I think we have the best legal system.
It's just the people that implement it. They get lost along the way and forget what their job really is. He just kept on trying to remind me that who was in authority, who was in control, and how easy it was for my body to be found in any alley of New York City.
It's a tough prison when you have the guards going against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison. They do that. They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing.
And anybody that said, well, why would you confess to something that you didn't do? My question to them will be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill your life? The judge, he said, how you feel? I said, I'm okay. He said, well, the days you're lucky day you're going home.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam Today. I have a guest who I've wanted to have on the show ever since. I saw a picture of him having his first meal after he was released after twenty years in prison, and he had this smile on his face that was just pure joy. It looked like. So we'll hear more about that, and I want to welcome you.
Angel Gonzalez, Wakegan man who spent the last two decades in prison, could soon be set free. New DNA evidence identifies two other men who committed the nineteen ninety four rape and kidnapping he was imprisoned for it.
Sell Us exonerated by DNA evidence that showed he couldn't have been one of the two men who kidnapped and raped the woman in Walkeegan in nineteen ninety four.
In two thousand and one, DNA testing identified one male profile that did not match Gonzales, and just last week, further testing pointed to an additional man.
It wasn't until lawyers from an innocence project took up his case and a change in leadership in the Lake County States Attorney's Office that DNA testing was conducted.
The forty one year old initially confessed to the crime after a lengthy police interrogation, and the victim identified him at the time, but Gonzalez has long maintained his innocence.
His attorney say Gonzalez head in alibi and no criminal history, and after a lengthy interrogation, he signed a confession written by Wakegan police in English, despite only speaking Spanish at the time.
Freedom for a Man released Brockrison after serving nearly twenty one years for a crime he did not commit. On Hell Gonzalez walked out of the Dixon Correctional Facility.
Tonight, twenty years after entering prison. Gonzalez, he's free.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having here.
And we have another special guest today, the director of post conviction litigation at the Innocence Project, Vanessa Podkin.
Thank you for having me.
We're here to talk about a case that is troubling in so many ways in that it has elements of misconduct, it has elements of a thing called the show up. Right, when we talk about the show up which is something we haven't really focused on the show before, and various other things, Miranda right, come into play how those were administered. But before we get into all of that, let's go back to nineteen ninety four.
I was leaving at the time in waki And, Illinois, which is about forty five mins north of Chicago, Lake.
County, Right, and you were how old were you at the time?
I was around twenty.
Right, so just getting started on your life.
Just getting started planning on getting married. Well, this's American dream, finally start planning for starting a family. At the time, talk to my ex girlfriend father and mother and us if we could marry, and they have I guess, And so it was met out of time and to save a little money and find a place to move. So everything seems like it was they were supposed to be for any normal person to get married and move on in life.
Yeah, and it's actually a very honorable to go to the father and ask permission and everything else. On July tenth of nineteen ninety four, everything was sort of typical. I imagine for you you were visiting your girlfriend.
Right, Yeah, they we went out, stopped by her friend's house and decided to go eat something, and we went out and eat on a fast food restaurant. After they we went to her sister's apartment. So we went there and watched movie Tonight. And that's what this or what crime happened.
So unbeknownst to you, in the same apartment complex, something terrible was taking place, right, and Vanessa wantly turned to you for a minute, do you want to talk about the crime itself?
Absolutely so. There was a woman who lived in this same kind of small apartment building who was at her house. She heard somebody buzzing her doorbell, went downstairs, and there were who she would later describe as two Latino men who abducted her into a vehicle and drove her to two different locations in the neighborhood where they sexually assaulted her.
And ultimately she was able to escape, and she was very dazed and traumatized by the incident, understandably so, and ultimately made her way to seven eleven, where she was able to summon the police and they brought her back to the apartment where they started to investigate the crime, and later her boyfriend, the victim's boyfriend, came on the scene and started talking to the police and trying to see if he could be helpful in any way.
Right, and that's where this starts to unravel, because you just wrong place, wrong time. Were in the apartment complex at some point you got into your car, right, presumably to go back to your place, that's correct.
How do we watch a movie and we're about to wrap it up and go home, and when we walked up the apartment if you can run it correctly. There were some squad cars on the left side of the building, and you know, a small town like well, something obviously happened. Maybe who knows in the building. It's an apartment building. They didn't really are business, so we don't stay or ask. We just got in the car and decide to leave.
And I drove to the gas station, put on some gas, and went on my way to drop off my girlfriend. And next thing you know, I was pull over. Right after I drop off my girlfriend now her house, I was pulled over, and I had no clue why it happened.
And what we know that happened is that the victim's boyfriend saw your car, maybe out the window or whatever it was, and for some reason or other, this triggered something in him to think that this might be I don't know how he would have had any idea that this car was in some way related to her abduction and rape, but obviously he was wrong. But nonetheless, that's what led the police to go looking for you, is that he had seen the car and somehow made some assumption he saw the.
Car, and the victim had given a very rough description of a large, dark sedan that was that she was abducted in and he's outside, the victim's boyfriend with the police, and from a distance sees Angel in his car, which was a dark car, driving off, and the victim's boyfriend says to the police, Hey, that car doesn't belong here.
So it's one of these things that.
You know, this is a car that's not usually seen in the apartment complex. And since Angel leaves, the police just write down the license plate number, and then that's why he's later stopped.
You know, some time and some miles away.
But of course, you know, when Angel's driving away from the scene, his girlfriend's sitting in the front seat with him. You know, he's taking his girlfriend home. They've just left the girlfriend's sister's house. And even from an investigative perspective at the time, what sense would it make for the perpetrator to return to the area an hour or two later from the same place that he just abducted somebody from when the police are around, you know, it'd make
a little sense that the perpetrator would return. But nonetheless, acting only on the suspicion the boyfriend's suspicion that the car didn't belong there, they pulled the Angel over.
Right he was Hispanic. That was close enough in this case, and then starts the process that we talk about a lot on the show, which is unique in this case just because of the fact that Angel was read his Miranda rights in a language he didn't speak very well at the time. Right, he was read them in English when your English was not good at that time. And now you speak fluently obviously, But did you understand at the time what they were telling you?
Not at all. I don't have no no clue what was going on. When I got pulled over, it was well, some kind of traffic problem, something wrong with the car had lighter, But I don't have no clue on what was going on until they bringing temporary to the courtroom after I went for a bond hearing. There's one kind of stun to what was going on, and you kind of want to scream if it wasn't me, but you don't steal, like, well, there's got to be some kind
of confusion. He's going to be meta day suntil they said, well, there's not a.
Guy, because this is America, America, this isn't that don't happen in America. But so when you were read you were Miranda rights in the language that you didn't understand or speak very well, and you didn't at that time know why you were there, right, right, So let's think
about that for a second. Right, if someone gets picked up and thinks that they're there for whether you speak English or not, and no matter if they read it to you in Portuguese, the fact is that if you are picked up and you think that it's just a minor violation of something that you're going to go to traffic court or whatever might be, why would you need a lawyer. I mean, you wouldn't even want a lawyer and pay for a lawyer, and you wouldn't want to
wait for a lawyer. You probably want to get it done and so you could go home. But it worked the next day. So it's a very bad moment in time when you don't have that you need in order to make a decision that is actually life or death. But you're just being given totally in complete information, if any at all, and you're being read something you don't understand. So yeah, it's not set up to get to a very good conclusion. It's not set up to protect the person who's meant.
To protect absolutely, and you have compounded the fact that Angel and his family recently had emigrated here, he wasn't familiar with the US system and barely spoke the language, so all of those barriers also existed, and he's not being given information as to what happened or why he's being questioned.
Police did say to him, where.
Were you, and he explains where he was. He says that keeps with his girlfriend, that they went to the girlfriend's sister's house. And at some point during this interrogation, which lasted many hours, police actually stopped and went out to follow up a bit on Angel's alibi.
But they didn't.
Follow up on the alibi in order to see if he could be exonerated and you know, whether or not he committed the crime.
They actually used it.
They used it as a tool to trick him, you know, into trying to give an inculpatory statement. And so they went back to him and they lied to him and they said, we looked into your alibi and it didn't pan out. Nobody's supporting your alibi, which was just a lie. But of course, as you know, it's completely constitutional and acceptable for police to lie to a suspect and to say they have fingerprints or you know, say that they have evidence that they don't have in order to try
to get the suspect to confess. We call it the false evidence ploy. It's a huge problem in false confession cases because, in a sense is a risk factor for false confessions. You think, oh, this will sort itself out later. You don't ask for the lawyer because you know you didn't do it, and you just want to You're not thinking I need to protect my rights. I just want to tell you, and once I give my side of the story, you'll understand you have the wrong person.
And of course it doesn't end that way.
Right, and it's it's legally acceptable but morally reprehensible. Absolutely, And he had all the information at his disposal, so he would have had every reason to believe that he would have been protected by the truth. But that's unfortunately, as we know, that's not how it works in too many cases. And his is really a perfect example that
there was another factor too, which was sleep. Right, because you were there for quite a while, right, you're picked up at night, right, so you're probably a little tired, right, stressed obviously from the situation. How long did this go on for and how and what effect did that have on your ability to make you know, reasonable decisions.
Well, after I got to the police station. At one point you lose track of time. I don't remember exactly how many hours, what was day or night anymore. Just do what you have to do. Let me get out of here. Some tired. I want to go sleep, I want to eat, I want to drink something. It is something they ill steal. Don't understand myself. Sometimes when you is so tired, you just want to everything wain like, do what you have to do, Just get me out of here.
Right. Well, that's a common thing too, Vanessa. Right when you end up in that tiny room, you're basically trapped. You can't go anywhere, you have no access to anyone to help you, and you're overmatched, and they have everything on their side. They can lie, they can keep you awake for as long as they want. They can they can make you hungry, they can stress you out, but
you're already stressed out enough. One of the other aspects of the case that I wanted to talk about is to show up because one of the reasons that Angel was wrongfully identified misidentified was because of the way that he was first viewed by the victim right or the witness, which I guess was the boyfriend. Can you talk about that little bit?
Absolutely so ironically, he was basically across the street from the jail and courthouse on his way home when he was pulled over by police. And as he mentioned, he didn't know why he was being pulled over. He thought was at a traffic stop, you know, where they checking his license. He was a bit perplexed as to what
was going on. And the police called back to the victim, who was at the scene with other officers back at her apartment complex, and they decided to do what's called the show up procedure, and essentially, officers brought the victim to the area where they had pulled Angel over, and the victim was seated in a patrol car, and they brought Angel in handcuffs with an officer standing next to him. And this is late at night, and so they have
their headlights on and so that's the lighting. And they take Angel right in front of the car where the victim is, and while he's handcuffed and next to an officer, they say.
To her, is this the man? Now?
It's a highly suggestive procedure, of course, because what's the expectation. The expectation is that they caught the guy who did this, and those type of procedures show up should only be used in very exceptional circumstances, and here there was absolutely no excuse to do a show up because.
They were across the street from the jail.
They could, you know, if they wanted to do a lineup procedure with Angel, they could have said, will you come with us over to the jail and put together five or six people and got people who matched the victim's initial description and done a procedure that would have been fair. But they didn't do that, and they conducted this highly suggestive procedure and she said, yeah, that's him, which was almost inevitable based on the circumstances.
I mean, you'd identify almost anybody at that point because it just looks like, well, wait a minute, the guy's in handcuffs, the cops got him, he's in my neighborhood. You're hispanic, good enough?
Right?
Who cares? I mean, so you don't look like the guy, but your mind is not right at that point anyway. And it's unbelievable that that is accepted procedure because it's just begging for mistakes to happen.
To add insult to injury. They told the victim before she viewed Angel, we got somebody who matches the description of the person and driving a similar car.
As you've reported. So we're going to bring you over to take.
A look at him, right done. I mean you had no chance at that point in the general was totally stacked and you had no chance. In Angel's case, there were a lot of irregularities, to put it nicely, in the way that his confession was recorded and the way it was documented, and if you could just touch on that for a second, because it's important for people to know. I think people would like to think that when a confession is made, it's like the guy just sits there.
He has a guilty conscience. He goes, I did it. I feel bad. I want to tell the truth. But in this case, it was fraught with problems and error.
Right, So they brought Angel in. They had him there overnight. He really didn't know what he was there for. You know, the next morning, I believe it was, they start the formal interrogation process, and you know, at that time, Angel's saying, I was with my girlfriend last night. We went and
saw her sister. He gives his alibi. The officer leaves at one point claiming that he's going to go try to check out Angel's alibi, and that's when he comes back and essentially lies to Angel and says, your albi doesn't check out. And you know, when you confront somebody with false evidence, people starts to feel overwhelmed and a sense of hopelessness, and let me get out of this situation.
And they keep pressuring him, and basically the officer even testified at trial that they told him what happened.
So they gave.
Angel the facts of the crime. You know, he didn't know the facts, they gave it to him. And all this interrogation is happening, in the first instance, in English, and he doesn't speak English very well, so they're interrogating him in English, and then they ask him to write out a statement, and so he writes something out in Spanish, and though he's been given bits and pieces from the police, he doesn't he didn't do it. So he doesn't know
the details of the crime. So the statement that he writes is just totally irrelevant, you know, it just wouldn't hold water. And so at that point, they bring somebody in who's Spanish speaking, and you know, interrogate him for much more time until they finally produce a statement that's written in English typewritten, I believe in English that they get him to sign without translating it into Spanish. So there's everything is wrong with this interrogation.
And they didn't videotape the process at all, right, the only video that they produced was the video of him being read his Miranda rights at a time when he didn't understand what the hell they were talking about or why he was there.
So, yeah, and you would hope that the courts would look at this and go, wait, there's all kinds of problems here. This is yes, it's a confession, but where's the where's the beef? You know?
I think that this happened, you know, in nineteen ninety four, and here we are decades later, and we've had three hundred and fifty dnaxonerations, and the statistics are one in four of those people who were wrongfully convicted falsely confessed
to crimes that they were completely innocent of. And even though we have those numbers and so much has been revealed about false confessions, there still is this attitude prevalent among courts and people in the system, and even to some extent the general public, that if you confessed, you did it, and people think.
Of themselves and whatever strength or.
Fortitude they think they have, and how they would respond, Oh, I would never confess to something I didn't do, even if I was interrogated.
And so we still find that.
People have trouble believing that somebody would admit to something that they didn't do, so they don't give it the scrutiny that you're just talking about. You know, nobody stops in the system to say, hey, this doesn't make sense. And right now, really the only screening that courts do for whether a confession should be admitted is whether or not it's voluntary. Did you get your miranda rights and
knowingly waive them? Nobody looks at is this reliable? No court is doing a pre screening before trial to say, are there too many discrepancies between the facts, This is story does not make sense, and if so, we're not
going to allow this evidence. In and Angel's case happened in a jurisdiction Lake County, Illinois, Waukegan that had many other wrongful convictions, Some of them false confessions, and of course it's Chicago's not too far away with the torture cases and real legacy of feeding and coercing false confessions out of people. But it doesn't need to be that type of physical coercion, you know, as we see just presenting false evidence or using some of these other techniques
that police do. You know, you just pointed out if you have experienced with the system, maybe know not to talk to the police. But if you don't and you go in there and the police say, just tell me what happened, you just need to talk to me, and I'm going to help you. Some people believe that or it's not going to be as bad if you tell me now, and they start throwing out scenarios and lead people to believe if I just give them something, I
can get out of this stressful situation. And because I'm innocent, people will find it out as the system goes on.
So it all conspires to end up in a situation like you Angel found yourself in when in June of nineteen ninety five, you ended up in court facing what ultimately might as well have been a death sentence because you were sentenced to fifty five years in prison for something you didn't have anything to do with, didn't understand, and didn't know about. What was that like?
Here you are being sentenced to fifty five years in life for a crime you don't call me. You know, there's something that scare you for life. I've been accused of such a horrible crime. I used to think and say, well, I wish at least we have been accused of all the kind of crime, not a raven and kidnapping a female. And when you leave there, it's just you start learning to live like some kind of animal. The all the bigger animals want to eat. So you have to watch
yourself everywhere you go, what time, who's around you. And unfortunately, to this day, as to do it sometimes always what I'm going, who I'm going with, what they're going to think of me? But is something there I don't wish up for nobody. He really messed you up mentally.
And physically, I'm sure too. But the you know, the crazy irony of that situation too, is that here we have a guy right who was so honorable that he was asking his girlfriend's father, is it okay if I propose to your daughter? He wasn't sleeping with her before the wedding, right, really an old fashioned, like, you know, very honorable, there's no other way to describe it. And then to be convicted of the most dishonorable crime, right, one of them that you could be convicted of, right,
other than doing it to a child. There's nothing, you know, that's probably more sort of despicable that you can think of than raping and kidnapping and raping a woman. And so it's really sort of a cruel twist of fate that this would happen to somebody like you, who is the last person in the world that would ever be involved with something like this based on what we know about about you, Angel. So it really gets interesting from
a legal perspective, right, and from an innocent perspective. In two thousand and one, because after having been in now for six years, in this terrible situation, being in a maximum security prison, as someone who's been convicted of these terrible crimes, you got to break. The DNA was found and it didn't match.
Right, So there was a first round of DNA testing that happened in two thousand and one, and they were able through the testing to find sperm evidence and get a DNA profile for it, and Angel was absolutely excluded
as the source of that profile. But because two people had committed the crime, the state took the position, well, this sperm must come from the other person that we never caught, the second assailant, and so these DNA test results don't prove your innocence, and it would be I guess another thirteen years until that day would come.
I mean, what kind of science is that, right? It seems to me. I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that if the DNA wasn't there just because there was two assailants, your DNA would still have to be there, would it not. It might be mixed in or whatever, but there would be some traces of Angel's DNA at the scene if he had been one of the rapists.
Well, I guess arguably someone would say, how do you know that the second assailant didn't wear a condom or maybe didn't ejaculate and didn't leave any of their DNA. I mean, nowadays DNA is so sensitive that if people have sexual contact or even with touch DNA there's you know, studies that are done on handshaking and after ten seconds of handshaking. You could get enough DNA just by swabbing somebody's hand who they shook hands with.
So it's very sensitive today.
So theoretically, was there a possibility that that semen could have belonged to the second assailant?
I think so the things are mounting, right. There's all the things that we talked about with the and in fact, in your trial, Angel, there were witnesses that testified on your behalf. You know, we've seen so many INNSIS project clients where the quarter pointed attorney didn't even bother to call witnesses, or there weren't any witnesses or what else. In your case, there were witnesses who got up on the stand and said, no, he was with me, he couldn't have done this crime. So you have that, now
you have the DNA six years later that emerges. That's like, well, okay, So as DNA's not there, the prosecution at that point has to know that the case is falling apart, right right.
These two thousand and one DNA test results came about at a time when in Lake County there was a prosecutor named Michael murmu who was the chief of the Felony Division for many years there and he basically just didn't believe in science.
So how frustrating is this angel. You're in this impossible situation, a peaceful guy stuck in the very violent prison where people don't have respect for you. They don't respect for anybody, but particularly for you because of the fact of the nature of the crime that you were convicted of. And now your hopes are raised as you're trying to survive
day to day. Your hopes were raised by knowing that this testing had been done, which proved what you had been saying all along, but nobody was listening that you weren't the guy. And now you get a phone call and they say, well, even though it proves that you're innocent, you're still stuck here. I mean, how did you deal with that?
What I used to prom my mind is I have to be strong for my mother, and I believe this is what keep me fighting because you always believe in me, even with a lot of the people dot it like, well, if the law systems say that you did it, well, there's the law system. We kind of have to believe them. It's just just saying you don't commit the crime. But at the end, and to this day, I look at my mom and that's what keeps me going when I have rough days like I can deal with this no more.
It's just hard. But I look at my mom color and I keep moving on. When you find yourself in a situation like that, for me, it's going to prison. I don't reully convicted. It don't matter what you go through in life. You got to find something. And my kids it was my mom something to move along to keep on fighting. And sometimes you feel like you're in a war, but you don't have no weapons, so you got to find some kind of weapons. Like I said,
in my case, it was my mom. I have to do it to show my mother that I don't commit this crime, even though when she told me always I know you don't commit the crime. I don't raise the kind of person.
Ultimately, you, somehow or other got in touch with the Innocence Project. How did that happen? How did you find out? How did you get in touch? How did you learn that they were taking your case?
Well, it's kind of weird how everything evolved to find out about the Innocence Project. I kind of lost my mind for a while when I got to prison and I got in trouble. I was punished and sent to a segregation and after I finished, during the time, they moved me to another building and I meet an old man. They asked he I'm still looking for him. His name I used to call him in prison old Tea. This guy he was on his probably close to his sixties.
He used to work in the low library. And we started again and asked him a little bit about the best way I could about the system and splaindly to bit what's going on. And he said, well, you have any papers, any transcripts or something that I can look at, because anybody say that, But luckily for me, I have some transcripts of the appeal if I can rema correctly. So I showed him to him, and within a couple of days probably he read them. And he told me, he said, well, you know that I see a lot
of problems with your case. He said, I'm not an attorney, but I know an organization they do take cases like yours, and his name is the Innocence Project out of New York. And I said, if you want me to, we can write them a letter. Because by the time where the prison was on lockdown and we don't have access to go to the library to get the right form to fill up. So I said, sure, thank you very much, it would be good if you can do that for me. So he did. In nineteen ninety seven, I believe he
wrote the letter to the Innosance Project. I remember getting like a postcard back saying they are, well, we got your letter, we got your information. Don't write alls on calls, we'd write you, we contact you. There's a lot of people waiting online. So once well, okay, well that's it, you know, But even after they always when I was fighting the case with my families helped they pay an
attorney for appeals, post appeals and everything we could. In the back of my mind there was always, well, there's still hope. There's the Innocence Project. Maybe somehow, someway, one day they will help me in a The more I started understanding English, I started seeing the case about Barry Check and the organization and the DNA and all the programs on TV, so I was always like, well, hopefully one day they would come and help me out.
And then one day did you get a letter? How did you find out that they had accepted the case?
I got transferred to non institution. I started going went to school and I don't know where. One day, out of the blue, I got a letter from the Innocence Project like, look, your name come out and we need your transcripts. Please send your transcripts and we're going to look into your case. So we did send the transcripts around h five. I'm not a very good time, and uh it went on like that, We're probably another couple of years. And I was like, well, I'll send the
transcripts and I don't hear anything. But one day I got the letter. I remember Molly saying that you we read transcripts, and I think you are you know man, that alone, you don't know what to do. I was so happy, but at the same time, you got to remember where you were. You can scream and say, well I'm innocent. They're gonna help me. So they called my mom and she was so happy and so like, Okay, now what when they're going to come and get you. I was like, well, Mom, it's a long process. It's
going to be a while. Imagine for us, they got to do DNA testing, they got to go to court and so on. So it was the longest time that I didn't prison long as they's waiting for something. And I talked to Vanessa and I was so happy. I wasn't homey about life. Yes, with the simple fact that the Innocence Project is helping you and they're looking at your case and and to me there.
Was big I know from talking to other formally incarcerated people that you can't run around and show all your emotion and you know you're going to get in trouble with the guards or the inmates, or something bad can happen. But did you have somebody in prison that you were close to that you could share this information? Did you just keep it to yourself and tell your mother and that was it? How did you did you have a person like one person that you trusted?
I did the time. It was a old man I had met another prison many years ago, and uh, this older gentleman he's still there, unfortunately. And we become good friends because he knew about the law. He used to work in the library as well, and he knew about my case. And explained him and show him the letter. He said, oh man, that's a great news. Man, you're going home.
And what about the guy who first told you about the Innocence Project in the law library. Did you get to tell him the good news?
Unfortunately, we have moved around in the prison system and I don't know where and he ended up and I don't get to get his real name. And when you in prison, you move so much and they shake you down, they go through your paperwork, and sometimes it's not allowed to have all the inmates information on your property, so you can really have all the inmates information. And uh. And to this day, I'm still trying to figure out
who he was. And I'm planning on probably hiring a probably detective and find out who he was and where he at.
Maybe maybe somebody who's listening knows the answer.
Again, his nickname was Old T old t.
Okay, if anybody knows Old.
T send an email to the Innocence Project, We'll make sure to get it. It's been one of our dreams to try to find Old Team.
Let's find it. But what email addressed to the Inscesce project though, because you can just sell into the Innocence Project.
That was just info at Innocence Project dot org.
Yeah, and then put the subject line Angel Gonzales and then we'll this would be incredible if we could actually find him, and you know that would be an amazing moment. Ultimately, Vanessa, how did this get resolved? It took several years. Still from this point, must have trusted your patients. How did we win?
So fortunately a new DA was elected, and I think that you know, when people look at elections that are going on through the country, you know, they usually look at kind of the highest levels. But these DA races are so important because what a difference a district attorney can make in terms of who's being prosecuted and post conviction just getting access to.
Evidence to prove innocence.
And so the old regime was out in Lake County and a new DA came in, Mike Nrheim, and that was a fortunate move for us because we've reached out to the States of Ernie Nrheim and requested that we be able to retest Angel's evidence, and under the previous administration, we would have been fighting for five years just to get access to the evidence. But he agreed we didn't have to do any litigation, and so the evidence pretty
quickly went off to the lab. What took some time and was really stressful about Angel's case is that, you know, when we read his transcripts, and we looked at the confession, and we looked at how he even got caught up in this. I think Mollie was sincere when she was a law student. She said that, you know, she knew you were innocent. So what was so stressful for us is we knew that the only way we were going to be able to exonerate him was to get a
second profile. And you know how they're already been testing, and so we started to look at the victims' shorts.
One of the perpetrators had ripped off of her shorts and they were torn, and so the lab was able to get some male DNA from the area where the perpetrator actually tore her shorts and some other samples, and so that created the second profile in addition to the sperm, which showed, Look, we now have the genetic profile of the two men who did this crime, and neither of those people is angel And.
I think once we had that proof, it was pretty quick.
It was a matter of weeks before they went back and they talked to the victim. And in these cases, the victim was traumatized and a lot of times it's you know, really hard for them to accept that the innocent people went to prison and the real perpetrators are
still out there. And so she said, well, maybe it's my boyfriend's DNA, and so they tested the boyfriend and he was excluded, further establishing the DNA profiles we had came from the two people who did it, and it was an Angel, And so, you know, initially we thought it was over because they prosecutor was agreeing to vacate his conviction, and we were ready to go into court, and we expected that that day his conviction was tossed.
He was just going to walk out of court and into the arms of his mom and his dad was who was there and had suffered a stroke and some health complications while Angel was locked up.
And what a terrible thing that this poor victim has to learn twenty years later that the people that did this to her got away with it. They literally got away with it, and they were free to go out and do the same thing to other innocent women, and that all this time she had been told a false narrative. It's such a terrible new trauma for someone to have to endure to now find out that they've misplaced their anger. And also that they've contributed to just a terrible, terrible
situation that you had to endure. I mean, I can't even process that whole It's a whole mixture of hers for somebody that have to and almost to relive the whole thing again twenty years later. How did you find out? Was it in court that you found out or was it later?
Well, how would you want to speak to one SI? It was on a Friday, and she said, well, look, we're going to court Monday, and uh is not over yet. Things stick can happen. You may come home to day, you may not, so on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So okay. So at the time I was like, well, I'm coming home because everything is there, like they shouldn't be nothing
from them, so they can stop me. But at the same time, like, well maybe they can come out with some crazy thing they have no idea and say, well, you're not going home because of this, and uh, ironically, it's kind of what happened the day who went to court and everything went our way and they said, well, wait, you did something in prison.
Oh yeah, we have to talk about this. Yeah. When Angels talking about this other case, he's talking about the fact that at one point in prison he destroyed I'm talking about he like, you're not here but yet, So Angel, you it seems like, said a gentle guy. I mean, you have a breaking point too, like anybody else. And you destroyed a sink in the prison.
Correct?
Was that in solitary confinement?
Yes?
Right, so you're in solitary confinement. You have nowhere to take your aggressions out. Rather than take it out on another inmate or guard or anything else, at least you took it out on an inanimate object. I mean, the poor sink. I'm sure feelings too. But anyway, so the Angel destroyed this sink and was given an additional three year sentence for assault and battery on a sink.
Yeah, exactly.
Is that an actual crime destruction.
Of state property?
Three years concurrent sentence, So an additional three years.
So now here it is, you're in and you were in the courtroom. I assume Vanessa went yes.
Yeah, so I was in the courtroom.
You know, it's a pretty surreal experience because we're standing there, we're with the prosecutor. The prosecutor stands up and declares Angel innocent of this brutal rape that he has a fifty five year sentence for and everybody's acknowledging he's been wrongfully convicted, and they say, no, he has to go back because the conviction for destruction of state property still stands. And not only does it still stand, but he was prosecuted for.
That in the town where the prison was.
So we then had to try to file emotion and drive the following day to the court in the prison town, and that's when Angel appeared through video conference, and we basically we had some legal grounds to go back and overturn the conviction, but it was basically throwing our mercy on the court and saying he's been wrongfully convicted of this other crime, and please vacate this conviction so he can finally come home, which the judge did.
That's a good judge, I mean, because he didn't have to do that.
Yeah, right, and shielded it was a woman.
Oh yeah. So the judge shows no mercy on the sink, but shows mercy on you, which was certainly logical, rational and compassionate thing to do. And now you're finally, you're finally there were you on video when this was.
Happening, Yes, the core was on videotape.
So you were in I wasn't side person. You're back in the present. Yes, So they have a room there and I'm trying to visualize this, right, So you're in this room. Are you there with a guard? Yes, and you're watching this on video.
Right, you're watching the judge in front of you.
And then what now you're still inside this room. But this was your reaction? Was the guard's reaction?
Well, they don't know what to do, Like, okay, now you finally all the cases are just missed, and how we process this? They were when in the halfway paperwork in the morning, but like, so we don't know if you go home, And I said, well do you know if you go home? No, So nobody knew when too, four thirty and now it was late and second ship guards, they don't know what to do. Well, how we process this? Somebody's picking you up. We just cannot let you go here, and the town lose.
I don't know why.
But his legal team we were in the car, are paralegals, law students driving over to get angel and then this is you know, kind of the crazy part of the innocence project job.
We're on the way and We're like, what is he gonna wear? So we're like, is there a Walmart? Is there any store in this town?
And so we're like, take a detour to go try to find some clothes in a Walmart?
What size is he?
We don't know, you know, so we're doing our best. Guest, I think we didn't you look good in the pictures?
We didn't very good. It was very good. Thank you?
So and this and by the way, I can't imagine. Well, first of all, I'm I'm going back for a second. So was the guard. What was the guard's reaction? He's never seen anything like this before. Did he get emotional? Did you get emotional? By this point, you were just like, what the hell? I mean?
Well, I used to be housed in in a unit. They used to call it a postally living unit, so most of the people that were working on themselves to better themselves. And I used to be a volunteer in the prison for years, so I pretty much knew everybody and the building and some of the guards. I remember one of the officers I used to work for. On one day, You're gonna see me walking out of the door, and you're gonna walk me all the way to the
door and gonna say good luck. I used to left about it, like why you're gonna escape, Like, no, you're gonna walk me to the door and you're gonna say good luck. But he was our second shift officer, so like, well, I don't even work in the morning, so you I'm
not gonna do that. And funny enough, the day he wasn't working there in the unit, but he come and relieve another officers like, hey, I'm going home, Yes, look at me, and it's miceaid, well, I guess it was true what you was telling me, so well, good luck. By the time, and then in the particular unit and most of the prisons they already knew because the media, the news who wasn't Telemundo and all the local channels, so they kind of knew what was going on already.
It was something that you free, you go home, but the door isn't.
Open, and what about let's do the split screen. Now, now you are driving around trying to find a Walmart at the you know, in the nighttime and somewhere around wakegan and what was the spirit in the car? Everybody freaking out, Like the law students probably hadn't experienced this before.
Right, We were very excited and I think many people had such a special connection to Angel.
Yeah, it was a little psychotic.
I mean, once we realized this conviction was still there, we were on the side of the road trying to draft emotion to get filed, to get him out. So it's a whirlwin of twenty four hours. And we had a law student paralegal and I was like, look, just here's your time.
To step up to be lawyers.
Start to do some research, find a way that we're going to vacate this conviction. And yeah, and we were picking out the clothes, but it was it was we're
really excited for this moment. And we had already met Angel's mother and father and siblings and beautiful extended family at the court hearing when they were so disappointed to the day before when his conviction was vacated, but he didn't come home, and so it was excitement and just really happy that we were able to get him and bring him home that night and there was a huge party waiting for him with balloons and lots of food, great food.
Right, and now, what how is their life now? I mean, you've been out for a couple of years. I know you talked about how you're still dealing with some of the psychological issues and trauma that you experienced. But what are you doing? How are you adjusting our things for you now?
Well, I'm trying to still readjust to life. Some days are harder than others, definitely, But again I go and and think about what can I do positive today and especially right now. You inviter us to the show. Thank you very much, and I'll do what I can to talk about the Innocence Project to keey hope to those who still fighting their cases in prison is not easy. But as long as you keep on fighting, someday help is going to come from the Innocence Project or other organizations.
Somebody somewhere, some how. I was doing the same thing for me. I feel like that's what I have to continue on doing. Spread the war. Just talk to sometimes the mothers of those wrongfully convicted. They call me and ask me about what can I do for my son? Who are those lawyers that get you out? How they get you out, how much they charge you? And all I can tell them sometimes you got to keep on fighting. And this is the information called make sure that he
writes them and don't give up. And that's what I'm I'm doing right now. I have a dream. When I was inside, I take construction classes. That are when I come home, I start something to help others. And that's what I'm doing right now. I just started working on it. And I'm hoping or building a house for the purpose of when somebody's coming home he's been wrongfully convicted. We have a place to learn, a place where they can at least teach them the most basic stuff of life. Here.
This is the phone. This is how you use it. You don't have to worry about paying rent. You don't have to worry but paying bills for six eight months, as long as we can allow you to stay here so you can start living again, because when you come home, it's it's it's a big shot. Twenty something years for me and now everything has changed. And to this day, when they send me their tickets to flying on the phone like what I do? Now? Did you get the email? Like how I get my email? So the small things
like that, I'm still learning. Yes, imagine if they take it to another planet like here you are, here's what you need, here's all the technology, but you know how to use it. We just look at it like okay, now, who's going to help me? I will leave there. And a lot of a lot of places, a lot of states, we still have the need for somebody to kind of
mentor you and teach you the most basic stuff. Yes, there's something as simple as going to store and then pick up toiletries, like now you have all these products? What I picked? Or how I go about it? Did I get in line? I used to go to the store and I see everybody paying with their credit cards and swipe their phone.
Like okay, want to do right? And then I don't have cares they give me a card like okay. So it must be overwhelming for somebody coming back. And that's incredible that you, like so many of the other exogunderies, Almost all of the other exouneries are driven by this desire to help other people both get out of the situation that they're in and to adjust to society. And I talk about it a lot when people see the courthouse steps and the happy celebration and the whole thing.
But it's a whole new series of challenges after you get out. And I think we as a society have to be much more accepting and understanding and more welcoming in terms of job opportunities, in terms of compensation, in terms of all that stuff for people who we are responsible for helping, I mean our brothers and sisters that we have horribly wrong, and then you come back and it's like, well, good luck, that's it, like the guard said, good luck. But I mean, like good luck, you need
a little more than that. You need a hand, you know, Angel. We have a tradition on wrongful conviction, which is that at the end of each episode, I offer to the star of our show, which is in this case you if you would like to share any last thoughts about anything at all.
Well, just when I ask everybody please keep on contributing to the Innocence Project and other organizations like the Innocence Project to help those who's still fighting. It can happen to anybody. Unfortunately, I'm not against for the system, but there's a lot of problems with the legal system. I believe you need to be reviewed and make it work better, because in this case, the system not just failed me,
failed the victim. I can't even imagine what you have to endure throughout all these years and not the end when I'm free, but probably she's still fighting, so please keep on giving financially. There's a lot of law of students, a lot of smart on people up there that can help to make this country better.
Thank you, Angel Gonzalez, and so happy you're here and I wish you all the blessings in life and head of Folks Addiction Litigation at the Ennists Project, Vanessa Potkin, thank you for coming and joining us here on Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flammer. Thank you don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts, it
really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Ennessis Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason flamm Is a production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number one