An East man who said the lawyer said he had been supervised for murder was actually found innocent.
Friday morning, Humberto Duran was standing in a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, nervously transfering his weight. But while judge H. Clay Jacke spoke, Duran slowly started to smile, soaking in the words he was waiting for so long to hear.
“The facts support the essential conclusion that Mr. Duran did not murder Albert Gonzalez or tried to kill Ms. Riveratiz, because he was not present at crime and is innocent.”
Turning to face Duran, he added: “You are factually innocent.”
Duran returned to kiss his family. And started to cry.
The 51 -year -old man was sentenced to life prison for gang murder in 1993 in East Los Angeles. Twenty -four years later, the case began to collapse when Monica Rivera – the only eyewitness of the crime – retracted her story, saying that Duran’s lawyer, she had lied to the stand when she swore that she had seen Duran shoot on Gonzalez, 17.
Duran lawyers at California Innocence Advocates have re -examined the case for seven years. Then at the beginning of 2024, they filed a petition asking a judge to cancel the conviction.
In their 147 -page file, lawyers Megan Baca and Arianna Price said that the deputies – one of whom described as the cousin of Rivera – “box” Duran, targeting him for prosecution. They said there were no other evidence involving Duran, and he had an alibi: he had been with his girlfriend and his mother.
In October, the Los Angeles County District Prosecutor’s Office conceded in a 10 -page letter that there was evidence of “real innocence”. A day later, Jacke canceled Duran’s conviction.
But before accepting the Defense team’s request to have officially declared that Duran officially declared Innocent – a conclusion that paves the way for state remuneration for the years when he had wrongly imprisoned – the prosecutors wanted to investigate more. Earlier this month, the DA office filed a letter of agreement with Baca’s request.
“While justice often arrives at arrest, conviction and conviction, there are cases where justice must cancel a conviction,” said Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman told court on Friday, thanking his prosecutors and the diligent work of the Duran defense team.
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” he said. “We don’t get too many days like that.”
Duran is the third person found innocent murder since Hochman took office last year.
A week before Christmas 1993, Duran – then 19 years old – went to his girlfriend on avenue Fraser in East by her account, they watched television together at home and made a quick trip to Taco Bell. Around 1:30 am, Duran said, an older friend in the neighborhood came to return him home.
When Duran returned to his parents, his sister opened the door and told him the news: a child he knew as growing – Gonzalez – had been shot.
After the deputies of East arrived at the crime scene, Rivera told them that she and Gonzalez had been in a back room in his family’s home when they heard someone cry for his older brother, Vidal. The teenagers went to the aisle and saw a young man in a dark hooded sweatshirt, who would have told Gonzalez that someone named “Beto” did not love him, according to the Department’s file.
Then the young man released a pistol and killed Gonzalez deadly. Subsequently, Rivera told deputies, the shooter climbed from the passenger side of a Cadillac waiting in a neighboring alley and left.
At the beginning, Rivera told deputies that she did not know the names of the shooter or the driver, but said that she knew they were members of the street gang Rascals.
When the detectives officially interviewed her three days later, she still mentioned only one shooter. A detective released a photo of Duran whom he had brought to the interview, but Rivera said that she had not seen him that night and that he was not the killer.
Later in the day, one of the detectives – the SGT. Robert Perry – informed the deputy Danny Batanero about the case and said that Duran was perhaps suspicious, even if Rivera had excluded him earlier.
Then, Batanero visited Rivera at his family’s home. The two already knew each other, and Rivera later declared in a statement that they were cousins.
During the visit, Batanero did not record the conversation, but later wrote in his report that Rivera said that there were two shooters and that the second was someone she “knew personally under the name” Beto “.”
Around midnight, he brought back to the Sheriff station for another interview. This time, the teenager said that after the first man, shot Gonzalez, Duran jumped from the back of the Cadillac and shot Gonzalez on the leg, then pointed his weapon to Rivera. When it did not trigger, he threatened and fled, she told the detectives.
The deputies arrested Duran the day after Christmas. As the word of his arrest took place, other people showed up with advice. Pez “Rocky” Payez told investigators that another member of a Rascals gang who passed through Spooky had confessed to a murder when he presented himself at a party a few hours later covered with blood.
When the case was tried, Duran’s lawyer – which shows that California’s California files were later struck off for “acts of moral turpitude” unrelated – put what Baca described as a “roughly ineffective” defense. He did not propose any evidence to safeguard the alibi of Duran, wrote Baca, and, during the trial, he presented himself late so many times that the judge held him with contempt, according to the minutes of the court and a payment receipt.
When he was contacted to comment last year, former lawyer, Donald Ainslie, said that “some of the allegations” against him were “absolutely manufacturing”.
After a week -long trial, Duran was sentenced. The judge gave him two perpetuity sentences.
More than 20 years later, the case landed on the Baca desk. She sent a Facebook message, and the old star witness recovered.
“I know Beto is innocent,” she wrote in a statement under oath in 2021. “My role in sending an innocent man to prison haunted me for 27 years.”
She also swore that there were two shooters and that the second was not Duran but rather a dangerous member of a gang that she could have identified if the deputies had not “insisted” that she called Duran.
Last year, Batanero said that Times found the story of Rivera credible at the time and declared that any accusation of misconduct against him was a “harmful attempt … to discredit me and the fact that Monica alone identified and involved the petitioner in this murder linked to a gang”.
Two detectives involved in the case did not respond or could not be joined to comment.
When Duran came for parole in the summer of 2022, Baca compiled a parole package which included the retraction of Rivera. A few months later, he left a free man from prison.
But Baca still pushed his efforts to prove his innocence. And now that the DA office and the court have agreed, Duran can look for money for his time behind bars.
“I am happy that it is finally done,” said Baca after the court. “This means that Mr. Duran can request compensation from the victims compensation council during each day, he was wrongly imprisoned. But more importantly, its name is erased and the truth has come out. ”
California Daily Newspapers
