WEBVTT - #381 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Daniel Villegas 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:07.360 Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer. In Season one 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.559 of False Confessions, we brought you the story of Daniel Viegas, 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:14.680 a teenager from El Paso, Texas, who was coerced into 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.360 giving a false confession to a double murder in nineteen 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.880 ninety three. One of the people who ultimately helped free 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:24.400 Daniel started out as a complete stranger to him. It's 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.720 a story of real heroism that proves anyone can have 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:30.480 an impact when they put in the effort. Now, we're 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.080 pleased to tell you that since his acquittal in twenty eighteen, 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.560 Daniel is living in that spirit. He's paying it forward, 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.440 so to speak. Today he works with Proclaim Justice, an 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.040 organization founded by Jason Baldwin, a member of the West 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.920 Memphis III. Proclaimed Justice helps to free other innocent people 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:51.879 across the country. Daniel also bravely shares his story on 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.280 stage and on social media. He helps to raise awareness 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.280 of this all too common miscarriage of justice. We need 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.320 advocates like Daniel Vehegas and organizations like Proclaimed Justice to 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.039 speak out against wrongful convictions, to tell the world that 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:11.080 this really can happen to anyone. It's through their work 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.839 that we can create a future where no innocent person 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:18.119 ever spends another day in prison. Daniel, We thank you 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.080 for your invaluable work. We're replaying this episode in your honor. 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.839 Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer, 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.240 and I'm Steve Drusy. Today we're going to tell you 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.240 about a case that shows just how much ordinary people 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:41.759 can help the wrongly convicted find real justice, even when 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:46.119 they start out as strangers. In today's case, an unexpected 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.840 hero fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:54.360 into one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations I've ever seen. 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.160 Like so many of our cases at the Center on 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:12.400 Wrongful Convictions, Steve first learned about Daniel Viegas through one 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:16.160 of his infamous online searches. By this time, I actually 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.079 had my own newsfeed, and so did our colleague Josh Tepfer. 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.280 But Steve had his own reasons for being particularly excited 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:24.320 about this case. 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.040 So after all three of us read about a possible 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.840 false confession case in Alpasso, it seemed like destiny for 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:34.920 us to get involved in this case. You see, in 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:38.280 two thousand and six, Alpasso was host to one of 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.480 the most important conferences in the history of false confessions 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.400 that brought together many of the leading experts on the 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:47.920 subject to the University of Texas. 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:51.600 For people like us, this is basically the Olympics meets Coachella. 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.480 Who was there? Well, Donald Connery, the author of Peter 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:56.920 Riley's book, was there. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.840 Steve's talking about a book called Guilty Until Proven Innocent. 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:02.560 We'll tell you that story in a later episode about 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:04.880 a false confession from nineteen seventy three. 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:10.880 And Geezley good Johnson, the famed Icelandic detective turned psychology 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.400 professor at King's College of London. 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:16.560 You might remember Geasley from our last episode. His scientific 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.480 expertise helped exonerate Tana Pora in New Zealand. 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.400 Richard Offshe and Richard Leo and Saul Cassen, some of 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.880 the leading experts in the United States on false confessions, 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:27.320 were there. 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:29.880 We're going to hear from Saul Cassen in another episode two. 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.320 All of these guys are og experts in the world 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:37.120 of false confessions. They're Steve's heroes and mine too. So 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:39.280 if I've turned into a geek here, you know who 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:39.720 to blame. 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.560 This conference was a watershed moment in the history of 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.280 false confessions and the idea of going back to El 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:50.480 Paso to work on an actual false confession case, it 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:52.000 just seemed like destiny to me. 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.600 This story starts in El Paso, a border city in 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:01.000 West Texas. Now. In the early nineteen nine El Casso 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.600 was a different place than it is today. The crime 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.080 rate was sky high. There was lots of gang activity. 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.200 Street violence was a daily problem, and in some neighborhoods, 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.000 shootings were regular occurrences. We start our story in the 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.920 early morning hours of April tenth, nineteen ninety three. Good Friday. 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.320 It's just after midnight, and four teenagers are walking home 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.680 from a party and they find themselves in a rough neighborhood. 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:29.599 Three of them, Manda Lazo, Juan Carlo's Medina, and Jesse Hernandez, 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.320 were seventeen years old. The fourth, Bobby England, was eighteen. 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.000 All of them were good kids, none of them were 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.640 caught up in gangs or the street life. But they 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.840 ran into trouble anyway. At the intersection of Electric Street 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.440 and trans Mountain Road. That's where a maroon car with 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:51.680 tinted windows rolls up behind them and starts following them. Slowly. Now, 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:53.360 just as the four of them start to get scared, 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.360 the car takes off. It speeds away, but a few 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.160 minutes later it comes back, and this time the driver 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.320 turns off the headline light. Words are shouted from the 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:06.120 car in Spanish, possibly an insult keeputos, and then a 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.680 series of shots ring out, one right after another. Wan 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.320 and Jesse take off running as a matter of sheer instinct, 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:16.559 and they think that their two friends are running away 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.520 alongside them. But when jan and Jesse feel that they've 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.200 run far enough that it's safe to slow down, they 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.239 look around them and they don't see Mondo or Bobby 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.560 with them at all. They take a deep breath, go 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:30.960 back to the scene of the shooting, and they see 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.479 police lights flashing. Bobby had been shot in the head 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.080 and died in the street. Mondo had been shot in 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.039 the stomach and the thigh. He made it one hundred 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.800 yards to a house up the street, where he collapsed 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.320 in the front yard and died as the residents frantically 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.680 dialed nine one one. Now, the police found six shells 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.360 from a twenty two caliber handgun littered on the street 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:54.680 right where the car had pulled over, but That's about it. 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.039 In terms of evidence. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.760 nothing forensic to help them solve this crime. It was 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.000 going to have to come down to confessions. 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.279 The Alpasso Police assigned one of the toughest cops on 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.559 the force to the Good Friday shooting, an officer whose 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:13.479 name we can't share, but an officer who is known 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:14.440 as a closer. 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:16.719 This guy is so tough he's even been featured on 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:18.000 the TV show Cops. 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.240 Now, what's a closer? A closer is someone who is 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:26.560 very skilled at police interrogation. A good closer will gather 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:31.160 evidence and then slowly reveal that evidence to a suspect, 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:33.920 like peeling off layers of an onion, so that the 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:37.880 suspect feels like he is nabbed, his goose is cooked, 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.880 and that leads the suspect to confess. But there are 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.680 other kinds of closers. Closers who use brutality and threats, 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.520 and they don't only use these tactics with suspects. Their 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:55.280 modus operandi is to use these tactics with suspects, with 0:06:55.440 --> 0:07:00.800 witnesses and sometimes with victims, and they get statements, but 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:05.599 those statements are coerced and false statements. This detective, he 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:07.880 was in that second camp exactly. 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:10.160 So the closer is brought in right this detective from 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.680 the al Paso Police Force. He begins investigating the case 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.000 and pretty soon he comes across a seventeen year old 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:21.440 boy named David Rongel. David is brought into the police 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:25.480 station in theory about a completely different case. The police 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:27.800 had told his mom that they needed to talk to 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:32.960 Davide about some telephone harassment complaints, but when questioning actually began, 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.960 it had nothing to do with telephone harassment. Police began 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:41.640 accusing Davide of committing the Good Friday shootings. Now later on, 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.200 Davide said that the police falsely told him during this 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:48.560 interrogation that his friends had implicated him, and Davide himself 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.040 was threatened. He says he was told that he was 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.320 a pretty white boy with green eyes who would be 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.080 raped in prison if he didn't confess. This scares David 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.080 and eventually he starts offering some information. He tells police 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:06.560 that his sixteen year old cousin, Daniel Viegos, had been 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.400 bragging about committing the Good Friday shootings, although he added 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.400 that everyone was sure Daniel had been joking. You see, 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:16.400 Daniel had a reputation as a jokester. He was the 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:18.720 type of kid who always boasted about things he hadn't 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.960 actually done. Daniel had bragged about owning a waterbed when 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.960 he didn't. He'd bragged about owning a fancy stereo when 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.120 he didn't. He'd even bragged about being descended from Italian 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:30.239 Royalty when he definitely wasn't. 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:32.920 I want to be descended from Italian Royalty. 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:34.679 Me too, but that kind of lucks just ain't for us. 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.720 Steve Anyway, when it came to the Good Friday shootings, 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.360 Davide never believed Daniel to be serious, not even for 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.520 a minute. It just wasn't him. Daniel had nothing serious 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:44.640 like this in his background. 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.400 Just like criminals have a modus operandi, many times closures 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:53.880 or interrogators have a modus operandi, And in David's case 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:57.679 we saw evidence that we later were able to demonstrate 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.559 was a modus operandi. Almost all this interrogator would tell 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:04.800 the suspect that his best friend or close associate had 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:05.720 implicated him. 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:07.559 In the crime, even if that's untrue, right. 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:10.560 Always untrue, right. He would threaten the suspect with the 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:14.360 death penalty, and he also told the suspects or the 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.480 witnesses or the victims in this case, that they were 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:20.599 going to go to prison and they were going to 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.760 be raped. I mean, if you're a seventeen year old kid, 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.360 and most of these witnesses were teenagers, and you're told 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.240 that you're looking at going to an adult jail where 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.599 you're going to be a rape victim, you're going to 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.120 say just about anything you need to get out of 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:35.840 that interrogation. 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.080 It's terrifying stuff. And for David, the information he gave 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.680 was that his cousin Daniel, had been joking about committing 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.600 the Good Friday shooting. He never believed Daniel to be serious, 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:49.439 but this information was enough for the police. They asked 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.880 Devid to write out a statement describing what Daniel had said. 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.119 David wrote that Daniel had bragged about using a shotgun 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.080 to commit the shootings, but the detective had David take 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.680 that part out and write the statement a second time 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.160 without mentioning the type of weapon, because remember, the shells 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.720 at the scene had come from a twenty two, not 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.520 a shotgun. Even with the detective's edits, da Vide's statements 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:16.000 still contained errors. He remembered his cousin bragging about being 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.199 in a black car, not a maroon car, and Davide 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.280 said that Daniel described firing a few shots, then getting 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.000 out of the car, chasing Mondo Lazo to the house 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:27.920 and shooting him again. There, that's just not how this 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.600 crime happened. The shots were all clustered together, not spaced out, 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:35.120 and there were no casings found near Mondo's body. But 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:41.120 none of us mattered. Now, this was a statement that 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.560 David regretted giving. It haunted him for the rest of 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.000 his life that he'd implicated his own cousin in the 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:50.920 Good Friday shootings, when even he didn't believe that Daniel 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.480 was guilty. But it was a statement that he felt 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:55.880 he had no choice but to give in light of 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:59.000 the threats that he was encountering in the interrogation room. 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.720 So there errors, errors in Da VID's statement, errors in 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.239 the statements of other witnesses, errors that the true perpetrator 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.200 would never have made. That's a red flag. 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.040 It's a huge red flag. But it doesn't stop these police. 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.120 Within hours, three more people are brought in for questioning. 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.679 Late at night on April twenty first, two friends of 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:24.000 Daniel's Marcos Gonzalez and Rodney Williams and Daniel himself. They're 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.920 all questioned, and when Daniel is interrogated, he denies involvement. 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.640 He tells the police he was babysitting that night with 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.000 a group of friends and they were all watching White 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:34.640 Men Can't Jump on TV. 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:38.520 But here comes that modus operandi exactly. 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.840 Daniel reports being told that if he didn't confess, he 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.400 would be taken to the desert to get beaten, and 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:46.920 then to jail where he would be raped by old 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:50.040 men then sentenced to death by the electric chair. This 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.080 is how they scared Daniel. This is how they began 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:55.480 reducing him down to this feeling of hopelessness. But if 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.439 he confessed, on the other hand, he was told that 0:11:57.480 --> 0:11:59.880 he would get leniency because he was just a minor. 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.880 And after about five hours of interrogation, Daniel ends up 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.400 signing a confession typed out by detectives. It's about three 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:08.760 o'clock in the morning. 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.720 He repeats the same errors that David Rangell had made, 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:15.200 but he makes other mistakes too. First of all, what 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:18.120 about the people in the car? Daniel says the driver 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.720 was someone nicknamed Popeye, and that the front passenger was 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.840 someone nicknamed Droopy, but the only known Popeye was incarcerated 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.480 at the time, and the only known Droopy he was 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.360 also on house arrest at the time. They could not 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.480 possibly have been in the car the color of the car. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.240 Davide had said the car was black. Survivor Jesse Hernandez 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:41.920 he had said the car was maroon. Daniel said they 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:44.720 were in a white four door sedan at the time 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.880 of the shooting. And finally, Daniel said that he had 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.000 shot Bobby and Mondo in the back, but it was 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.320 clear from the medical examiner's report that they had been 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:56.360 shot from the front. 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.560 The more and more you study Daniel's confession, the more 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:02.880 you start to a pattern. The only facts about this 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.800 murder that he was able to get right are facts 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:08.920 that had been publicized about the Good Friday shootings in 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.520 the local paper, the El Paso Times. Now, this is 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:13.600 a pretty big red flag when you can only get 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:15.800 facts right when you've read about them in the newspaper. 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:19.040 And there's another red flag in this case too. As 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:23.800 soon as the interrogator left the room, Daniel immediately recants 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.439 to a juvenile probation officer. I didn't do it, he said, 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:30.280 and he explained that he only confessed because the cops 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.960 kept harassing him. He said, I was tired, so I 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:35.760 told them what they wanted to hear. 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.120 And the police and prosecutors rang with that confession, even 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:43.800 though it was filled with many false facts. 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:47.240 And errors, Despite the red flags in his confession, despite 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:51.240 the recantation, despite the lack of any physical evidence connecting 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:55.000 him to the crime, Daniel Viegas is arrested and charged 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:58.040 with capital murder. He's sixteen years old. 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:08.480 Now. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.880 Daniel didn't come from a family with a lot of money, 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:15.000 but his parents managed somehow to scrape together ten thousand 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:19.120 dollars for an attorney. Daniel Viegas's first trial took place 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:23.560 in December nineteen ninety four. At that trial, David Wrangle testified, 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.760 but he maintained that Daniel had been obviously kidding when 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.880 he'd bragged about the shooting. Rodney and Marcos, Daniel's friends, well, 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.240 they'd given police statements implicating Daniel when they'd been questioned, 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:36.800 but on the witness stand they said their statements were 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.560 false and had been obtained through threats of prison, rape 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:45.200 and other similar threats, and Daniel's attorney called eighteen defense witnesses, 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.560 including several alibi witnesses who testified that Daniel was with 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:52.800 them babysitting and watching TV at the time of the shooting. Right, 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:57.640 white men can't jump, And Daniel's attorney argued strenuously about 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.480 all these inconsistencies in Daniel's confession, how it just didn't 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:04.280 match the facts of this crime, how it showed every 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:06.160 indication of being false. 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.960 He even called other witnesses who called into question the 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:16.320 credibility of this detective, former prosecutors who had sought indictments 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:17.360 for perjury. 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.160 The defense mounted a huge fight. They made every argument 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.840 they could. The trial lasted a week and at the 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:27.200 end there was a hung jury eleven to one, but. 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.920 It was eleven to one in favor of a conviction, 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.760 which gave the district attorney some thought that this would 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.880 be an easier case to convict the next time around. 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.680 Sure enough, about nine months later, again, Daniel veegis Is 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:43.000 tried for the murders of Mondo and Bobby. But the 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.720 second trial was different. You see, Daniel's parents had spent 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:50.240 every penny they had on the first trial, and they 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.640 couldn't afford a lawyer for the second trial. This time around, 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.600 Daniel was represented by a court appointed lawyer, someone who 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:58.840 had been assigned the case only two months before the 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:02.000 trial began, and so when the second trial rolled around, 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:06.440 that lawyer called only one defense witness, no alibi witnesses 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:10.160 at all. He hardly pointed to any problems with Daniel's confession, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.200 even though he had a blueprint for success in the 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:14.800 form of the first trial, and. 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.040 He didn't make a full frontal attack on the integrity 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:23.400 and credibility of the police officer who got these unreliable statements. 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.600 And so on August twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five, Daniel 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:31.440 Viegas was convicted of capital murder. Because he'd been a 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.280 juvenile at the time of the offense, he wasn't sentenced 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.360 to death. Instead, he was given two life terms in prison, 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.480 one for Bobby and one for Mondo. Daniel was a 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.000 teenager when he went to prison, and he might still 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:47.920 be there today if it weren't for a man named 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:48.760 John Mimbella. 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:50.040 What a man now. 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.560 John is the head of a successful El Paso construction firm, 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.080 a firm that hired a lot of formerly incarcerated people. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.120 Because John is a guy who believes in second chances. 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.200 One day in two thousand and five, John Mabella walks 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:06.879 into an El Paso bank and he ends up asking 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:09.840 his teller, a woman named Lucy, out on a date. 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:14.600 Six months later, we're buried. Lucy had three daughters with 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:19.840 Daniel's brother, so Daniel was actually Lucy's ex brother in law. 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.320 I adopted Lucy's daughters two years later, and that's when 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.120 I learned more about Daniel's case. 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:28.720 Now, Lucy often brought the girls to see their grandparents, 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.480 who were Daniel's parents, and eventually John started coming along too. 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.840 That's where he started to hear stories about their son, Daniel, 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:39.560 who was serving life in prison for two murders he 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:40.240 didn't commit. 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:43.960 At first. I thought, you know, any parents gonna not 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.919 want to accept that their son might be a killer. 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:50.960 I had a lot of faith also in our system. 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.920 You know, I always believe that if a jury found 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.680 you guilty, it must have been because they had plenty 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.760 of evidence against you. So I figured, hey, you know, 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.040 they must have all kinds of evidence on this kid 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:06.240 if they sentenced him to life. 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:10.360 John was skeptical, but he saw how heartbroken the grandparents were, 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:14.080 and he agreed to read through the court papers. Before 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.280 long he was dumb struck. There was no reliable evidence 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.280 tying Daniel to these shootings at all. And then John 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.840 Manbela became a man possessed. 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.000 I've got a couple of friends and I asked him 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.720 if they could set up a meeting with our DA 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.560 because I saw some serious problems in Daniel's conviction. Our 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.720 DA happened to be high Miss Parsa and he personally 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:42.480 tried Daniel. So I figured, you know what, if there's 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:44.959 some mistake, if there's some doubt, you know, he's going 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.120 to reopen this case. So we had the meeting and 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:50.320 I told him, I go, you know what, I think 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.359 Daniel's innocent. Something's wrong here, you know, we need to 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:57.560 look into it. This DA fought us a lot just 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.880 to get evidentry heering. After he told me the hire 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:02.800 Good of Bills lawyer and opened up the case again, 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:04.600 he fought as to the new. 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.200 Now this really fired John up. It didn't make any sense. 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.520 He starts paying for billboards around El Paso that say 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.919 free Daniel Viegas. He starts organizing rallies and protests outside 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.520 the courthouse, and he hired a private investigator. 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.720 He read the transcripts and he was dumbfounded too. He goes, John, 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.920 I was a homicide detective for twenty years. This case 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:29.000 would never have gone to trial. I would never have 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:32.560 presented this to my DA if this is all I had. Well, 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:34.640 he was very upset, and he goes, yes, John, I'll 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:35.240 take your case. 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:39.000 John nan Bella's invested in Daniel's innocence and the work 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:40.880 he would go on to do ended up costing him 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.400 personally hundreds of thousands of dollars. 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:47.159 He's the patron saint of the Daniel Viegis case. You know. 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:51.479 I went down to l Passo shortly after John had 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:56.240 hired lawyers and investigators to reopen Daniel's case, and when 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:58.639 I went into the courthouse, there were like fifteen or 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:03.760 twenty people walking around with signs saying free Daniel Viegas. 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:08.000 You know, false confessions happened. Justice for Daniel Viegas. John 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.480 had organized a rally right in front of the courthouse, 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.480 and on the street in front of the courthouse was 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.359 a truck that had billboards on both sides of it 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.760 that was driving around the courthouse. So when you walked 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.840 into the courtroom in Alpaso. You were just blitched by 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:28.600 this notion that an injustice had occurred and that it 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:30.240 needed to be fixed. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.200 Exactly, and John brought his entire community into this case too. 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.159 There was a manager who worked at his construction company 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:39.080 who was a songwriter, and he ends up writing a corrido, 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:43.840 a traditional Mexican ballad, about the wrongful conviction of Daniel Viegas. 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.480 John was so proud of that song that one of 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:48.600 the first things he did when I was down in 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:58.160 El Paso was to play that for me. It's on 0:20:58.200 --> 0:20:59.679 YouTube now if you want to hear it. 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.080 John and the private investigator, right, they want to really 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:07.879 find out what happened, and one of the first people 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:11.639 they go to speak to is Jesse Hernandez, one of 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.080 the survivors of the shooting. Of course, Jesse was now 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.720 a grown man, and John shows Jesse for the first 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.639 time a copy of Daniel's confession. 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:26.880 Jesse's like, John, this is not what happened. This does 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.680 not look like a confession from somebody who was there 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:36.560 who took this confession down. And I told him. At 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:41.080 that point, Jesse turns pale and he's like John, that 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:46.720 same detective almost had me confessing to that crime. He 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.159 shows up that night and he tells me, we know 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:51.639 you shot your friends. Your buddy Juan Medina, I just 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.679 told us that you did it. And Jesse says that 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.320 he was just hysterical. He's like, wait a minute, these 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.760 are my friends. I love my friends. I would never 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:01.600 do it like that to my friends. He goes, well, 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:04.040 maybe you blacked out, you know, and you shot them. 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:05.120 You didn't even realize it. 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:08.159 And at that moment, Jesse goes, well, man, you know, 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:09.760 why would my friend say I shot them if I 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.760 didn't shook them. Maybe I did do it, And he 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:16.600 put his head down on the table and just crying uncontrollably. 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:19.880 Had it not been for his mom that stepped in, 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:24.480 he says, he was almost ready to confess. So Jesse's like, 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:28.000