Speaker 1: On the morning of August fourth, nineteen ninety two, the
Speaker 1: body of thirty one year old Vernon Huggins was discovered
Speaker 1: in a park on the north side of Toledo, Ohio. Oddly,
Speaker 1: from when the case opened until that December, there appeared
Speaker 1: to be no investigative record until an alleged anonymous tip
Speaker 1: led to witnesses who claimed to have seen a wooden
Speaker 1: club wielding white supremacist gang bragging about the crime. Then
Speaker 1: one young man signed a statement making him part of
Speaker 1: the Loathsome group, before immediately denying the statement he just signed,
Speaker 1: but it was already too late for him and four others,
Speaker 1: including twenty year old Lewis Costilla. This is Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we're
Speaker 1: heading to Toledo, Ohio to cover the investigation and prosecution
Speaker 1: of five young men Ismael and Lorenzo Vasquez, Joseph Ercard,
Speaker 1: Eric Mish, and our guest today, Lewis Castilla and if
Speaker 1: names like Castilla and Vascaz don't exactly sound like they
Speaker 1: fit into a white supremacist group to you, Well, you
Speaker 1: might not be the only one. So lewis welcome and
Speaker 1: joining him is his post conviction attorney, a partner with
Speaker 1: the Ohio defense firm Don Malarchick. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Sure now, Lou, I want you to take us back
Speaker 1: to your beginnings in Toledo, Ohio.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was born and raised in the north side
Speaker 2: of Toledo. That guy the three brothers, and I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say baby sister, but she ain't a baby no more so.
Speaker 2: When I was thirteen years old, man I lied on
Speaker 2: application to get a child. I was at dishwasher, spaghetti
Speaker 2: where else. So I worked because that's how my dad
Speaker 2: raised me. It might not have been around a lot,
Speaker 2: but I know he loved me. But that man got
Speaker 2: up every day at work. Just family life was. I mean,
Speaker 2: I love my parents, okay, love them both to death,
Speaker 2: but I had to grow up quick. I mean my
Speaker 2: dad's problems, my maya or problems, and as a kid,
Speaker 2: I didn't realize adult problems. I was dealing with them,
Speaker 2: just didn't realize them. So I just I ran the streets.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wasn't out there running the streets like
Speaker 2: they said.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: Okay, But I mean I just I was irresponsible as
Speaker 2: a kid. Okay. I snuck around, snuck out at night,
Speaker 2: we'd go sit forty ounces with the friends. But I
Speaker 2: was happy. I wasn't out there beating nobody up and
Speaker 2: doing the things that they did. But like the whole
Speaker 2: trying to say I was part of a white supremacist group,
Speaker 2: trust me, if the Toledo police had to describe me,
Speaker 2: the last thing they would describe me as was a
Speaker 2: white supremacist. Just that's not who I was. All I
Speaker 2: know is the cops in Toledo didn't like me. Okay,
Speaker 2: they would stop us all the time because of my
Speaker 2: last name. Now, like I said, I wasn't no Angel.
Speaker 2: I did dumb shit, but that's what we all do.
Speaker 2: I got jumped one time when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: The detectant came told me I had to drop chargers
Speaker 2: and he was gonna charge me. Like I mean, Toledo
Speaker 2: is just I don't even know how to explain it.
Speaker 2: That's just the way them cobs were.
Speaker 1: Sounds like they had a very loose relationship with the truth.
Speaker 1: Which might help explain what happened in the investigation of
Speaker 1: the murder of thirty one year old Vernon Huggins, who
Speaker 1: reportedly had a very volatile relationship with his girlfriend, Emma,
Speaker 1: and then his body was discovered around seven thirty am
Speaker 1: on August fourth, nineteen eighty two in Woodrow Wilson Park
Speaker 1: on the north side of Toledo.
Speaker 4: Vernon is discovered and this bloody bottle was picked up
Speaker 4: near Vernon. But this piece of evidence went untested. It
Speaker 4: stayed in the evidence fault and people are being interviewed
Speaker 4: right away. Vernon's mom says, this must have been Emma's family.
Speaker 4: I mean, she knows how volatile.
Speaker 3: Their history is.
Speaker 4: She knows that this was a really dangerous and violent relationship.
Speaker 4: Vernon's uncles, Nathaniel, saw him, and Nathaniel says he was
Speaker 4: with vern after two am, about three am. Gave him
Speaker 4: sixty bucks, followed him and vern is approached by four
Speaker 4: black males and Nathaniel says they're threatening him, confronting him,
Speaker 4: and they're driving this gray station wagon with tinted windows.
Speaker 2: And he was on the whole other side of town.
Speaker 2: This happened on the east side. They found him in
Speaker 2: the North End Well.
Speaker 1: The murder was initially investigated by Detective Berks, and at
Speaker 1: least one in the group of four was said to
Speaker 1: have been carrying the leg of a wooden chair. Then
Speaker 1: Vernon Huggins somehow went from the east side of Toledo
Speaker 1: across the Maumie River to the North End before or
Speaker 1: after he was beaten to death after three am, and
Speaker 1: his body was found in Woodrow Wilson Park. Now, strangely,
Speaker 1: the police only collected one shoe print, which could indicate
Speaker 1: that the park was not the site of the group assault.
Speaker 1: Either way, there appears to have been promising leads.
Speaker 4: So the real legitimate leads that pointed to Emma's family
Speaker 4: were there that information was available, Unfortunately, nobody followed up
Speaker 4: on that. What happens, unfortunately, is the initial detective who's
Speaker 4: on the case, Detective Berks, is reassigned and all of
Speaker 4: this information that pointed to other individuals is really buried
Speaker 4: and not eventually provided to the defense attorneys.
Speaker 1: The case was reassigned to detectives Robert Lighter and James
Speaker 1: Anderson in December nineteen ninety two, who, instead of following
Speaker 1: Burke's investigation to his logical end came upon an alternate theory.
Speaker 4: This idea that this white supremacist group attacked Vernon seemed
Speaker 4: to take foothold in the minds of these detectives. They
Speaker 4: were desperate to solve this homicide. They ignored other evidence,
Speaker 4: they ignored other leads, and most importantly, they ignored the
Speaker 4: lack of any physical evidence at all.
Speaker 1: It's unclear what or who was the source of this
Speaker 1: unsupported new theory. According to them, it was a January
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three anonymous tip. But interestingly, around that time,
Speaker 1: a man named John Urbina was also arrested on an
Speaker 1: unrelated charge. And lucky for these two gum shoes, they
Speaker 1: had in their custody the bona fide founder of this
Speaker 1: alleged wooden club wielding white supremacist gang.
Speaker 2: Look, there's no such thing. There's no such thing, none whatsoever. Period.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you who Johnny Orbina is. I didn't
Speaker 2: like John or Pina. I whooped his ass twice. Johnny
Speaker 2: Robina is a sex offender. Okay, he touched on a
Speaker 2: little girl in the neighborhood. I was gonna whoop him
Speaker 2: in the county when they put him in the holding tank.
Speaker 2: With me because of who he touched. Okay, they threw
Speaker 2: them charges out because he told his fucking story. And
Speaker 2: now he's doing al wop in Texas for doing the
Speaker 2: same goddamn thing he did here.
Speaker 1: So either Urbina was offering false information about the Vernon
Speaker 1: Huggins murder to escape being a convicted job molester, thereby
Speaker 1: becoming the origin of this unsupported white gang theory, or
Speaker 1: it happened just like these two detectives reported it officially
Speaker 1: that a crime Stoppers tip came in leading to an
Speaker 1: apartment on the North Side rented by a woman named
Speaker 1: Lisa Earle and her roommate Michelle Parkhurst, who claimed to
Speaker 1: have been at John Urbina's house in July of ninety
Speaker 1: two when the gang arrived sometime between midnight and one am,
Speaker 1: bragging about beating up a black man.
Speaker 4: But the problem with all that is she's got the
Speaker 4: wrong day. The detectives are feeding her information, they're telling
Speaker 4: her when it supposedly happens. She's correcting herself. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: it must have been in August, not in July. It
Speaker 4: doesn't make any sense. And I think they were desperate
Speaker 4: to pin this on somebody.
Speaker 1: Now, according to park Curse twenty sixteen, Alfid David. Those
Speaker 1: somebodies were seventeen year old Joey Hall and twenty year
Speaker 1: old Lou Castilla, the latter of whom Parkhurst was acquainted
Speaker 1: with through her roommate Lisa Earle.
Speaker 2: Look, the only reason I went to Lisa Earl's house
Speaker 2: is because I was doing her, simple as that. Okay.
Speaker 2: Michelle Parker's mom is the one that called crime starver
Speaker 2: and she ain't none but a fucking crackhead. Okay, Michelle
Speaker 2: Parker's done guy. All of her kids too.
Speaker 1: Parkhurst twenty sixteen, Alfid David continued that she was noticeably
Speaker 1: pregnant at the time and had already lost custody of
Speaker 1: her first son, and then these detectives threatened her with
Speaker 1: murder charges if she didn't cooperate, at which point she
Speaker 1: said the wrong month as well as the wrong time,
Speaker 1: between midnight and one am, when Vernon was last seen
Speaker 1: alive around three am, and it appears that the police
Speaker 1: suggested that perhaps the group arrived in a gray Chevy Nova.
Speaker 2: Evidently Michelle knew I drove that great Nova. It used
Speaker 2: to be my mom's car. It was always parked right
Speaker 2: down the street. From her, and I bought the car. Okay,
Speaker 2: but the car was a piece of shit and it
Speaker 2: set in my mother in law's backyard. It wasn't even
Speaker 2: fucking running in July, let alone August. But why would
Speaker 2: they say we're looking for a great nova? Why not
Speaker 2: a blue nova? Unless you read some shit that suggested
Speaker 2: something great.
Speaker 1: Like the gray station wagon from the initial investigation. So
Speaker 1: that's three falsehoods for Parkhurst. And that theme continued when
Speaker 1: they visited Joey Hall, who also chose to be a
Speaker 1: witness rather than a co defendant, giving many inconsistent statements
Speaker 1: that ultimately allowed him a vantage point for the fatal beating.
Speaker 1: And this is where Ismael and Lorenzo v Aska has
Speaker 1: first come out.
Speaker 2: Listen, Joey Hall just got out a juvie. His ass
Speaker 2: got locked right back up after this dude got killed.
Speaker 2: So the only thing I could think of, man, is
Speaker 2: he did that shit to get his ass out of trouble.
Speaker 1: And Derbino was no different now. Not only did he
Speaker 1: claim to have founded this wooden club wielding white supremacist group,
Speaker 1: also said the wrong month and time, a July night
Speaker 1: between midnight and two am. Despite these numerous inconsistencies and
Speaker 1: falsehoods in their statements. Arrest warrants were signed for Lou
Speaker 1: Joe Rickard who went by CJ, and then the Vasquez brothers,
Speaker 1: and all of them were charged with murder.
Speaker 2: When they came and got me, I was working and
Speaker 2: they slammed me up against the wall. At the time,
Speaker 2: I was on back child support, so I thought that's
Speaker 2: what it was. And then when they told me murder,
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, y'all got to be fucking tripping. I
Speaker 2: ain't killed nobody. I thought it was a fucking joke.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, I think me and CJ was the
Speaker 2: first two to be arrested.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Urbina, allegedly on his own, also named a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old kid named Eric Mish who was brought down
Speaker 1: to the precinct where he was adamant that he knew
Speaker 1: nothing about the crime.
Speaker 4: The detectives then take him out of the police department,
Speaker 4: drive him over the crime scene. They're showing him where
Speaker 4: this stuff happened, and the detectives start really feeding him
Speaker 4: this fake story of and Joe and everybody else's involvement.
Speaker 4: And they are lying to Eric who's sixteen and saying
Speaker 4: we know you were there. We've got proof that you
Speaker 4: were there, we got witnesses that you were there. You know,
Speaker 4: you don't want to go down alone on this. You
Speaker 4: don't want to be in prison. So you're fifty years old.
Speaker 2: Until he was fifty, they said the same shit to me.
Speaker 4: Too, And they are literally coercing a sixteen year old
Speaker 4: kid into saying a statement that's complete bullshit. What's also important,
Speaker 4: I think is the detectives were with him for hours
Speaker 4: and hours, feeding him there what they call pre thoughts
Speaker 4: about their theory of the case.
Speaker 1: So they made a twenty one minute long recording running
Speaker 1: through the narrative as if Eric was there as a
Speaker 1: witness to the fatal beating.
Speaker 4: You can hear him trying to make this shit up
Speaker 4: as he's going along, and they're having him correct his
Speaker 4: story as he's making it up, and he's saying, in
Speaker 4: his mind, if I can tell these guys what I
Speaker 4: know they want to hear, maybe I can go home today.
Speaker 1: So he does go home with the expectation that he'd testify,
Speaker 1: but he recanted the following day, so he was arrested,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile they offered lou a plea deal.
Speaker 2: It was an involuntary man slaughter in the commission of
Speaker 2: a flonious assault, which we call for ten to twenty
Speaker 2: five and I'm not going to lie. I thought about
Speaker 2: it like man, because I didn't know what the hell
Speaker 2: was going on. But then the next day I called
Speaker 2: my attorney, I said, man, I can't do this. I
Speaker 2: didn't do nothing, but they told us, if you don't
Speaker 2: take this deal, we're going to read indict you on
Speaker 2: AG murder AG robbery. I'm like, how in the hell
Speaker 2: are you gonna do that? Where they used Air's confession,
Speaker 2: and that afternoon the sheriff came up and say, here's
Speaker 2: your reindictment papers, AG murder, AG robbery.
Speaker 1: Joe Rickard, Ismael and Venzo Vasquez and Eric Misch also
Speaker 1: received aggravated murder and aggravated robbery chargers. And somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way, a woman named Rosemary Nell came forward with
Speaker 1: a wooden club that was allegedly left at her home
Speaker 1: by CJ aka Joe Rickard, which was entered into evidence
Speaker 1: not as a murder weapon, but as an example of
Speaker 1: what might have been used and with what Lou and
Speaker 1: CJ knew about johnre being as tendencies toward children. They
Speaker 1: were paired off for a trial without John or being
Speaker 1: a testifying in June of ninety three.
Speaker 4: Park Hurst was really the person who put all this
Speaker 4: together for the prosecution. She talks about seeing Joe and
Speaker 4: Lou and others bragging about supposedly jumping some black guy.
Speaker 4: But again she's got the wrong dates. She's thinking that
Speaker 4: this happened in July. The detectives are correcting her and
Speaker 4: feeding her that this happens in August.
Speaker 3: They get Hall and it's more of the same.
Speaker 2: Joey Hall, he couldn't point to what the murder happened
Speaker 2: at my trial. Prosecution had to fucking showing And her
Speaker 2: and Joey couldn't even agree on whether I drove or
Speaker 2: we walked, because she said we walked, Joey said we drove.
Speaker 4: These are folks who weren't sober when all these events occurred.
Speaker 4: They're talking about it months later. And the glaring thing
Speaker 4: is what was absent from the trial any physical evidence
Speaker 4: at all. I mean, this was a vicious attack by
Speaker 4: supposedly five guys who all took turns whaling on mister Vernon,
Speaker 4: and there's just no physical evidence at all, nothing at all.
Speaker 1: Plus, I'm not saying that shoeprint evidence is positive of anything,
Speaker 1: but how the hell would they only collect one shoe
Speaker 1: print from a group assault in an outdoor setting like
Speaker 1: a park.
Speaker 2: I had nothing else to do in prison but to
Speaker 2: look at shit. Okay, so I looked at the weather.
Speaker 2: It was raining that night, a light rain, and one
Speaker 2: fucking shoe print, But you got five of us. What
Speaker 2: did I do? Hold them all on my fucking shoulders.
Speaker 1: In addition, the state presented medical experts, one of whom
Speaker 1: testified that the injuries were more consistent with a baseball
Speaker 1: bat leaning away from the thin wooden club that was
Speaker 1: turned in by Rosemary Nell, which could have been corroborated
Speaker 1: by Nathaniel Huggins. But all of Burke's evidence pointing toward
Speaker 1: a group of men with a wooden chair leg on
Speaker 1: the east side of Toledo around three am had been
Speaker 1: hidden from the defense, making a path for the false
Speaker 1: narrative about a white supremisist gang attacking with these thin
Speaker 1: wooden clubs around midnight on the north end.
Speaker 4: I think the jury got caught up in the brutality
Speaker 4: of the crime, this idea that this was a white
Speaker 4: supremacist Act and without the evidence that shows that they
Speaker 4: were lying. The defense attorneys were kind of fighting with
Speaker 4: two hands tied behind their back.
Speaker 2: I was young and dumb man. I was still believing
Speaker 2: in the system. I didn't kill nobody. As far as
Speaker 2: my defense goes, there wasn't nothing really presented. When the
Speaker 2: state was done, my attorney was like, they didn't prove nothing,
Speaker 2: and again I knew what they were saying was lives.
Speaker 2: I even asked the deputy sheriff that was walking me
Speaker 2: back and forth, Hey, you think they don't find me guilty?
Speaker 2: He said, if they believe that girl, they don't find
Speaker 2: you guilty. If they don't, you'll walk out of here.
Speaker 2: And I was trying to convict it in less than
Speaker 2: twenty four hours. I mean, this shit was a joke.
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Speaker 2: Me CJ Doctor in June of ninety three. My sentence
Speaker 2: was fifteen in life. Even when I first went to prison,
Speaker 2: I still had a little bit of belief, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I got these appeals, somebody gonna see something somewhere, and
Speaker 2: I set my appeals attorney a letter, I'm innocent. I
Speaker 2: didn't kill nobody, and she sent me letter back. Somebody
Speaker 2: ain't gonna do whether you're innocent of Gilts. It's whether
Speaker 2: he was given a fair trial. So I accepted that.
Speaker 4: So Joe and Lou they're convicted. Eric is bound over.
Speaker 4: He's tried as an adult, and they introduced this false confession,
Speaker 4: and Eric's convicted. The Vasquez brothers are seeing how all
Speaker 4: this unfolds, and they talk to their lawyer and they
Speaker 4: work out a deal and they offer an Alfred plea,
Speaker 4: And Alfred plea is a denial that you did anything wrong.
Speaker 4: It doesn't admit that you committed a crime, but it said, look,
Speaker 4: I'm not risking it. I've seen two juris convict innocent men,
Speaker 4: and I don't have any faith in the system at all.
Speaker 4: I'll take my chances with the parole board and take
Speaker 4: a lesser sentence. And the Vasquez brothers pled guilty and
Speaker 4: avoided the two trials that lou Joe and.
Speaker 3: Mitch got convicted of.
Speaker 1: So Eric got twenty the life, while Ismail and Lorenzo
Speaker 1: got fifteen to life.
Speaker 2: When Melon Lorenzo came through, they got shipped somewhere else.
Speaker 2: But from ninety three to ninety eight, yeah, Me, CJ
Speaker 2: and Misch was all in the same person. And ninety
Speaker 2: five my last appeals was exhausted. So I did what
Speaker 2: I had to do to survivor life. Since I'm under
Speaker 2: the old law, so I knew I was going to
Speaker 2: board and tenure. But I wasn't stupid enough to think
Speaker 2: they was gonna let me go home. I knew they
Speaker 2: was gonna give me time, so I just I did
Speaker 2: what I had to do to survive. O three was
Speaker 2: my first time going to board. They gave me five years,
Speaker 2: went back. You know, eight, they gave me three more,
Speaker 2: they gave me five three three three three. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: gave me eighteen years and flops.
Speaker 1: And during that time it appears that Eric Mish was
Speaker 1: the most active in post conviction litigation, garnering the support
Speaker 1: of the Wrongful Conviction Project of the Ohio Public Defender's Office,
Speaker 1: led by a friend of our show, Joanna Sanchez.
Speaker 4: Joanna Sanchez is an incredible, amazing, tenacious, badass lawyer. The
Speaker 4: problem is you're making multiple public records requests and you're
Speaker 4: starting to kind of pull it the thread and you're
Speaker 4: getting new and different information kind of piecemeal. It's not
Speaker 4: all delivered at once. It's coming through, there's more and
Speaker 4: more information.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, early records requests only turned up the initial criminal
Speaker 1: complaint in August of ninety two, along with the investigation
Speaker 1: files starting in that December. Burke's investigated files didn't begin
Speaker 1: to turn up until twenty eighteen. Meanwhile, Michelle Parkhurst had
Speaker 1: recanted in twenty sixteen, saying that when she had been
Speaker 1: interviewed way back in January of ninety three, the police
Speaker 1: had threatened her with murder charges if she didn't name
Speaker 1: their suspects. Joey Hall, John Orbina, and lu Castilla, never
Speaker 1: mentioning Eric Mish. They also mentioned her pregnancy, seemingly implying
Speaker 1: that she would lose custody of her soon to be
Speaker 1: born and Sun and for her cooperation, she was given
Speaker 1: immunity among other temporary benefits.
Speaker 2: The prosecutors then gave her hotels, put her in apartments,
Speaker 2: and once the trialsers over, would they kicked her ass out.
Speaker 1: Then, in twenty eighteen, Joanna Sanchez filed a new records
Speaker 1: request asking specifically for the investigation records from August through
Speaker 1: December nineteen ninety two, which turned up one hundred and
Speaker 1: fourteen pages of Burke's investigation records, including a number of
Speaker 1: alternate suspects, as well as the bloody bottle collected at
Speaker 1: the scene.
Speaker 4: That's a bombshell, And there's a statute in the state
Speaker 4: of Ohio that you can go to the court for
Speaker 4: post conviction relief and request DNA. The state is fighting this,
Speaker 4: the state doesn't want it. The States upholding this wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: And while Joanna fought for the DNA testing and filed
Speaker 1: a motion for a new trial, all five innocent men
Speaker 1: finally parolled out. Lorenzo was in May twenty fifteen. Cj, Eric,
Speaker 1: and Lou were all released within days of one another
Speaker 1: in April of twenty twenty. While Ismael came home that June.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean when I actually got the letter shit,
Speaker 2: I cried like a little baby right there to Milly York,
Speaker 2: my wife. Now she was there to pick me up,
Speaker 2: cook the roast, roast, potatoes, carrots. My first day home.
Speaker 2: When we was coming home, I saw Walmart and I
Speaker 2: told her, I said, look, just take me in there
Speaker 2: and get it over with now. I just I made
Speaker 2: sure I was gonna put myself in every position that
Speaker 2: was going to make me uncomfortable, so I wouldn't get
Speaker 2: stuck in a house in a room like I was
Speaker 2: still in prison. I couldn't sleep for two weeks because
Speaker 2: of the new noises. I wasn't used to cars driving by.
Speaker 2: I mean, this woman put up with a whole lot
Speaker 2: of shit in the last four years with me dealing
Speaker 2: with my demons. I still deal with them. They're just
Speaker 2: not as bad as they used to be.
Speaker 1: It never ceases to amaze me how love can still
Speaker 1: find a way even when partners are on opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the prison walls.
Speaker 2: I met her like back in ninety eight, and that
Speaker 2: we stayed in contact. I didn't think the pro boy
Speaker 2: was gonna let me get pro to her because she's
Speaker 2: the reason I first got in trouble because she used
Speaker 2: to be a seal in ninety eight. So that was
Speaker 2: my first whole shot. But thankfully I got the right
Speaker 2: parle officer and he was like, no, I want him
Speaker 2: to come here, and that was probably about the best
Speaker 2: thing that could happen to me.
Speaker 1: Well, we haven't talked about this yet, but lou has
Speaker 1: four children now. One initial connection to this whole situation
Speaker 1: for him was through a woman he had been sleeping with,
Speaker 1: and then his first time getting sent to the whole
Speaker 1: was over an affair he had had with a correction
Speaker 1: officer who ended up marrying him over two decades later.
Speaker 1: Now I'm just saying, the lady seemed to really like
Speaker 1: this guy.
Speaker 2: Listen, if I'm being honest with you. Okay, I met
Speaker 2: my wife in ninety eight, but I met somebody in
Speaker 2: ninety five that stood by me the whole time I
Speaker 2: was in prison. She passed away a year before I
Speaker 2: came home. Her name was Faviola. She's the reason that.
Speaker 2: She's the reason I made it. I loved my wife,
Speaker 2: but she was there day for day twenty five straight years,
Speaker 2: and I screwed up and we split up in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: and that's when my wife came back and we started
Speaker 2: talking to you. A lot of people helped me get
Speaker 2: to where I'm at, and I respect each and every
Speaker 2: one of them. Some of them are here, some of them.
Speaker 2: But if it wasn't for her, yeah, I wouldn't checked
Speaker 2: out A long time ago. It wasn't easy coming home.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find a job for four months. I'm at
Speaker 2: the same job I started back in twenty twenty. I
Speaker 2: went from picking people's orders to now I'm working on
Speaker 2: the bay systems and robotics. Because I was determined not
Speaker 2: to go back to that damn place. They offered me
Speaker 2: to teach me things, so I learned them and now
Speaker 2: I make pretty good money. I'm in tell with all
Speaker 2: my kids. I don't have the best relationship with all
Speaker 2: of them, but I'm doing what I can. You know,
Speaker 2: I made a promise to myself before I came home,
Speaker 2: and no matter what I was gonna try, you know,
Speaker 2: I got a son now that lives down here with me,
Speaker 2: and he was going through what he was going through,
Speaker 2: and I asked him, now you want to leave you
Speaker 2: little He said, yeah, I went and got it. He
Speaker 2: been here with me ever since. I'll do anything for
Speaker 2: my kids.
Speaker 1: So, while Lou and the other guys struggled with reacclimating
Speaker 1: Ismael got a parole violation just three months after his release,
Speaker 1: sending him back to prison, all of which made the
Speaker 1: post conviction litigation even more pressing. Luckily, the court sided
Speaker 1: with Eric and Johanna Sanchez, ordering DNA testing, and when
Speaker 1: the materials that were sent for testing to the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Criminal Investigation or BCI, came back, it turned out
Speaker 1: that two sealed bags containing even more investigative files from
Speaker 1: Burkes had also made the round trip journey, which included
Speaker 1: background that Burkes had worked up about Vernon Huggins and
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, Emma.
Speaker 4: Vernon was pretty out on his luck. He would hustle
Speaker 4: for money, he had some issues with substance abuse, he
Speaker 4: had some issues with alcohol. He and Emma had a
Speaker 4: pretty volatile, sometimes violent relationship. And what's really important is
Speaker 4: within days of Vernon's death, he and Emma have a big,
Speaker 4: huge falling out there's a big fight. Vernon pulls Emma
Speaker 4: into a car, he speeds off. The car crashes, people
Speaker 4: are scattering, they're all running away. Emma goes home, she's
Speaker 4: with her mom, and then Vernon, on three consecutive nights,
Speaker 4: the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before his homicide, he basically
Speaker 4: breaks into where Emma is and he's pissed off, he's angry,
Speaker 4: he's not sober. Vernon is threatening her, He's threatening Emma's mom.
Speaker 4: And Emma has a couple of brothers and some family
Speaker 4: members who don't take too kindly. And we know now
Speaker 4: through witness account and through public records requests that Emma's
Speaker 4: brothers confronted Vernon. One of the brothers had what looked
Speaker 4: like a club that would have fit the description of
Speaker 4: the kind of weapon that was used on Vernon on
Speaker 4: the day of his death, and they threatened Vernon. And
Speaker 4: that is the absolute clear motive for Vernon's homicide.
Speaker 1: And then there's the interview with Nathaniel Huggins about the
Speaker 1: lead up to Vernon's death, in which we know he
Speaker 1: was seen after three am on the east side of Toledo.
Speaker 1: Nathaniel gave him money, followed him and saw this confrontation
Speaker 1: with four men, one of whom had a wooden chair leg,
Speaker 1: and they all had emerged from a gray station wagon
Speaker 1: with tinted windows.
Speaker 2: Them cops knew that shit. Thep cops read that fucking report.
Speaker 2: The prosecutors read their fucking report, because how else are
Speaker 2: they going to go from a gray station wagon, low
Speaker 2: writer to my gray nova that was broke the fuck
Speaker 2: down in my mother in law's back yard. How was
Speaker 2: that that prosecutor going to go when they said we
Speaker 2: beat this man with a stick, and their witness said,
Speaker 2: that's impossible. There would have been slivers in the skull.
Speaker 2: What's he go to? Oh maybe it was a Louisville slugger.
Speaker 2: How the fuck do you go to Louisville slugger? Because
Speaker 2: it's more like a goddamn cheer lake. Right, you can't
Speaker 2: tell me. None of them guys didn't see it. They
Speaker 2: all saw that shit, just like these cops that don't remember. Now,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't remember either of us sent five fucking kids
Speaker 2: to motherfucker prison.
Speaker 1: So not only was there evidence of a more compelling
Speaker 1: alternate suspect, narrative and motive, but then also the victim's
Speaker 1: uncle undermined both the timeframe of the murder as established
Speaker 1: by the state's witnesses, as well as disproved Eric Misch's
Speaker 1: alleged confession. But wait, don't forget that this all came
Speaker 1: alongside DNA test results from the bloody bottle.
Speaker 4: And again, this is against the backdrop of zero physical
Speaker 4: evidence connecting lou Joe, the Vasquez Brothers or Eric Minch
Speaker 4: to this homicide. There's nothing, and the DNA comes back
Speaker 4: of a local guy who's got a felony record. And
Speaker 4: then Joanna is also able to make a connection that
Speaker 4: this guy knew Vernon and this is another alternative suspect
Speaker 4: who had nothing to do with lou Joe, Defasquez Brothers
Speaker 4: or Eric Minch. So Joanna files this motion for a
Speaker 4: new trial, and the prosecution stipulated that this evidence was
Speaker 4: not turned over to the defense team.
Speaker 3: There's no dispute about that.
Speaker 4: But procedurally, the prosecutor's office is fighting us at every
Speaker 4: step of the way and making this kind of weak
Speaker 4: ass argument that it wasn't really relevant, it really wouldn't
Speaker 4: have had an impact on the trial. Joanna has a
Speaker 4: full blown hearing. She puts on these witnesses. She talks
Speaker 4: about how a false confection can happen, especially with a minor,
Speaker 4: and she convinces the court to grant a motion for
Speaker 4: a new trial, but the prosecution still had the audacity
Speaker 4: to appeal that decision. And you know, I'm not the
Speaker 4: smartest lawyer in the world, but I'm smart enough to
Speaker 4: know to let Joanna go first and do all the
Speaker 4: hard work.
Speaker 3: Joanna really paved the way. She did all the heavy lifting.
Speaker 4: I talked to Lou, we talked to Joe, and we said, listen,
Speaker 4: let's see how Eric's case plays out. Eric had a
Speaker 4: really tough case because he had a confession, so we
Speaker 4: felt like if Eric can get some relief, there was
Speaker 4: really no doubt that we were going to get that
Speaker 4: same relief.
Speaker 1: At this time, the Vasquez brothers were fighting to withdraw
Speaker 1: their Alfred please while Lou and CJ monitored the new
Speaker 1: trial motion through the Court of Appeals and the collective
Speaker 1: process took over two years.
Speaker 4: And the prosecution they reach out to Joanna and say
Speaker 4: they're going to drop the appeal, and eventually they file
Speaker 4: motions saying they're not going to contest for the Alfred
Speaker 4: pleas of the Vasquez brothers being withdrawn. They're not going
Speaker 4: to fight a new trial, and eventually they say they're
Speaker 4: not going to oppose a motion to dismiss So the
Speaker 4: prosecution files this motion to nully the charges, and that
Speaker 4: motion means the charges are dismissed, and the judge said
Speaker 4: the words that the conviction is vacated. The judge sign
Speaker 4: the order there is no conviction. There's not going to
Speaker 4: be a retrial. And that was an incredible day. It
Speaker 4: was twenty eight years too late. It doesn't give Lou
Speaker 4: back his life for Job or Eric or the Vasquez brothers,
Speaker 4: but it was a partial end to an agonizing, brutalizing,
Speaker 4: torturous stint that these guys had to endure.
Speaker 2: When I went to my hearing, I was already upset
Speaker 2: because they wasn't gonna let mel walk out with us
Speaker 2: because they needed paperwork to let him out, so he
Speaker 2: had to sit there for about six hours in Olden Seale.
Speaker 2: But I just assumed that when I got back home
Speaker 2: that I would give with my parole officer and just
Speaker 2: like everybody else, my stuff would be terminated. Everything that
Speaker 2: happened on this case, every courterering, I let the APA
Speaker 2: know so they knew this was coming. But when I
Speaker 2: get back in, my PO tells me, well, I need
Speaker 2: to see you on a tent.
Speaker 4: Lou shows up at his parole officers and is telling
Speaker 4: her the good news. It's by then been reported on
Speaker 4: the television, and she says, no, you're still under supervision.
Speaker 4: Lou calls me and I'm that's got to be a mistake.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on. So I politely call
Speaker 4: her and say, hey, I don't know if you've heard,
Speaker 4: but you know there is no conviction. You have no
Speaker 4: lawful basis to continue to supervise Lou. And she says, well,
Speaker 4: I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see it on
Speaker 4: the docket. And I said, well, it's on the docket.
Speaker 4: Let me email you a certified copy of the judge's order.
Speaker 4: So I hang up and I email the parole officer
Speaker 4: not only a certified copy of the judge's order, but
Speaker 4: a copy of the prosecutor's motion to dismiss. And I
Speaker 4: say to her terminate his supervision immediately. There's no lawful
Speaker 4: basis to supervise. And she writes back some smart ass
Speaker 4: letter that says, well, this has been referred to the parole.
Speaker 3: Board, and I just lose my shit.
Speaker 4: And I write a letter, an email to her, I
Speaker 4: call the parole board and I basically say, Lou was
Speaker 4: brutalized by the criminal justice system for three decades or
Speaker 4: crime he didn't commit. And this is the indignity that
Speaker 4: you have to throw on top of him after the
Speaker 4: case is dismissed. There's no lawful basis at all to
Speaker 4: continue to supervise him. And every hour that you deny
Speaker 4: him is just deny him as humanity.
Speaker 2: Still, as of right now, I'm still on paroth.
Speaker 1: When we recorded this interview, all of that was still true.
Speaker 1: But we're happy to announce that Lou's supervise release was
Speaker 1: finally terminated on January twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, a
Speaker 1: final act and a series of others that took entirely
Speaker 1: too long to come to pass.
Speaker 4: And this is the bigger problem here. The system is
Speaker 4: designed to protect itself. The system isn't designed to find
Speaker 4: out who's innocent, who's guilty. The system is designed to
Speaker 4: perpetuate a guilty verdict at all costs, despite physical evidence,
Speaker 4: despite witnesses recanting, despite new evidence of innocence, despite DNA testing,
Speaker 4: the prosecutors, police officers, and everybody involved in the system.
Speaker 4: Their goal is to perpetuate this guilty verdict and fuck
Speaker 4: it if you're innocent. Not to mention the DNA testing
Speaker 4: identified someone who's still alive. The problem we have is
Speaker 4: the incentive of the cops and the prosecution to really
Speaker 4: solve this crime. They are still to this day hiding
Speaker 4: behind this procedure and saying, well, we're not saying these
Speaker 4: guys are actually innocent, so there's no real motivation on
Speaker 4: their part to find the true killer or killers of
Speaker 4: mister Huggins. Despite the fact that they vacated the decision.
Speaker 4: They don't have the courage and the integrity and the
Speaker 4: honesty to say and do the right thing that these
Speaker 4: five men are actually innocent and they need to find
Speaker 4: the true killer. They're just not doing it.
Speaker 1: And with that we're going to go to closing arguments.
Speaker 1: This is my favorite part of the show. This is
Speaker 1: where I think each of you, from the bottom of
Speaker 1: my heart and on behalf of our whole team here
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good. And then I'm going to turn
Speaker 1: it over to you don for anything else you want
Speaker 1: to share with me and our wonderful audience, and then
Speaker 1: you can hand the microphone off to Lou and he'll
Speaker 1: take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 4: It's hard to hear Lou talk about what he's been through.
Speaker 4: It's hard to hear Joe talk about what he's been through,
Speaker 4: because we don't want to think that this happens, right.
Speaker 4: We don't want to link relive in a society where
Speaker 4: someone who is innocent is ignored, really laughed at. And
Speaker 4: that's what happened here. These police officers framed innocent men,
Speaker 4: and it took decades to get this.
Speaker 3: To come to light.
Speaker 4: I talked to Lou, I talked to Joe, and they
Speaker 4: had the right attitude. They knew that this was going
Speaker 4: to work out. I don't know how I would have
Speaker 4: reacted if I was in their shoes. Give Lou, I
Speaker 4: give Joe a lot of credit. This is a system
Speaker 4: that protects itself, and it's a system that covers up
Speaker 4: the injustices. And when there are claims of innocent we
Speaker 4: need to pay attention and the people in power need
Speaker 4: to make.
Speaker 3: The right fucking decisions. Man.
Speaker 4: I mean, the defense attorneys can bring this to the
Speaker 4: attention of the courts. We can bring it to the
Speaker 4: attention of the media. But these prosecutors, these police officers,
Speaker 4: these judges, I can't believe that there's some of them
Speaker 4: that are out there that don't want.
Speaker 3: To do good. Raise your voice, say something when you
Speaker 3: see something. This was wrong.
Speaker 4: This could have been stopped decades ago, and this system
Speaker 4: perpetuated these lies and brutalized these men for no other reason.
Speaker 3: Then people weren't brave enough to speak up.
Speaker 2: This ain't just me. There's many people that are locked
Speaker 2: up in the system that are innocent. But like I said,
Speaker 2: the first time I talked to somebody, nobody wanted to
Speaker 2: ask the right questions. People would just wanted to sweep
Speaker 2: shit in the rug just for a conviction, for a
Speaker 2: rating or whatever. Nobody thought about my kids. The choices
Speaker 2: them two cops made affected a lot of people, a
Speaker 2: lot of people. And for them to just sit here
Speaker 2: and say they forgot, they don't remember now, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna buy it. If anybody out there who's going through
Speaker 2: what I'm going through, it's gonna get better. There was
Speaker 2: times I didn't think it was gonna get better. But
Speaker 2: I know what is the more I talk about it.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm grateful for everybody that's let me speak
Speaker 2: that way. I wasn't imploding on myself. I've been holding
Speaker 2: so much shit in for damning my whole life. I'm
Speaker 2: just grateful, man, that I was blessed enough to meet
Speaker 2: the people that I met from the time of mycarce
Speaker 2: ration to now, because if it wasn't for them, I
Speaker 2: probably would have lost my shit a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: one week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank
Speaker 1: our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well
Speaker 1: as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and
Speaker 1: Jeff Cliber. The music in this production was supplied by
Speaker 1: three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay. Be sure to follow
Speaker 1: us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good
Speaker 1: and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number One. We have worked hard to ensure that all
Speaker 1: facts reported in this show are accurate.
Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
Speaker 2: this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
Speaker 2: those of Lava for Good