A man from East of Los Angeles whose lawyer said he was framed by murder was found factically innocent.
Humberto Duran stopped in a court of the court in the center of Los Angeles on Friday morning, nervely changing his weight. But as Judge H. Clay Jacke spoke, they slowly suggest smiling, soaking in the words he had been waiting for so long to listen.
“The facts support the unavoidable conclusion that Mr. did not murder Albert González or tried to kill Mrs. Rivera-Sortiz, since she was not present at the crime scene and is innocent.”
Facing Duran again, he added: “You are in fact innocent.”
Duran returned to hug his family. And he began to cry.
The now 51 -year -old man had been sentenced to life imprisonment for a 1993 gang murder in eastern Los Angeles. Twenty-four years later, the case began to fall when Monica River-the only ocular witness to the history of history, Count Duran, that there were songs on the stage when she swore that she saw Duran shoot González, 17.
Duran’s lawyers at California Innocence defenders restart the case for seven years. Then, at the beginning of 2024, they presented a petition asking a jufge to attack the sentence.
In their 147 pages presentation, lawyers Megan Baca and Arianna Price said the deputies, one of which they described as Rivera’s cousin, “framed” Duran, pointing it to the prosecution. They said there was no other evidence that involved Duran, and that he had a alibi: he had legs with his girlfriend and his mother.
In October, the Los Angeles County District Prosecutor’s Office admitted in a 10 -page letter That there was evidence of “real innocence.” A day later, Jacke revoked Duran’s conviction.
But before accepting the application of the defense teams that Duran has declared formally innocent, a finding that clears the way for compensation of the year for the years that passed erroneously imprisoned, the prosecutors delivered to investigate Furtter. Earlier this month, the district prosecutor’s office filed a letter according to the bacas application.
“While justice often comes to trial, condemnation and sentence, there are cases in which justice has to reserve a conviction,” dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman told the 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 good morning like this.”
Duran is the third person who is actually innocent of the murder from Hochman Tok’s office last year.
A week before Christmas of 1993, they last, then 19, went to his girlfriend’s house in Fraser Avenue in East the on their own, they saw television together at home and made a fast trip to Taco Bell. At approximately 1:30 am, Duran said, a major friend of the neighborhood came to accompany him home.
When Duran returned to his parents’ sister’s house, his sister opened the news and told her the news: a child who knew he was growing, González, had shot.
After the agents of Eastern Los Angeles arrived at the crime scene, Rivera told them and González had his leg in a back room or at his family’s house, they heard some shouts to his older brother, Vidal. The teenagers went out to the entrance way and saw a young man with a dark sweatshirt, who supposedly told González that someone called “Beto” did not like, according to the case case file.
Then, the young man took a gun and fatally shot González. Then, Rivera told the agents that the shooter climbed next to the passenger of a Cadillac waiting in a nearby alley and left.
At first, Rivera told the agents that he did not know the names of the shooter or the driver, but said they were members of the Rascals Street gang.
When the detectives formally interviewed her three days later, she still mentioned only one shooter. A detective took a photo of Duran that had brought the interview, but Rivera said she was that night and that he was not the murderer.
Later that day, one of the detectives: the sergeant. Robert Perry – the deputy reported Danny Batanero in the case and said that Duran could have been suspicious, he even thought Rivera had excluded it only a few hours earlier.
Then Batanero visited Rivera in his family’s house. The two already knew each other, and Rivera later said in an affidavit that they were cousins.
Duration The visit, Batanero did not record the conversation, later wrote in his report that Rivera said that there were two shooters and that the second was some that “personally knew as” Beto. “
Near midnight, he brought Rivera back to the Sheriff Station for another interview. This time, the teenager said after the first man shot González, Duran jumped from the back of Cadillac and shot González in his leg, then pointed his gun to Rivera. When he didn’t leave, he threatened and fled her, he told the detectives.
Arrested deputies last the day after Christmas. As the word or their judgment presented, other people presented themselves with advice. Peter “Rocky” Paez told the researchers that a member of the Rascals gang was Spooky had confessed a murder when he appeared at a party a few hours later covered with blood.
When the case went to trial, Duran’s lawyer, who shows the records of the Bar Association of the State of California, was inhebered by “unrelated moral deposit acts, put what Baca described as a” very ineffective “defense. Hey, did not sacrifice the evidence to support Duran’s alibi, wrote Baca, and, in the judgment, the hero of the judge who despises himself, according to the minutes of the Court and a payment receipt was presented late.
When he was contacted to comment last year, former lawyer, Donald Ainslie, said “some of the accusations” against him were “absolutely manufacture.”
After a one -week trial, Duran was convicted. The judge gave him two perpetual chains.
More than 20 years later, the case landed in Bacas Desk. He sent Rivera a Facebook message, and the former star witness retracted.
“I know that Beto is innocent,” she written A affidavit in 2021. “My role in sending an innocent man to prison has persecuted me for the last 27 years.”
He also swore that there were two shooters and that the second was not Durán, but rather a dangerous member of a gang that could have identified if the agents “insisted” in it, appointed Duran.
Last year, Batanero told The Times that he had found the story of credible Rivera at that time and said that any accusation of misconduct against him was a “disastrous attempt … of discrediting me and the fact that by his own and involved, involved and involved Muredred and involved bite” “” “” “” “” “
Two detectives involved in the case did not respond or could not be contacted to comment.
When Duran became on probation in the summer of 2022, Baca compiled a probation package that included Rivera’s retracting. A few months later, a free man left the prison.
But Baca still advanced with his effort to demonstrate his innocence. And now that both the prosecutor and the court have agreed, Duran can look for money for his time after bars.
“I’m happy that this is finally done,” Baca said after the court. “This means that Mr. Duran can seek compensation of the Victims Compensation Board for every day that was wrong, the jailed life. But the most important thing is that his name is clear and the truth is out.”
