Speaker 1: One hot August afternoon in twenty seventeen, Louis Garcia was
Speaker 1: helping his friend John K build a wheelchair ran for
Speaker 1: John's girlfriend Rexina at their house.
Speaker 2: In San Antonio.
Speaker 3: Suddenly, Bear County police showed up with a search warrant.
Speaker 3: They took Louis and John inside, cuffed them, and quickly
Speaker 3: found a stash of drugs that were hidden in the house.
Speaker 1: Bodycam footage later showed more drugs on the floor near
Speaker 1: Louie's feet.
Speaker 3: John, Rixina, and Louis were all arrested in charge with
Speaker 3: drug possession and trafficking. Louie insisted he knew nothing about it.
Speaker 3: Those drugs on the floor didn't belong to him.
Speaker 2: This wasn't even his house, but.
Speaker 3: His lawyer said it didn't look good. If they went
Speaker 3: to trial and the jury saw that footage, Louie could
Speaker 3: be facing twenty five years to life. Reluctantly, he pled
Speaker 3: guilty and got a lighter sentence.
Speaker 1: I mean, after all, the drugs were right there on camera.
Speaker 1: But this is wrong for.
Speaker 3: Conviction, all right, Welcome back to wrongful conviction. We are
Speaker 3: guest hosting Dave.
Speaker 2: My name is Greg Glatt and I'm English.
Speaker 3: You might recognize our voices from the War on Drugs
Speaker 3: podcast that Clayton and I co host, and you know,
Speaker 3: we're really excited to share the story that we have
Speaker 3: for you today on wrongful Conviction because I really think
Speaker 3: it aligns to a lot of things that we're talking
Speaker 3: about there, you know, perverse incentives within the criminal justice system,
Speaker 3: within the drug war that lead to devastating consequences, and
Speaker 3: in the case that we have today, an actual wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3: There really isn't a greater example than Louis Garcia, who
Speaker 3: was the subject and victim of wrongful conviction in the
Speaker 3: San Antonio of Texas. So we have Louis here and
Speaker 3: we also have his attorney, Dana Jones. Guys, thank you
Speaker 3: so much for being on the Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and let's just kind of get into it a
Speaker 3: little bit. Louis, let's talk about prior to the incident here,
Speaker 3: back in twenty seventeen. You know, where were you born,
Speaker 3: where'd you grow up?
Speaker 5: I was born in San Antonio. I went to school,
Speaker 5: I played ball, I lifted a lot of weights, and
Speaker 5: you know, I was just enjoying myself dating off.
Speaker 3: And on any minor run ins with the law, things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 5: I've had run into with the law before, and it's
Speaker 5: it's just, you know, like when you're in your early
Speaker 5: twenties and you started drinking alcohol. So I've had some
Speaker 5: run into with the authorities, and yeah, you know I've yeah,
Speaker 5: i iuld say I've learned some of my lessons.
Speaker 1: Typical stuff for being a young for being a young adult.
Speaker 1: Like you said, you start drinking, you get you know,
Speaker 1: you're irresponsible at that age. You get pulled over for
Speaker 1: tail lights tags, and then something else goes on. But
Speaker 1: it's not like this was your life or you were
Speaker 1: in and out of the system before.
Speaker 5: No, I was a that's just electrician. I had a
Speaker 5: real good job. I was running jobs, I was I
Speaker 5: was doing everything, you know, I was going down a
Speaker 5: good path.
Speaker 1: Right. So when all of this went down August of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, you were like, what forty five years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were living in San Antonio working, you know, doing
Speaker 1: your thing, electrician work, and you were friends with a
Speaker 1: couple of your neighbors, John Kate and Rexina Lenon Wadez
Speaker 1: who lived across the street.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my neighbors are great. Sometimes I have barbecue, sometimes
Speaker 5: they do, and we'll send plates back and forth. I'm
Speaker 5: the kind of guy that you invite to the barbecue
Speaker 5: and bring your tools, right, So I'm like, okay, so
Speaker 5: I'm always out there, you know, having a good time.
Speaker 3: Gotcha. And Mexina, who also went by Mona. You helped
Speaker 3: her out a lot. You know, she had lost her
Speaker 3: legs to diabetes. She was in a wheelchair, and in fact,
Speaker 3: this one day, you'd actually seen her fall off her
Speaker 3: ramp to get into her house because the ramp was
Speaker 3: in you know, pretty rough shape, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Then I go across the street and start helping her up,
Speaker 5: and I started looking at this little just you know,
Speaker 5: whatever you want to call it that was built. It
Speaker 5: was just a bunch of scrap would put together. And
Speaker 5: I looked around and I told her, you know, Mona,
Speaker 5: I'll help you build all this up and clean your
Speaker 5: fence up.
Speaker 1: And you were like, hey, let me get this together
Speaker 1: so this won't happen again.
Speaker 5: And yeah, So I had extra plywood two by fours
Speaker 5: and a lot of stuff out there that we could have.
Speaker 5: We were going to build her a better round, and
Speaker 5: she she was excited about it. But she kept on
Speaker 5: telling me I can't pay you. I can't pay you.
Speaker 5: And I told her, you know, well, on the first
Speaker 5: of the month when you get your food stamp. So
Speaker 5: you know, I'm a real sucker for some chicken mole.
Speaker 5: She goes, oh, I can make that. I can say.
Speaker 2: We'll be good man.
Speaker 1: Listen, home cooked meal sometimes that's more than enough for
Speaker 1: a hard day's work. So that's what you and Mona's boyfriend,
Speaker 1: John Cape were up to that day, August tenth, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: You're out in front of their house. You're building a
Speaker 1: new wheelchair ramp, and Mona had gone off to the
Speaker 1: dollar store to you know, grab some snacks and some
Speaker 1: gatorade for you guys.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, And while we were, you know, putting everything together.
Speaker 5: I don't know who the guy was, but uh this,
Speaker 5: uh you know, John was communicating with him and he
Speaker 5: told him that, hey, do you mind if my daughter
Speaker 5: uses the restroom. She had a pink backpack with her
Speaker 5: and they go inside. John comes right back out with
Speaker 5: me and we're taking stuff apart and they leave. And
Speaker 5: another thing that caught my eyes. She didn't have a
Speaker 5: backpack this time.
Speaker 3: So this guy who you didn't know, and daughter has
Speaker 3: a backpack, come up and say, hey, just need to
Speaker 3: use the rest room. You guys are just being good
Speaker 3: host and let them in. Daughter comes back out, no
Speaker 3: backpack on her, no backpack on the way back out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And as soon as.
Speaker 5: You hear their car take off of the block, and
Speaker 5: I looked up and I just see a Bear County
Speaker 5: Sheriff sticker on the side of a vent and everybody
Speaker 5: starts jumping out. And I told John, Amen, we're in
Speaker 5: the RAI dude.
Speaker 3: So Dane, let me throw it to you for some
Speaker 3: background here. Can you kind of run through the facts
Speaker 3: of the case, Like what's going on at this point?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the listener like, why are the
Speaker 3: cops even here?
Speaker 6: So Bear County Narcotics Division it goes and gets a
Speaker 6: search warrant for the house where Louis happened to be.
Speaker 4: Louie did not live there at all.
Speaker 6: They relied on a confidential informant to get into this
Speaker 6: particular house with really nothing corroborating the confidential informance information
Speaker 6: at all. This confidential informant had never been relied on before.
Speaker 6: How they made this person credible in the FI David
Speaker 6: was that they had conducted a controlled buy for the officer.
Speaker 6: The officer says he met with the informant, gave the
Speaker 6: informant an undisclosed amount of US currency, dropped the informant
Speaker 6: off down the road, and observe the informant go into
Speaker 6: a location. Then they later picked up the informant and
Speaker 6: he had drugs.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just saying that the informant had never been
Speaker 1: used as a CI.
Speaker 2: Or anything before first time.
Speaker 1: And they're just going off somebody's word. Who essentially, you
Speaker 1: dropped them off somewhere, you saw him go in a
Speaker 1: place in later on they had drugs, and you will
Speaker 1: equate that to them being credible.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 6: I mean, that doesn't even prove that the person knows
Speaker 6: what drugs are. They just went in there and said,
Speaker 6: here's money, give me, give me meth. And then they're like,
Speaker 6: they came back with meth, they must know what it is.
Speaker 4: But that's essentially what it was. That's the credibility there.
Speaker 6: That information got police lawfully into a house. I mean
Speaker 6: lawfully in the sense of that's the paperwork the judge
Speaker 6: signed off on. This got them into a house, took
Speaker 6: people down, searched their house made a rest base.
Speaker 3: On that, and you know, this is the kind of
Speaker 3: problem that we see with a lot of these warrants,
Speaker 3: and Clayton, I'm sure you're thinking what I'm thinking. We
Speaker 3: did an episode of the War on Drugs podcast called
Speaker 3: The War at Your Door on no knock warrants, and
Speaker 3: this is not a no knock warrant, but it has
Speaker 3: a lot of those similarities to it. It kind of has
Speaker 3: that same feel, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it definitely has that no knock feel. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of what Radley Balco talked about on our
Speaker 1: episode that we had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it feels exactly like that. And really,
Speaker 3: you know, judges are supposed to be this check a
Speaker 3: lot of these warrants and they just they kind of
Speaker 3: rubber stant them quite a bit. And you really look
Speaker 3: at a lot of the evidence that comes to allow
Speaker 3: the government just to barrel into your door not announcing themselves,
Speaker 3: and how shoddy and minor that is. And then you
Speaker 3: look at a case like this and you're using an untested, untrained,
Speaker 3: confidential format has all the incentive of the world to
Speaker 3: essentially do things to get themselves off, and you're rubber
Speaker 3: stamping these things and the consequences of that. I think
Speaker 3: it's just it's a pretty scary, scary circumstances one that
Speaker 3: you know, we could all find ourselves there. You know,
Speaker 3: Louis was just doing a good deed for a neighbor
Speaker 3: and look at the circumstances that he found himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, justice being served out in the name of a
Speaker 1: lie is scary anyway, exactly, all right, So Louis, let's
Speaker 1: wind it back a minute. You and John are building
Speaker 1: the ram. The guy and his daughter come in use
Speaker 1: the bathroom and take off, and police show up in
Speaker 1: a hot second with his warrant.
Speaker 2: What happened next?
Speaker 5: They started cuffing us up and they secured the location.
Speaker 5: And uh, I have been cu from the back like
Speaker 5: everybody else does, and I'll already on the floor. Well
Speaker 5: I look up and I just an officer comes and
Speaker 5: he jumps on top of me and he messes up
Speaker 5: my right shoulder and you know, I can't lift it
Speaker 5: up over my shoulders right now. And I was like, man,
Speaker 5: what did you do that for?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 6: So almost immediately they go back to the bathroom and
Speaker 6: they come back and they're like, what's this With a huge,
Speaker 6: large quantity of drugs and that's exactly where this guy
Speaker 6: and his little girl with the backpack had just gone
Speaker 6: and they supposedly found it between like there was like
Speaker 6: a loose board in the wall and like in a
Speaker 6: hole and that's where they found it.
Speaker 1: Wow, So was this We don't know about these people?
Speaker 1: Are they? Because I'm gonna say what it looks like
Speaker 1: and what it sounds like is this dude came in
Speaker 1: with his daughter and planet drugs in there.
Speaker 5: So I'm just sitting there and everything, and then they
Speaker 5: pointed me out and said, hey, get your drugs on
Speaker 5: the floor. And you guys been looking at me the
Speaker 5: whole time. My hands have been handcuffed, and so they
Speaker 5: they jump on me again and they some some narcotics
Speaker 5: that were found on the floor, and they were saying
Speaker 5: that it's fine. I was like, I said, no, it's
Speaker 5: not one. That's that.
Speaker 6: What he's talking about is when they handcuffed him, they
Speaker 6: took they led them in it's on body camp into
Speaker 6: it inside to sit on a couch and you can
Speaker 6: kind of see the general area. There's an officer sitting
Speaker 6: with them the entire time. You don't see anything on
Speaker 6: the ground. He's handcuffed the entire time, and when they
Speaker 6: stand him up to leave, there's all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: like a little bit of drugs sitting on the floor
Speaker 6: next to him that was not there before. I don't
Speaker 6: know how he could be sitting on a couch with
Speaker 6: his hands behind him and next next to a police
Speaker 6: officer and somehow get I mean, the implication to me
Speaker 6: when I was reading the reports was he somehow pulled
Speaker 6: these out of his pockets or something. But they were
Speaker 6: accusing him of having this small quantity sitting next to
Speaker 6: on the floor.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, that wasn't there when he sat him down, okay.
Speaker 3: And then right about then, that's when Xina came back
Speaker 3: from the dollar store and saw everything that was going
Speaker 3: on her.
Speaker 2: So she came back to the race.
Speaker 5: She came back in the middle of the race.
Speaker 2: She came back police there you win, coach.
Speaker 5: And she sees like she sat cussing them out. What
Speaker 5: the hell are y'all doing in my house?
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 5: You know, she might be in a wheelchair, but she's
Speaker 5: going to stand the ground sure, and she telling me,
Speaker 5: you get the hell out of my house. I don't
Speaker 5: know who y'all are. We're bear County Sheriff and hand
Speaker 5: there the warrant and she knows she's in cups.
Speaker 6: They were Bear County Narcotics Division, where the officers, interesting enough,
Speaker 6: just a side piece of information is this is not
Speaker 6: my first case overturning a Bear County narcotics case. Like
Speaker 6: years ago the same division, they had some lying officers
Speaker 6: who were in trouble in the same unit, who were
Speaker 6: just kind of making up information and on search warrants
Speaker 6: and go.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask that. I was gonna ask, like
Speaker 1: they have a little bit of history of being.
Speaker 4: Dirty, at least with me, they do.
Speaker 6: I mean, not every officer is bad. I can put
Speaker 6: that out there, but I haven't had a good, really
Speaker 6: positive experience in my career with that particular.
Speaker 3: Unit, right, And there's been a history, like you said,
Speaker 3: within Bear County. I know, back in what March twenty ten,
Speaker 3: there was you know, I think two hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: nine warnings of defensive hernees whose cases evolved to narcotics
Speaker 3: deputies when they're accused of pocketing money that was supposed
Speaker 3: to be paid to SEIS. And like you said, there's
Speaker 3: been other cases there and so this is something I
Speaker 3: don't know if the term systemic, but there has been
Speaker 3: a routine within Bear County of this type of stuff
Speaker 3: going on within their narcotics division.
Speaker 6: Correct, Yeah, okay, So each one of them was charged
Speaker 6: with four to two hundred grams, I believe is what
Speaker 6: the ultimate charge ended up being with intent to deliver,
Speaker 6: which in Texas that elevates it up to another offense
Speaker 6: level range of punishment.
Speaker 4: Everything.
Speaker 5: So I wait to go see the lawyer, and that's
Speaker 5: told the racina. She gave me an affidavit stating that
Speaker 5: it's her house. Everything is found on the property is
Speaker 5: she's solely responsible for. He looked at that thing and
Speaker 5: he was like, you don't live there. They searched your stuff,
Speaker 5: there was nothing found on your person. He goes, I'm
Speaker 5: taking this all the way to trial, and this is
Speaker 5: immediately dismissal. Oh man, I just that was a quarter
Speaker 5: pointed telling me this man, I'm high five of him.
Speaker 5: He goes, man, keep your nose clean. Stead He goes,
Speaker 5: you're gonna beat your case. So I went hopping home,
Speaker 5: skipping happy them go back to working again and helping
Speaker 5: out and stuff like that. And there wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 5: the same when I went to court.
Speaker 6: Eventually your bond got revoked and you were back in
Speaker 6: jail waiting for these charges. And somehow, I don't know,
Speaker 6: nobody can figure out, but his lawyers like switched and
Speaker 6: he didn't have the same lawyer anymore, and he got
Speaker 6: a new quarter appointed a lawyer.
Speaker 5: He's already telling me, man, they don't look good.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, man, whoa we go from?
Speaker 1: This trial's about to get thrown The case gonna get
Speaker 1: thrown out, So it doesn't look good.
Speaker 5: They were ten years and I was like, what are
Speaker 5: you serious? Ten years from having all this confidence about
Speaker 5: me getting this case dismissed to this guy looking at
Speaker 5: me like, swell, what can you say? You've been in
Speaker 5: trouble before, and I'm just but this isn't mine. Wow,
Speaker 5: in the eyes of the court, you're guilty and you're
Speaker 5: gonna have to sign for something today.
Speaker 2: So they immediately wanted you to take a plea yes.
Speaker 5: And I just put my head down and just that's
Speaker 5: when I started like thinking, like, maybe I need to
Speaker 5: do this. Maybe I knew that maybe. And it wasn't
Speaker 5: until this case got opened up about me having these
Speaker 5: drugs that were found come to find out, all these
Speaker 5: police officers, none of them are credible in court. That's
Speaker 5: the reason why they didn't want me to take this trial.
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, okay, So this goes just going back to
Speaker 2: what you were saying.
Speaker 1: They were trying to get you to admit to those
Speaker 1: drugs in the house when they put their knee on
Speaker 1: your chest and everything. They were trying to get a
Speaker 1: mission then and then when you got the first one
Speaker 1: saw it for what it was, that it should be
Speaker 1: thrown out or whatever, then they switched it to somebody
Speaker 1: that told you to take the plea.
Speaker 2: And it just sounds like what we've talked.
Speaker 1: About Greg on our podcast, with that whole system of
Speaker 1: trying to get people to get through the system as
Speaker 1: fast as possible, get them the plea, Like it's almost
Speaker 1: shock and all, like we're trying to scare you into.
Speaker 6: This, Like you know, I think there's also something to
Speaker 6: be said there that when somebody is in custody already,
Speaker 6: like his bond got revoked, he's in custody, the balance
Speaker 6: of well, okay, if I just take the plea and
Speaker 6: do a little bit of time, I can get out.
Speaker 6: It's a lot easier to fight charges when you're actually
Speaker 6: out of jail, you're working with your lawyer, you can
Speaker 6: have better meetings with them. There's a lot more discussion
Speaker 6: that way. But when sometimes when you're in custody and
Speaker 6: you have a lawyer who's like, look, not fighting for you,
Speaker 6: but they're also not meeting with you. Because they're not,
Speaker 6: you're not able to call their office and talk with them.
Speaker 6: I think Louie and I have talked about this before,
Speaker 6: just the okay, well if they want me to do
Speaker 6: ten and he ended up getting eight years ultimately, But
Speaker 6: you start running through I could do. I've been in
Speaker 6: here a little bit of time already, I'm facing life
Speaker 6: in prison for this amount of drugs. The reality is
Speaker 6: you never know what a jury's going to do if
Speaker 6: you can't get your case dismissed, and you start kind
Speaker 6: of justifying to yourself, Okay, I can maybe make parole
Speaker 6: in a couple of years, and those thoughts start going
Speaker 6: through your mind.
Speaker 3: So Louis, now we're over a year and a half
Speaker 3: out from the actual arrest. You're initially thinking that this
Speaker 3: is going to get dismissed. Those hopes that kind of
Speaker 3: just start to dwindle, and then you have to accept
Speaker 3: a plea deal on something that you know in your
Speaker 3: heart you had nothing.
Speaker 5: I was so twenty five to life if I take
Speaker 5: this trial, and I'm like, you know, what do you say?
Speaker 5: It's hard? And uh, You're like, okay, I might beat
Speaker 5: this one, but this one's over your opinion and what
Speaker 5: are the chances? And you just put your and just
Speaker 5: you know, I have to take this. I have to
Speaker 5: take what they're offering me twenty five to life each case.
Speaker 5: And I was like, I know I have a history.
Speaker 5: It's it's you know, I've learned from the mistakes. I
Speaker 5: have been making mistakes. And it's just like you totally
Speaker 5: cos you get a cashp cash, you don't don't do
Speaker 5: it this way.
Speaker 3: Okay. So Louis pled out to serve eight years in prison,
Speaker 3: and there was time served and all that. What about
Speaker 3: the other two defendants, Mona and John?
Speaker 6: So John ended up taking time in prison. I think
Speaker 6: he got ten years on his case. And then they
Speaker 6: call her Mona. Her official name is Rexina. Rexina was
Speaker 6: very very ill. So John actually took a little bit
Speaker 6: more time on his sentence so that Rexina could get probation.
Speaker 6: That's kind of also another reason that these plea. Bargains
Speaker 6: were all offered so that Rexina could get out because
Speaker 6: of her health problems, and Louis and John recognized that.
Speaker 4: So Rexina got out, she served her probation.
Speaker 6: And John and Louis went off to start their sentences.
Speaker 5: You get there, you already kind of got your mindset
Speaker 5: on you know how, You're just going to tread through.
Speaker 5: You don't want to get involved, you don't want to
Speaker 5: stay out of the way, Go to the library, read books,
Speaker 5: do this, and that's what you're mostly focused on. You
Speaker 5: can't sit there and tell yourself that you know what
Speaker 5: you do is wrong. You sold yourself out. You know
Speaker 5: you had nothing to do with this. You know why
Speaker 5: did you do what you did. I'm just here to
Speaker 5: do my time. That's all in my mind for it.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of disordering, chaos that goes on in there,
Speaker 5: and you just don't want no part of it. You
Speaker 5: don't conversate with certain people. You just leave all this
Speaker 5: stuff alone. And every now and then you're gonna have
Speaker 5: a clash with these groups or with this or with that,
Speaker 5: and it's how you deal it. You just got to
Speaker 5: keep moving forward. I had a real tough time in
Speaker 5: there because I had a silly and you know, he
Speaker 5: was five years older than I was, and we would
Speaker 5: talk and next thing, I know, the more he's there,
Speaker 5: we were just talking, talk and talk. Well he had
Speaker 5: he was making some hooch when I was at the library,
Speaker 5: and they fought for the bottle or whatever it was,
Speaker 5: and uh, you know, my my celling. You know he
Speaker 5: was he died. He beating the death and uh, he
Speaker 5: still bothers. It still bothers me today.
Speaker 4: But hey, do you want me to tell this part? Louis? Okay?
Speaker 6: So they I've heard him tell this before and it's
Speaker 6: really heartbreaking. But they basically brought him like a bucket
Speaker 6: of water and told him to clean up the blood
Speaker 6: that was in his cell himself.
Speaker 4: So it's his friend's blood and he had to clean.
Speaker 5: It all up. I told him, I don't want to
Speaker 5: go in there. I don't want to go in there.
Speaker 5: And they said, aren't you coming up for parol? You know,
Speaker 5: I'm giving you a direct order to get inside your cell.
Speaker 5: And do you just do that? You know you don't
Speaker 5: want to get in there. You know, Okay, you lose
Speaker 5: your pearl next yere, you know, following year. So I
Speaker 5: put my head down and I cleaned up the blood.
Speaker 3: So, Dana, you get involved in this case in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: can you know there's a parallel case to this that
Speaker 3: is really tied into Louis. Can you kind of talk
Speaker 3: about what you discovered between Louis case and obviously the
Speaker 3: other case of Ruby Sandoval, which happened in October that
Speaker 3: same year in San Antonio, Texas.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, when I was asked by the Conviction Integrity Union
Speaker 6: and then appointed by the judge to represent them, I
Speaker 6: did reach out to Louis and John. I just wanted
Speaker 6: to know what was going on, what their thoughts on
Speaker 6: their own case were, and saying I'm looking into this.
Speaker 6: This is what I've been told so far, but I
Speaker 6: need to get some information. And both of their letters
Speaker 6: back finally were kind of the same thing. We've always
Speaker 6: said that this guy came into the house and he
Speaker 6: must have planted the drugs because they weren't ours, and
Speaker 6: it was a really weird situation and nobody believed us,
Speaker 6: which it matched up with with Ruby's case as well.
Speaker 6: So what I find out later is somebody had messaged
Speaker 6: her or talked to her about storing like a box
Speaker 6: or a bag, leaving it at her house for a
Speaker 6: little while. She said, sure, that's fine. She had a
Speaker 6: lot of text messages with this person. The person was like,
Speaker 6: when are you going to be home? When are you
Speaker 6: going to be home? You know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: And as soon as she gets home, cops raided her
Speaker 6: house with the search warrant and they have find drugs
Speaker 6: in this bag that this person asked.
Speaker 4: To leave at her house.
Speaker 6: So based on that, she starts immediately fighting her case.
Speaker 6: And it takes her quite a while to prove to
Speaker 6: the prosecutor and to everyone you know, with her lawyer,
Speaker 6: get her text messages and everything in line to show
Speaker 6: this person us have left the drugs here. The state
Speaker 6: now feels comfortable enough that that's what happened in her case.
Speaker 6: So that prosecutor in her case went to a conviction
Speaker 6: integrity unit that the DA's office has. They immediately pulled
Speaker 6: every case that this confidential informant had worked on previously,
Speaker 6: and it was Louis Rexina and John's case. They sent
Speaker 6: me a memorandum explaining everything that went on and why
Speaker 6: they think that you know what happened in John and
Speaker 6: Louise case and Rexina's case might have happened just like
Speaker 6: it happened in this other woman's case.
Speaker 1: Wow, so the same informant, So the same playbook of
Speaker 1: somebody comes by and leave something there and then the
Speaker 1: police come the same county.
Speaker 6: Wow, No it was It was the same informant, the
Speaker 6: same situation, same informant. Thankfully, in her case, she had
Speaker 6: a bunch of text messages from the individual and she
Speaker 6: was able to establish all of that.
Speaker 3: Okay, gotcha? Okay? What was the between Roxine and the
Speaker 3: confidential informant? Like, was there a connection? Why would is
Speaker 3: he drawn to this house even plant things? Or was
Speaker 3: it completely random?
Speaker 6: I think that he knew John and Rexina just from
Speaker 6: the neighborhood, is my understanding. They knew who he was,
Speaker 6: but that was kind of the extent of it. Louie
Speaker 6: didn't know who he was at all.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, and the person used their daughter.
Speaker 6: It just shows the lengths that confidential informants go to
Speaker 6: to work off their own cases.
Speaker 3: Gotcha, So was it readily apparent when you were kind
Speaker 3: of reading through this and going through What were some
Speaker 3: of the things that you feel could have nipped us
Speaker 3: in the bud earlier? What was the kind of the
Speaker 3: things that stood out to you. The most red.
Speaker 6: Flag Number one to me was reading this search warrant,
Speaker 6: that this is the first time they've ever used this
Speaker 6: confidential informant. I don't think that they had enough to
Speaker 6: get a search warrant based on that.
Speaker 4: I would have challenged that.
Speaker 6: The bodycam footage that what I had said earlier, that
Speaker 6: they're trying to say that these drugs that are near
Speaker 6: Louis but they weren't there before.
Speaker 5: It doesn't if you see the video, there's turn the
Speaker 5: camera on and snaked your name and what's your address,
Speaker 5: and then it turned it back off, then it turned
Speaker 5: it back on, is that these drugs were found right here.
Speaker 6: Officers that turn on and off their cameras or mute
Speaker 6: their mics always red flag for me. It just all
Speaker 6: seemed weird, and when something seems weird or off, there's
Speaker 6: usually some problems there is, in my opinion, So there's
Speaker 6: definitely was a lot to work with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, Okay, So you talked about Dana a lot
Speaker 3: of the work that the Bear County Conviction Integrity Union
Speaker 3: has done and the good work that they've done, and
Speaker 3: they've actually been you know, a really big bright spot
Speaker 3: within the Prostitorial's office there. Can you talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: what their involvement throughout this process with Louis once you
Speaker 3: got into the case and how that looked.
Speaker 6: So initially it was the chief of that office. She's
Speaker 6: not there anymore. She works for a different court, but
Speaker 6: Matt Howard is now the chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit.
Speaker 6: I work with Matt quite a bit. I can't I
Speaker 6: can't ever say that he and I always are going
Speaker 6: to agree on every case, but I can assure you
Speaker 6: that he gives everything a thorough review, and if it's
Speaker 6: a wrongful conviction, he will stand up and say it's
Speaker 6: a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: He's not afraid to do it.
Speaker 6: So I really do commend the work our das Jo Gonzalez.
Speaker 6: He didn't start the Conviction Integrity Unit, but he's kept
Speaker 6: it going and really built on it, and they do
Speaker 6: a great job of overturning wrongful convictions when the proof
Speaker 6: is there. So in my work, when I file the claims,
Speaker 6: I got every claim together that I could possibly file
Speaker 6: for Louis and John and Rexina, and then I file
Speaker 6: them in the writ, application and memorandum of.
Speaker 4: Law from there.
Speaker 6: I worked with the conviction Integrity unit on what facts
Speaker 6: and details we're going to agree to, and we put
Speaker 6: those agreed orders together and we get those in front
Speaker 6: of the judge. And we also had a great judge,
Speaker 6: Judge Mesa here in town. She agreed on a lot
Speaker 6: of this. She actually went even further than what the
Speaker 6: Court of Criminal Appeals was willing to do. Judge Mesa
Speaker 6: recommended that all three of them are actually innocent of
Speaker 6: the charges. That's kind of the process when, especially when
Speaker 6: we have agreed facts and agreed relief. The DA's office
Speaker 6: here is willing to get on board and we file
Speaker 6: a lot of agreed stuff together, which is unique. As
Speaker 6: a defense attorney, it does feel weird to give so
Speaker 6: much credit, but every DA's office, because of situations like this,
Speaker 6: need conviction integrity units and true ones that are willing
Speaker 6: to say our das messed up, our sheriffs messed up.
Speaker 6: So they are they're willing to make those hard calls.
Speaker 6: And the convection Integrity Unit here and I appreciate the
Speaker 6: work that they do, especially on this case.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, a conviction integrity unit, I think that that
Speaker 1: needs to be implemented everywhere.
Speaker 2: Man likes that's something that.
Speaker 1: It's a resource I think that can hopefully get a
Speaker 1: lot more cases overturned.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, Clayton, I totally agree, and you know
Speaker 3: we're seeing them pop up a lot more and more,
Speaker 3: and yeah, to your point, we definitely need more oversight
Speaker 3: on these things.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So, Dana, as you said, Judge Mesa recommended that Louis
Speaker 3: and John's convictions be overturned and they should be found innocent.
Speaker 3: But then it went up to the Texas Court of
Speaker 3: Criminal Appeals. Can you explain what happened next?
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Court of Criminal Appeals for John and Louie
Speaker 6: said no, that they should their case is overturned, but
Speaker 6: they're not actually innocent, which it's it's a really high
Speaker 6: difficult burden to prove with actual innocence. So I can
Speaker 6: go into why they didn't. There were because in John's
Speaker 6: house there was some little minor amounts of drugs that
Speaker 6: were found, like personal use, small amounts like that, and
Speaker 6: because they said that that's a lesser included of the
Speaker 6: greater amount, they're not going to give them an actual
Speaker 6: innocence finding. That's why they went that route. But Louie
Speaker 6: didn't live there, and there was nothing directly linked to Louis.
Speaker 6: I really felt like, at least in Louie's case, he
Speaker 6: should have had the actual innocence finding in this case.
Speaker 6: So since they don't get an actual innocence, it gets
Speaker 6: sent back down to the trial court level, and the
Speaker 6: DA's office immediately filed dismissals and all the cases just
Speaker 6: to make it official that it's overturned and now dismissed officially.
Speaker 6: So they don't have a conviction on their record for
Speaker 6: these cases.
Speaker 3: And because they are not found actually innocent, Texas law
Speaker 3: does not allow them to be entitled a compensation because
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: Correct, Have anyone, any officers or anyone else been disciplined
Speaker 3: that were connected to this case?
Speaker 4: Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3: Was the informant ever charged with anything about lying.
Speaker 2: In this case?
Speaker 4: No, not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3: Okay, And so we're now looking into what August twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: Judge Maza finally finds for wrongful conviction and then Louis
Speaker 3: you're released at the same time as John on bond
Speaker 3: in September twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Yes, you had like kind of a turn, because you
Speaker 1: sound like you kind of gave up and just like said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my head down and do my time
Speaker 1: in too, be walking free. Man.
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 5: It was the meeting my little grand baby, playing with
Speaker 5: her is just I just started smiling, like be there
Speaker 5: for my parents. You know, I'm the only son, I'm
Speaker 5: big little brother, and so it's kind of, you know,
Speaker 5: gonna go do what I'm'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 6: One other little kind of piece of sad part of
Speaker 6: this whole case is the whole time that I represented Rexina,
Speaker 6: she was on hospice care because of her illness, and
Speaker 6: the day that the judge signed these orders for them,
Speaker 6: like for her case to be overturned, it didn't need
Speaker 6: to go up to the Quarter of Criminal Appeals, but
Speaker 6: the day she signed it. I called the next day
Speaker 6: after I got the order, and she had passed away
Speaker 6: the night before, so I never got a chance to
Speaker 6: tell Rexina her case was overturned.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The first thing that John and Louis did was they
Speaker 6: were pall bearers at Rexina's funeral.
Speaker 5: Yeah, her sister had told us that she knew, you
Speaker 5: know that young guys are going to get out. She
Speaker 5: was happy we got out. I think about a year
Speaker 5: into my sentence, she wrote me a letter. I know
Speaker 5: with her it is that probably took a lot out
Speaker 5: of her. Even when I was incarcerated, we still kept
Speaker 5: in touch what little she could say, because it was like, Hi,
Speaker 5: thinking about you, how have you been? And pretty much
Speaker 5: is it? You know, I still keep in touch with John.
Speaker 5: I still keep in touch with Delma Rexina's sister. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we're still, like I guess, easing our way through this
Speaker 5: and just slowly turning pages and moving forward.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Just an unbelievable story. I think this, this case really
Speaker 3: does exemplify so much that's wrong with our criminal justice
Speaker 3: system and the war on drugs and how these negative
Speaker 3: incentives can really, you know, impact people's lives in such
Speaker 3: a dramatic fashion that you know, you see where these
Speaker 3: negative sentences can lie with the confidential informant and where
Speaker 3: his incentives are are drawn from the detectives to garner
Speaker 3: or two more convictions kind of fairly easily without kind
Speaker 3: of you know, really respecting someone's constitutional rights. It's such
Speaker 3: an exemplification of all the negative that we see within
Speaker 3: the criminal justice and the fact that we have, you know,
Speaker 3: somewhat of a happy ending with Louis, and how many
Speaker 3: other thousands of people have probably gone through similar things
Speaker 3: and never got this opportunity to actually be you know,
Speaker 3: have their cases dismissed because there wasn't this commision integrity
Speaker 3: or there's wasn't this piece of evidence. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: I just want to thank you Louis for coming on
Speaker 3: today and discuss this case.
Speaker 1: Well that's one thing with our podcast, we don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of happy ending. Yeah, so to have somebody
Speaker 1: who's actually been through everything and come out the other
Speaker 1: side and it's great.
Speaker 2: So thank you, Thank you both, Louis.
Speaker 3: Is there any call to action? Is there a go
Speaker 3: fundme page? Is there a number for people can reach
Speaker 3: out about you know, you and your your your skills
Speaker 3: as an electrician, anything else with that that we can
Speaker 3: we can plug for you.
Speaker 5: If anybody needs to help, we need some work or
Speaker 5: stuff like that, you can go through Dana.
Speaker 3: It's all right with her.
Speaker 4: I'll be your secretary, Louis.
Speaker 2: But I mean, you.
Speaker 5: Need you need plumbing in the electrical you need to
Speaker 5: fix your fence, and I ain't gonna wash your dogs,
Speaker 5: but you know all that other stuff like anything to
Speaker 5: keep uself busy, keep myself moving. Keep some guess it
Speaker 5: in the truck and a little change in my bucket.
Speaker 2: I'm fine.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at some curtains right now that are crooked
Speaker 3: because I couldn't do that. You look at the whole
Speaker 3: fucking house by yourself. God damn worthless.
Speaker 2: Man. Come on, you gotta get your skills up. No,
Speaker 2: I take that back. We got to get our skills,
Speaker 2: that's what we think. We gotta get our skills up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, Look, we've come to this segment of our
Speaker 1: show called closing Arguments. Louis and Dana, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here with us today. This is the
Speaker 1: last segment of the show, so we turn it over
Speaker 1: to YouTube for any final thoughts that you may have
Speaker 1: for your closing arguments. So, Dana, why don't you start
Speaker 1: us off.
Speaker 6: I always say that I would love to not do
Speaker 6: this job anymore, only because I would love that there's
Speaker 6: never another.
Speaker 4: Wrongful conviction ever.
Speaker 6: But there's always going to be this job because humans
Speaker 6: are involved in this process, in this system, the use
Speaker 6: of confidential informants really needs to be questioned in every
Speaker 6: single case. If they're going to do it, I don't
Speaker 6: personally think they should be doing it. But that's I'm
Speaker 6: not a law enforcement officer. Judges who review search Warren
Speaker 6: Affi Davids and arrest Warren Affi Davids. I mean the
Speaker 6: whole process. Everybody needs to have better training so that
Speaker 6: we can catch these things on the front end and
Speaker 6: prevent them from ever even happening. I just think, I
Speaker 6: hope and I love podcasts like this where we're getting
Speaker 6: the word out that wrongful convictions do happen. They absolutely
Speaker 6: do happen, and we can't just incarcerate somebody and turn
Speaker 6: a blind eye anymore.
Speaker 4: That we need to start working.
Speaker 6: So if there's any local organizations innocence projects in your
Speaker 6: state or local community, get involved, if you can donate.
Speaker 6: If you ever get called on jury duty, really take
Speaker 6: it serious because you could be deciding somebody's fate.
Speaker 5: Keep your head up and keep going. You get enough
Speaker 5: wrong two you're out there doing right. So yeah, I've
Speaker 5: had enough wrong done to me. So now it's just
Speaker 5: you know, I go out there and help out all
Speaker 5: I can, and I don't hold any negativity, any grudge
Speaker 5: or nothing like that. You know, I still have a
Speaker 5: lot of respect for the law, and I still respect
Speaker 5: you know, these people that are doing a hell of
Speaker 5: a job out there. And it wasn't until I was
Speaker 5: released and I saw all the effort that Dya and
Speaker 5: the Judge mess It put into getting me out. It's
Speaker 5: like these people already they didn't know me for any date,
Speaker 5: they didn't owe me anything, but they fought hard to
Speaker 5: get me out. They fought hard to where I'm at.
Speaker 5: And so that's you know, I guess check marks on
Speaker 5: my side. You know, you do have people looking out
Speaker 5: at me. Not everybody's there to hang in.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. We are your
Speaker 1: guest hosts Clayton.
Speaker 3: English and I'm Greg Glott, and.
Speaker 1: We'd like to give a shout out to executive producers
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm and Kevin Wadis.
Speaker 3: Plus everybody on the Wrongful Conviction production team Connor Hall, Anny, Chelsea,
Speaker 3: Lyla Robinson and Jeff Cliber.
Speaker 1: The music in the production comes from three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer shave Rout.
Speaker 3: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 3: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 3: wrong Conviction, as well as Lava for Good on all
Speaker 3: three platforms so.
Speaker 1: You can find US online too. I'm Clayton English on Instagram.
Speaker 3: And I'm on Twitter at greg Glott.
Speaker 1: And For more about the state of drug criminalization in
Speaker 1: your society, listen to the War on Drugs podcast wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 3: and association with Signal Company Number one