Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer. In Season one
Speaker 1: of False Confessions, we brought you the story of Daniel Viegas,
Speaker 1: a teenager from El Paso, Texas, who was coerced into
Speaker 1: giving a false confession to a double murder in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. One of the people who ultimately helped free
Speaker 1: Daniel started out as a complete stranger to him. It's
Speaker 1: a story of real heroism that proves anyone can have
Speaker 1: an impact when they put in the effort. Now, we're
Speaker 1: pleased to tell you that since his acquittal in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Daniel is living in that spirit. He's paying it forward,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Today he works with Proclaim Justice, an
Speaker 1: organization founded by Jason Baldwin, a member of the West
Speaker 1: Memphis III. Proclaimed Justice helps to free other innocent people
Speaker 1: across the country. Daniel also bravely shares his story on
Speaker 1: stage and on social media. He helps to raise awareness
Speaker 1: of this all too common miscarriage of justice. We need
Speaker 1: advocates like Daniel Vehegas and organizations like Proclaimed Justice to
Speaker 1: speak out against wrongful convictions, to tell the world that
Speaker 1: this really can happen to anyone. It's through their work
Speaker 1: that we can create a future where no innocent person
Speaker 1: ever spends another day in prison. Daniel, We thank you
Speaker 1: for your invaluable work. We're replaying this episode in your honor.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drusy. Today we're going to tell you
Speaker 1: about a case that shows just how much ordinary people
Speaker 1: can help the wrongly convicted find real justice, even when
Speaker 1: they start out as strangers. In today's case, an unexpected
Speaker 1: hero fought for years to turn tragedy into triumph, ending
Speaker 1: into one of the most dramatic courtroom exonerations I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Like so many of our cases at the Center on
Speaker 1: Wrongful Convictions, Steve first learned about Daniel Viegas through one
Speaker 1: of his infamous online searches. By this time, I actually
Speaker 1: had my own newsfeed, and so did our colleague Josh Tepfer.
Speaker 1: But Steve had his own reasons for being particularly excited
Speaker 1: about this case.
Speaker 2: So after all three of us read about a possible
Speaker 2: false confession case in Alpasso, it seemed like destiny for
Speaker 2: us to get involved in this case. You see, in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, Alpasso was host to one of
Speaker 2: the most important conferences in the history of false confessions
Speaker 2: that brought together many of the leading experts on the
Speaker 2: subject to the University of Texas.
Speaker 1: For people like us, this is basically the Olympics meets Coachella.
Speaker 2: Who was there? Well, Donald Connery, the author of Peter
Speaker 2: Riley's book, was there.
Speaker 1: Steve's talking about a book called Guilty Until Proven Innocent.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you that story in a later episode about
Speaker 1: a false confession from nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: And Geezley good Johnson, the famed Icelandic detective turned psychology
Speaker 2: professor at King's College of London.
Speaker 1: You might remember Geasley from our last episode. His scientific
Speaker 1: expertise helped exonerate Tana Pora in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Richard Offshe and Richard Leo and Saul Cassen, some of
Speaker 2: the leading experts in the United States on false confessions,
Speaker 2: were there.
Speaker 1: We're going to hear from Saul Cassen in another episode two.
Speaker 1: All of these guys are og experts in the world
Speaker 1: of false confessions. They're Steve's heroes and mine too. So
Speaker 1: if I've turned into a geek here, you know who
Speaker 1: to blame.
Speaker 2: This conference was a watershed moment in the history of
Speaker 2: false confessions and the idea of going back to El
Speaker 2: Paso to work on an actual false confession case, it
Speaker 2: just seemed like destiny to me.
Speaker 1: This story starts in El Paso, a border city in
Speaker 1: West Texas. Now. In the early nineteen nine El Casso
Speaker 1: was a different place than it is today. The crime
Speaker 1: rate was sky high. There was lots of gang activity.
Speaker 1: Street violence was a daily problem, and in some neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: shootings were regular occurrences. We start our story in the
Speaker 1: early morning hours of April tenth, nineteen ninety three. Good Friday.
Speaker 1: It's just after midnight, and four teenagers are walking home
Speaker 1: from a party and they find themselves in a rough neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Three of them, Manda Lazo, Juan Carlo's Medina, and Jesse Hernandez,
Speaker 1: were seventeen years old. The fourth, Bobby England, was eighteen.
Speaker 1: All of them were good kids, none of them were
Speaker 1: caught up in gangs or the street life. But they
Speaker 1: ran into trouble anyway. At the intersection of Electric Street
Speaker 1: and trans Mountain Road. That's where a maroon car with
Speaker 1: tinted windows rolls up behind them and starts following them. Slowly. Now,
Speaker 1: just as the four of them start to get scared,
Speaker 1: the car takes off. It speeds away, but a few
Speaker 1: minutes later it comes back, and this time the driver
Speaker 1: turns off the headline light. Words are shouted from the
Speaker 1: car in Spanish, possibly an insult keeputos, and then a
Speaker 1: series of shots ring out, one right after another. Wan
Speaker 1: and Jesse take off running as a matter of sheer instinct,
Speaker 1: and they think that their two friends are running away
Speaker 1: alongside them. But when jan and Jesse feel that they've
Speaker 1: run far enough that it's safe to slow down, they
Speaker 1: look around them and they don't see Mondo or Bobby
Speaker 1: with them at all. They take a deep breath, go
Speaker 1: back to the scene of the shooting, and they see
Speaker 1: police lights flashing. Bobby had been shot in the head
Speaker 1: and died in the street. Mondo had been shot in
Speaker 1: the stomach and the thigh. He made it one hundred
Speaker 1: yards to a house up the street, where he collapsed
Speaker 1: in the front yard and died as the residents frantically
Speaker 1: dialed nine one one. Now, the police found six shells
Speaker 1: from a twenty two caliber handgun littered on the street
Speaker 1: right where the car had pulled over, but That's about it.
Speaker 1: In terms of evidence. There were no fingerprints, no DNA,
Speaker 1: nothing forensic to help them solve this crime. It was
Speaker 1: going to have to come down to confessions.
Speaker 2: The Alpasso Police assigned one of the toughest cops on
Speaker 2: the force to the Good Friday shooting, an officer whose
Speaker 2: name we can't share, but an officer who is known
Speaker 2: as a closer.
Speaker 1: This guy is so tough he's even been featured on
Speaker 1: the TV show Cops.
Speaker 2: Now, what's a closer? A closer is someone who is
Speaker 2: very skilled at police interrogation. A good closer will gather
Speaker 2: evidence and then slowly reveal that evidence to a suspect,
Speaker 2: like peeling off layers of an onion, so that the
Speaker 2: suspect feels like he is nabbed, his goose is cooked,
Speaker 2: and that leads the suspect to confess. But there are
Speaker 2: other kinds of closers. Closers who use brutality and threats,
Speaker 2: and they don't only use these tactics with suspects. Their
Speaker 2: modus operandi is to use these tactics with suspects, with
Speaker 2: witnesses and sometimes with victims, and they get statements, but
Speaker 2: those statements are coerced and false statements. This detective, he
Speaker 2: was in that second camp exactly.
Speaker 1: So the closer is brought in right this detective from
Speaker 1: the al Paso Police Force. He begins investigating the case
Speaker 1: and pretty soon he comes across a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: boy named David Rongel. David is brought into the police
Speaker 1: station in theory about a completely different case. The police
Speaker 1: had told his mom that they needed to talk to
Speaker 1: Davide about some telephone harassment complaints, but when questioning actually began,
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with telephone harassment. Police began
Speaker 1: accusing Davide of committing the Good Friday shootings. Now later on,
Speaker 1: Davide said that the police falsely told him during this
Speaker 1: interrogation that his friends had implicated him, and Davide himself
Speaker 1: was threatened. He says he was told that he was
Speaker 1: a pretty white boy with green eyes who would be
Speaker 1: raped in prison if he didn't confess. This scares David
Speaker 1: and eventually he starts offering some information. He tells police
Speaker 1: that his sixteen year old cousin, Daniel Viegos, had been
Speaker 1: bragging about committing the Good Friday shootings, although he added
Speaker 1: that everyone was sure Daniel had been joking. You see,
Speaker 1: Daniel had a reputation as a jokester. He was the
Speaker 1: type of kid who always boasted about things he hadn't
Speaker 1: actually done. Daniel had bragged about owning a waterbed when
Speaker 1: he didn't. He'd bragged about owning a fancy stereo when
Speaker 1: he didn't. He'd even bragged about being descended from Italian
Speaker 1: Royalty when he definitely wasn't.
Speaker 2: I want to be descended from Italian Royalty.
Speaker 1: Me too, but that kind of lucks just ain't for us.
Speaker 1: Steve Anyway, when it came to the Good Friday shootings,
Speaker 1: Davide never believed Daniel to be serious, not even for
Speaker 1: a minute. It just wasn't him. Daniel had nothing serious
Speaker 1: like this in his background.
Speaker 2: Just like criminals have a modus operandi, many times closures
Speaker 2: or interrogators have a modus operandi, And in David's case
Speaker 2: we saw evidence that we later were able to demonstrate
Speaker 2: was a modus operandi. Almost all this interrogator would tell
Speaker 2: the suspect that his best friend or close associate had
Speaker 2: implicated him.
Speaker 1: In the crime, even if that's untrue, right.
Speaker 2: Always untrue, right. He would threaten the suspect with the
Speaker 2: death penalty, and he also told the suspects or the
Speaker 2: witnesses or the victims in this case, that they were
Speaker 2: going to go to prison and they were going to
Speaker 2: be raped. I mean, if you're a seventeen year old kid,
Speaker 2: and most of these witnesses were teenagers, and you're told
Speaker 2: that you're looking at going to an adult jail where
Speaker 2: you're going to be a rape victim, you're going to
Speaker 2: say just about anything you need to get out of
Speaker 2: that interrogation.
Speaker 1: It's terrifying stuff. And for David, the information he gave
Speaker 1: was that his cousin Daniel, had been joking about committing
Speaker 1: the Good Friday shooting. He never believed Daniel to be serious,
Speaker 1: but this information was enough for the police. They asked
Speaker 1: Devid to write out a statement describing what Daniel had said.
Speaker 1: David wrote that Daniel had bragged about using a shotgun
Speaker 1: to commit the shootings, but the detective had David take
Speaker 1: that part out and write the statement a second time
Speaker 1: without mentioning the type of weapon, because remember, the shells
Speaker 1: at the scene had come from a twenty two, not
Speaker 1: a shotgun. Even with the detective's edits, da Vide's statements
Speaker 1: still contained errors. He remembered his cousin bragging about being
Speaker 1: in a black car, not a maroon car, and Davide
Speaker 1: said that Daniel described firing a few shots, then getting
Speaker 1: out of the car, chasing Mondo Lazo to the house
Speaker 1: and shooting him again. There, that's just not how this
Speaker 1: crime happened. The shots were all clustered together, not spaced out,
Speaker 1: and there were no casings found near Mondo's body. But
Speaker 1: none of us mattered. Now, this was a statement that
Speaker 1: David regretted giving. It haunted him for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life that he'd implicated his own cousin in the
Speaker 1: Good Friday shootings, when even he didn't believe that Daniel
Speaker 1: was guilty. But it was a statement that he felt
Speaker 1: he had no choice but to give in light of
Speaker 1: the threats that he was encountering in the interrogation room.
Speaker 2: So there errors, errors in Da VID's statement, errors in
Speaker 2: the statements of other witnesses, errors that the true perpetrator
Speaker 2: would never have made. That's a red flag.
Speaker 1: It's a huge red flag. But it doesn't stop these police.
Speaker 1: Within hours, three more people are brought in for questioning.
Speaker 1: Late at night on April twenty first, two friends of
Speaker 1: Daniel's Marcos Gonzalez and Rodney Williams and Daniel himself. They're
Speaker 1: all questioned, and when Daniel is interrogated, he denies involvement.
Speaker 1: He tells the police he was babysitting that night with
Speaker 1: a group of friends and they were all watching White
Speaker 1: Men Can't Jump on TV.
Speaker 2: But here comes that modus operandi exactly.
Speaker 1: Daniel reports being told that if he didn't confess, he
Speaker 1: would be taken to the desert to get beaten, and
Speaker 1: then to jail where he would be raped by old
Speaker 1: men then sentenced to death by the electric chair. This
Speaker 1: is how they scared Daniel. This is how they began
Speaker 1: reducing him down to this feeling of hopelessness. But if
Speaker 1: he confessed, on the other hand, he was told that
Speaker 1: he would get leniency because he was just a minor.
Speaker 1: And after about five hours of interrogation, Daniel ends up
Speaker 1: signing a confession typed out by detectives. It's about three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2: He repeats the same errors that David Rangell had made,
Speaker 2: but he makes other mistakes too. First of all, what
Speaker 2: about the people in the car? Daniel says the driver
Speaker 2: was someone nicknamed Popeye, and that the front passenger was
Speaker 2: someone nicknamed Droopy, but the only known Popeye was incarcerated
Speaker 2: at the time, and the only known Droopy he was
Speaker 2: also on house arrest at the time. They could not
Speaker 2: possibly have been in the car the color of the car.
Speaker 2: Davide had said the car was black. Survivor Jesse Hernandez
Speaker 2: he had said the car was maroon. Daniel said they
Speaker 2: were in a white four door sedan at the time
Speaker 2: of the shooting. And finally, Daniel said that he had
Speaker 2: shot Bobby and Mondo in the back, but it was
Speaker 2: clear from the medical examiner's report that they had been
Speaker 2: shot from the front.
Speaker 1: The more and more you study Daniel's confession, the more
Speaker 1: you start to a pattern. The only facts about this
Speaker 1: murder that he was able to get right are facts
Speaker 1: that had been publicized about the Good Friday shootings in
Speaker 1: the local paper, the El Paso Times. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a pretty big red flag when you can only get
Speaker 1: facts right when you've read about them in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: And there's another red flag in this case too. As
Speaker 1: soon as the interrogator left the room, Daniel immediately recants
Speaker 1: to a juvenile probation officer. I didn't do it, he said,
Speaker 1: and he explained that he only confessed because the cops
Speaker 1: kept harassing him. He said, I was tired, so I
Speaker 1: told them what they wanted to hear.
Speaker 2: And the police and prosecutors rang with that confession, even
Speaker 2: though it was filled with many false facts.
Speaker 1: And errors, Despite the red flags in his confession, despite
Speaker 1: the recantation, despite the lack of any physical evidence connecting
Speaker 1: him to the crime, Daniel Viegas is arrested and charged
Speaker 1: with capital murder. He's sixteen years old.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Daniel didn't come from a family with a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but his parents managed somehow to scrape together ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for an attorney. Daniel Viegas's first trial took place
Speaker 1: in December nineteen ninety four. At that trial, David Wrangle testified,
Speaker 1: but he maintained that Daniel had been obviously kidding when
Speaker 1: he'd bragged about the shooting. Rodney and Marcos, Daniel's friends, well,
Speaker 1: they'd given police statements implicating Daniel when they'd been questioned,
Speaker 1: but on the witness stand they said their statements were
Speaker 1: false and had been obtained through threats of prison, rape
Speaker 1: and other similar threats, and Daniel's attorney called eighteen defense witnesses,
Speaker 1: including several alibi witnesses who testified that Daniel was with
Speaker 1: them babysitting and watching TV at the time of the shooting. Right,
Speaker 1: white men can't jump, And Daniel's attorney argued strenuously about
Speaker 1: all these inconsistencies in Daniel's confession, how it just didn't
Speaker 1: match the facts of this crime, how it showed every
Speaker 1: indication of being false.
Speaker 2: He even called other witnesses who called into question the
Speaker 2: credibility of this detective, former prosecutors who had sought indictments
Speaker 2: for perjury.
Speaker 1: The defense mounted a huge fight. They made every argument
Speaker 1: they could. The trial lasted a week and at the
Speaker 1: end there was a hung jury eleven to one, but.
Speaker 2: It was eleven to one in favor of a conviction,
Speaker 2: which gave the district attorney some thought that this would
Speaker 2: be an easier case to convict the next time around.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, about nine months later, again, Daniel veegis Is
Speaker 1: tried for the murders of Mondo and Bobby. But the
Speaker 1: second trial was different. You see, Daniel's parents had spent
Speaker 1: every penny they had on the first trial, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't afford a lawyer for the second trial. This time around,
Speaker 1: Daniel was represented by a court appointed lawyer, someone who
Speaker 1: had been assigned the case only two months before the
Speaker 1: trial began, and so when the second trial rolled around,
Speaker 1: that lawyer called only one defense witness, no alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: at all. He hardly pointed to any problems with Daniel's confession,
Speaker 1: even though he had a blueprint for success in the
Speaker 1: form of the first trial, and.
Speaker 2: He didn't make a full frontal attack on the integrity
Speaker 2: and credibility of the police officer who got these unreliable statements.
Speaker 1: And so on August twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five, Daniel
Speaker 1: Viegas was convicted of capital murder. Because he'd been a
Speaker 1: juvenile at the time of the offense, he wasn't sentenced
Speaker 1: to death. Instead, he was given two life terms in prison,
Speaker 1: one for Bobby and one for Mondo. Daniel was a
Speaker 1: teenager when he went to prison, and he might still
Speaker 1: be there today if it weren't for a man named
Speaker 1: John Mimbella.
Speaker 2: What a man now.
Speaker 1: John is the head of a successful El Paso construction firm,
Speaker 1: a firm that hired a lot of formerly incarcerated people.
Speaker 1: Because John is a guy who believes in second chances.
Speaker 1: One day in two thousand and five, John Mabella walks
Speaker 1: into an El Paso bank and he ends up asking
Speaker 1: his teller, a woman named Lucy, out on a date.
Speaker 3: Six months later, we're buried. Lucy had three daughters with
Speaker 3: Daniel's brother, so Daniel was actually Lucy's ex brother in law.
Speaker 3: I adopted Lucy's daughters two years later, and that's when
Speaker 3: I learned more about Daniel's case.
Speaker 1: Now, Lucy often brought the girls to see their grandparents,
Speaker 1: who were Daniel's parents, and eventually John started coming along too.
Speaker 1: That's where he started to hear stories about their son, Daniel,
Speaker 1: who was serving life in prison for two murders he
Speaker 1: didn't commit.
Speaker 3: At first. I thought, you know, any parents gonna not
Speaker 3: want to accept that their son might be a killer.
Speaker 3: I had a lot of faith also in our system.
Speaker 3: You know, I always believe that if a jury found
Speaker 3: you guilty, it must have been because they had plenty
Speaker 3: of evidence against you. So I figured, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: they must have all kinds of evidence on this kid
Speaker 3: if they sentenced him to life.
Speaker 2: John was skeptical, but he saw how heartbroken the grandparents were,
Speaker 2: and he agreed to read through the court papers. Before
Speaker 2: long he was dumb struck. There was no reliable evidence
Speaker 2: tying Daniel to these shootings at all. And then John
Speaker 2: Manbela became a man possessed.
Speaker 3: I've got a couple of friends and I asked him
Speaker 3: if they could set up a meeting with our DA
Speaker 3: because I saw some serious problems in Daniel's conviction. Our
Speaker 3: DA happened to be high Miss Parsa and he personally
Speaker 3: tried Daniel. So I figured, you know what, if there's
Speaker 3: some mistake, if there's some doubt, you know, he's going
Speaker 3: to reopen this case. So we had the meeting and
Speaker 3: I told him, I go, you know what, I think
Speaker 3: Daniel's innocent. Something's wrong here, you know, we need to
Speaker 3: look into it. This DA fought us a lot just
Speaker 3: to get evidentry heering. After he told me the hire
Speaker 3: Good of Bills lawyer and opened up the case again,
Speaker 3: he fought as to the new.
Speaker 1: Now this really fired John up. It didn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: He starts paying for billboards around El Paso that say
Speaker 1: free Daniel Viegas. He starts organizing rallies and protests outside
Speaker 1: the courthouse, and he hired a private investigator.
Speaker 3: He read the transcripts and he was dumbfounded too. He goes, John,
Speaker 3: I was a homicide detective for twenty years. This case
Speaker 3: would never have gone to trial. I would never have
Speaker 3: presented this to my DA if this is all I had. Well,
Speaker 3: he was very upset, and he goes, yes, John, I'll
Speaker 3: take your case.
Speaker 1: John nan Bella's invested in Daniel's innocence and the work
Speaker 1: he would go on to do ended up costing him
Speaker 1: personally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2: He's the patron saint of the Daniel Viegis case. You know.
Speaker 2: I went down to l Passo shortly after John had
Speaker 2: hired lawyers and investigators to reopen Daniel's case, and when
Speaker 2: I went into the courthouse, there were like fifteen or
Speaker 2: twenty people walking around with signs saying free Daniel Viegas.
Speaker 2: You know, false confessions happened. Justice for Daniel Viegas. John
Speaker 2: had organized a rally right in front of the courthouse,
Speaker 2: and on the street in front of the courthouse was
Speaker 2: a truck that had billboards on both sides of it
Speaker 2: that was driving around the courthouse. So when you walked
Speaker 2: into the courtroom in Alpaso. You were just blitched by
Speaker 2: this notion that an injustice had occurred and that it
Speaker 2: needed to be fixed.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and John brought his entire community into this case too.
Speaker 1: There was a manager who worked at his construction company
Speaker 1: who was a songwriter, and he ends up writing a corrido,
Speaker 1: a traditional Mexican ballad, about the wrongful conviction of Daniel Viegas.
Speaker 2: John was so proud of that song that one of
Speaker 2: the first things he did when I was down in
Speaker 2: El Paso was to play that for me. It's on
Speaker 2: YouTube now if you want to hear it.
Speaker 1: John and the private investigator, right, they want to really
Speaker 1: find out what happened, and one of the first people
Speaker 1: they go to speak to is Jesse Hernandez, one of
Speaker 1: the survivors of the shooting. Of course, Jesse was now
Speaker 1: a grown man, and John shows Jesse for the first
Speaker 1: time a copy of Daniel's confession.
Speaker 3: Jesse's like, John, this is not what happened. This does
Speaker 3: not look like a confession from somebody who was there
Speaker 3: who took this confession down. And I told him. At
Speaker 3: that point, Jesse turns pale and he's like John, that
Speaker 3: same detective almost had me confessing to that crime. He
Speaker 3: shows up that night and he tells me, we know
Speaker 3: you shot your friends. Your buddy Juan Medina, I just
Speaker 3: told us that you did it. And Jesse says that
Speaker 3: he was just hysterical. He's like, wait a minute, these
Speaker 3: are my friends. I love my friends. I would never
Speaker 3: do it like that to my friends. He goes, well,
Speaker 3: maybe you blacked out, you know, and you shot them.
Speaker 2: You didn't even realize it.
Speaker 3: And at that moment, Jesse goes, well, man, you know,
Speaker 3: why would my friend say I shot them if I
Speaker 3: didn't shook them. Maybe I did do it, And he
Speaker 3: put his head down on the table and just crying uncontrollably.
Speaker 3: Had it not been for his mom that stepped in,
Speaker 3: he says, he was almost ready to confess. So Jesse's like,
Speaker 3: the last thing I want is somebody innocence spending the
Speaker 3: rest of their life in prison. That could have been me.
Speaker 1: This was an absolute bolt from the blue when John
Speaker 1: heard this story from Jesse Hernandez, and it only motivated
Speaker 1: him to continue pounding the pavement. Eventually, John hires a
Speaker 1: highly skilled El Paso trial lawyer, a man named Joe Spencer.
Speaker 1: Now Joe files a state petition for a writ of
Speaker 1: habeas corpus, arguing, among other things, that Daniel's lawyer at
Speaker 1: his second trial had been ineffective for failing to call
Speaker 1: Daniel's alibi witnesses. There's a hearing plan it's going to
Speaker 1: happen in twenty eleven, and in the run up to
Speaker 1: that hearing, that's when Steve and I first heard about
Speaker 1: this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we heard about it through our news feeds. And
Speaker 2: this time what made this special is it wasn't just
Speaker 2: me who came in to the office the next day.
Speaker 2: It was me and Laura, and so did our third attorney,
Speaker 2: Josh Tepfra That all three of us got this news
Speaker 2: feed at the same time, a case of a juvenile
Speaker 2: who had confessed to a crime he didn't commit and
Speaker 2: who was trying to reopen his case through a new hearing.
Speaker 1: At the hearing, Jesse Hernandez takes the stand for the
Speaker 1: first time. Jesse testifies that Daniel's confession didn't match what
Speaker 1: actually happened to him and his friends. Daniel's alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: also testified, saying that they were with Daniel on the
Speaker 1: night of the crime, and remember doctor Richard Leo One
Speaker 1: of the experts from that falsecon profession conference in El
Speaker 1: Paso back in two thousand and six. He took the
Speaker 1: stand to and testified that Daniel's statement showed every sign
Speaker 1: of being false. There was even evidence introduced that two
Speaker 1: other known gang members had threatened Mando Lazo's life right
Speaker 1: before the shooting, and they'd bragged about killing him afterwards.
Speaker 1: When one of those two gang members was called to testify,
Speaker 1: he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination and
Speaker 1: refused to answer anything.
Speaker 2: And Joe Spencer also mounted again a direct attack on
Speaker 2: the integrity of the detective who had taken the false
Speaker 2: witness statements, who had almost gotten a false confession from
Speaker 2: the crime victim, and who had gotten the confession from Daniel.
Speaker 2: And one of the things he discovered, which is pretty incredible,
Speaker 2: was that one of the tactics that this detective had
Speaker 2: used in another case was that he would enter an
Speaker 2: interrogation room dressed in a smock. Now, why would anybody
Speaker 2: wear a smock? Well, he tried to mislead the suspect
Speaker 2: into thinking that they were speaking to a medical person,
Speaker 2: a doctor, unbelievable, instead of a police officer. And when
Speaker 2: the judge heard that evidence, his eyes rolled back into his.
Speaker 1: Head, and eventually we had an opportunity to file an
Speaker 1: amicus brief about the unreliability of Daniel's confession and add
Speaker 1: that to everything that Joe Spencer was already doing in
Speaker 1: the courtroom, and we emphasized how vulnerable a teenager like
Speaker 1: Daniel would have been to making a false confession. The
Speaker 1: hearing concluded, and then we waited. The judge took nine
Speaker 1: months to reach a decision, but on August seventeenth, twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: Judge Sam Madrano recommended that Daniel Viegues receive a new trial.
Speaker 1: Judge Modrano concluded that Daniel's trial lawyer had provided ineffective
Speaker 1: assistance by failing to investigate or introduce evidence of the
Speaker 1: unreliability of Daniel's confession. Now, Judge Modrano's decision was a
Speaker 1: fabulous victory, but it was only a recommendation. It had
Speaker 1: to be adopted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Speaker 1: It was at that point that we joined the team
Speaker 1: to craft a presentation to that court that we hoped
Speaker 1: it would accept. As that appeal process is ongoing, Daniel's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Joe Spencer, asked Judge Madrano to free Daniel on bond
Speaker 1: let him go home. As the appeal process dragged on,
Speaker 1: and on January fourteenth, twenty fourteen, after nearly two decades
Speaker 1: in prison, Daniel was released on bond, straight into the
Speaker 1: arms of John Mambella, who drove him home in a
Speaker 1: brand new, shiny red convertible.
Speaker 2: It was almost like a chick or tape parade. Daniel
Speaker 2: was free.
Speaker 1: He got started living right away. As soon as he
Speaker 1: was released. He got married to a woman named Amanda,
Speaker 1: whom he'd met when he was behind bars, and in
Speaker 1: short order they had two beautiful children. But even though
Speaker 1: Daniel was walking out of the prison into the arms
Speaker 1: of a crowd of supporters, that could have all been
Speaker 1: taken away from him.
Speaker 2: And the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas is a
Speaker 2: court that has a reputation of being hostile to defendant's claims,
Speaker 2: especially claims regarding their actual innocence, So it was anything
Speaker 2: but a sure thing that Judge Medrano's decision would be affirmed.
Speaker 1: Long story short, the High Court affirms Judge Madrano's ruling. Yes,
Speaker 1: Daniel Viegs deserves another trial and a chance to prove
Speaker 1: his innocence. But the DA didn't get around to the
Speaker 1: new trial until twenty eighteen. So for four years Daniel's
Speaker 1: living with a sword hanging over his head. If he
Speaker 1: goes to trial and loses, he'll be back in prison
Speaker 1: for life. This is enormously stressful. The months and years
Speaker 1: are ticking by. Daniel's starting a family. He's working at
Speaker 1: John Manbella's construction company, tasting freedom and cherishing it. What
Speaker 1: does the DA do? He asks Daniel to enter an
Speaker 1: Alfred plea stay free as long as you plead guilty.
Speaker 2: It's such a tempting offer, especially to somebody who was
Speaker 2: locked up for a crime they didn't commit as a
Speaker 2: teenager and had to spend two decades or more in
Speaker 2: prison suffering under the weight of that wrongful conviction. But
Speaker 2: now Daniel's got other people. He has to think about,
Speaker 2: his wife and their children.
Speaker 1: Daniel considered the Alfred Plea option seriously because it meant
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't have to go back to trial. You
Speaker 1: would be a convicted murderer, but at least he would
Speaker 1: have his freedom. Of course, he was tempted to put
Speaker 1: the whole thing behind him, But Daniel lived in El Paso, Texas,
Speaker 1: and El Paso had become home to a small community
Speaker 1: of wrongly convicted individuals. Among that community was a man
Speaker 1: named Jason Baldwin. Now that's a name that true crime
Speaker 1: junkies might recognize because Jason Baldwin was a member of
Speaker 1: the West Memphis III, a group of three teenagers from
Speaker 1: Arkansas who had been a hues of the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three killings of three eight year old boys. One of them,
Speaker 1: Jesse miss Kelly, had falsely confessed and the three of
Speaker 1: them were convicted, two sentenced to life in prison, and
Speaker 1: the third, Damien Eccles, sent a death row in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: They fought their case for seventeen years. Steve and I
Speaker 1: were fortunate enough to join Damien Eckles' legal team at
Speaker 1: the very end, and they were freed only when the
Speaker 1: State of Arkansas made them an offer. All three of
Speaker 1: you enter, Alfred, please say you're guilty of these crimes,
Speaker 1: and then we'll let you out. Now this is an
Speaker 1: easier decision when it came to Damien, he was on
Speaker 1: death row, but Jason, who had been sentenced to life
Speaker 1: in prison, wrestled with it. He didn't want to admit
Speaker 1: to a crime. He didn't commit even to secure his
Speaker 1: own freedom. Ultimately, he chose to accept the Alfred plea
Speaker 1: to help save Damien's life.
Speaker 2: One of the consequences of entering an Alford plea is
Speaker 2: that you can't get compensated through state compensation statutes. The
Speaker 2: Alfred plea is considered a plea of guilty, and that
Speaker 2: disqualifies you from recovering any compensation.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors dangle freedom so long as they can secure guilty
Speaker 1: please in return and prevent themselves from being sued down
Speaker 1: the road. It's a tool of injustice that happens way
Speaker 1: too often. It was used in the Robert Davis case,
Speaker 1: it was used in the West Memphis three case, and
Speaker 1: it almost worked on Daniel Viegas. You see, Jason Baldwin
Speaker 1: had moved from Arkansas to Texas, where he became involved
Speaker 1: in a wrongful conviction advocacy organization called Proclaim Justice and
Speaker 1: joined John Manbela's fight to free Daniel Viegas. Jason Baldwin
Speaker 1: became one of his closest friends and confidants. As Daniel
Speaker 1: wade whether to accept that Alfred play.
Speaker 3: Daniel told me, Johnny goes, if I take this deal,
Speaker 3: all this work that you did is for nothing. So
Speaker 3: we called Jason Bodwin for his advice, and he said,
Speaker 3: let's talk about it before you decide anything. And he
Speaker 3: tells Daniel, Noah, I can't tell you what to do.
Speaker 3: You have a family. But in my case, you know
Speaker 3: there's no way that I would do it again. It
Speaker 3: bothers me every day of my life. So just think
Speaker 3: hard about this because it could bother you the rest
Speaker 3: of your life too.
Speaker 1: And with Jason Baldwyn's counseling and support, Daniel Viegas found
Speaker 1: his courage and turned down that unjust Alfred plea offer.
Speaker 1: He decided to go to trial.
Speaker 2: The stakes were so high at this trial. Daniel had
Speaker 2: tasted freedom, he was starting to live the kind of
Speaker 2: life he had always dreamed of. But here he was
Speaker 2: back in that court, a place where the last time
Speaker 2: had ended in a conviction.
Speaker 1: Now this trial was very different because this time Daniel's
Speaker 1: team of lawyers we succeeded in getting his confession thrown
Speaker 1: out as involunteer and coerced and without that confession there
Speaker 1: is precious little evidence to go on. The state presented
Speaker 1: a case to the jury. The jury deliberated and in
Speaker 1: October of twenty eighteen, a verdict came out.
Speaker 2: The State of Texas versus Daniel Viegus.
Speaker 1: Now, this is one of the highest profile cases in
Speaker 1: the history of El Paso at this point, and the
Speaker 1: courtroom is packed with supporters of Daniel Viegas. Jason Baldwin
Speaker 1: of the West Memphis three is there, the local wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction advocacy organization Proclaimed Justice is there, and John and
Speaker 1: Lucy Membella sitting in the front row right behind Daniel
Speaker 1: and his lawyers. They are there.
Speaker 2: And when the judge asks Daniel to stand up for
Speaker 2: the verdict, his knees buckle. He almost collapses. He has
Speaker 2: to hear whether this beautiful life that he has started
Speaker 2: reconstructing is going to continue, where is it going to end?
Speaker 1: Daniel's lawyers actually have to help him stand up, and
Speaker 1: he was able to stand just long enough to hear
Speaker 1: the verdict.
Speaker 2: We the jury finally defended Daniel viegis not guilty of friend.
Speaker 1: Not guilty.
Speaker 2: And the courtland rupts in a sound of both cheers
Speaker 2: and incredible relief.
Speaker 1: And then he collapsed under the weight of a lifetime's
Speaker 1: worth of fighting. He had finally been exonerated. It was over.
Speaker 3: It was a feeling that I don't think I'm ever
Speaker 3: going to feel again in my life.
Speaker 4: Hey, Daniel, is that you? Yeah? Tell me about your kids?
Speaker 4: How many kids you got? Now? There's four all together.
Speaker 4: The man of my wife, to me short was pregnant.
Speaker 4: I remember, I told him, man, I'm told to be
Speaker 4: a dead and right at that time, my daughter got
Speaker 4: pregnant too, and I was like, oh man, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty young to be a grandfather.
Speaker 1: What do you tell your kids about what happened to you?
Speaker 4: The two little one of the are too small to
Speaker 4: know about it. They don't understand yet. Like I love
Speaker 4: when they tell me life ain't fair. I tell him,
Speaker 4: tell me about the nineteen years in print, and tell
Speaker 4: me how life ran fair. Preenia Room, I know that
Speaker 4: the Wrongful Conviction podcast played an important role in your
Speaker 4: case too. Yes, Amanda, she's really into the Wrongful Conviction community, right,
Speaker 4: She's like the voted fans to Jason Plant. So when
Speaker 4: they came in with that offer flee, you know, they
Speaker 4: were just telling me by signing the sea the paper,
Speaker 4: that case is closed. So I was going to sign
Speaker 4: it almost and that's when Amanda jumped in and shea's like, no, no,
Speaker 4: I know all about this Alpha Please. You know Jason
Speaker 4: Plant told me about this. She educated me on that,
Speaker 4: and then that's when we decided not to take that
Speaker 4: pre deal.
Speaker 2: Daniel, You're an incredible human being. To see you as
Speaker 2: a free man at Innocence Network conferences, at events for
Speaker 2: proclaimed you justice, it makes my heart seek.
Speaker 1: You're a symbol of endurance. It's been our honor to
Speaker 1: know you and to tell your story today. Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: our executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and
Speaker 1: Pope and additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing and for
Speaker 1: wrangling and writing like a mad woman. Our music was
Speaker 1: composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: or Twitter at Laura Nywriter, and.
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongfulconviction podcast dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to follow the show on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction on Facebook, Get Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction