WEBVTT - #121 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Daniel Villegas 0:00:01.560 --> 0:00:05.160 Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer. 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:06.280 And I'm Steve Drisen. 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:09.080 Today we're going to tell you about a case that 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:12.160 shows just how much ordinary people can help the wrongly 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:16.400 convicted find real justice, even when they start out as strangers. 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:21.239 In today's case, an unexpected hero fought for years to 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.720 turn tragedy into triumph, ending into one of the most 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:40.040 dramatic courtroom exonerations I've ever seen. Like so many of 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.440 our cases at the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Steve first 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.320 learned about Daniel Viegas through one of his infamous online searches. 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:50.600 By this time, I actually had my own newsfeed, and 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.840 so did our colleague Josh Tepfer. But Steve had his 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.400 own reasons for being particularly excited about this case. 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:01.080 So after all three of us read about a possible 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:04.920 false confession case in Alpasso, it seemed like destiny for 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.000 us to get involved in this case. You see, in 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.280 two thousand and six, al Passo was host to one 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.880 of the most important conferences in the history of false 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.319 confessions that brought together many of the leading experts on 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:21.000 the subject to the University of Texas. 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:24.680 For people like us. This is basically the Olympics meets Coachella. 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.559 Who was there? Well, Donald Connery, the author of Peter 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:30.000 Riley's book, was there. 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:32.920 Steve's talking about a book called Guilty Until Proven Innocent. 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:35.640 We'll tell you that story in a later episode about 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:39.560 a false confession from nineteen seventy three, and Geisley. 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:44.920 Good Johnson, the famed Icelandic detective turned psychology professor at 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:46.480 King's College of London. 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.640 You might remember Geisley from our last episode. His scientific 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.560 expertise helped exonerate Tana Pora in New Zealand. 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.480 Richard Offshe and Richard Leo and Saul Cassen some of 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.919 the leading experts in the United States on false confessions. 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:00.440 There. 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.960 We're going to hear from saulcasm in another episode two. 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.400 All of these guys are og experts in the world 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.160 of false confessions. They're Steve's heroes and mine too. So 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:12.359 if I've turned into a geek here, you know who 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:12.799 to blame. 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.600 This conference was a watershed moment in the history of 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.360 false confessions and the idea of going back to El 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:23.560 Paso to work on an actual false confession case. It 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:25.080 just seemed like destiny to me. 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.640 This story starts in El Paso, a border city in 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:34.040 West Texas. Now, in the early nineteen nineties, El Casso 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.640 was a different place than it is today. The crime 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.160 rate was sky high. There was lots of gang activity, 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.239 street violence was a daily problem, and in some neighborhoods, 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.080 shootings were regular occurrences. We start our story in the 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:51.000 early morning hours of April tenth, nineteen ninety three. Good Friday. 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.399 It's just after midnight, and four teenagers are walking home 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.840 from a party and they find themselves in a rough neighborhood. 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:02.679 Three of them, Manda Lazo, Juan Carlo's Medina, and Jesse Hernandez. 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.400 We're seventeen years old. The fourth, Bobby England, was eighteen. 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.079 All of them were good kids, none of them were 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.720 caught up in gangs or the street life. But they 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.880 ran into trouble anyway. At the intersection of Electric Street 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.480 and trans Mountain Road. That's where a maroon car with 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:24.760 tinted windows rolls up behind them and starts following them slowly. Now, 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:26.440 just as the four of them start to get scared, 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.440 the car takes off. It speeds away, but a few 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.240 minutes later it comes back, and this time the driver 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.640 turns off the headlights. Words are shouted from the car 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.640 in Spanish, possibly an insult keeputos, and then a series 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:44.120 of shots ring out, one right after another. One and 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.400 Jesse take off running as a matter of sheer instinct, 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:49.600 and they think that their two friends are running away 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.600 alongside them. But when One and Jesse feel that they've 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.200 run far enough that it's safe to slow down, they 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.280 look around them and they don't see Mondo or Bobby 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.000 with them at all. Take a deep breath, go back 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.360 to the scene of the shooting, and they see police 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:08.120 lights flashing. Bobby had been shot in the head and 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.280 died in the street. Mondo had been shot in the 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.480 stomach and the thigh. He made it one hundred yards 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:16.960 to a house up the street, where he collapsed in 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.679 the front yard and died as the residents frantically dialed 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.920 nine one one. Now, the police found six shells from 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.640 a twenty two caliber handgun littered on the street right 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:27.760 where the car had pulled over. But that's about it 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.120 in terms of evidence. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.840 nothing forensic to help them solve this crime. It was 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:37.000 going to have to come down to confessions. 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:40.359 The Alpasso Police assigned one of the toughest cops on 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.640 the force to the Good Friday shooting, an officer whose 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.520 name we can't share, but an officer who was known 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:47.520 as a closer. 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.760 This guy is so tough he's even been featured on 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:51.080 the TV show Cops. 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:54.320 Now, what's a closer. A closer is someone who is 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:59.559 very skilled at police interrogation. A good closer will gather 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:04.240 evid and then slowly reveal that evidence to a suspect, 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.000 like peeling off layers of an onion, so that the 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.960 suspect feels like he is nabbed, his goose is cooked, 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.960 and that leads the suspect to confess. But there are 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:19.760 other kinds of closers. Closers who use brutality and threats, 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.599 and they don't only use these tactics with suspects. Their 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:28.360 modus operandi is to use these tactics with suspects, with 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:33.800 witnesses and sometimes with victims, and they get statements, but 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.680 those statements are coerced and false statements. This detective, he 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:40.920 was in that second camp exactly. 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:43.240 So the closer is brought in right, this detective from 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.760 the Al Paso Police Force. He begins investigating the case, 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.080 and pretty soon he comes across a seventeen year old 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:54.520 boy named David Rongel. David is brought into the police 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.560 station in theory about a completely different case. The police 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:00.840 had told his mom that they needed to talk to 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:06.040 Davide about some telephone harassment complaints, but when questioning actually began, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:10.039 it had nothing to do with telephone harassment. Police began 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.720 accusing Davide of committing the Good Friday shootings. Now later on, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.279 Davide said that the police falsely told him during this 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:21.640 interrogation that his friends had implicated him, and Davide himself 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.120 was threatened. He says he was told that he was 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:27.400 a pretty white boy with green eyes who would be 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.159 raped in prison if he didn't confess. This scares David. 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:35.200 Then eventually he starts offering some information. He tells police 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:39.640 that his sixteen year old cousin, Daniel Viegas, had been 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.480 bragging about committing the Good Friday shootings, although he added 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:46.480 that everyone was sure Daniel had been joking. You see, 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.479 Daniel had a reputation as a jokester. He was the 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.760 type of kid who always boasted about things he hadn't 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.839 actually done. Daniel had bragged about owning a water bed 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.760 when he didn't. He'd bragged about owning a fancy stereo 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:00.640 when he didn't. He'd even bragged about being ascended from 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.280 Italian Royalty when he definitely wasn't. 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:05.840 I want to be descended from Italian Royalty, me. 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.080 Too, but that kind of looks just ain't for us. Steve. Anyway, 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:11.600 when it came to the Good Friday shootings, Davide never 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:14.200 believed Daniel Tobi Sirius, not even for a minute. It 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.040 just wasn't him. Daniel had nothing serious like this in 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:17.720 his background. 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.480 Just like criminals have a modus operandi, many times closers 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.960 or interrogators have a modus operandi, and in David's case 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.760 we saw evidence that we later were able to demonstrate 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:34.640 was a modus operandi. Almost always, this interrogator would tell 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:39.040 the suspect that his best friend or close associate had implicated. 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:40.720 Him in the crime, even if that's une true right. 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.640 Always untrue right. He would threaten the suspect with the 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:47.440 death penalty, and he also told the suspects or the 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:51.560 witnesses or the victims in this case, that they were 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:53.680 going to go to prison, and they were going to 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.840 be raped. I mean, if you're a seventeen year old kid, 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.440 and most of these witnesses were teenagers, and you're told 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.320 that you're looking at going to an adult jail where 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:05.640 you're going to be a rape victim, you're going to 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.160 say just about anything you need to get out of 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:08.920 that interrogation. 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.160 It's terrifying stuff. And for David, the information he gave 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:15.760 was that his cousin Daniel, had been joking about committing 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.679 the Good Friday shooting. He never believed Daniel to be serious, 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.520 but this information was enough for the police. They asked 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.960 Devid to write out a statement describing what Daniel had said. 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:29.200 David wrote that Daniel had bragged about using a shotgun 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:33.120 to commit the shootings, but the detective had David take 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.760 that part out and write the statement a second time 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:39.240 without mentioning the type of weapon, because remember, the shells 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.800 at the scene had come from a twenty two, not 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.920 a shotgun. Even with the detective's edits, David's statements still 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.160 contained errors. He remembered his cousin bragging about being in 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.520 a black car, not a maroon car, and Davide said 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:55.520 that Daniel described firing a few shots then getting out 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.440 of the car, chasing Mondo Lazo to the house and 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.800 shooting him again. There, that's just not how this crime happened. 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:05.000 The shots were all clustered together, not spaced out, and 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.440 there were no casings found near Mondo's body. But none 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:14.320 of us mattered. Now, this was a statement that da 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:17.640 Vide regretted giving. It haunted him for the rest of 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:21.079 his life that he'd implicated his own cousin in the 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.000 Good Friday shootings, when even he didn't believe that Daniel 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.560 was guilty. But it was a statement that he felt 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:28.960 he had no choice but to give in light of 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.040 the threats that he was encountering in the interrogation room. 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.800 So there are errors, errors in David's statement, errors in 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.319 the statements of other witnesses, errors that the true perpetrator 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.240 would never have made. That's a red flag. 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.120 It's a huge red flag. But it doesn't stop these police. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.240 Within hours, three more people are brought in for questioning 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:52.360 late at night on April twenty first, two friends of Daniel's, 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:57.800 Marcos Gonzalez and Rodney Williams, and Daniel himself. They're all questioned, 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:01.439 and when Daniel is interrogated, he denies involvement. He tells 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.080 the police he was babysitting that night with a group 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.679 of friends and they were all watching White Men Can't 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:07.720 Jump on TV. 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.599 But here comes that modus operandi exactly. 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.920 Daniel reports being told that if he didn't confess, he 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.480 would be taken to the desert to get beaten, and 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.000 then to jail where he would be raped by old 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:23.120 men then sentenced to death by the electric chair. This 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:25.160 is how they scared Daniel. This is how they began 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.520 reducing him down to this feeling of hopelessness. But if 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:30.520 he confessed, on the other hand, he was told that 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.000 he would get leniency because he was just a minor. 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:36.920 And after about five hours of interrogation, Daniel ends up 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.480 signing a confession typed out by detectives. It's about three 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:41.840 o'clock in the morning. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.720 He repeats the same errors that David Rangell had made, 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.280 but he makes other mistakes too. First of all, what 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.200 about the people in the car? Daniel says the driver 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.800 was someone nicknamed Popeye and that the front passenger was 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:58.920 someone nicknamed Droopy. But the only known Popeye was incarcerated 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.560 at the time, and the only known Droopy he was 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.440 also on house arrested at the time, they could not 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.560 possibly have been in the car. The color of the car. 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:12.319 Davide had said the car was black. Survivor Jesse Hernandez 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:15.000 he had said the car was maroon. Daniel said they 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.800 were in a white four door sedan at the time 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:21.959 of the shooting. And finally, Daniel said that he had 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:25.080 shot Bobby and Mondo in the back, but it was 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.400 clear from the medical examiner's report that they had been 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:29.440 shot from the front. 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:32.679 The more and more you study Daniel's confession, the more 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.880 you start to see a pattern. The only facts about 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:38.439 this murder that he was able to get right are 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.880 facts that had been publicized about the Good Friday shootings 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.480 in the local paper, the El Paso Times. Now, this 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:46.440 is a pretty big red flag when you can only 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:48.880 get facts right when you've read about them in the newspaper. 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.120 And there's another red flag in this case too. As 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:56.880 soon as the interrogator left the room, Daniel immediately recants 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:00.520 to a juvenile probation officer. I didn't do it, he said, 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.360 and he explained that he only confessed because the cops 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:07.040 kept harassing him. He said, I was tired, so I 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:09.080 told them what they wanted to hear. 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.200 And the police and prosecutors ran with that confession, even 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.040 though it was filled with many false facts and errors. 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.080 Despite the red flags in his confession, despite the recantation, 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.559 despite the lack of any physical evidence connecting him to 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.200 the crime, Daniel Viegas is arrested and charged with capital murder. 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:31.120 He's sixteen years old. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:41.560 Now. 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:43.960 Daniel didn't come from a family with a lot of money, 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:48.079 but his parents managed somehow to scrape together ten thousand 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:52.160 dollars for an attorney. Daniel Viegas's first trial took place 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:56.640 in December nineteen ninety four. At that trial, Davide Wrangle testified, 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.800 but he maintained that Daniel had been obviously kidding when 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:03.959 he'd bragged about the shooting. Rodney and Marcos, Daniel's friends, well, 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:07.320 they had given police statements implicating Daniel when they'd been questioned, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:09.880 but on the witness stand they said their statements were 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.640 false and had been obtained through threats of prison, rape 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:18.280 and other similar threats. And Daniel's attorney called eighteen defense witnesses, 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.640 including several alibi witnesses, who testified that Daniel was with 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:25.880 them babysitting and watching TV at the time of the shooting. Right, 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:30.680 white men can't jump, And Daniel's attorney argued strenuously about 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.560 all these inconsistencies in Daniel's confession, how it just didn't 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.360 match the facts of this crime, how it showed every 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:39.240 indication of being false. 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:43.040 He even called other witnesses who called into question the 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:49.400 credibility of this detective, former prosecutors who had sought indictments 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:50.439 for perjury. 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.240 The defense mounted a huge fight. They made every argument 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:55.880 they could. The trial lasted a week and at the 0:13:56.080 --> 0:14:00.280 end there was a hung jury eleven to one, but. 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.000 It was eleven to one in favor of a conviction, 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:06.839 which gave the district attorney some thought that this would 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.720 be an easier case to convict the next time around. 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.079 Sure enough, about nine months later, again, Daniel Veegiss tried 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.520 for the murders of Mondo and Bobby. But the second 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.320 trial was different. You see, Daniel's parents had spent every 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.720 penny they had on the first trial and they couldn't 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:26.720 afford a lawyer for the second trial. This time around, 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:29.680 Daniel was represented by a court appointed lawyer, someone who 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:31.920 had been assigned the case only two months before the 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.080 trial began, and so when the second trial rolled around, 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:39.520 that lawyer called only one defense witness, no alibi witnesses 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.280 at all. He hardly pointed to any problems with Daniel's confession, 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.280 even though he had a blueprint for success in the 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:47.920 form of the first trial. 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.400 And he didn't make a full frontal attack on the 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:54.800 integrity and credibility of the police officer who got these 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:56.440 unreliable statements. 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.680 And so on August twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five, Daniel 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.520 Viegas was convicted of capital murder. Because he'd been a 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.360 juvenile at the time of the offense, he wasn't sentenced 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:11.440 to death. Instead, he was given two life terms in prison, 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.560 one for Bobby and one for Mondo. Daniel was a 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.040 teenager when he went to prison, and he might still 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.000 be there today if it weren't for a man named 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:25.080 John Mimbella. Now, John is the head of a successful 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.360 El Paso construction firm, a firm that hired a lot 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.440 of formerly incarcerated people because John is a guy who 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:35.160 believes in second chances. One day in two thousand and five, 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:38.880 John Mimbela walks into an El Paso bank and he 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:42.320 ends up asking his teller, a woman named Lucy out 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:42.680 on a. 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.360 Date six months later, were buried. Lucy had three daughters 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:52.520 with Daniel's brother, so Daniel was actually Lucy's ex brother 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:56.880 in law. I adopted Lucy's daughters two years later, and 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.400 that's when I learned more about Daniel's. 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.840 Case now, and brought the girls to see their grandparents, 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.560 who were Daniel's parents, and eventually John started coming along too. 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.920 That's where he started to hear stories about their son, Daniel, 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.640 who was serving life in prison for two murders he 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:13.320 didn't commit. 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.040 At first, I thought, you know, any parents gonna not 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.000 want to accept that their son might be a killer. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.040 I had a lot of faith also in our system, 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:28.000 you know, I always believe that if a jury found 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.760 you guilty, it must have been because they had plenty 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.800 of evidence against you. So I figured, hey, you know, 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.120 they must have all kinds of evidence on this kid 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:39.360 if they sentenced him to life. 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:43.200 John was skeptical, but he saw how heartbroken the grandparents 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.280 were and he agreed to read through the court papers. 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:50.680 Before long, he was dumb struck. There was no reliable 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.960 evidence tying Daniel to these shootings at all. And then 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.920 John Minbella became a man possessed. 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.080 I've got a couple of friends and I asked him 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.760 if they could set up a meeting with our DA 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:08.640 because I saw some serious problems in Daniel's conviction. Our 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.800 DA happened to be high Miss Barsa, and he personally 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.520 tried Daniel. So I figured, you know what, if there's 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.040 some mistake, if there's some doubt, you know, he's going 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.200 to reopen this case. So we had the meeting and 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:23.400 I told him, I go, you know what, I think 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.640 Daniel's innocent. Something's wronger, you know, we need to look 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.800 into it. This DA fought us a lot just to 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.119 get evidententry. Heering after he told me the Higher Good 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.199 of Bills lawyer and opened up the case again. He 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:37.679 fought us to the new. 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.280 Now this really fired John up. It didn't make any sense. 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:44.600 He starts paying for billboards around El Paso that' say 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:49.040 free Daniel Viegas. He starts organizing rallies and protests outside 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.600 the courthouse, and he hired a private investigator. 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.280 He read the transcripts and he was dumbfounded too. He 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.040 goes John, I was a homicide detective for twenty years. 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:01.760 This case would never have gone to trial. I would 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.240 never have presented this to my da if this is 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.520 all I had. He was very upset, and he goes, yes, John, 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:08.320 I'll take your case. 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:12.119 John Nannella's invested in Daniel's innocence and the work he 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.560 would go on to do ended up costing him personally 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:16.480 hundreds of thousands of dollars. 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.320 He's the patron saint of the Daniel Viegas case. You know. 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:24.560 I went down to al Paso shortly after John had 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:29.320 hired lawyers and investigators to reopen Daniel's case, and when 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:31.720 I went into the courthouse, there were like fifteen or 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:36.840 twenty people walking around with signs saying free Daniel Viegas. 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.080 You know, false confessions happened. Justice for Daniel Viegas. John 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.560 had organized a rally right in front of the courthouse, 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.560 and on the street in front of the courthouse was 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:50.439 a truck that had billboards on both sides of it 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:53.840 that was driving around the courthouse. So when you walked 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.399 into the courtroom and al Paso, you were just blitched 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:01.520 by this notion that an udjusta had occurred and that 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:02.320 it needed to. 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.480 Be fixed exactly, and John brought his entire community into 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.040 this case too. There was a manager who worked at 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:11.080 his construction company who was a songwriter, and he ends 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.560 up writing a corrido, a traditional Mexican ballad about the 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:16.920 wrongful conviction of Daniel Viegas. 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:19.560 John was so proud of that song that one of 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:21.720 the first things he did when I was down in 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:31.240 al Paco was to play that for me. It's on 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:32.720 YouTube now if you want to hear it. 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.160 John and the private investigator, right, they want to really 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:40.919 find out what happened, and one of the first people 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.680 they go to speak to is Jesse Hernandez, one of 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.120 the survivors of the shooting. Of course, Jesse was now 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.800 a grown man, and John shows Jesse for the first 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:54.720 time a copy of Daniel's confession. 0:19:55.480 --> 0:20:01.200 Jesse's like, John, this is not what happened. Not look 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.200 like a confession from somebody who was there, who took 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:10.240 this confession down and I told him. At that point, 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:15.399 Jesse turns pale and he's like, John, that same detective 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:20.359 almost had me confessing to that crime. He shows up 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:22.680 that night and he tells me, we know you shot 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.040 your friends, your buddy Kwan Medina. I just told us 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.159 that you did it, and Jesse says that he was 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:31.119 just hysterical. He's like, wait a minute, these are my friends. 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.399 I love my friends. I would never do anything like 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:35.560 that to my friends. He goes, well, maybe you blacked out, 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:37.680 you know, and you shot them and you didn't even 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.000 realize it. And at that moment, Jesse goes, well, man, 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:42.600 you know, why would my friends say I shot them 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.640 if I didn't show them. Maybe I did do it, 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:47.560 And he put his head down on the table and 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.200 just crying uncontrollably. Had it not been for his mom 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.200 that stepped in, he says, he was almost ready to confess. 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.800 So Jesse's like, the last thing I want is somebody 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.840 innocence spending the rest of their life in prison. That 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:03.520 could have been me. 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.320 This was an absolute bolt from the blue when John 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.280 heard this story from Jesse Hernandez, and it only motivated 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.919 him to continue pounding the pavement. Eventually, John hires a 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:28.240 highly skilled El Paso trial lawyer, a man named Joe Spencer. 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:30.960 Now Joe files a state petition for a writ of 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:34.960 habeas corpus, arguing, among other things, that Daniel's lawyer at 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.439 his second trial had been ineffective for failing to call 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.680 Daniel's alibi witnesses. There's a hearing plan it's going to 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.199 happen in twenty eleven. And in the run up to 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:47.200 that hearing, that's when Steve and I first heard about 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:47.639 this case. 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:50.520 Yeah, we heard about it through our news feeds. And 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:53.520 this time what made this special is it wasn't just 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.400 me who came in to the office the next day. 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:00.440 It was me and Laura, and so did our third attorney, 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:04.440 Josh Tepfratz. All three of us got this newsfeed at 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.600 the same time, a case of a juvenile who had 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.320 confessed to a crime he didn't commit and who was 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:13.479 trying to reopen his case through a new hearing. 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:16.399 At the hearing, Jesse Hernandez takes the stand for the 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:20.919