Speaker 1: I think we have the best legal system.
Speaker 2: It's just the people that implement it. They get lost
Speaker 2: along the way and forget what their job really is.
Speaker 2: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
Speaker 2: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
Speaker 2: it was for my body to be found in any
Speaker 2: alley of New York City.
Speaker 1: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
Speaker 1: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
Speaker 1: They do that. They'll give a guy a life sentence
Speaker 1: and go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing.
Speaker 2: And anybody that said, well, why would you confess to
Speaker 2: something that you didn't do? My question to them will
Speaker 2: be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill
Speaker 2: your life? The judge, he said, how you feel? I said,
Speaker 2: I'm okay. He said, well, the days you're lucky day
Speaker 2: you're going home.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 3: Jason Flam Today. I have a guest who I've wanted
Speaker 3: to have on the show ever since. I saw a
Speaker 3: picture of him having his first meal after he was
Speaker 3: released after twenty years in prison, and he had this
Speaker 3: smile on his face that was just pure joy. It
Speaker 3: looked like. So we'll hear more about that, and I
Speaker 3: want to welcome you.
Speaker 4: Angel Gonzalez, Wakegan man who spent the last two decades
Speaker 4: in prison, could soon be set free. New DNA evidence
Speaker 4: identifies two other men who committed the nineteen ninety four
Speaker 4: rape and kidnapping he was imprisoned for it.
Speaker 5: Sell Us exonerated by DNA evidence that showed he couldn't
Speaker 5: have been one of the two men who kidnapped and
Speaker 5: raped the woman in Walkeegan in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6: In two thousand and one, DNA testing identified one male
Speaker 6: profile that did not match Gonzales, and just last week,
Speaker 6: further testing pointed to an additional man.
Speaker 5: It wasn't until lawyers from an innocence project took up
Speaker 5: his case and a change in leadership in the Lake
Speaker 5: County States Attorney's Office that DNA testing was conducted.
Speaker 6: The forty one year old initially confessed to the crime
Speaker 6: after a lengthy police interrogation, and the victim identified him
Speaker 6: at the time, but Gonzalez has long maintained his innocence.
Speaker 5: His attorney say Gonzalez head in alibi and no criminal history,
Speaker 5: and after a lengthy interrogation, he signed a confession written
Speaker 5: by Wakegan police in English, despite only speaking Spanish at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 7: Freedom for a Man released Brockrison after serving nearly twenty
Speaker 7: one years for a crime he did not commit. On
Speaker 7: Hell Gonzalez walked out of the Dixon Correctional Facility.
Speaker 5: Tonight, twenty years after entering prison. Gonzalez, he's free.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having here.
Speaker 3: And we have another special guest today, the director of
Speaker 3: post conviction litigation at the Innocence Project, Vanessa Podkin.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: We're here to talk about a case that is troubling
Speaker 3: in so many ways in that it has elements of misconduct,
Speaker 3: it has elements of a thing called the show up. Right,
Speaker 3: when we talk about the show up which is something
Speaker 3: we haven't really focused on the show before, and various
Speaker 3: other things, Miranda right, come into play how those were administered.
Speaker 3: But before we get into all of that, let's go
Speaker 3: back to nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: I was leaving at the time in waki And, Illinois,
Speaker 1: which is about forty five mins north of Chicago, Lake.
Speaker 3: County, Right, and you were how old were you at
Speaker 3: the time?
Speaker 1: I was around twenty.
Speaker 3: Right, so just getting started on your life.
Speaker 1: Just getting started planning on getting married. Well, this's American dream,
Speaker 1: finally start planning for starting a family. At the time,
Speaker 1: talk to my ex girlfriend father and mother and us
Speaker 1: if we could marry, and they have I guess, And
Speaker 1: so it was met out of time and to save
Speaker 1: a little money and find a place to move. So
Speaker 1: everything seems like it was they were supposed to be
Speaker 1: for any normal person to get married and move on
Speaker 1: in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's actually a very honorable to go to
Speaker 3: the father and ask permission and everything else. On July
Speaker 3: tenth of nineteen ninety four, everything was sort of typical.
Speaker 3: I imagine for you you were visiting your girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they we went out, stopped by her friend's
Speaker 1: house and decided to go eat something, and we went
Speaker 1: out and eat on a fast food restaurant. After they
Speaker 1: we went to her sister's apartment. So we went there
Speaker 1: and watched movie Tonight. And that's what this or what
Speaker 1: crime happened.
Speaker 3: So unbeknownst to you, in the same apartment complex, something
Speaker 3: terrible was taking place, right, and Vanessa wantly turned to
Speaker 3: you for a minute, do you want to talk about
Speaker 3: the crime itself?
Speaker 8: Absolutely so. There was a woman who lived in this
Speaker 8: same kind of small apartment building who was at her house.
Speaker 8: She heard somebody buzzing her doorbell, went downstairs, and there
Speaker 8: were who she would later describe as two Latino men
Speaker 8: who abducted her into a vehicle and drove her to
Speaker 8: two different locations in the neighborhood where they sexually assaulted her.
Speaker 8: And ultimately she was able to escape, and she was
Speaker 8: very dazed and traumatized by the incident, understandably so, and
Speaker 8: ultimately made her way to seven eleven, where she was
Speaker 8: able to summon the police and they brought her back
Speaker 8: to the apartment where they started to investigate the crime,
Speaker 8: and later her boyfriend, the victim's boyfriend, came on the
Speaker 8: scene and started talking to the police and trying to
Speaker 8: see if he could be helpful in any way.
Speaker 3: Right, and that's where this starts to unravel, because you
Speaker 3: just wrong place, wrong time. Were in the apartment complex
Speaker 3: at some point you got into your car, right, presumably
Speaker 3: to go back to your place, that's correct.
Speaker 1: How do we watch a movie and we're about to
Speaker 1: wrap it up and go home, and when we walked
Speaker 1: up the apartment if you can run it correctly. There
Speaker 1: were some squad cars on the left side of the building,
Speaker 1: and you know, a small town like well, something obviously happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe who knows in the building. It's an apartment building.
Speaker 1: They didn't really are business, so we don't stay or ask.
Speaker 1: We just got in the car and decide to leave.
Speaker 1: And I drove to the gas station, put on some gas,
Speaker 1: and went on my way to drop off my girlfriend.
Speaker 1: And next thing you know, I was pull over. Right
Speaker 1: after I drop off my girlfriend now her house, I
Speaker 1: was pulled over, and I had no clue why it happened.
Speaker 3: And what we know that happened is that the victim's
Speaker 3: boyfriend saw your car, maybe out the window or whatever
Speaker 3: it was, and for some reason or other, this triggered
Speaker 3: something in him to think that this might be I
Speaker 3: don't know how he would have had any idea that
Speaker 3: this car was in some way related to her abduction
Speaker 3: and rape, but obviously he was wrong. But nonetheless, that's
Speaker 3: what led the police to go looking for you, is
Speaker 3: that he had seen the car and somehow made some
Speaker 3: assumption he saw the.
Speaker 8: Car, and the victim had given a very rough description
Speaker 8: of a large, dark sedan that was that she was
Speaker 8: abducted in and he's outside, the victim's boyfriend with the police,
Speaker 8: and from a distance sees Angel in his car, which
Speaker 8: was a dark car, driving off, and the victim's boyfriend
Speaker 8: says to the police, Hey, that car doesn't belong here.
Speaker 7: So it's one of these things that.
Speaker 8: You know, this is a car that's not usually seen
Speaker 8: in the apartment complex. And since Angel leaves, the police
Speaker 8: just write down the license plate number, and then that's
Speaker 8: why he's later stopped.
Speaker 7: You know, some time and some miles away.
Speaker 8: But of course, you know, when Angel's driving away from
Speaker 8: the scene, his girlfriend's sitting in the front seat with him.
Speaker 8: You know, he's taking his girlfriend home. They've just left
Speaker 8: the girlfriend's sister's house. And even from an investigative perspective
Speaker 8: at the time, what sense would it make for the
Speaker 8: perpetrator to return to the area an hour or two
Speaker 8: later from the same place that he just abducted somebody
Speaker 8: from when the police are around, you know, it'd make
Speaker 8: a little sense that the perpetrator would return. But nonetheless,
Speaker 8: acting only on the suspicion the boyfriend's suspicion that the
Speaker 8: car didn't belong there, they pulled the Angel over.
Speaker 3: Right he was Hispanic. That was close enough in this case,
Speaker 3: and then starts the process that we talk about a
Speaker 3: lot on the show, which is unique in this case
Speaker 3: just because of the fact that Angel was read his
Speaker 3: Miranda rights in a language he didn't speak very well
Speaker 3: at the time. Right, he was read them in English
Speaker 3: when your English was not good at that time. And
Speaker 3: now you speak fluently obviously, But did you understand at
Speaker 3: the time what they were telling you?
Speaker 1: Not at all. I don't have no no clue what
Speaker 1: was going on. When I got pulled over, it was well,
Speaker 1: some kind of traffic problem, something wrong with the car
Speaker 1: had lighter, But I don't have no clue on what
Speaker 1: was going on until they bringing temporary to the courtroom
Speaker 1: after I went for a bond hearing. There's one kind
Speaker 1: of stun to what was going on, and you kind
Speaker 1: of want to scream if it wasn't me, but you
Speaker 1: don't steal, like, well, there's got to be some kind
Speaker 1: of confusion. He's going to be meta day suntil they said, well,
Speaker 1: there's not a.
Speaker 3: Guy, because this is America, America, this isn't that don't
Speaker 3: happen in America. But so when you were read you
Speaker 3: were Miranda rights in the language that you didn't understand
Speaker 3: or speak very well, and you didn't at that time
Speaker 3: know why you were there, right, right, So let's think
Speaker 3: about that for a second. Right, if someone gets picked
Speaker 3: up and thinks that they're there for whether you speak
Speaker 3: English or not, and no matter if they read it
Speaker 3: to you in Portuguese, the fact is that if you
Speaker 3: are picked up and you think that it's just a
Speaker 3: minor violation of something that you're going to go to
Speaker 3: traffic court or whatever might be, why would you need
Speaker 3: a lawyer. I mean, you wouldn't even want a lawyer
Speaker 3: and pay for a lawyer, and you wouldn't want to
Speaker 3: wait for a lawyer. You probably want to get it
Speaker 3: done and so you could go home. But it worked
Speaker 3: the next day. So it's a very bad moment in
Speaker 3: time when you don't have that you need in order
Speaker 3: to make a decision that is actually life or death.
Speaker 3: But you're just being given totally in complete information, if
Speaker 3: any at all, and you're being read something you don't understand.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's not set up to get to a
Speaker 3: very good conclusion. It's not set up to protect the
Speaker 3: person who's meant.
Speaker 8: To protect absolutely, and you have compounded the fact that
Speaker 8: Angel and his family recently had emigrated here, he wasn't
Speaker 8: familiar with the US system and barely spoke the language,
Speaker 8: so all of those barriers also existed, and he's not
Speaker 8: being given information as to what happened or why he's
Speaker 8: being questioned.
Speaker 7: Police did say to him, where.
Speaker 8: Were you, and he explains where he was. He says
Speaker 8: that keeps with his girlfriend, that they went to the
Speaker 8: girlfriend's sister's house. And at some point during this interrogation,
Speaker 8: which lasted many hours, police actually stopped and went out
Speaker 8: to follow up a bit on Angel's alibi.
Speaker 7: But they didn't.
Speaker 8: Follow up on the alibi in order to see if
Speaker 8: he could be exonerated and you know, whether or not
Speaker 8: he committed the crime.
Speaker 7: They actually used it.
Speaker 8: They used it as a tool to trick him, you know,
Speaker 8: into trying to give an inculpatory statement. And so they
Speaker 8: went back to him and they lied to him and
Speaker 8: they said, we looked into your alibi and it didn't
Speaker 8: pan out. Nobody's supporting your alibi, which was just a lie.
Speaker 8: But of course, as you know, it's completely constitutional and
Speaker 8: acceptable for police to lie to a suspect and to
Speaker 8: say they have fingerprints or you know, say that they
Speaker 8: have evidence that they don't have in order to try
Speaker 8: to get the suspect to confess. We call it the
Speaker 8: false evidence ploy. It's a huge problem in false confession
Speaker 8: cases because, in a sense is a risk factor for
Speaker 8: false confessions. You think, oh, this will sort itself out later.
Speaker 8: You don't ask for the lawyer because you know you
Speaker 8: didn't do it, and you just want to You're not
Speaker 8: thinking I need to protect my rights. I just want
Speaker 8: to tell you, and once I give my side of
Speaker 8: the story, you'll understand you have the wrong person.
Speaker 7: And of course it doesn't end that way.
Speaker 3: Right, and it's it's legally acceptable but morally reprehensible. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: And he had all the information at his disposal, so
Speaker 3: he would have had every reason to believe that he
Speaker 3: would have been protected by the truth. But that's unfortunately,
Speaker 3: as we know, that's not how it works in too
Speaker 3: many cases. And his is really a perfect example that
Speaker 3: there was another factor too, which was sleep. Right, because
Speaker 3: you were there for quite a while, right, you're picked
Speaker 3: up at night, right, so you're probably a little tired, right,
Speaker 3: stressed obviously from the situation. How long did this go
Speaker 3: on for and how and what effect did that have
Speaker 3: on your ability to make you know, reasonable decisions.
Speaker 1: Well, after I got to the police station. At one
Speaker 1: point you lose track of time. I don't remember exactly
Speaker 1: how many hours, what was day or night anymore. Just
Speaker 1: do what you have to do. Let me get out
Speaker 1: of here. Some tired. I want to go sleep, I
Speaker 1: want to eat, I want to drink something. It is
Speaker 1: something they ill steal. Don't understand myself. Sometimes when you
Speaker 1: is so tired, you just want to everything wain like,
Speaker 1: do what you have to do, Just get me out
Speaker 1: of here.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, that's a common thing too, Vanessa. Right when
Speaker 3: you end up in that tiny room, you're basically trapped.
Speaker 3: You can't go anywhere, you have no access to anyone
Speaker 3: to help you, and you're overmatched, and they have everything
Speaker 3: on their side. They can lie, they can keep you
Speaker 3: awake for as long as they want. They can they
Speaker 3: can make you hungry, they can stress you out, but
Speaker 3: you're already stressed out enough. One of the other aspects
Speaker 3: of the case that I wanted to talk about is
Speaker 3: to show up because one of the reasons that Angel
Speaker 3: was wrongfully identified misidentified was because of the way that
Speaker 3: he was first viewed by the victim right or the witness,
Speaker 3: which I guess was the boyfriend. Can you talk about
Speaker 3: that little bit?
Speaker 8: Absolutely so ironically, he was basically across the street from
Speaker 8: the jail and courthouse on his way home when he
Speaker 8: was pulled over by police. And as he mentioned, he
Speaker 8: didn't know why he was being pulled over. He thought
Speaker 8: was at a traffic stop, you know, where they checking
Speaker 8: his license. He was a bit perplexed as to what
Speaker 8: was going on. And the police called back to the victim,
Speaker 8: who was at the scene with other officers back at
Speaker 8: her apartment complex, and they decided to do what's called
Speaker 8: the show up procedure, and essentially, officers brought the victim
Speaker 8: to the area where they had pulled Angel over, and
Speaker 8: the victim was seated in a patrol car, and they
Speaker 8: brought Angel in handcuffs with an officer standing next to him.
Speaker 8: And this is late at night, and so they have
Speaker 8: their headlights on and so that's the lighting. And they
Speaker 8: take Angel right in front of the car where the
Speaker 8: victim is, and while he's handcuffed and next to an officer,
Speaker 8: they say.
Speaker 7: To her, is this the man? Now?
Speaker 8: It's a highly suggestive procedure, of course, because what's the expectation.
Speaker 8: The expectation is that they caught the guy who did this,
Speaker 8: and those type of procedures show up should only be
Speaker 8: used in very exceptional circumstances, and here there was absolutely
Speaker 8: no excuse to do a show up because.
Speaker 7: They were across the street from the jail.
Speaker 8: They could, you know, if they wanted to do a
Speaker 8: lineup procedure with Angel, they could have said, will you
Speaker 8: come with us over to the jail and put together
Speaker 8: five or six people and got people who matched the
Speaker 8: victim's initial description and done a procedure that would have
Speaker 8: been fair. But they didn't do that, and they conducted
Speaker 8: this highly suggestive procedure and she said, yeah, that's him,
Speaker 8: which was almost inevitable based on the circumstances.
Speaker 3: I mean, you'd identify almost anybody at that point because
Speaker 3: it just looks like, well, wait a minute, the guy's
Speaker 3: in handcuffs, the cops got him, he's in my neighborhood.
Speaker 3: You're hispanic, good enough?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 3: Who cares? I mean, so you don't look like the guy,
Speaker 3: but your mind is not right at that point anyway.
Speaker 3: And it's unbelievable that that is accepted procedure because it's
Speaker 3: just begging for mistakes to happen.
Speaker 8: To add insult to injury. They told the victim before
Speaker 8: she viewed Angel, we got somebody who matches the description
Speaker 8: of the person and driving a similar car.
Speaker 7: As you've reported. So we're going to bring you over
Speaker 7: to take.
Speaker 3: A look at him, right done. I mean you had
Speaker 3: no chance at that point in the general was totally stacked
Speaker 3: and you had no chance. In Angel's case, there were
Speaker 3: a lot of irregularities, to put it nicely, in the
Speaker 3: way that his confession was recorded and the way it
Speaker 3: was documented, and if you could just touch on that
Speaker 3: for a second, because it's important for people to know.
Speaker 3: I think people would like to think that when a
Speaker 3: confession is made, it's like the guy just sits there.
Speaker 3: He has a guilty conscience. He goes, I did it.
Speaker 3: I feel bad. I want to tell the truth. But
Speaker 3: in this case, it was fraught with problems and error.
Speaker 8: Right, So they brought Angel in. They had him there overnight.
Speaker 8: He really didn't know what he was there for. You know,
Speaker 8: the next morning, I believe it was, they start the
Speaker 8: formal interrogation process, and you know, at that time, Angel's saying,
Speaker 8: I was with my girlfriend last night. We went and
Speaker 8: saw her sister. He gives his alibi. The officer leaves
Speaker 8: at one point claiming that he's going to go try
Speaker 8: to check out Angel's alibi, and that's when he comes
Speaker 8: back and essentially lies to Angel and says, your albi
Speaker 8: doesn't check out. And you know, when you confront somebody
Speaker 8: with false evidence, people starts to feel overwhelmed and a
Speaker 8: sense of hopelessness, and let me get out of this situation.
Speaker 8: And they keep pressuring him, and basically the officer even
Speaker 8: testified at trial that they told him what happened.
Speaker 7: So they gave.
Speaker 8: Angel the facts of the crime. You know, he didn't
Speaker 8: know the facts, they gave it to him. And all
Speaker 8: this interrogation is happening, in the first instance, in English,
Speaker 8: and he doesn't speak English very well, so they're interrogating
Speaker 8: him in English, and then they ask him to write
Speaker 8: out a statement, and so he writes something out in Spanish,
Speaker 8: and though he's been given bits and pieces from the police,
Speaker 8: he doesn't he didn't do it. So he doesn't know
Speaker 8: the details of the crime. So the statement that he
Speaker 8: writes is just totally irrelevant, you know, it just wouldn't
Speaker 8: hold water. And so at that point, they bring somebody
Speaker 8: in who's Spanish speaking, and you know, interrogate him for
Speaker 8: much more time until they finally produce a statement that's
Speaker 8: written in English typewritten, I believe in English that they
Speaker 8: get him to sign without translating it into Spanish. So
Speaker 8: there's everything is wrong with this interrogation.
Speaker 9: And they didn't videotape the process at all, right, the
Speaker 9: only video that they produced was the video of him
Speaker 9: being read his Miranda rights at a time when he
Speaker 9: didn't understand what the hell they were talking about or
Speaker 9: why he was there.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, and you would hope that the courts would
Speaker 3: look at this and go, wait, there's all kinds of
Speaker 3: problems here. This is yes, it's a confession, but where's
Speaker 3: the where's the beef? You know?
Speaker 8: I think that this happened, you know, in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 8: and here we are decades later, and we've had three
Speaker 8: hundred and fifty dnaxonerations, and the statistics are one in
Speaker 8: four of those people who were wrongfully convicted falsely confessed
Speaker 8: to crimes that they were completely innocent of. And even
Speaker 8: though we have those numbers and so much has been
Speaker 8: revealed about false confessions, there still is this attitude prevalent
Speaker 8: among courts and people in the system, and even to
Speaker 8: some extent the general public, that if you confessed, you
Speaker 8: did it, and people think.
Speaker 7: Of themselves and whatever strength or.
Speaker 8: Fortitude they think they have, and how they would respond, Oh,
Speaker 8: I would never confess to something I didn't do, even
Speaker 8: if I was interrogated.
Speaker 7: And so we still find that.
Speaker 8: People have trouble believing that somebody would admit to something
Speaker 8: that they didn't do, so they don't give it the
Speaker 8: scrutiny that you're just talking about. You know, nobody stops
Speaker 8: in the system to say, hey, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 8: And right now, really the only screening that courts do
Speaker 8: for whether a confession should be admitted is whether or
Speaker 8: not it's voluntary. Did you get your miranda rights and
Speaker 8: knowingly waive them? Nobody looks at is this reliable? No
Speaker 8: court is doing a pre screening before trial to say,
Speaker 8: are there too many discrepancies between the facts, This is
Speaker 8: story does not make sense, and if so, we're not
Speaker 8: going to allow this evidence. In and Angel's case happened
Speaker 8: in a jurisdiction Lake County, Illinois, Waukegan that had many
Speaker 8: other wrongful convictions, Some of them false confessions, and of
Speaker 8: course it's Chicago's not too far away with the torture
Speaker 8: cases and real legacy of feeding and coercing false confessions
Speaker 8: out of people. But it doesn't need to be that
Speaker 8: type of physical coercion, you know, as we see just
Speaker 8: presenting false evidence or using some of these other techniques
Speaker 8: that police do. You know, you just pointed out if
Speaker 8: you have experienced with the system, maybe know not to
Speaker 8: talk to the police. But if you don't and you
Speaker 8: go in there and the police say, just tell me
Speaker 8: what happened, you just need to talk to me, and
Speaker 8: I'm going to help you. Some people believe that or
Speaker 8: it's not going to be as bad if you tell
Speaker 8: me now, and they start throwing out scenarios and lead
Speaker 8: people to believe if I just give them something, I
Speaker 8: can get out of this stressful situation. And because I'm innocent,
Speaker 8: people will find it out as the system goes on.
Speaker 3: So it all conspires to end up in a situation
Speaker 3: like you Angel found yourself in when in June of
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, you ended up in court facing what
Speaker 3: ultimately might as well have been a death sentence because
Speaker 3: you were sentenced to fifty five years in prison for
Speaker 3: something you didn't have anything to do with, didn't understand,
Speaker 3: and didn't know about. What was that like?
Speaker 1: Here you are being sentenced to fifty five years in
Speaker 1: life for a crime you don't call me. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something that scare you for life. I've been accused
Speaker 1: of such a horrible crime. I used to think and say, well,
Speaker 1: I wish at least we have been accused of all
Speaker 1: the kind of crime, not a raven and kidnapping a female.
Speaker 1: And when you leave there, it's just you start learning
Speaker 1: to live like some kind of animal. The all the
Speaker 1: bigger animals want to eat. So you have to watch
Speaker 1: yourself everywhere you go, what time, who's around you. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: to this day, as to do it sometimes always what
Speaker 1: I'm going, who I'm going with, what they're going to
Speaker 1: think of me? But is something there I don't wish
Speaker 1: up for nobody. He really messed you up mentally.
Speaker 3: And physically, I'm sure too. But the you know, the
Speaker 3: crazy irony of that situation too, is that here we
Speaker 3: have a guy right who was so honorable that he
Speaker 3: was asking his girlfriend's father, is it okay if I
Speaker 3: propose to your daughter? He wasn't sleeping with her before
Speaker 3: the wedding, right, really an old fashioned, like, you know,
Speaker 3: very honorable, there's no other way to describe it. And
Speaker 3: then to be convicted of the most dishonorable crime, right,
Speaker 3: one of them that you could be convicted of, right,
Speaker 3: other than doing it to a child. There's nothing, you know,
Speaker 3: that's probably more sort of despicable that you can think
Speaker 3: of than raping and kidnapping and raping a woman. And
Speaker 3: so it's really sort of a cruel twist of fate
Speaker 3: that this would happen to somebody like you, who is
Speaker 3: the last person in the world that would ever be
Speaker 3: involved with something like this based on what we know
Speaker 3: about about you, Angel. So it really gets interesting from
Speaker 3: a legal perspective, right, and from an innocent perspective. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, because after having been in now
Speaker 3: for six years, in this terrible situation, being in a
Speaker 3: maximum security prison, as someone who's been convicted of these
Speaker 3: terrible crimes, you got to break. The DNA was found
Speaker 3: and it didn't match.
Speaker 8: Right, So there was a first round of DNA testing
Speaker 8: that happened in two thousand and one, and they were
Speaker 8: able through the testing to find sperm evidence and get
Speaker 8: a DNA profile for it, and Angel was absolutely excluded
Speaker 8: as the source of that profile. But because two people
Speaker 8: had committed the crime, the state took the position, well,
Speaker 8: this sperm must come from the other person that we
Speaker 8: never caught, the second assailant, and so these DNA test
Speaker 8: results don't prove your innocence, and it would be I
Speaker 8: guess another thirteen years until that day would come.
Speaker 3: I mean, what kind of science is that, right? It
Speaker 3: seems to me. I'm not a scientist, but it seems
Speaker 3: to me that if the DNA wasn't there just because
Speaker 3: there was two assailants, your DNA would still have to
Speaker 3: be there, would it not. It might be mixed in
Speaker 3: or whatever, but there would be some traces of Angel's
Speaker 3: DNA at the scene if he had been one of
Speaker 3: the rapists.
Speaker 8: Well, I guess arguably someone would say, how do you
Speaker 8: know that the second assailant didn't wear a condom or
Speaker 8: maybe didn't ejaculate and didn't leave any of their DNA.
Speaker 8: I mean, nowadays DNA is so sensitive that if people
Speaker 8: have sexual contact or even with touch DNA there's you know,
Speaker 8: studies that are done on handshaking and after ten seconds
Speaker 8: of handshaking. You could get enough DNA just by swabbing
Speaker 8: somebody's hand who they shook hands with.
Speaker 7: So it's very sensitive today.
Speaker 8: So theoretically, was there a possibility that that semen could
Speaker 8: have belonged to the second assailant?
Speaker 3: I think so the things are mounting, right. There's all
Speaker 3: the things that we talked about with the and in fact,
Speaker 3: in your trial, Angel, there were witnesses that testified on
Speaker 3: your behalf. You know, we've seen so many INNSIS project
Speaker 3: clients where the quarter pointed attorney didn't even bother to
Speaker 3: call witnesses, or there weren't any witnesses or what else.
Speaker 3: In your case, there were witnesses who got up on
Speaker 3: the stand and said, no, he was with me, he
Speaker 3: couldn't have done this crime. So you have that, now
Speaker 3: you have the DNA six years later that emerges. That's like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: So as DNA's not there, the prosecution at that point
Speaker 3: has to know that the case is falling apart, right right.
Speaker 8: These two thousand and one DNA test results came about
Speaker 8: at a time when in Lake County there was a
Speaker 8: prosecutor named Michael murmu who was the chief of the
Speaker 8: Felony Division for many years there and he basically just
Speaker 8: didn't believe in science.
Speaker 3: So how frustrating is this angel. You're in this impossible situation,
Speaker 3: a peaceful guy stuck in the very violent prison where
Speaker 3: people don't have respect for you. They don't respect for anybody,
Speaker 3: but particularly for you because of the fact of the
Speaker 3: nature of the crime that you were convicted of. And
Speaker 3: now your hopes are raised as you're trying to survive
Speaker 3: day to day. Your hopes were raised by knowing that
Speaker 3: this testing had been done, which proved what you had
Speaker 3: been saying all along, but nobody was listening that you
Speaker 3: weren't the guy. And now you get a phone call
Speaker 3: and they say, well, even though it proves that you're innocent,
Speaker 3: you're still stuck here. I mean, how did you deal
Speaker 3: with that?
Speaker 1: What I used to prom my mind is I have
Speaker 1: to be strong for my mother, and I believe this
Speaker 1: is what keep me fighting because you always believe in me,
Speaker 1: even with a lot of the people dot it like, well,
Speaker 1: if the law systems say that you did it, well,
Speaker 1: there's the law system. We kind of have to believe them.
Speaker 1: It's just just saying you don't commit the crime. But
Speaker 1: at the end, and to this day, I look at
Speaker 1: my mom and that's what keeps me going when I
Speaker 1: have rough days like I can deal with this no more.
Speaker 1: It's just hard. But I look at my mom color
Speaker 1: and I keep moving on. When you find yourself in
Speaker 1: a situation like that, for me, it's going to prison.
Speaker 1: I don't reully convicted. It don't matter what you go
Speaker 1: through in life. You got to find something. And my
Speaker 1: kids it was my mom something to move along to
Speaker 1: keep on fighting. And sometimes you feel like you're in
Speaker 1: a war, but you don't have no weapons, so you
Speaker 1: got to find some kind of weapons. Like I said,
Speaker 1: in my case, it was my mom. I have to
Speaker 1: do it to show my mother that I don't commit
Speaker 1: this crime, even though when she told me always I
Speaker 1: know you don't commit the crime. I don't raise the
Speaker 1: kind of person.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, you, somehow or other got in touch with the
Speaker 3: Innocence Project. How did that happen? How did you find out?
Speaker 3: How did you get in touch? How did you learn
Speaker 3: that they were taking your case?
Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of weird how everything evolved to find
Speaker 1: out about the Innocence Project. I kind of lost my
Speaker 1: mind for a while when I got to prison and
Speaker 1: I got in trouble. I was punished and sent to
Speaker 1: a segregation and after I finished, during the time, they
Speaker 1: moved me to another building and I meet an old man.
Speaker 1: They asked he I'm still looking for him. His name
Speaker 1: I used to call him in prison old Tea. This
Speaker 1: guy he was on his probably close to his sixties.
Speaker 1: He used to work in the low library. And we
Speaker 1: started again and asked him a little bit about the
Speaker 1: best way I could about the system and splaindly to
Speaker 1: bit what's going on. And he said, well, you have
Speaker 1: any papers, any transcripts or something that I can look at,
Speaker 1: because anybody say that, But luckily for me, I have
Speaker 1: some transcripts of the appeal if I can rema correctly.
Speaker 1: So I showed him to him, and within a couple
Speaker 1: of days probably he read them. And he told me,
Speaker 1: he said, well, you know that I see a lot
Speaker 1: of problems with your case. He said, I'm not an attorney,
Speaker 1: but I know an organization they do take cases like yours,
Speaker 1: and his name is the Innocence Project out of New York.
Speaker 1: And I said, if you want me to, we can
Speaker 1: write them a letter. Because by the time where the
Speaker 1: prison was on lockdown and we don't have access to
Speaker 1: go to the library to get the right form to
Speaker 1: fill up. So I said, sure, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: it would be good if you can do that for me.
Speaker 1: So he did. In nineteen ninety seven, I believe he
Speaker 1: wrote the letter to the Innosance Project. I remember getting
Speaker 1: like a postcard back saying they are, well, we got
Speaker 1: your letter, we got your information. Don't write alls on calls,
Speaker 1: we'd write you, we contact you. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: people waiting online. So once well, okay, well that's it,
Speaker 1: you know, But even after they always when I was
Speaker 1: fighting the case with my families helped they pay an
Speaker 1: attorney for appeals, post appeals and everything we could. In
Speaker 1: the back of my mind there was always, well, there's
Speaker 1: still hope. There's the Innocence Project. Maybe somehow, someway, one
Speaker 1: day they will help me in a The more I
Speaker 1: started understanding English, I started seeing the case about Barry
Speaker 1: Check and the organization and the DNA and all the
Speaker 1: programs on TV, so I was always like, well, hopefully
Speaker 1: one day they would come and help me out.
Speaker 3: And then one day did you get a letter? How
Speaker 3: did you find out that they had accepted the case?
Speaker 1: I got transferred to non institution. I started going went
Speaker 1: to school and I don't know where. One day, out
Speaker 1: of the blue, I got a letter from the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project like, look, your name come out and we need
Speaker 1: your transcripts. Please send your transcripts and we're going to
Speaker 1: look into your case. So we did send the transcripts
Speaker 1: around h five. I'm not a very good time, and
Speaker 1: uh it went on like that, We're probably another couple
Speaker 1: of years. And I was like, well, I'll send the
Speaker 1: transcripts and I don't hear anything. But one day I
Speaker 1: got the letter. I remember Molly saying that you we
Speaker 1: read transcripts, and I think you are you know man,
Speaker 1: that alone, you don't know what to do. I was
Speaker 1: so happy, but at the same time, you got to
Speaker 1: remember where you were. You can scream and say, well
Speaker 1: I'm innocent. They're gonna help me. So they called my
Speaker 1: mom and she was so happy and so like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now what when they're going to come and get you.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, Mom, it's a long process. It's
Speaker 1: going to be a while. Imagine for us, they got
Speaker 1: to do DNA testing, they got to go to court
Speaker 1: and so on. So it was the longest time that
Speaker 1: I didn't prison long as they's waiting for something. And
Speaker 1: I talked to Vanessa and I was so happy. I
Speaker 1: wasn't homey about life. Yes, with the simple fact that
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project is helping you and they're looking at
Speaker 1: your case and and to me there.
Speaker 3: Was big I know from talking to other formally incarcerated
Speaker 3: people that you can't run around and show all your
Speaker 3: emotion and you know you're going to get in trouble
Speaker 3: with the guards or the inmates, or something bad can happen.
Speaker 3: But did you have somebody in prison that you were
Speaker 3: close to that you could share this information? Did you
Speaker 3: just keep it to yourself and tell your mother and
Speaker 3: that was it? How did you did you have a
Speaker 3: person like one person that you trusted?
Speaker 1: I did the time. It was a old man I
Speaker 1: had met another prison many years ago, and uh, this
Speaker 1: older gentleman he's still there, unfortunately. And we become good
Speaker 1: friends because he knew about the law. He used to
Speaker 1: work in the library as well, and he knew about
Speaker 1: my case. And explained him and show him the letter.
Speaker 1: He said, oh man, that's a great news. Man, you're
Speaker 1: going home.
Speaker 3: And what about the guy who first told you about
Speaker 3: the Innocence Project in the law library. Did you get
Speaker 3: to tell him the good news?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we have moved around in the prison system and
Speaker 1: I don't know where and he ended up and I
Speaker 1: don't get to get his real name. And when you
Speaker 1: in prison, you move so much and they shake you down,
Speaker 1: they go through your paperwork, and sometimes it's not allowed
Speaker 1: to have all the inmates information on your property, so
Speaker 1: you can really have all the inmates information. And uh.
Speaker 1: And to this day, I'm still trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who he was. And I'm planning on probably hiring a
Speaker 1: probably detective and find out who he was and where
Speaker 1: he at.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe somebody who's listening knows the answer.
Speaker 1: Again, his nickname was Old T old t.
Speaker 3: Okay, if anybody knows Old.
Speaker 8: T send an email to the Innocence Project, We'll make
Speaker 8: sure to get it. It's been one of our dreams
Speaker 8: to try to find Old Team.
Speaker 3: Let's find it. But what email addressed to the Inscesce
Speaker 3: project though, because you can just sell into the Innocence Project.
Speaker 8: That was just info at Innocence Project dot org.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then put the subject line Angel Gonzales and
Speaker 3: then we'll this would be incredible if we could actually
Speaker 3: find him, and you know that would be an amazing moment. Ultimately, Vanessa,
Speaker 3: how did this get resolved? It took several years. Still
Speaker 3: from this point, must have trusted your patients. How did
Speaker 3: we win?
Speaker 8: So fortunately a new DA was elected, and I think
Speaker 8: that you know, when people look at elections that are
Speaker 8: going on through the country, you know, they usually look
Speaker 8: at kind of the highest levels. But these DA races
Speaker 8: are so important because what a difference a district attorney
Speaker 8: can make in terms of who's being prosecuted and post
Speaker 8: conviction just getting access to.
Speaker 7: Evidence to prove innocence.
Speaker 8: And so the old regime was out in Lake County
Speaker 8: and a new DA came in, Mike Nrheim, and that
Speaker 8: was a fortunate move for us because we've reached out
Speaker 8: to the States of Ernie Nrheim and requested that we
Speaker 8: be able to retest Angel's evidence, and under the previous administration,
Speaker 8: we would have been fighting for five years just to
Speaker 8: get access to the evidence. But he agreed we didn't
Speaker 8: have to do any litigation, and so the evidence pretty
Speaker 8: quickly went off to the lab. What took some time
Speaker 8: and was really stressful about Angel's case is that, you know,
Speaker 8: when we read his transcripts, and we looked at the confession,
Speaker 8: and we looked at how he even got caught up
Speaker 8: in this. I think Mollie was sincere when she was
Speaker 8: a law student. She said that, you know, she knew
Speaker 8: you were innocent. So what was so stressful for us
Speaker 8: is we knew that the only way we were going
Speaker 8: to be able to exonerate him was to get a
Speaker 8: second profile. And you know how they're already been testing,
Speaker 8: and so we started to look at the victims' shorts.
Speaker 8: One of the perpetrators had ripped off of her shorts
Speaker 8: and they were torn, and so the lab was able
Speaker 8: to get some male DNA from the area where the
Speaker 8: perpetrator actually tore her shorts and some other samples, and
Speaker 8: so that created the second profile in addition to the sperm,
Speaker 8: which showed, Look, we now have the genetic profile of
Speaker 8: the two men who did this crime, and neither of
Speaker 8: those people is angel And.
Speaker 7: I think once we had that proof, it was pretty quick.
Speaker 8: It was a matter of weeks before they went back
Speaker 8: and they talked to the victim. And in these cases,
Speaker 8: the victim was traumatized and a lot of times it's
Speaker 8: you know, really hard for them to accept that the
Speaker 8: innocent people went to prison and the real perpetrators are
Speaker 8: still out there. And so she said, well, maybe it's
Speaker 8: my boyfriend's DNA, and so they tested the boyfriend and
Speaker 8: he was excluded, further establishing the DNA profiles we had
Speaker 8: came from the two people who did it, and it
Speaker 8: was an Angel, And so, you know, initially we thought
Speaker 8: it was over because they prosecutor was agreeing to vacate
Speaker 8: his conviction, and we were ready to go into court,
Speaker 8: and we expected that that day his conviction was tossed.
Speaker 8: He was just going to walk out of court and
Speaker 8: into the arms of his mom and his dad was
Speaker 8: who was there and had suffered a stroke and some
Speaker 8: health complications while Angel was locked up.
Speaker 3: And what a terrible thing that this poor victim has
Speaker 3: to learn twenty years later that the people that did
Speaker 3: this to her got away with it. They literally got
Speaker 3: away with it, and they were free to go out
Speaker 3: and do the same thing to other innocent women, and
Speaker 3: that all this time she had been told a false narrative.
Speaker 3: It's such a terrible new trauma for someone to have
Speaker 3: to endure to now find out that they've misplaced their anger.
Speaker 3: And also that they've contributed to just a terrible, terrible
Speaker 3: situation that you had to endure. I mean, I can't
Speaker 3: even process that whole It's a whole mixture of hers
Speaker 3: for somebody that have to and almost to relive the
Speaker 3: whole thing again twenty years later. How did you find out?
Speaker 3: Was it in court that you found out or was
Speaker 3: it later?
Speaker 1: Well, how would you want to speak to one SI?
Speaker 1: It was on a Friday, and she said, well, look,
Speaker 1: we're going to court Monday, and uh is not over yet.
Speaker 1: Things stick can happen. You may come home to day,
Speaker 1: you may not, so on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So okay.
Speaker 1: So at the time I was like, well, I'm coming
Speaker 1: home because everything is there, like they shouldn't be nothing
Speaker 1: from them, so they can stop me. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, like, well maybe they can come out with
Speaker 1: some crazy thing they have no idea and say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not going home because of this, and uh, ironically,
Speaker 1: it's kind of what happened the day who went to
Speaker 1: court and everything went our way and they said, well, wait,
Speaker 1: you did something in prison.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we have to talk about this. Yeah. When
Speaker 3: Angels talking about this other case, he's talking about the
Speaker 3: fact that at one point in prison he destroyed I'm
Speaker 3: talking about he like, you're not here but yet, So Angel,
Speaker 3: you it seems like, said a gentle guy. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have a breaking point too, like anybody else. And
Speaker 3: you destroyed a sink in the prison.
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 3: Was that in solitary confinement?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Right, so you're in solitary confinement. You have nowhere to
Speaker 3: take your aggressions out. Rather than take it out on
Speaker 3: another inmate or guard or anything else, at least you
Speaker 3: took it out on an inanimate object. I mean, the
Speaker 3: poor sink. I'm sure feelings too. But anyway, so the
Speaker 3: Angel destroyed this sink and was given an additional three
Speaker 3: year sentence for assault and battery on a sink.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Is that an actual crime destruction.
Speaker 7: Of state property?
Speaker 8: Three years concurrent sentence, So an additional three years.
Speaker 3: So now here it is, you're in and you were
Speaker 3: in the courtroom. I assume Vanessa went yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I was in the courtroom.
Speaker 8: You know, it's a pretty surreal experience because we're standing there,
Speaker 8: we're with the prosecutor. The prosecutor stands up and declares
Speaker 8: Angel innocent of this brutal rape that he has a
Speaker 8: fifty five year sentence for and everybody's acknowledging he's been
Speaker 8: wrongfully convicted, and they say, no, he has to go
Speaker 8: back because the conviction for destruction of state property still stands.
Speaker 8: And not only does it still stand, but he was
Speaker 8: prosecuted for.
Speaker 7: That in the town where the prison was.
Speaker 8: So we then had to try to file emotion and
Speaker 8: drive the following day to the court in the prison town,
Speaker 8: and that's when Angel appeared through video conference, and we
Speaker 8: basically we had some legal grounds to go back and
Speaker 8: overturn the conviction, but it was basically throwing our mercy
Speaker 8: on the court and saying he's been wrongfully convicted of
Speaker 8: this other crime, and please vacate this conviction so he
Speaker 8: can finally come home, which the judge did.
Speaker 3: That's a good judge, I mean, because he didn't have
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, right, and shielded it was a woman.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. So the judge shows no mercy on the sink,
Speaker 3: but shows mercy on you, which was certainly logical, rational
Speaker 3: and compassionate thing to do. And now you're finally, you're
Speaker 3: finally there were you on video when this was.
Speaker 1: Happening, Yes, the core was on videotape.
Speaker 3: So you were in I wasn't side person. You're back
Speaker 3: in the present. Yes, So they have a room there
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to visualize this, right, So you're in
Speaker 3: this room. Are you there with a guard? Yes, and
Speaker 3: you're watching this on video.
Speaker 1: Right, you're watching the judge in front of you.
Speaker 3: And then what now you're still inside this room. But
Speaker 3: this was your reaction? Was the guard's reaction?
Speaker 1: Well, they don't know what to do, Like, okay, now
Speaker 1: you finally all the cases are just missed, and how
Speaker 1: we process this? They were when in the halfway paperwork
Speaker 1: in the morning, but like, so we don't know if
Speaker 1: you go home, And I said, well do you know
Speaker 1: if you go home? No, So nobody knew when too,
Speaker 1: four thirty and now it was late and second ship guards,
Speaker 1: they don't know what to do. Well, how we process this?
Speaker 1: Somebody's picking you up. We just cannot let you go here,
Speaker 1: and the town lose.
Speaker 3: I don't know why.
Speaker 8: But his legal team we were in the car, are paralegals,
Speaker 8: law students driving over to get angel and then this
Speaker 8: is you know, kind of the crazy part of the
Speaker 8: innocence project job.
Speaker 7: We're on the way and We're like, what is he
Speaker 7: gonna wear? So we're like, is there a Walmart? Is
Speaker 7: there any store in this town?
Speaker 8: And so we're like, take a detour to go try
Speaker 8: to find some clothes in a Walmart?
Speaker 7: What size is he?
Speaker 8: We don't know, you know, so we're doing our best. Guest,
Speaker 8: I think we didn't you look good in the pictures?
Speaker 1: We didn't very good. It was very good. Thank you?
Speaker 3: So and this and by the way, I can't imagine. Well,
Speaker 3: first of all, I'm I'm going back for a second.
Speaker 3: So was the guard. What was the guard's reaction? He's
Speaker 3: never seen anything like this before. Did he get emotional?
Speaker 3: Did you get emotional? By this point, you were just like,
Speaker 3: what the hell? I mean?
Speaker 1: Well, I used to be housed in in a unit.
Speaker 1: They used to call it a postally living unit, so
Speaker 1: most of the people that were working on themselves to
Speaker 1: better themselves. And I used to be a volunteer in
Speaker 1: the prison for years, so I pretty much knew everybody
Speaker 1: and the building and some of the guards. I remember
Speaker 1: one of the officers I used to work for. On
Speaker 1: one day, You're gonna see me walking out of the door,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna walk me all the way to the
Speaker 1: door and gonna say good luck. I used to left
Speaker 1: about it, like why you're gonna escape, Like, no, you're
Speaker 1: gonna walk me to the door and you're gonna say
Speaker 1: good luck. But he was our second shift officer, so like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't even work in the morning, so you I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do that. And funny enough, the day he
Speaker 1: wasn't working there in the unit, but he come and
Speaker 1: relieve another officers like, hey, I'm going home, Yes, look
Speaker 1: at me, and it's miceaid, well, I guess it was
Speaker 1: true what you was telling me, so well, good luck.
Speaker 1: By the time, and then in the particular unit and
Speaker 1: most of the prisons they already knew because the media,
Speaker 1: the news who wasn't Telemundo and all the local channels,
Speaker 1: so they kind of knew what was going on already.
Speaker 1: It was something that you free, you go home, but
Speaker 1: the door isn't.
Speaker 3: Open, and what about let's do the split screen. Now,
Speaker 3: now you are driving around trying to find a Walmart
Speaker 3: at the you know, in the nighttime and somewhere around
Speaker 3: wakegan and what was the spirit in the car? Everybody
Speaker 3: freaking out, Like the law students probably hadn't experienced this before.
Speaker 8: Right, We were very excited and I think many people
Speaker 8: had such a special connection to Angel.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was a little psychotic.
Speaker 8: I mean, once we realized this conviction was still there,
Speaker 8: we were on the side of the road trying to
Speaker 8: draft emotion to get filed, to get him out. So
Speaker 8: it's a whirlwin of twenty four hours. And we had
Speaker 8: a law student paralegal and I was like, look, just
Speaker 8: here's your time.
Speaker 7: To step up to be lawyers.
Speaker 8: Start to do some research, find a way that we're
Speaker 8: going to vacate this conviction. And yeah, and we were
Speaker 8: picking out the clothes, but it was it was we're
Speaker 8: really excited for this moment. And we had already met
Speaker 8: Angel's mother and father and siblings and beautiful extended family
Speaker 8: at the court hearing when they were so disappointed to
Speaker 8: the day before when his conviction was vacated, but he
Speaker 8: didn't come home, and so it was excitement and just
Speaker 8: really happy that we were able to get him and
Speaker 8: bring him home that night and there was a huge
Speaker 8: party waiting for him with balloons and lots of food,
Speaker 8: great food.
Speaker 3: Right, and now, what how is their life now? I mean,
Speaker 3: you've been out for a couple of years. I know
Speaker 3: you talked about how you're still dealing with some of
Speaker 3: the psychological issues and trauma that you experienced. But what
Speaker 3: are you doing? How are you adjusting our things for
Speaker 3: you now?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm trying to still readjust to life. Some days
Speaker 1: are harder than others, definitely, But again I go and
Speaker 1: and think about what can I do positive today and
Speaker 1: especially right now. You inviter us to the show. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, and I'll do what I can to
Speaker 1: talk about the Innocence Project to keey hope to those
Speaker 1: who still fighting their cases in prison is not easy.
Speaker 1: But as long as you keep on fighting, someday help
Speaker 1: is going to come from the Innocence Project or other organizations.
Speaker 1: Somebody somewhere, some how. I was doing the same thing
Speaker 1: for me. I feel like that's what I have to
Speaker 1: continue on doing. Spread the war. Just talk to sometimes
Speaker 1: the mothers of those wrongfully convicted. They call me and
Speaker 1: ask me about what can I do for my son?
Speaker 1: Who are those lawyers that get you out? How they
Speaker 1: get you out, how much they charge you? And all
Speaker 1: I can tell them sometimes you got to keep on fighting.
Speaker 1: And this is the information called make sure that he
Speaker 1: writes them and don't give up. And that's what I'm
Speaker 1: I'm doing right now. I have a dream. When I
Speaker 1: was inside, I take construction classes. That are when I
Speaker 1: come home, I start something to help others. And that's
Speaker 1: what I'm doing right now. I just started working on it.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping or building a house for the purpose
Speaker 1: of when somebody's coming home he's been wrongfully convicted. We
Speaker 1: have a place to learn, a place where they can
Speaker 1: at least teach them the most basic stuff of life. Here.
Speaker 1: This is the phone. This is how you use it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about paying rent. You don't
Speaker 1: have to worry but paying bills for six eight months,
Speaker 1: as long as we can allow you to stay here
Speaker 1: so you can start living again, because when you come home,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a big shot. Twenty something years for
Speaker 1: me and now everything has changed. And to this day,
Speaker 1: when they send me their tickets to flying on the
Speaker 1: phone like what I do? Now? Did you get the email?
Speaker 1: Like how I get my email? So the small things
Speaker 1: like that, I'm still learning. Yes, imagine if they take
Speaker 1: it to another planet like here you are, here's what
Speaker 1: you need, here's all the technology, but you know how
Speaker 1: to use it. We just look at it like okay, now,
Speaker 1: who's going to help me? I will leave there. And
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of places, a lot of states,
Speaker 1: we still have the need for somebody to kind of
Speaker 1: mentor you and teach you the most basic stuff. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's something as simple as going to store and then
Speaker 1: pick up toiletries, like now you have all these products?
Speaker 1: What I picked? Or how I go about it? Did
Speaker 1: I get in line? I used to go to the
Speaker 1: store and I see everybody paying with their credit cards
Speaker 1: and swipe their phone.
Speaker 3: Like okay, want to do right? And then I don't
Speaker 3: have cares they give me a card like okay. So
Speaker 3: it must be overwhelming for somebody coming back. And that's
Speaker 3: incredible that you, like so many of the other exogunderies,
Speaker 3: Almost all of the other exouneries are driven by this
Speaker 3: desire to help other people both get out of the
Speaker 3: situation that they're in and to adjust to society. And
Speaker 3: I talk about it a lot when people see the
Speaker 3: courthouse steps and the happy celebration and the whole thing.
Speaker 3: But it's a whole new series of challenges after you
Speaker 3: get out. And I think we as a society have
Speaker 3: to be much more accepting and understanding and more welcoming
Speaker 3: in terms of job opportunities, in terms of compensation, in
Speaker 3: terms of all that stuff for people who we are
Speaker 3: responsible for helping, I mean our brothers and sisters that
Speaker 3: we have horribly wrong, and then you come back and
Speaker 3: it's like, well, good luck, that's it, like the guard said,
Speaker 3: good luck. But I mean, like good luck, you need
Speaker 3: a little more than that. You need a hand, you know, Angel.
Speaker 3: We have a tradition on wrongful conviction, which is that
Speaker 3: at the end of each episode, I offer to the
Speaker 3: star of our show, which is in this case you
Speaker 3: if you would like to share any last thoughts about
Speaker 3: anything at all.
Speaker 1: Well, just when I ask everybody please keep on contributing
Speaker 1: to the Innocence Project and other organizations like the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project to help those who's still fighting. It can happen
Speaker 1: to anybody. Unfortunately, I'm not against for the system, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems with the legal system. I
Speaker 1: believe you need to be reviewed and make it work better,
Speaker 1: because in this case, the system not just failed me,
Speaker 1: failed the victim. I can't even imagine what you have
Speaker 1: to endure throughout all these years and not the end
Speaker 1: when I'm free, but probably she's still fighting, so please
Speaker 1: keep on giving financially. There's a lot of law of students,
Speaker 1: a lot of smart on people up there that can
Speaker 1: help to make this country better.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Angel Gonzalez, and so happy you're here and
Speaker 3: I wish you all the blessings in life and head
Speaker 3: of Folks Addiction Litigation at the Ennists Project, Vanessa Potkin,
Speaker 3: thank you for coming and joining us here on Wrongful
Speaker 3: Conviction with Jason Flammer. Thank you don't forget to give
Speaker 3: us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts, it
Speaker 3: really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Ennessis
Speaker 3: Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting
Speaker 3: this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions.
Speaker 3: Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to
Speaker 3: donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 3: Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show
Speaker 3: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 3: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 3: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 3: flamm Is a production of Lava for Good podcasts and
Speaker 3: association with signal Company Number one