed by j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
or Twitter at Laura night Rider and you can follow
me on Twitter at s Drizzen. For more information on
the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com and be
sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
(34:56):
wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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