Speaker 1: On March eighth, nineteen ninety eight, seventeen year old Oscar
Speaker 1: Eagle was shot in the leg in Los Angeles' Peico
Speaker 1: Union neighborhood. Six days later, sixteen year old Benjamin Eureus
Speaker 1: was also shot, a non fatal wound that police believed
Speaker 1: was in retaliation for Oscar's shooting. Soon police arrested Oscar Eagle,
Speaker 1: but the charges were dropped when Eureus failed to appear
Speaker 1: in court. Then something changed. Eureas suddenly became confident that
Speaker 1: Oscar was the shooter, even though he'd always said the
Speaker 1: gunman had run to and from the car. But with
Speaker 1: Oscar's debilitating leg injury, could he really have done that?
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. The Fox Foundation is proud to
Speaker 1: support this episode of wrongful conviction and the work of
Speaker 1: After Innocence, a nonprofit that helps hundreds of people nationwide
Speaker 1: rebuild their lives after wrongful incarceration. Each year, innocent people
Speaker 1: are released after spending years behind bars for crimes they
Speaker 1: didn't commit. Nearly all of them leave prison with nothing
Speaker 1: more than the clothes on their backs, with no help
Speaker 1: or compensation from the state, as they face the steep
Speaker 1: challenges of rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment. After Innocence
Speaker 1: is changing that After Innocence helps exoneries get and make
Speaker 1: good use of essential services like health care, dental care,
Speaker 1: mental health support, legal aid, financial counseling, and more. Since
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, they've brought that help to more than eight
Speaker 1: hundred exoneries across forty six states, working tirelessly to ensure
Speaker 1: that no one released after wrongful incarceration is left behind.
Speaker 1: Learn more at After Dash Innocence Ditte and join After
Speaker 1: Innocence to support exoneries as they rebuild their lives. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Lauren Bright Pacheco,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad to be back for another season.
Speaker 1: And we're starting off in Los Angeles in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, a time to find by gang hysteria and
Speaker 1: the sweeping mass incarceration that followed. Joining me today is
Speaker 1: someone who lived through it as a kid, Oscar Eagle.
Speaker 1: Oscar welcome, thank you, and to help tell the story.
Speaker 1: His attorney from California Innocence Advocates, Megan Bacha welcome, thank you.
Speaker 1: So Oscar grew up in the eighties and the nineties
Speaker 1: in the Peico Union area of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: I had two loving parents, had a sister that lived
Speaker 2: with me, and I had a brother that was in
Speaker 2: and out of juvenile hall camp. And she was a
Speaker 2: lot older than me. It was about ten years older
Speaker 2: than me. Yeah, so the family life was comfortable. My
Speaker 2: dad after work, he came straight home and we wait
Speaker 2: at the dinner table in the living room. It was
Speaker 2: a good time growing up in the house. But outside
Speaker 2: of my house was the projects in the Pickle Union.
Speaker 1: Which was the main hangout for a gang called the
Speaker 1: Burlington Locos.
Speaker 2: So I wouldn't stand growing up looking out my window
Speaker 2: watching them, you know, riding on the walls. And I
Speaker 2: love art, you know, I love drawing, and probably like
Speaker 2: ten years old, I got into graffiti that had to
Speaker 2: continued when I got involved with gangs.
Speaker 1: Oscar's graffiti tag was clown and graffiti really was the
Speaker 1: extent of his criminal activity.
Speaker 2: I believe that drew a lot of attention to me.
Speaker 2: Growing up in Pickle Union, I was always getting haarressed
Speaker 2: by these cops. At one time when I was younger,
Speaker 2: the LPD pulled probably about five of us on in
Speaker 2: front of my house and after the cops left. All
Speaker 2: my friends they started to leave. I went back to
Speaker 2: my house, but in front of how some other kids
Speaker 2: that lived in the neighborhood that were not gang members,
Speaker 2: they gather up like about four or five Christmas trees
Speaker 2: and they put it on fire, and the police showed up.
Speaker 2: They took a guest and said, oh, well, Oscar was
Speaker 2: just hanging out in front of the house right here.
Speaker 2: They arrested me and were saying that they watched me
Speaker 2: from across the street burning the Christmas trees.
Speaker 1: So this was the first time that Oscar's alleged gang
Speaker 1: affiliation led to false charges against him. In Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: at the time, there was a specialized unit called CRASH,
Speaker 1: short for Community Resources against Street Hoodlums. But as we've
Speaker 1: seen in other cities with heavy gang policing, when a
Speaker 1: neighborhood is associated with a gang, an alleged member of
Speaker 1: the area's gang will usually be targeted for any crime
Speaker 1: that occurs in the area, innocent or not. And most
Speaker 1: gang members aren't involved in violent crime at all, like
Speaker 1: graffiti artists, but they are painted with the same bra
Speaker 1: criminal brush.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely right.
Speaker 2: You know, if every game member was violent, man, it
Speaker 2: would be super chaotic out there, but it's only a
Speaker 2: small percentage of every gang that has these type of
Speaker 2: individuals that are violent, like social paths or whatever you know.
Speaker 1: All So, while on probation, Oscar was targeted again while
Speaker 1: at his friend Victor's house. There was a party going
Speaker 1: on outside. When LAPD raided the.
Speaker 2: Location, an officer put the flash light on me and
Speaker 2: I heard him say to another officer that clown is
Speaker 2: right here. That's what they used to call me, clown.
Speaker 2: And they cut me up and they told me that
Speaker 2: I was being arrested for violating my probation for hanging
Speaker 2: around with Victor, who is a bursting game member. So
Speaker 2: they cut me up. They threw me in that cop car.
Speaker 2: As soon as we left eighteen and Union. We headed
Speaker 2: down towards Venice and Union, and a guy named one
Speaker 2: Carlos and Martha Torres acrossing the street, and one Carlos
Speaker 2: was a game member from Drifters them up. They opened
Speaker 2: up the truck of the car and they pulled something
Speaker 2: out of the car, but there was a bag of something.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was marijuana or what, but
Speaker 2: they say you're gonna get arrested. For this, you know,
Speaker 2: you said that shit in minds and they're like, get.
Speaker 3: In the car.
Speaker 2: And there was two eighty street Game members crossing the street.
Speaker 2: They pulled up on them, chased them on foot. They
Speaker 2: grabbed a hold of a guy named Weto and another
Speaker 2: guy out of what the other guy's name was, and
Speaker 2: they threw them in the car. Car with us went
Speaker 2: to the police station. There was a lot of activity
Speaker 2: going on that day. It was a lot of cops everywhere.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of people in there. They were
Speaker 2: interested on the guy from at street, the guy named Wetto,
Speaker 2: and they started talking to him and they were bragging
Speaker 2: about they killed somebody that looked just like him.
Speaker 1: And then Crash Unit Officer Nino Durden threatened Oscar with
Speaker 1: firearm charges.
Speaker 2: Officer Durden, he threw the mem in a room and
Speaker 2: started to tell me that I was gonna go down
Speaker 2: for some guns and that IU. I guess he wanted
Speaker 2: me to admit the guns or something like that. And
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm gonna do that. Man like man,
Speaker 2: you me for violation probation, Just take me in and ready,
Speaker 2: and I went to juvenile hall. Actually got convicted for
Speaker 2: the gut charge. I got out of camp around October
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety seven. I believe I was trying to
Speaker 2: be more mature at that time. I kept my routine up, exercising,
Speaker 2: going to school, going to my community service. And on
Speaker 2: March eighth, it was my niece's birthday. We celebrated her
Speaker 2: birthday at my house. After that party, Bortom said it
Speaker 2: and I said, you know.
Speaker 3: What I'm gonna. I'm gonna go to Peak Co Union.
Speaker 2: I took the bus to Pickle Union and I started
Speaker 2: walking looking for the guys, and I couldn't find nobody
Speaker 2: from the neighborhood. So I started walking towards the bus
Speaker 2: stop on Pickle and Union to go home in Easter Day.
Speaker 2: And so when I was walking over there, a car
Speaker 2: pulled up and started shooting at me and immediately hit
Speaker 2: me in my calf.
Speaker 1: Oscar turned eighteen two days after he was shot, and
Speaker 1: the wound made it very difficult for him to walk,
Speaker 1: let alone run, which became a very important fact on
Speaker 1: March fourteenth, when a sixteen year old kid named Benjamin
Speaker 1: Urius was also shot.
Speaker 4: So Arias was a sixteen year old kid who was
Speaker 4: just walking in the Pico Union neighborhood of Los Angeles
Speaker 4: and a car pulled up. He says that somebody jumped
Speaker 4: out of the back seat yelled Burlington Locals, which is
Speaker 4: the name of the local gang and one that Oscar
Speaker 4: was associated with. He said that the shooter took off running,
Speaker 4: which is important, chased after Arias. Arias went to hide
Speaker 4: under a nearby vehicle. Ultimately, several shots went off and
Speaker 4: one grazed Arisa's chest, in another his leg, and then
Speaker 4: the shooter ran back to the car. Again important considering
Speaker 4: that Oscar was incapable of running.
Speaker 1: Because you're on crutches, right it went into your calf.
Speaker 1: The bullet was still lodged there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was still lodge right there.
Speaker 4: And Arias originally told responding officers that the shooter was
Speaker 4: wearing shorts. Oscar also had a drain on his legs
Speaker 4: where the blood was draining out from the bullet wound,
Speaker 4: and Rhea said that he didn't notice anything on the
Speaker 4: shooter's leg on the strain would have been very visible.
Speaker 1: But despite these disqualifying elements, they contacted Oscar under the
Speaker 1: auspices of his own debilitating shooting.
Speaker 2: March fifteen, I get a call from Detective Caserras. And
Speaker 2: I told you guys already that I didn't see who
Speaker 2: shot me. I don't have nothing else to say to
Speaker 2: you guys. He goes, well, we need to close that
Speaker 2: case up and we need you to pretty much like
Speaker 2: sign off on it or something like that. And then
Speaker 2: on March seventeen, he showed up right away. He looked
Speaker 2: at my leg and seeing that I was on crutches,
Speaker 2: and he's like, hey, you can't walk, and I go, nah,
Speaker 2: could you put your foot to the floor And I
Speaker 2: said nah, my calf locked and I wasn't able to
Speaker 2: stretch my leg or nothing. He told me, hey, you
Speaker 2: know Junior from at Street and I was like no,
Speaker 2: and he goes, well, he knows you.
Speaker 1: The guy he's calling Junior is Benjamin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yes, And I was like, maybe I do
Speaker 3: know him. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I grew up right there in people in Union. Maybe
Speaker 2: I don't know him personally. Maybe we see each other around.
Speaker 2: So he's like, well, he's saying that you shot up.
Speaker 2: I go, don't know what it's talking about. So he
Speaker 2: was like, I don't think he did, because I'm looking
Speaker 2: at your leg and I don't think you're capable of
Speaker 2: doing this crime.
Speaker 1: It later became clear that neither did the victim, Benjamin Urias,
Speaker 1: but Oscar was affiliated with the Burlington Locos, so they
Speaker 1: brought him in anyway, and he told them exactly where
Speaker 1: he was during the shooting at the hospital with his
Speaker 1: friend Becky Chavez, whose friend Susie had gone into an
Speaker 1: early and false labor.
Speaker 2: I went to the hospital like all day. I remember
Speaker 2: going back and forth to drink water. I remember the
Speaker 2: camera being right above the water, found it and then
Speaker 2: the security I remember him being a short black officer,
Speaker 2: So I was like, go talk to that security guard,
Speaker 2: go get the camera right there, and didn't do none
Speaker 2: of that. They called Becky Chavis, who I was with
Speaker 2: that night, so she got down there. They put Becky
Speaker 2: in a room, they questioned her, and she just verified
Speaker 2: the same thing that I told him, and they came
Speaker 2: out and they put me in front of her and
Speaker 2: they asked me, you better say you did it, because
Speaker 2: if not, Becky, job is going to go down for
Speaker 2: this tool. And I was like, man, why are you
Speaker 2: doing this to us? She told me like, don't listen
Speaker 2: to these cops, you know. So I told Becky, Becky, sorry,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to get arrested too, because you know
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't do this crime.
Speaker 3: And then I've seen her walk out, and then.
Speaker 2: It took me a week or two to get a
Speaker 2: public defender to come visit me at the Ali County.
Speaker 2: It's one of the first things I told him, Man,
Speaker 2: go get the footage from the hospital. And my first
Speaker 2: two courts, I was going in crutches. And then on
Speaker 2: the third court day the case got.
Speaker 1: Dismissed because Junior didn't show up.
Speaker 3: He didn't show up.
Speaker 1: In order to indict Oscar again, they were gonna need
Speaker 1: the victims cooperation. But there's a record of this new
Speaker 1: interaction with ben Urius which appears to shed light on
Speaker 1: why he hadn't shown up to the prior court proceedings
Speaker 1: and also why he was now open to suggestion.
Speaker 4: So we don't have a recording of the first lineup,
Speaker 4: and we don't know precisely what happened there, but it's
Speaker 4: really clear from the recording of the second lineup that
Speaker 4: police definitely pushed Areas into selecting Oscar.
Speaker 1: Ureus also repeatedly asked if they were going to help
Speaker 1: him on his other case, and six times the new detectives,
Speaker 1: Muriel and Wiseman, assured him they'd get him on home
Speaker 1: confinement instead of juvenile camp. Interestingly, these new detectives were
Speaker 1: from the homicide unit, even though this wasn't a homicide.
Speaker 1: They asked Ureus if he knew his shooter's name, and
Speaker 1: Urreus said, quote, they said, Oscar Eagle. Then he's shown
Speaker 1: a lineup with Oscar in position four. Urreus denied recognizing
Speaker 1: his shooter. Detective Muriel urged him, quote, take a closer
Speaker 1: look at it there. Again, Urius didn't make an identification silence.
Speaker 1: Then Uria says, quote looks sort of looks. Murl cut
Speaker 1: him off, quote like number four.
Speaker 4: And then Oria says the number that they had pointed
Speaker 4: to that the police pointed to in the lineup. I
Speaker 4: don't know why they were so focused on Oscar or
Speaker 4: why police didn't bother investigating other alternative suspects, but it
Speaker 4: seems that once they had their eyes set on Oscar,
Speaker 4: they just weren't going to take anything else other than Oscar.
Speaker 1: So, you know, just to show how crazy this was
Speaker 1: at the time of your trial, forget about Becky, They've
Speaker 1: pulled in another woman randomly a young woman named Martha
Speaker 1: Torres who's twenty years old, just happened to be from
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. And now they're claiming that she was driving
Speaker 1: the car that you were in the night Junior was shot.
Speaker 1: And now they twisted so that the motive is that
Speaker 1: you're shooting Junior in retaliation for you being shot, and
Speaker 1: that Torres is motivated by the fact that her brother
Speaker 1: was murdered by a member of the same rival gang,
Speaker 1: and none of it's true.
Speaker 2: And her brother was not even a Births and Game member.
Speaker 2: Her brother was from another different gang called Drifters, but
Speaker 2: they made it seem like he was from a neighborhood too,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh man, this guy's not even
Speaker 2: from my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And then the saddest part is she, like you, is
Speaker 1: completely innocent, but they talk her into taking a plea
Speaker 1: deal for five years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Miss Torres, I think made the right decision. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: even though she was innocent, because she was facing life
Speaker 4: as well, I mean, she could have ended up doing
Speaker 4: more than twenty six years like Oscar as well. So
Speaker 4: she began trial with Oscar. Part Way through the beginning
Speaker 4: of trial, she separately took a plea deal, and the
Speaker 4: judge had to instruct the jury that they weren't supposed
Speaker 4: to draw any conclusions. By Miss Torres no longer being
Speaker 4: part of Oscar's trial. You know, Miss Torres still maintains
Speaker 4: her innocence and there was no evidence against her. She
Speaker 4: had never driven, she didn't have a driver's license, she
Speaker 4: didn't know how to drive. Her friend's father happened to
Speaker 4: own a vehicle that looked similar to the one Areas described.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: So Martha Torres did the math and did not like
Speaker 1: her odds. But Oscar's appointed attorney, Patrick Lake, gave him confidence.
Speaker 2: He started to tell me that he talked to my alibis,
Speaker 2: he talked to my doctor. He said that they all
Speaker 2: confirm and verify my story and that we're good and
Speaker 2: we got a strong case right here. And also the
Speaker 2: joys that we're going to be in front of is
Speaker 2: a band from school or something like that.
Speaker 1: But it seems like Patrick Lake had given Oscar false confidence.
Speaker 4: So a trial against Oscar. There was the test money
Speaker 4: of Benjamin Arias, and by the time of trial he
Speaker 4: was much more confident that it was Oscar. He wasn't
Speaker 4: cross examined thoroughly. It seems that maybe Oscar's defense council
Speaker 4: hadn't listened to the audio recorded police interview, because if
Speaker 4: he had, then it's inexplicable why he wouldn't have cross
Speaker 4: examined him on the inconsistencies that Rias didn't originally pick
Speaker 4: out Oscar, that the police directed him to pick out Oscar.
Speaker 4: In fact, they said, how about this one.
Speaker 2: He's the quiet, he's the quiet, and I was like,
Speaker 2: the hell, Like, you're not going to speak for me.
Speaker 2: And then I told him he is the doctor going
Speaker 2: to show up and he goes, oh, he'll be here tomorrow.
Speaker 4: There was that there was testimony from police officers, including
Speaker 4: you know, gang investigators, which is scary for the jury
Speaker 4: to hear about gang members in their community.
Speaker 3: And I had all two tattoos.
Speaker 2: So when I was in trout, they had like poster
Speaker 2: size pictures and that's deftly part of the stand and
Speaker 2: starts saying, oh, these are old English type letters, and
Speaker 2: you know, she's start telling professional opinion. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is they're just trying to just any little things,
Speaker 2: just to.
Speaker 1: Just anything they could do to make you look.
Speaker 2: Bad, just look like an animal. And Patrick Lake, he
Speaker 2: doesn't talk again, and I'm like, hey, man, what's going on?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: Go I'm preparing. I'm preparing. So I told me what's
Speaker 3: up with the doctors? He's showing up?
Speaker 2: And he said, yeah, he'll be here tomorrow and said,
Speaker 2: you told me that yesterday. Every day he kept telling
Speaker 2: me that, and the next thing know, the cases almost
Speaker 2: over with and and I'm like, hey, where's the doctor
Speaker 2: at Oh, he's not going to show up.
Speaker 1: It sounds like your representation didn't prepare at all. You
Speaker 1: only had one witness called in your defense, and that
Speaker 1: was Becky. I'm gonna throw it to you, Megan. When
Speaker 1: you looked into the witnesses that Patrick Lake claimed to
Speaker 1: have contacted for his defense, what did you find.
Speaker 4: Well, we spoke to the friend that had false labor
Speaker 4: that day that Oscar went to go see in the hospital,
Speaker 4: and she absolutely remembered this day she was in the
Speaker 4: hospital for false flabor, So that's documented. She said Patrick
Speaker 4: Lake had never interviewed her or her mother, and when
Speaker 4: Patrick Lake said that he left a message on their
Speaker 4: answering machine, she says they didn't even have an answering
Speaker 4: machine back then. That she absolutely would have appeared at
Speaker 4: trial had she been called to do so, but she
Speaker 4: wasn't even interviewed. Quite simply, he didn't interview witnesses. He
Speaker 4: didn't call these witnesses that were so crucial. And then
Speaker 4: in fact, it's very apparent that he lied to the
Speaker 4: court about having interviewed these witnesses. You know, he stood up,
Speaker 4: he looked around court and said, I don't see them here.
Speaker 4: I don't know why they're not here to testify. Well,
Speaker 4: because he hadn't bothered to even talk to them.
Speaker 1: And then at one point I think the judge said,
Speaker 1: we'll give you twenty more minutes.
Speaker 4: So even when the judge gave an additional twenty minutes,
Speaker 4: even if Patrick had called, then she would have been
Speaker 4: completely unprepared. She probably in LA. She wouldn't even be
Speaker 4: able to get to the courthouse in that amount of time.
Speaker 2: My mom passed me a NOE that morning. She said,
Speaker 2: fire your lawyer, like this guy do nothing for you.
Speaker 2: He didn't even contact your alibies. I raised my hand
Speaker 2: and the judge was like, what are you doing? And
Speaker 2: I said, man, I want to fire this guy. And
Speaker 2: he's like, well, hold on, hold on, and he took
Speaker 2: everybody out the court. Room, and he said, you're doing
Speaker 2: a Marston motion or something like that, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I'll go I don't know what that is. I just
Speaker 2: want to fire this guy because he hasn't been representing me.
Speaker 2: And he goes, Oh, you just don't like the way
Speaker 2: your trial's going, and so you just want to get
Speaker 2: rid of your lawyer. He goes, it doesn't work that way,
Speaker 2: you know, sit back down. So I was like, man,
Speaker 2: let me take the stand in. I was like, man,
Speaker 2: at least let me show the jurors because they're going
Speaker 2: to see the whole of my leg and they're going
Speaker 2: to be like, oh, man, this guy wasn't able to
Speaker 2: do this crime. As soon as I got up on
Speaker 2: that stand, I just felt attacked by the DA and
Speaker 2: then next thing you know, it was go sit back down.
Speaker 2: So I turned around and told the judge, Hey, Judge,
Speaker 2: I show my leg to the jurors.
Speaker 3: He said, now go back and sit down.
Speaker 4: Patrick Lake could have asked to show that to the jury,
Speaker 4: but Oscar, as the witness at that time, can't just
Speaker 4: turn around and ask to judge, hey, let me show
Speaker 4: my leg.
Speaker 1: And then a detective takes a stand. He holds up
Speaker 1: two pictures. One is you holding a gun, no context
Speaker 1: of where or when it was taken. The other one
Speaker 1: is you standing next to somebody holding a gun. And
Speaker 1: on March twelfth, nineteen ninety nine, you were convicted of
Speaker 1: attempted first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison
Speaker 1: plus twenty five years.
Speaker 2: At that moment, you know, I was stoic and shocked.
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to react, but I.
Speaker 3: Just remember my brother. She was right behind me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard her cry. When I heard her cry,
Speaker 2: I turned around. The judge was talking and I didn't
Speaker 2: hear nothing at all. I just just my brother. I
Speaker 2: was feeling double. She said, she was feeling you know,
Speaker 2: they're separating us for life. My mom I stopped drinking
Speaker 2: when I was probably about twelve thirteen years old.
Speaker 3: She made me a promise that she wasn't gonna drink
Speaker 3: no more. And after I.
Speaker 2: Got convicted, I started hearing that she was drinking and
Speaker 2: I was like, what the hell there? And I knew
Speaker 2: I knew it was it was because of.
Speaker 1: People, because of what was done to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You then ended up entering California's adult prison system as
Speaker 1: a teenager.
Speaker 2: I got there at nineteen years old. I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to sell it at that time. It was twenty
Speaker 2: four hour lockdown, sometimes going years and year's lockdown.
Speaker 3: It was a biling. It was riots.
Speaker 2: When I got there to Pelican Bay, there was a
Speaker 2: big riots and a fair way of two thousand and
Speaker 2: I ended up going to the ads say for that
Speaker 2: for sixteen months, and then I ended up in ire
Speaker 2: Was state prison.
Speaker 3: I found a good program right.
Speaker 2: There in a completed computer class, and I started having
Speaker 2: a border job.
Speaker 3: And I always been drawing, you know, that was my thought.
Speaker 2: So I used to tell my mom those semi money,
Speaker 2: just buy me my art supplies and I'll figure out
Speaker 2: how to get money.
Speaker 1: While Oscar's early appeals failed, the LAPD was still reeling
Speaker 1: from what became known as the Rampart scandal. It began
Speaker 1: with a nineteen ninety seven road rage incident, but exploded
Speaker 1: the following summer when crash unit officer Rafael Perez was
Speaker 1: caught stealing cocaine from an evidence locker and selling it
Speaker 1: nearly eight hundred thousand dollars worth to save himself. Perez
Speaker 1: turned state's witness and became a whistleblower, exposing everything Oscar
Speaker 1: had already experienced and more brutality, planted evidence, perjury, drug trafficking,
Speaker 1: bank robbery cover ups, and even ties to organized crime.
Speaker 1: Perez also revealed the officers would gather at a bar
Speaker 1: near Dodgers Stadium to celebrate their shootings, handing out red
Speaker 1: cards for a wound and black cards for a kill.
Speaker 1: Perez implicated at least seventy officers, including crash officer Nino Durden,
Speaker 1: and how he had engineered the false firearm charge against
Speaker 1: then sixteen year old Oscar Eagle, but that was a
Speaker 1: different crime, so Oscar remained behind bars for yet another
Speaker 1: crime he did not commit.
Speaker 2: My mom died in two thousand and seven, and after
Speaker 2: her death, I went into the depression and I couldn't
Speaker 2: snap out of it. I was breeving. I started making
Speaker 2: poor decisions. Eventually, the squad unit came in and the
Speaker 2: gaffled me up. They had searched my cell and they
Speaker 2: found an address book. I had an address to Gigi
Speaker 2: Gordon that was helping me in my case years prior,
Speaker 2: and she happy to have a client that was a
Speaker 2: member of the Mexican mafia.
Speaker 3: And they said that.
Speaker 2: I was using her as a third part dropped to
Speaker 2: connect with the mesic of mafia. So they sent me
Speaker 2: to the whole You're.
Speaker 1: Again like falsely accused and you get thrown pretty much
Speaker 1: in solitary for six years.
Speaker 2: Yes, I just would think that, man, I must be cursed.
Speaker 2: You know that that night marries got worse and worse.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, man, you guys are just stretching.
Speaker 2: You guys are just stretching to validate me or to
Speaker 2: break me or something. And I got a visit from
Speaker 2: my dad when I was in essay. That was the
Speaker 2: last time I see them. I told me that they're
Speaker 2: trying to they're trying to break me in here, and yeah,
Speaker 2: he just said, he said, oh, you know, don't break.
Speaker 2: Just believe in a higher power, man, just don't break.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that that was the last time you saw
Speaker 1: your father, because unfortunately both of your parents passed while
Speaker 1: you were incarcerated. What at that point kept you from
Speaker 1: giving up hope completely?
Speaker 3: I was in the shoe.
Speaker 2: We end up having a hunger strike, and the result
Speaker 2: of the hunger strikes that we went through, they start
Speaker 2: to release suspect to the general population. I started to
Speaker 2: see the GP as freedom, you know, So I was like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, I'm going to go.
Speaker 3: Back to the mainline.
Speaker 2: I always loved running laps, so I was like, man,
Speaker 2: I could go out there and run again, you know,
Speaker 2: like I could get into school and try to get
Speaker 2: an education, and.
Speaker 1: With greater freedom of movement and access to educational materials.
Speaker 1: He was able to submit his case to the Conviction
Speaker 1: Review Unit under Jackie Lacy, the LA District attorney at
Speaker 1: the time, but citing that it was submitted with no
Speaker 1: new evidence, he was denied a reinvestigation, so Oscar had
Speaker 1: to wait for the election of George Gascon in order
Speaker 1: to resubmit his case, around which point Megan got involved.
Speaker 4: I was actually at a transitional house at an event
Speaker 4: for other clients, and I was approached by a couple
Speaker 4: of Oscar's friends. They had with them an entire file
Speaker 4: full of things, and they sat me down and showed me.
Speaker 4: During this party, they ended up showing me all this
Speaker 4: evidence and how Raphael Press had admitted that they had
Speaker 4: essentially placed at false gun charge on Oscar to begin with.
Speaker 4: And what really drew me to his case was it
Speaker 4: doesn't seem that Arias ever really identified Oscar until the
Speaker 4: police pointed him to do so. So I had been
Speaker 4: working in other cases with doctor Wicksted. He's an eyewitness
Speaker 4: identification expert, and there is a new consensus in the
Speaker 4: eyewitness identification scientific community, and I thought that Oscar's case
Speaker 4: fell perfectly in line with that. So I was gathering
Speaker 4: everything that we needed. I went to the offices of
Speaker 4: Gig Gordon, whose Gordon has passed away. I contacted all
Speaker 4: of Oscar's prior council and got materials from the California
Speaker 4: Court of Appeal. That all takes a lot of time
Speaker 4: to gather the materials. In the meantime, the LA District
Speaker 4: Attorney's office, well, Oscar was blessed. I'll just say that
Speaker 4: because there was a Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles
Speaker 4: who is behind I think seven exonerations. Now. She really
Speaker 4: believed in these cases and incorporated the eyewitness identification consensus
Speaker 4: into most of them. She has now gone on to
Speaker 4: become a judge, which is a great loss to the
Speaker 4: innocence community. But she ended up looking at the case
Speaker 4: as well, so she and I actually ended up working
Speaker 4: on the case together. We interviewed witnesses together. I flew
Speaker 4: to northern California to interview Benjamin Arius, who was actually
Speaker 4: incarcerated at that time, interviewed him with some attorney investigators
Speaker 4: as well, and it just seems so clear that there
Speaker 4: was no evidence against Oscar. The only evidence was this
Speaker 4: quote unquote identification by Arius, which never existed.
Speaker 1: Baca and the DA's Habeas Corpus litigation office together filed
Speaker 1: a joint writ arguing that Oscar's conviction was the result
Speaker 1: of ineffective counsel for all the reasons we've already discussed.
Speaker 1: His attorney had failed to impeach Benjamin Urius or Detective Muriel,
Speaker 1: with the audio recording of the flawed identification process, ignored
Speaker 1: the issue of Urius's unrelated criminal case, did not present
Speaker 1: more alibi witnesses or supporting evidence. Most critically, the defense
Speaker 1: never introduced proof of Oscar's compromised physical condition or called
Speaker 1: his doctor to testify that given his injuries, he could
Speaker 1: not have committed this crime.
Speaker 4: So, although the ineffective assistance of counsel is what led
Speaker 4: Oscar to be wrongfully convicted in the first place, Elisa
Speaker 4: meant that some of this evidence that we were able
Speaker 4: to use to prove his innocence wasn't already used in
Speaker 4: the past, so that we couldn't, you know, bring that
Speaker 4: up again post conviction.
Speaker 1: And relatively speaking, once you got involved, it was pretty fast.
Speaker 4: It was really fast. And again that is thanks to
Speaker 4: Dia Laura bazign of the LA District Attorney's office. She
Speaker 4: was in the conviction integrity unit and then went over
Speaker 4: to the habeas litigation unit. And you know, if she
Speaker 4: hadn't been working with us jointly, then this would have
Speaker 4: taken years and years.
Speaker 1: On July tenth, twenty twenty five, Oscar's conviction was vacated.
Speaker 4: Once he was out, we got to meet face to
Speaker 4: face for the first time, and now he's my next
Speaker 4: door neighbor.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. You know, the Los Angeles Times did basically
Speaker 1: where are they now in terms of all the different
Speaker 1: people who contributed to this wrongful conviction and the LAPD
Speaker 1: spokesperson had no comment on it. Others denied wrongdoing. You know,
Speaker 1: even Patrick Lake, your attorney, who claims he doesn't even
Speaker 1: remember your case. I want to ask about accountability. What
Speaker 1: does accountability mean in a case like this.
Speaker 2: I just don't see them taking accountability. I should think,
Speaker 2: like man, I wonder sooner or later are they going
Speaker 2: to step up and say, you know what, I did
Speaker 2: something wrong back then. You know, I gotta get off
Speaker 2: the streets in But I'm not the only one. There's
Speaker 2: other guys still stuck in there from the rap par scandal.
Speaker 2: I would love to see these officers have integrity and
Speaker 2: do the right things, but I don't think it's going to.
Speaker 4: Happen no matter how we hold the people responsible to account.
Speaker 4: Oscar lost his entire twenties and thirties to prison. He
Speaker 4: wasn't there when either of his parents passed away, and
Speaker 4: there's absolutely nothing to get him that time back. I
Speaker 4: think that the state bar should take these cases more
Speaker 4: seriously when they is such egregious, ineffective assistance, just simply
Speaker 4: no evidence put on that was very apparent and readily available.
Speaker 4: I also think that qualified immunity is a huge issue.
Speaker 4: I don't see how prosecutors or police can ever really
Speaker 4: be held accountable so long as there's this immunity. I
Speaker 4: also think that even all of these years later, even
Speaker 4: when district attorney's offices are willing to do the right thing,
Speaker 4: and they you know, they get so much credit for me.
Speaker 4: I'm so grateful to them. You know, even in Oscar's case,
Speaker 4: the elected DA of La County showed up and appeared
Speaker 4: on the record in his case, which is huge. However,
Speaker 4: you know, the police still aren't held to account for
Speaker 4: the wrongdoing. And the problem is the police are the
Speaker 4: investigating agency for the District Attorney's office. I mean they
Speaker 4: work together, they work hand in hand. Police unions don'tate
Speaker 4: to prosecutorial elections. Aside from overhauling the system completely, I
Speaker 4: don't know how we can ever prevent this sort of
Speaker 4: thing from happening again, considering that they work so closely together.
Speaker 1: And when people say, oh, well, they're settlements and there's
Speaker 1: money paid, that money is not coming from the people
Speaker 1: who caused the wrongful conviction. That's not accountability. That's society
Speaker 1: basically trying to pay off to protect the people in power.
Speaker 4: Right right, That's coming from the taxpayers.
Speaker 1: So with that, we're going to close out this interview
Speaker 1: by asking our audience to support Megan's organization. They're out
Speaker 1: there doing the work necessary to finally bring about some
Speaker 1: measure of justice in these cases. So we're going to
Speaker 1: link California Innocent's advocates in the episode description. Please donate,
Speaker 1: follow them on social media, or otherwise get involved. And
Speaker 1: now I'm just going to thank you both for sharing
Speaker 1: this story with us before I leave the floor to
Speaker 1: you for any final thoughts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will say that I am consistently shocked by
Speaker 4: how little evidence needs to be put on for a
Speaker 4: jury to convict. I don't think that people understand the
Speaker 4: burden of beyond a reasonable doubt. And when the crime
Speaker 4: is allegedly gang motivated and they have gang investigators coming
Speaker 4: up and testifying, it just sort of scares the jury
Speaker 4: into let's lock up whoever, because it sounds like, you know, hoodlums.
Speaker 4: It's all these hoodlums out there destroying our communities, like
Speaker 4: the crash units.
Speaker 1: I was just about to say, like the crash unit
Speaker 1: street hoodlum.
Speaker 4: That's right, even though in Oscar's case, what he was
Speaker 4: doing was artwork on walls. He was doing graffiti. You know,
Speaker 4: he wasn't out shooting people. But they lump them all
Speaker 4: into being sort of the same, and that, you know,
Speaker 4: anybody that's getting associated just having grown up in that neighborhood,
Speaker 4: they're necessarily evil and violent.
Speaker 2: I just want to let people know that, you know,
Speaker 2: our system is bad, you know, like they don't need
Speaker 2: concrete evidence or direct evidence to find you guilty. Here,
Speaker 2: it's like they don't take a human life serious, you know.
Speaker 2: And I just tell people just to be more open
Speaker 2: minded and look beyond somebody's image because it's easy for
Speaker 2: a district attorney, it's easy for a police officer to
Speaker 2: draw a negative image to somebody.
Speaker 3: That's understand.
Speaker 2: We take their word as gold, and they got to
Speaker 2: be able to see behind the words. When you make
Speaker 2: a person into a monster and an animal, it's real
Speaker 2: easy to convict them as soon as you have that
Speaker 2: thought in your mind.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
Speaker 1: early and add free by subscribing to Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers
Speaker 1: Jason Vlahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
Speaker 1: music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
Speaker 1: all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 2: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 2: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 2: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good