#122 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Bonus Interview with Daniel Villegas

Hey guys, it's Laura and I writer. Welcome to a special bonus episode of Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. We've gotten an overwhelming response to this week's story about Daniel Viegas and to the video we posted on Instagram and Twitter showing the moment he learned the jury's verdict, so we're releasing a bonus episode a conversation I had with Daniel when I sat down with him in Austin, Texas two months ago. You know, after everything we've been through together,

Yes, I'm glad to be here too, thank you.

Yeah, So tell me what's going on for you right now in your life. You've been out how many years?

Six years? Now? Six years?

And tell me what you're doing with your life.

At this point in the stage in my life, it's you know, we're not dealing with the hecticness of trial and all that stuff. So now I'm focusing on what I'm going to do for the future.

So you were acquitted about fourteen months ago, and so you've had that time to finally move on from this case. That's dog you your whole life exactly right. So what have you been doing? Are you working?

Yes, I'm working with Manbela Contractors. I do their deliveries with Mimbella Contractors.

So this is John Vnbella.

Yeah, John Minbella. That helped me out too. Yeah.

Yeah, so you're working with John Vmbella huh all these years.

You know, John Mimbella is like a family member. You know, he didn't just you know, help get me free. You know, he's always been there for me, you know, like a backbone and a counselor. You know, he's always been someone that I can go to, you know for anything. You know, even if it's just a hang out.

Well, you've been a counselor yourself too. You were telling me before we sat down that you know, you're working at Membela construction and doing deliveries and things for them, but you're also working with a lot of the other guys.

Yes, work there.

Yeah, we do construction, so it's a lot of you know, you're gonna have a lot of conmics and stuff there. So a lot of these guys, you know, they got problems and issues, and you know they look up to me.

So Membela hires people who used to be incarcerated. Yes, a lot of folks there. And these guys, you know, just like anybody getting out of prison, have their struggles, you know, their situation when they get out. Stuff they have to figure out, and they come.

To you exactly, you know, and they come to me and ask me, you know, for my advice.

You know, because one of the hardest things to transition into.

You know, what we call the free world is you know, we have to leave everything in prison behind us.

And a lot of times a lot of people can't do that.

Because you're so used to you know, thinking and moving in that way. So it's hard to put that behind you and then live basically a whole different life.

How do you put that behind you?

It's hard.

I mean I don't ever like I always tell her, but I don't think it'll ever get away from us. It won't ever escape us, and we'll always have it. But the good thing is that as time progresses, you know, as we grow, it's a lot easier to deal with. Like before you would get mad and it was so hard for you to calm down. After a while, when you start getting mad, you'll start catching yourself going through the stages of going from zero to one hundred, and you can stop it before it goes to one hundred?

What do you tell yourself to stop it?

Personally? Like I always check myself. You know, it's not that bad, you know, look at the bigger picture.

Well, and you're not dealing with it alone either, Right, you've got John Manilla, but you've also got a wonderful family.

Oh yes, you know, like my wife too, I mean everyone for her. I mean I don't know what I would have done. Yeah, she was when I first came out, you know, I was basically a forty year old with a sixteen year old mentality. You know, got locked up when I was a kid, so I never really grew up. I wasn't never had a structure. I never I never really came out and was, you know, have my own

You feel like an alien, like you.

Got dropped into another planet.

Yeah right, you know. So Amanda's always been there too, like she's always all right. You got your wallet, you got your keys, you got this.

Yeah, those basic things of life, but the stuff you forget right when you've been locked away for so long, exactly exactly Amanda's watching. Make sure. Hey, man, we all need somebody like Amanda.

In our life, exactly, trust me.

And you have a beautiful You've got a beautiful family.

You've got kids. Yes, we have four kids.

I have my oldest daughter who's twenty five, Priscilla, and then my daughter who's tan Kayla that's Amanda's daughter, and my stepdaughter, and then we have two kids together.

One four. That's basically I know, Jude, and.

Then named after your dad.

Yeah, you're named after my dad and Amanda's brother. Yeah. And then we have.

The little little baby, the little rugrat. We have the newest addition to the family. That's Emory Hope. She's the hell Raiser.

There you go.

How old is she?

She's going on two years old in a couple of months, so she's almost too But that's the little hell Raiser.

Man a full house. Yeah, that's great, that's great. So, you know, what would you tell your kids? You know, some of them are obviously too young to talk about what happened to you, But what do you tell your kids who are old enough to start to think about what happened to you? What do you tell them about what happened to you?

You know, I really don't try to focus so much of what happened to me, but what they can do now to avoid that, you know, like I always try to tell them, you know, like you know, when they get frusted, I'm always.

Trying to tell me, you know, it's not that bad.

You know, you're you're you're you're getting too caught up in this little drama going on at school.

Or whatever, and it's not that tough. You know, it's not gonna be the end of the world. And you know, I just try to.

Give them my perspective as far as you know, thinking of how to deal with problems.

And stuff and issues that come into life.

And that's mostly what I focus on, because I feel like, you know, life is ten percent of what happens in ninety percent how you react to that.

I don't want to so.

Much teach him about my experience as much as teach him about how to deal with your problems now from that experience.

So let me talk to you a little bit about what it was like to walk out of prison six years ago. Right, you were released on bond. It's twenty fourteen, January twenty fourteen when you were released on bond. Yes, And you know, when I talk to my other clients who have come out of prison, you know, people always have stories about the little things, the things they didn't realize they missed until they were back out and remembered things right that they'd missed for so long. What were

Does smell? Yeah, you know the way the pavement of the street smell. You know, we take that again after a while you're walking and you know, especially people living downtown or whatever, you know, they don't even smell the roses no more. And that's one of the main things that a lot of us when we come out, we notice these smells because we've been smelling nothing but disinfected our whole life.

Yeah.

So you know, you have actual nature and you have like pavement, you have like you know, the birds chirpping, and then you have cars and you have like horns, and you know, it's a whole different orchestra of music, and so to speak, compared to prison, where it's nothing but just a lot of yelling and screaming, it's.

A beautiful orchestra of music. Yeah, but hard to get used to it first too.

It's not so much as hard to get used to it, just it's hard to concentrate on something now, is because you're so focused on hearing every sound and everything.

That's amazing, amazing, every sound from the orchestra of life. I think that's gorgeous.

Yeah.

I want to take you back from moment too, if I can, that moment fourteen months ago when you were acquitted. It was your third trial right over the course of twenty plus years, and this was the moment of your vindication. Yes, it's an incredible moment for us all to listen to. When you were sitting there in that courtroom. You know, Amanda and your family members are right behind you, all your supporters are right behind you. You were sitting there through

That was excruciating pain that I would not wish on anybody.

That was terrible.

But you know when I was going through that, you know, when they I was in the back of the side of the courthouse and I was like having an intimate moment with my daughter, my youngest daughter. How old was she she was at that time, she was about six months And you know, I really didn't think, you know, I know she can't understand what I'm saying. So I was just praying that you know, that parmorama experience happens during death.

It's true, where you live, your whole life flashes before you.

You sort of get out of your body and see yourself exactly.

So I figured, you know, if if anything.

You know, I'll talk to her and she will remember that on that day when she you know, because I couldn't, you know, there's no other way.

She was too young.

So I was just explaining to her, you know, I was just telling her, you know, baby, you know, I'm not guilty.

I'm just saying who I am.

People are going to tell you stuff about me, and I'm just like explaining things for that, you know that I'm hoping one day she'll kind of remember that, she'll come back to that.

And uh. I did this to each of my kids.

I set each of them down by themselves and I would explain things to them, and that was my last one. And right when I was doing that, they tell us that the verdict is on. We got the verdict, and I'm like, holy crap. So we were running to the courthouse. And then the thoughts, like I said, since I was having that intimate moment with her, you know, was one of the thoughts that came into my mind that were

It the right decision for our kids?

Yeah?

You know, even if you know you're right, you know, are we making the right decisions because this is my case right.

Not to see you?

Yes, exactly.

And if you look at the video, you'll see me and my Lord's talking and you see me shaking my hand.

That's what I was telling them.

You know, I'm pleased, man, tell me that we made the right decision here, that we do made the right decision, not only on me, but did we make the right decision for my children?

You know? Did we fight this on pride or did we fight this for justice?

You know, you you second guess everything at that moment, you know, and then you second guess your you know everything that charal's coming through your head and you're like, man, we should have done this, We should have done that.

You know that was coming to your thoughts, and that's killing you too.

So you got all these there's like a million thoughts just blading down on you. And then you just want to judge your hear up and tell you not guilty and guilty and you wait for the jury to come in here in.

Order, and you're just sitting there dying, I mean excruciated. So you're sitting there in that moment, waiting for the verdicts to come back, and you're thinking back on the offer, play on that decision which which Amanda guided you through which Jason Baldwin from the West movest Iie guided you throw yes, and then the verdict comes.

Back yes, not guilty exactly.

And it was not before he said not guilty. I already knew when he said he said it was a form B, right, and I already had had the piece of paper, and it was like Form A was guilty, Form B was not guilty, you know. So when I had the paper in front of me and then I heard form B, I right away looked at that piece of paper.

I said, oh shit, it's not guilty.

But it was just a couple of seconds like you're saying, you know, and that's what I just it was like I was, like I said, I was so tense. I mean that time period, that whole year was probably the worst year of my life. And uh, I was so tense that when that verdict not guilty happened. It was just like, you know, like a ball full of rubber bands. It was like you just take one and it all

Yeah.

Yeah, And you got out of there, didn't you right away as soon as you could never to return.

We left too fast out of there, Like that's what I was telling, me and a man that we had all this little speech that we're going to do afterwards, you know, to the news or whatever. And when that man said the judge said, you know what, not guilty, you are free to go there. You are no longer under any conditions of this court anymore. Yeah, that whole speech that we had, it was up my head. I totally forgot. I ran out that courtroom. I was like, I grabbed the man. I was like, let's go and the.

Cameras, get the news, get me out of here. But you are actually going to be in a courtroom again. I think in a couple of days. Right, what's your plan for when you're here in Austin.

I'm here in Austin.

I want to go to the Capitol and I want to go see the Court's of Criminal Appeals and I would love to see if I can talk to one of the judges.

So you want to go to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This is the court that affirmed your grant of a new trial, that affirmed your conviction being thrown out. Yeah, and you want to just go in that building. Tell me why.

One of the main things I want to go because when we're going to courts criminal appial, they're telling us about the judges and they were saying that we have to get a majority rule, and they were saying three of the judges were not going to go for they never go for the inmate. And they were like, so don't even worry about those three. We know we're not going to get them. But at the end of the day,

What was so special that shot to your faith? You know? What was it?

Do you think it will still be worthwhile to go there even if you can't talk to the judges, just to be in the building. What would it be just to be in the building, just.

To be in the building, if they would let me walk into the room where they actually make the decisions. I would you like to just sit there, you know, and just think this is where they made the decisions on letting you go.

Yeah, you know, that would be awesome.

This is where it all turned around.

Yeah, this is the place I used to curse that every every Wednesday, waiting for the answer, Daniel.

I just want to ask you, you know, what is what's your what are your hopes for the future.

That I'm not totally certain about that right now, I haven't figured out where my direction is actually going to go. Because one thing I've realized about life is that I have my plans, but the universe has its own plans, and somehow or another, I always end up doing what the universe wants me to do rather than what I want

Well, one day at a time. It's pretty good right now. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Daniel Viegas than man, exonerated man, congrat Thank you.

Oh and also like thank you for helping me on my appeal. I mean, Laura, she's on my case. It's just so it's so bad ass. It's so awesome to have all you guys with us.

It's our pleasure.

But you know, you guys never get the thanks, you know, and that's one thing that you know, I want to really focus, you know, I want to really you know, put out there two about our lawyers or you know that that help us, because you got to understand that normally, with a client and the lawyer, situation goes once the court is over, you're not going to see that lawyer hardly ever again, you know, and in this situation where around for conviction, we are so close to our lawyer,

You guys become our family.

You know that even when we come out, you don't give up on It's not like, Okay, well we got your free buy, I have a good life.

You guys are they're helping us out. You guys are still.

There making sure that you know we're we're being entered back into society but successfully. Yeah, you know, and that you guys need to get them things for that, because I don't feel like you guys get the things for that. I don't feel like the networks get the things for the innocent networks that are all these different organizations that work so hard to get us free. Because when we get free, the game's not over yet. Well it's still

And that's what you guys do too.

Well, that's what you've done. So congratulations on that, all right, believe us?

I love that great.

Thanks so much, Daniel, thank you, Thanks for listening to the special bonus episode of Wrongful Conviction False Confessions. You can listen to Daniel's story right here in this feed and come back on Wednesday to hear our next story about a California man who was wrongfully convicted of terrorism based on a confession about and I kitch you not