Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer. Welcome to a
Speaker 1: special bonus episode of Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. We've gotten
Speaker 1: an overwhelming response to this week's story about Daniel Viegas
Speaker 1: and to the video we posted on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: showing the moment he learned the jury's verdict, so we're
Speaker 1: releasing a bonus episode a conversation I had with Daniel
Speaker 1: when I sat down with him in Austin, Texas two
Speaker 1: months ago. You know, after everything we've been through together,
Speaker 1: Daniel's not just a former client, he's a friend. We
Speaker 1: talked about what it was like waiting for the jury
Speaker 1: to announce its verdict, how he'd prepared his children for
Speaker 1: the possibility he might not be coming home, and how
Speaker 1: it feels to finally focus on the future. If you
Speaker 1: haven't heard his full story, it's right here in the
Speaker 1: podcast feed, just under this bonus episode. And if you've
Speaker 1: yet to watch Daniel's exoneration video, check it out on
Speaker 1: Instagram at ung Full Conviction. It's an incredible opportunity for
Speaker 1: all of us to bear witness to freedom. Daniel. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you're here with us today.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm glad to be here too, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me what's going on for you right
Speaker 1: now in your life. You've been out how many years?
Speaker 2: Six years? Now? Six years?
Speaker 1: And tell me what you're doing with your life.
Speaker 3: At this point in the stage in my life, it's
Speaker 3: you know, we're not dealing with the hecticness of trial
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. So now I'm focusing on what
Speaker 3: I'm going to do for the future.
Speaker 1: So you were acquitted about fourteen months ago, and so
Speaker 1: you've had that time to finally move on from this case.
Speaker 1: That's dog you your whole life exactly right. So what
Speaker 1: have you been doing? Are you working?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm working with Manbela Contractors. I do their deliveries
Speaker 2: with Mimbella Contractors.
Speaker 1: So this is John Vnbella.
Speaker 2: Yeah, John Minbella. That helped me out too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're working with John Vmbella huh all these years.
Speaker 3: You know, John Mimbella is like a family member. You know,
Speaker 3: he didn't just you know, help get me free. You know,
Speaker 3: he's always been there for me, you know, like a
Speaker 3: backbone and a counselor. You know, he's always been someone
Speaker 3: that I can go to, you know for anything. You know,
Speaker 3: even if it's just a hang out.
Speaker 1: Well, you've been a counselor yourself too. You were telling
Speaker 1: me before we sat down that you know, you're working
Speaker 1: at Membela construction and doing deliveries and things for them,
Speaker 1: but you're also working with a lot of the other guys.
Speaker 2: Yes, work there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do construction, so it's a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have a lot of conmics and stuff there.
Speaker 3: So a lot of these guys, you know, they got
Speaker 3: problems and issues, and you know they look up to me.
Speaker 1: So Membela hires people who used to be incarcerated. Yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks there. And these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: just like anybody getting out of prison, have their struggles,
Speaker 1: you know, their situation when they get out. Stuff they
Speaker 1: have to figure out, and they come.
Speaker 3: To you exactly, you know, and they come to me
Speaker 3: and ask me, you know, for my advice.
Speaker 2: You know, because one of the hardest things to transition into.
Speaker 3: You know, what we call the free world is you know,
Speaker 3: we have to leave everything in prison behind us.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times a lot of people can't
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 3: Because you're so used to you know, thinking and moving
Speaker 3: in that way. So it's hard to put that behind
Speaker 3: you and then live basically a whole different life.
Speaker 1: How do you put that behind you?
Speaker 2: It's hard.
Speaker 3: I mean I don't ever like I always tell her,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it'll ever get away from us.
Speaker 3: It won't ever escape us, and we'll always have it.
Speaker 3: But the good thing is that as time progresses, you know,
Speaker 3: as we grow, it's a lot easier to deal with.
Speaker 3: Like before you would get mad and it was so
Speaker 3: hard for you to calm down. After a while, when
Speaker 3: you start getting mad, you'll start catching yourself going through
Speaker 3: the stages of going from zero to one hundred, and
Speaker 3: you can stop it before it goes to one hundred?
Speaker 1: What do you tell yourself to stop it?
Speaker 3: Personally? Like I always check myself. You know, it's not
Speaker 3: that bad, you know, look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: Well, and you're not dealing with it alone either, Right,
Speaker 1: you've got John Manilla, but you've also got a wonderful family.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, you know, like my wife too, I mean
Speaker 3: everyone for her. I mean I don't know what I
Speaker 3: would have done. Yeah, she was when I first came out,
Speaker 3: you know, I was basically a forty year old with
Speaker 3: a sixteen year old mentality. You know, got locked up
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, so I never really grew up.
Speaker 3: I wasn't never had a structure. I never I never
Speaker 3: really came out and was, you know, have my own
Speaker 3: family or anything, you know. So coming down and dinning
Speaker 3: was society as an adult was very very very very hard,
Speaker 3: you know, because there was so much I didn't know,
Speaker 3: and it was so frustrating because everybody knows it like
Speaker 3: second nature, and you feel like you're out of the loop.
Speaker 2: You feel like an alien, like you.
Speaker 1: Got dropped into another planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, you know. So Amanda's always been there too,
Speaker 3: like she's always all right. You got your wallet, you
Speaker 3: got your keys, you got this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those basic things of life, but the stuff you
Speaker 1: forget right when you've been locked away for so long,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly Amanda's watching. Make sure. Hey, man, we all
Speaker 1: need somebody like Amanda.
Speaker 2: In our life, exactly, trust me.
Speaker 1: And you have a beautiful You've got a beautiful family.
Speaker 2: You've got kids. Yes, we have four kids.
Speaker 3: I have my oldest daughter who's twenty five, Priscilla, and
Speaker 3: then my daughter who's tan Kayla that's Amanda's daughter, and
Speaker 3: my stepdaughter, and then we have two kids together.
Speaker 2: One four. That's basically I know, Jude, and.
Speaker 1: Then named after your dad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're named after my dad and Amanda's brother. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then we have.
Speaker 3: The little little baby, the little rugrat. We have the
Speaker 3: newest addition to the family. That's Emory Hope. She's the
Speaker 3: hell Raiser.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: How old is she?
Speaker 3: She's going on two years old in a couple of months,
Speaker 3: so she's almost too But that's the little hell Raiser.
Speaker 1: Man a full house. Yeah, that's great, that's great. So,
Speaker 1: you know, what would you tell your kids? You know,
Speaker 1: some of them are obviously too young to talk about
Speaker 1: what happened to you, But what do you tell your
Speaker 1: kids who are old enough to start to think about
Speaker 1: what happened to you? What do you tell them about
Speaker 1: what happened to you?
Speaker 3: You know, I really don't try to focus so much
Speaker 3: of what happened to me, but what they can do
Speaker 3: now to avoid that, you know, like I always try
Speaker 3: to tell them, you know, like you know, when they
Speaker 3: get frusted, I'm always.
Speaker 2: Trying to tell me, you know, it's not that bad.
Speaker 3: You know, you're you're you're you're getting too caught up
Speaker 3: in this little drama going on at school.
Speaker 2: Or whatever, and it's not that tough. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not gonna be the end of the world. And you know,
Speaker 2: I just try to.
Speaker 3: Give them my perspective as far as you know, thinking
Speaker 3: of how to deal with problems.
Speaker 2: And stuff and issues that come into life.
Speaker 3: And that's mostly what I focus on, because I feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, life is ten percent of what happens in
Speaker 3: ninety percent how you react to that.
Speaker 2: I don't want to so.
Speaker 3: Much teach him about my experience as much as teach
Speaker 3: him about how to deal with your problems now from
Speaker 3: that experience.
Speaker 1: So let me talk to you a little bit about
Speaker 1: what it was like to walk out of prison six
Speaker 1: years ago. Right, you were released on bond. It's twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: January twenty fourteen when you were released on bond. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you know, when I talk to my other clients
Speaker 1: who have come out of prison, you know, people always
Speaker 1: have stories about the little things, the things they didn't
Speaker 1: realize they missed until they were back out and remembered
Speaker 1: things right that they'd missed for so long. What were
Speaker 1: those things for you? Those things you didn't realize that
Speaker 1: you've been missing.
Speaker 3: Does smell? Yeah, you know the way the pavement of
Speaker 3: the street smell. You know, we take that again after
Speaker 3: a while you're walking and you know, especially people living
Speaker 3: downtown or whatever, you know, they don't even smell the
Speaker 3: roses no more. And that's one of the main things
Speaker 3: that a lot of us when we come out, we
Speaker 3: notice these smells because we've been smelling nothing but disinfected
Speaker 3: our whole life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, you have actual nature and you have
Speaker 3: like pavement, you have like you know, the birds chirpping,
Speaker 3: and then you have cars and you have like horns,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's a whole different orchestra of music,
Speaker 3: and so to speak, compared to prison, where it's nothing
Speaker 3: but just a lot of yelling and screaming, it's.
Speaker 1: A beautiful orchestra of music. Yeah, but hard to get
Speaker 1: used to it first too.
Speaker 3: It's not so much as hard to get used to it,
Speaker 3: just it's hard to concentrate on something now, is because
Speaker 3: you're so focused on hearing every sound and everything.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, amazing, every sound from the orchestra of life.
Speaker 1: I think that's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to take you back from moment too, if
Speaker 1: I can, that moment fourteen months ago when you were acquitted.
Speaker 1: It was your third trial right over the course of
Speaker 1: twenty plus years, and this was the moment of your vindication. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's an incredible moment for us all to listen to.
Speaker 1: When you were sitting there in that courtroom. You know,
Speaker 1: Amanda and your family members are right behind you, all
Speaker 1: your supporters are right behind you. You were sitting there through
Speaker 1: lawyers and the judge read out the verdict. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me what it was like waiting for that verdict?
Speaker 3: That was excruciating pain that I would not wish on anybody.
Speaker 2: That was terrible.
Speaker 3: But you know when I was going through that, you know,
Speaker 3: when they I was in the back of the side
Speaker 3: of the courthouse and I was like having an intimate
Speaker 3: moment with my daughter, my youngest daughter. How old was
Speaker 3: she she was at that time, she was about six
Speaker 3: months And you know, I really didn't think, you know,
Speaker 3: I know she can't understand what I'm saying. So I
Speaker 3: was just praying that you know, that parmorama experience happens
Speaker 3: during death.
Speaker 2: It's true, where you live, your whole life flashes before you.
Speaker 1: You sort of get out of your body and see
Speaker 1: yourself exactly.
Speaker 2: So I figured, you know, if if anything.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll talk to her and she will remember
Speaker 3: that on that day when she you know, because I couldn't,
Speaker 3: you know, there's no other way.
Speaker 2: She was too young.
Speaker 3: So I was just explaining to her, you know, I
Speaker 3: was just telling her, you know, baby, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not guilty.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying who I am.
Speaker 3: People are going to tell you stuff about me, and
Speaker 3: I'm just like explaining things for that, you know that
Speaker 3: I'm hoping one day she'll kind of remember that, she'll
Speaker 3: come back to that.
Speaker 2: And uh. I did this to each of my kids.
Speaker 3: I set each of them down by themselves and I
Speaker 3: would explain things to them, and that was my last one.
Speaker 3: And right when I was doing that, they tell us
Speaker 3: that the verdict is on. We got the verdict, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, holy crap. So we were running to the courthouse.
Speaker 3: And then the thoughts, like I said, since I was
Speaker 3: having that intimate moment with her, you know, was one
Speaker 3: of the thoughts that came into my mind that were
Speaker 3: more prevailing than anyone. I was thinking to myself that
Speaker 3: did we make the right decision, you know, not accepting
Speaker 3: the offer please? And I was like, I know in
Speaker 3: my heart, you know that we made the right decision.
Speaker 3: And I know Amanda stands by me on that, but
Speaker 3: I was saying, did we actually do.
Speaker 2: It the right decision for our kids?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, even if you know you're right, you know,
Speaker 3: are we making the right decisions because this is my
Speaker 3: case right.
Speaker 1: Not to see you?
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the video, you'll see me
Speaker 3: and my Lord's talking and you see me shaking my hand.
Speaker 2: That's what I was telling them.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm pleased, man, tell me that we made
Speaker 3: the right decision here, that we do made the right decision,
Speaker 3: not only on me, but did we make the right
Speaker 3: decision for my children?
Speaker 2: You know? Did we fight this on pride or did
Speaker 2: we fight this for justice?
Speaker 3: You know, you you second guess everything at that moment,
Speaker 3: you know, and then you second guess your you know
Speaker 3: everything that charal's coming through your head and you're like, man,
Speaker 3: we should have done this, We should have done that.
Speaker 2: You know that was coming to your thoughts, and that's
Speaker 2: killing you too.
Speaker 3: So you got all these there's like a million thoughts
Speaker 3: just blading down on you. And then you just want
Speaker 3: to judge your hear up and tell you not guilty
Speaker 3: and guilty and you wait for the jury to come
Speaker 3: in here in.
Speaker 1: Order, and you're just sitting there dying, I mean excruciated.
Speaker 1: So you're sitting there in that moment, waiting for the
Speaker 1: verdicts to come back, and you're thinking back on the offer,
Speaker 1: play on that decision which which Amanda guided you through
Speaker 1: which Jason Baldwin from the West movest Iie guided you
Speaker 1: throw yes, and then the verdict comes.
Speaker 2: Back yes, not guilty exactly.
Speaker 3: And it was not before he said not guilty. I
Speaker 3: already knew when he said he said it was a
Speaker 3: form B, right, and I already had had the piece
Speaker 3: of paper, and it was like Form A was guilty,
Speaker 3: Form B was not guilty, you know. So when I
Speaker 3: had the paper in front of me and then I
Speaker 3: heard form B, I right away looked at that piece
Speaker 3: of paper.
Speaker 2: I said, oh shit, it's not guilty.
Speaker 3: But it was just a couple of seconds like you're saying,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's what I just it was like
Speaker 3: I was, like I said, I was so tense. I
Speaker 3: mean that time period, that whole year was probably the
Speaker 3: worst year of my life. And uh, I was so
Speaker 3: tense that when that verdict not guilty happened. It was
Speaker 3: just like, you know, like a ball full of rubber bands.
Speaker 3: It was like you just take one and it all
Speaker 3: just falls apart. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened, you know,
Speaker 3: that not guilty just pulled that one string and everything
Speaker 3: fell apart and I just hit the ground. I hit
Speaker 3: the table with my head. It didn't even hurt here
Speaker 3: on the next day and I was just so, you know,
Speaker 3: out of there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you got out of there, didn't you right
Speaker 1: away as soon as you could never to return.
Speaker 3: We left too fast out of there, Like that's what
Speaker 3: I was telling, me and a man that we had
Speaker 3: all this little speech that we're going to do afterwards,
Speaker 3: you know, to the news or whatever. And when that
Speaker 3: man said the judge said, you know what, not guilty,
Speaker 3: you are free to go there. You are no longer
Speaker 3: under any conditions of this court anymore. Yeah, that whole
Speaker 3: speech that we had, it was up my head. I
Speaker 3: totally forgot. I ran out that courtroom. I was like,
Speaker 3: I grabbed the man. I was like, let's go and the.
Speaker 1: Cameras, get the news, get me out of here. But
Speaker 1: you are actually going to be in a courtroom again.
Speaker 1: I think in a couple of days. Right, what's your
Speaker 1: plan for when you're here in Austin.
Speaker 2: I'm here in Austin.
Speaker 3: I want to go to the Capitol and I want
Speaker 3: to go see the Court's of Criminal Appeals and I
Speaker 3: would love to see if I can talk to one
Speaker 3: of the judges.
Speaker 1: So you want to go to the Texas Court of
Speaker 1: Criminal Appeals. This is the court that affirmed your grant
Speaker 1: of a new trial, that affirmed your conviction being thrown out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you want to just go in that building. Tell
Speaker 1: me why.
Speaker 3: One of the main things I want to go because
Speaker 3: when we're going to courts criminal appial, they're telling us
Speaker 3: about the judges and they were saying that we have
Speaker 3: to get a majority rule, and they were saying three
Speaker 3: of the judges were not going to go for they
Speaker 3: never go for the inmate. And they were like, so
Speaker 3: don't even worry about those three. We know we're not
Speaker 3: going to get them. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you know, we had an anonymous vote. Even the judges
Speaker 3: that they said we're not going to vote voted, and
Speaker 3: that was like the first time it happened in Texas history.
Speaker 3: So that's what I was like, you know, maybe I
Speaker 3: won't be able to talk to judge, but I would
Speaker 3: love to, you know, ask you know what made this
Speaker 3: case so different that all you are in agreement with it?
Speaker 2: What was so special that shot to your faith? You know?
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 1: Do you think it will still be worthwhile to go
Speaker 1: there even if you can't talk to the judges, just
Speaker 1: to be in the building. What would it be just
Speaker 1: to be in the building, just.
Speaker 3: To be in the building, if they would let me
Speaker 3: walk into the room where they actually make the decisions. I
Speaker 3: would you like to just sit there, you know, and
Speaker 3: just think this is where they made the decisions on
Speaker 3: letting you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: This is where it all turned around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the place I used to curse that
Speaker 3: every every Wednesday, waiting for the answer, Daniel.
Speaker 1: I just want to ask you, you know, what is
Speaker 1: what's your what are your hopes for the future.
Speaker 3: That I'm not totally certain about that right now, I
Speaker 3: haven't figured out where my direction is actually going to go.
Speaker 3: Because one thing I've realized about life is that I
Speaker 3: have my plans, but the universe has its own plans,
Speaker 3: and somehow or another, I always end up doing what the
Speaker 3: universe wants me to do rather than what I want
Speaker 3: to do. So I'm trying to figure out my nick
Speaker 3: and right now, you know, meanwhile, I'm just trying to
Speaker 3: do as much I can to help, you know, other people,
Speaker 3: to figure out what my true calling is going to be.
Speaker 1: Well, one day at a time. It's pretty good right now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sitting down with me. It's
Speaker 1: been an absolute pleasure. Daniel Viegas than man, exonerated man,
Speaker 1: congrat Thank you.
Speaker 3: Oh and also like thank you for helping me on
Speaker 3: my appeal. I mean, Laura, she's on my case. It's
Speaker 3: just so it's so bad ass. It's so awesome to
Speaker 3: have all you guys with us.
Speaker 1: It's our pleasure.
Speaker 3: But you know, you guys never get the thanks, you know,
Speaker 3: and that's one thing that you know, I want to
Speaker 3: really focus, you know, I want to really you know,
Speaker 3: put out there two about our lawyers or you know
Speaker 3: that that help us, because you got to understand that normally,
Speaker 3: with a client and the lawyer, situation goes once the
Speaker 3: court is over, you're not going to see that lawyer
Speaker 3: hardly ever again, you know, and in this situation where
Speaker 3: around for conviction, we are so close to our lawyer,
Speaker 3: We're so close to you guys.
Speaker 2: You guys become our family.
Speaker 3: You know that even when we come out, you don't
Speaker 3: give up on It's not like, Okay, well we got
Speaker 3: your free buy, I have a good life.
Speaker 2: You guys are they're helping us out. You guys are still.
Speaker 3: There making sure that you know we're we're being entered
Speaker 3: back into society but successfully. Yeah, you know, and that
Speaker 3: you guys need to get them things for that, because
Speaker 3: I don't feel like you guys get the things for that.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like the networks get the things for
Speaker 3: the innocent networks that are all these different organizations that
Speaker 3: work so hard to get us free. Because when we
Speaker 3: get free, the game's not over yet. Well it's still
Speaker 3: a whole new game now. Now the game is how
Speaker 3: do we get this man who's been locked up for
Speaker 3: twenty years in prison that doesn't know nothing else but
Speaker 3: how to be an amn? How do we get him
Speaker 3: to become a productive member in society.
Speaker 2: And that's what you guys do too.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what you've done. So congratulations on that, all right,
Speaker 1: believe us?
Speaker 2: I love that great.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Daniel, thank you, Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the special bonus episode of Wrongful Conviction False Confessions. You
Speaker 1: can listen to Daniel's story right here in this feed
Speaker 1: and come back on Wednesday to hear our next story
Speaker 1: about a California man who was wrongfully convicted of terrorism
Speaker 1: based on a confession about and I kitch you not
Speaker 1: pole vaulting Ninja Turtles. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number One and PRX Special thanks to our executive
Speaker 1: producer Jason Flomm and the team at Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: One Executive producer Kevin Wardies Senior Producer and Pope, and
Speaker 1: additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jaji Hammer for additional script editing and for wrangling and
Speaker 1: writing like a mad woman. Our music was composed by
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter
Speaker 1: at Laura Nywriter, and you can follow Steve on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Stephen Drisen or on Twitter at Strisen. For more
Speaker 1: information on the show, visit Wrongful convictionpodcast dot com and
Speaker 1: be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast and on Twitter
Speaker 1: at wrong Conviction