#420 Maggie Freleng with Wilson Rivera

In September of nineteen ninety three, Wilson Rivera and his friend Roger Murfick were lying in wait to rub a pizza delivery driver in South Detroit. They'd been tipped off that the pizza guy was carrying a couple thousand dollars in drug money, but the payoff was less than they expected, only a few hundred dollars. A few nights later, two masked gunmen burst into a nearby house. Twenty year old Doug Williams and his mother, Lavanda were both shot and killed.

They are risk me at my house. I'm under the assumption that they're looking for me for the robbery, and so when they take me to homicide, I'm thinking that this is a trick that they're playing on me, so that I could go ahead and admit to the robbery.

Wilson had a solid alibi for that night, but one by one, the other suspects were dropped from the investigation. By the time Wilson went to trial, he was the only one left.

My name is Wilson Rivera and for the last thirty years I've been seven times for crima.

Did not come in from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Wilson Rivera. Wilson Rivera was born in nineteen seventy four in southwest Detroit.

My whole family's porter. My mother was born in Chicago, but my father I was born in Puerto Rico, so we have family on both sides of the ocean, if you will. I spent most of my time as a teenager in Detroit, but I was raised in Puerto Rico. My mother tells me that as a child, she said, I was I was a pretty lively individu you. As a child, I'm animated, hyper to a degree. Always, she said. I always always smiled.

But the family had its troubles. Both of Wilson's parents struggled with substance abuse.

My father was an alcoholic. He was as far as I could remember images, I could see my father being a man abuser, getting in domestical youth. My mother ended up engaging drugs, drinking, and so her life at that time she did. My mother had a lot of personal issues and personal demons that she was struggling against that she never could deal with at the time, so her life was spiraling out of control.

Wilson's parents separated, and his father ended up moving back to Puerto Rico. His mother did her best to care for Wilson and his brother Antonio.

My mother did struggle at the time, but she may do with what we had. I don't remember going hungry, and we always have something to eat, whether it was some wig or food stamps or focus home. I can honestly said that we became somewhat of introverts, Me and my brother. We could depend on each other, but that was about it only because throughout our childhood it was always me and hand that were together, Me and my older brother. It's alway about one year Antonio.

For most of his childhood, Wilson went back and forth between their mother in Detroit and their father in Puerto Rico. In nineteen eighty four, when he was ten, they moved back to Detroit, but he struggled in school.

I had the language barrier. We didn't really speak English. They placed us in bilingual classes where basically we were just put in a classroom and as far as I can remember, just left there. That you become kind of like ostracized, and I began to resent school. I was constantly getting to fight in school and get in trouble.

The trouble continued through his teens.

I used to be a member. We were through a local street gang, Camel Boys Incorporated CBI, and consequently we was involved in a lot of mischievous behavior as in the neighborhood. And I started getting trouble shoplifting and things of that nature at the time and skipping out of school.

But soon the neighborhood mischief was escalating into something else.

About nineteen eighty seven, Southwest Detroit began to receive the influx of national gangs. There were two or three primary gags for Chicago who ended up coming to Southwest Detroit and they began to recruit individuals and what ends up happening local street gangs in the neighborhood. We all bended us one together and what we were constantly fighting with these the gangs.

In nineteen ninety, when Wilson was sixteen, one of his friends was shot in the face by a member of a rival gang. This led to an incident that would end up having deep repercussions for Wilson.

Basically, one of my other friends went and got a weapon, a shotgun, and brought me the shotgun and I opened fire at the rival gang, and as I fled the scene, I came face to face with a member of the Detroit Police. I pulled the webinarut and as I pulled the webin out, I hope discharged it and it didn't hit him. Later on the following day, I was arrested and eventually I pled guilty to the offense.

He was charged with attempt to commit bodily harm on a police officer.

That's what I want you to do, w I'm for.

Wilson spent over two years at the Maxie Boys Training School, a juvenile correction facility about an hour outside of Detroit, and when he was released in nineteen ninety three, he still hadn't graduated high school, but he did manage to find a job in a factory.

At the time I was working, but then I had suffered a hand injury or gusha wound where I couldn't really use my hand and keep up with the production. So instead of being fired. I quit the job, and the way that I will survive it would be either petty hustle or I will engage in small and I'm not minimizing it, but it was what we would consider small robberies in the neighborhood, and it would be dope dealers or things of the source.

Wilson got by on the petty crimes and was still running with the Camel Boys, but when he was around nineteen, his girlfriend told him some news that made him want to change his lifestyle.

I was excited when I found out that Sho was pregnant. I wasn't I wouldn't say I was scared, but I knew that I want to make like a shift in my life. I wanted to be a person for my daughters, and.

To Wilson, that meant leaving gang life behind, but he found that was easier said than done.

I had started applying for jobs. I wanted to try to see if I could get back in the old factory where I was working at, but maybe in a different position where it then requires for me to work in the machines that I had to be working on before. Unfortunately, though I still live in the same environment. Though the neighborhood where I lived at, like my house was smacked.

Wilson was living in the neighborhood, spending his nights at his girlfriend's house and leaving early in the morning to try and avoid the other gangs.

I figured that me going home in the mornings would be a lot safer as opposed to you know, coming home at midnight or late at night time because said by that company rival gangs, because he that you're home.

Wilson had decided to give up the petty crime in gang life, but he hadn't found a job yet and he was still involved with the same crowd. One of his friends, kal Matta, was in a gang called the cash Flow Posse, a gang that the Camel Boys had an alliance with. Cal also worked at a local pizza shop, and one day Cal approached Wilson and his friend Roger Murfk with a scheme to make some easy money.

What he had informed those was that there was a guy that was delivering pizzas, but he was doing so while at the same time challenge drugs, we were led to believe that this person had at least two thousand dollars from drug proceeds on himself.

On September twelfth, nineteen ninety three, Wilson and Roger were armed and waiting to rob the pizza guy along his route, but he was taking longer than they expected, so they thought they might have missed him. Roger knew a guy named Douglas Williams who lived across the street, and he went over to Doug's house to ask if he could use the phone.

Eventually, the piece that every guy comes and we robbed a guy and he didn't have no two thousand dollars. He didn't have eight hundred dollars. The individual actually only had four hundred dollars. So when Kel comes to the apartment after he gets out of work at ten o'clock and he asked for his portion of the money, I told him he wasn't going to get the money because he lied about what the guy had, and so we fell out over there.

And that should have been that robbery and a small argument over a few hundred dollars, but it wasn't. Twenty year old Douglas Williams lived with his parents, Lavanda and Daniel Brown, and three days after the pizza man was robbed, two men burst into their house wearing ski masks. One of the intruders shot and killed both Doug and Lavanda, but Daniel, Doug's father survived. He talked with police shortly afterwards.

Daniel Brown said that his son Doug had told him that Wilson Rivera and Roger Murfick were the two individuals involved in that armed robbery.

This is Wilson's post conviction attorney, Rachel Wolfe.

There was plenty there for the prosecution to latch onto and for the police to investigate, because they knew exactly who Roger Murfick and Wilson Rivera were at the time.

And one member of the Detroit Police Department, Officer Gerald Packard, had his own reasons for focusing on Wilson. The officer that Wilson had shot at back when he was sixteen. Officer Ayala was Packard's partner.

So Officer Packard knew Wilson. He knew that he had gotten what I imagine Packard would assume is a short sentence for something like that. He is not on the homicide team. He was not part of the homicide investigation, but he was the one when he heard that Roger and Wilson were potentially suspects. He was the one that went to Wilson's apartment knocking on the door, and then ultimately, once the warrant was obtained, just busted right in to the apartment.

And when they arrest me at my house, I'm under the assumption that they're looking for me for the robbery, and so when they take me to homicide, Sergeant Morell tells me that he's arrested me for murder. I'm thinking that this is a trick that they're playing on me so that I could go ahead and admit to the robbery.

But Wilson knew nothing about the homicide. The night of the shooting, he had been with his girlfriend and her mother at their house. He didn't learn about the shooting until the next day, when he found out that Roger had also been arrested.

I've seen Roger aside, and when they put him in a bulkin, and that's when I asked Rogers like what's going on, and he explained to me what had actually taken place with the murder with the ham size. Now again, I'm operating under this concept of loads that we have within the gang, right, so I'm not going to say nothing. They're not going to say nothing, you know, and we just take it out and see what happens. In my mind, I'm assuming that eventually the facts are going to bear

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Pods cast. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Detroit homicide squad, headed up by Officer Carrie Russell, rounded up a number of local gang members and charged them with the murders. One of the first to be arrested with cal Mata.

They knew they were looking for Wilson and Roger. They went to this house that was a known location for both the cash Flow Posse gang and the Camel Boys Gang, so they they came in, they arrested Cal. At that time, he was the only person in that apartment with a number of firearms. They also found a ski mask and a jacket inside of that apartment that they ultimately seized and ended up admitting at trial as well.

While in custody, Cal told Officer Packard that he had heard Wilson and Roger talking about Doug Williams calling him a snitch. Cal took that to me and they were going to take steps to make sure Doug couldn't report them for the robbery. The police also brought in a couple of other gang members for questioning, Armando Campos and Ephram Garcia. Both of them were in the cash Flow Posse and according to Wilson, Ephram was trying to climb the ranks in the gang.

The way that the gang was operating was that in order for an individual to move up in the ranks, right to either become an enforcer or treasurer or whatever other upper echeline in the gang, what they would have to do is they would have to what we call back then put in work, you know, whether it be if you rob somebody, if you shout somebody, he jumped somebody in the schools and all that. The reputation of that,

This case, the work was to keep Doug Williams from snitching a about the pizza robbery. Wilson says that that day at the jail, Roger told him exactly how it had gone down.

And so Roger and Etham go to the house where the witness of the robbery was and Ethel kicks down the door and opens fire and hits Dug, and then Roger comes from the other side and hits Doug. And then as Doug's mother attempts to flee that the residence, Roger opens fire on him and he hits her as well.

After what Roger told him, Wilson was confident that the truth would come out and he'd be released. But Roger never confessed to anyone else, and the homicide team continued to question.

Wilson, and I told him exactly where I was at, Sohm. I was spending the night with my daughter's mother, and she was at the time, I was twenty half months pregnant. In my mind, I know where I was at. So I gave him to Alibi and gave him everything where I was, that and everything. And my expectation was that they were walk through my daughter's mother, but that never took place.

When Armando Compost was questioned, he told police that the day after the homicide, Roger had turned up at his house desperate for money.

Roger vad I just smoked someone. I just smoked someone. I need as much money as possible. I got to get out of town. And then when questioned a little further, Armando also said, yeah, he mentioned Wilson too. He mentioned Wilson was there too.

Wilson and Roger were now the primary suspects, and both were charged with the murders. In September of nineteen ninety three, a joint preliminary hearing was held at which cal and Armando testified. Both repeated what they had told police, but when Roger Murphick went to trial in April of nineteen ninety four, Armando changed his story.

Armando recanted everything he had said at the preliminary examination. He said, no, I never made those statements. The only reason that I made those statements is because I was arrested. You know, I was charged. I was threatened by the police. I said exactly what they wanted me to say. Roger, of course, was acquitted of all of the.

Charges, but Wilson remained in jail. He went to trial a few months later on September sixth, nineteen ninety four. The judge was Helen Brown and the prosecutor was Lisa Lindsay. As far as physical evidence, there wasn't much for the state to present.

We don't have fingerprints, They didn't fingerprint the shell casings or anything in the house at the time. Obviously there's no DNA or anything like that. It was a really quick homicide.

Officer Packard and the homicide squad had searched Wilson's home the day they arrested him.

And they find two firearms and two ski masks, one of which was black or dark blue in color. The other one was a multicolored. Those guns were tested against some of the shell casings that were recovered in the house, and the there was a bullet I believe recovered from Doug's body during the autopsy, and there wasn't a match, so conclusively, neither of the weapons found in Wilson's home

But they presented it as if it could be.

They sure did. Yeah, they presented all of that to the jury.

The state relied heavily on police and witness testimony to make their case, but there wasn't much of that either.

Daniel Brown testified to the armed robbery and named these two co defendants as perpetrators of that armed robbery, and then they also had testimony from one other witness, kal Matta.

Cal repeated the statement he had given the police that he had heard Wilson and Roger talking about getting rid of Doug Williams, and that was about it for the prosecution's case.

The officer in charge of the case, you know who, was basically the one that was responsible for taking other testimonies from all these witnesses and all that she felt to shored up for my trial, even though she knew my trouble set for that day, and so all of these things that was taken place, I'm looking at what was going on, I was like, yeah, at least in my mind, I was hoping that the judge was going to say, you know, I'm going to interfere in this thing here and I'm going to dismiss it for the

And not only that, Wilson had an alibi. Remember on the night of the murders, he'd been with his girlfriend, but she never testified at trial, and surprisingly Armando Compos did not appear either.

So when my attorney at the time, mister Griffin, asked to I have a due diligence hearing as to why Armando has not shown up to testify, we find out that the prosecutor at the time has failed to subpoena Armando and so he never showed up to testify because he never knew.

I think ultimately it's entirely possible that Roger was acquitted and Wilson was convicted because of the absence of Armando Compos's testimony.

On September ninth of nineteen ninety four, the jury found Wilson Rivera guilty of the premeditated murders of Donald Williams and Lavanda Brown. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

After I came to Prey within the first year, I winned for an enimy to get into a fight and he got stamped. Eventually he died understade and he basically la out and so they locked us down, and I told myself, Yeah, that's not going to happen to me, you know. So I wanted to hope defensive posturing and any issue that I had, I either was going to get into a fight. I wasn't going to wait for anybody to stab me to try to kill me in prison. And so what I ended up doing I started acting

While Wilson was in jail awaiting trial, his daughter, Sierra was born.

The first time that I got a chance to see her was actually doing my sentencing. So the time that I'm being sentenced to life without parole, I'm actually paying more so attention to my daughter, who basically just a few months old at the time.

You know, he's been in prison my whole life. So what I do know is from the relationship we formed with him being in prison.

This is Wilson's daughter, Sierra Ramirez.

He's funny, he's intelligent, and I are a lot of like very talkative. He's an encourager. You know, it's only fifteen minute phone calls at a time, but I feel pretty open when I talk with him.

What was that like, growing up only knowing your father from prison from visiting rooms.

I guess for me, it was a norm. I didn't see it as anything weird because it was all I knew, basically, you know, when I started getting old and going to my friend's house and I'm like, oh, okay, this is a little bit different. You know, there's There's a different dynamic that comes from having.

Your dad in your life.

And I had him to an extent, but not fully. And now as an adult, when I look back, I see how that impacted me just as a woman, as a girl growing up, you know, as a white how it impacted me.

Did you ever feel angry or resentful towards your dad.

I did feel some anger with him when I was younger. I felt very abandoned, and I did tell him I was angry at him and felt like he made the choice to leave me no, and I was coming. He was very receptive, you know, he apologized, and he's definitely done what he can as a father to his best of his ability. You know, whether when I was young, he would send me, you know, we're Hispanic. He would send me tapes to learn Spanish, and he would send me these books and make me bracelets and stuff like that.

Soon after his conviction, Wilson's attorney filed a direct appeal based on prosecutorial misconduct and the improper admission of the firearms founded his house, which had been found to be not connected to the murders. The courts denied the appeal, and Wilson knew that if he wanted to get out of prison, he would have to dedicate all of his time and resources to proving his innocence.

After about seventeen years in prison, of going to all these up and downs and the disappointment was the case, I started investing more time and the pace, and I started working, saving my money that I learned for my prison detail and basically I will try to hire my private investigators to try to find the information that I needed to prove my innocence. I decided to start studying the law myself, and eventually I got trained as a

Then in twenty eighteen, Rachel Wolf began working on Wilson's case.

It was funny when Wilson and I first met, he was worried about me because I was young, and because I and he said, this is a quote sound like a Republican. So I had to I had to assure him that that wasn't going to be an issue. So when I first went to meet him. I didn't know what to expect, but we clicked right away.

Initially, Rachel was skeptical about the strength of Wilson's argument.

You know, how are we going to prove this case there is a motive? And people find that very, very convincing. So regardless of the strength of the evidence as it exists, or the existence of other possible suspects, which there are, it's easy for people to latch onto and easy for them to say.

Well, of course he did it.

He had a reason to do it, you know, without looking at any closer at the case.

So what convinced you of his innocence or what made you want to keep digging?

When I started talking to people, and especially like the leaders of the cash Flow posse and some other members of you know, some other people who were involved in the gang activity at that time, I started just getting some information that did not jive with the prosecutor's theory.

For one thing, remember ephrom Garcia. He was arrested in the DPD roundup along with Roger Murfik, and Roger had told Wilson straight out that he and Ephram had done the killings, But somehow Ephram was dropped from the case early on.

We didn't know at the time. They subjected e from Garcia two way polygraph and he failed it, but they didn't disclose it to Wilson's defense counsel. He didn't know about it at the time of trial. We discovered that much later, and that's you know, part of the basis from my legal challenge to his case is that he should have had this evidence. There was this suspect, and we know that e from Garcia was released after that. He wasn't investigated for involvement in this homicide any further

Officer Packard especially wanted Wilson. He hadn't forgotten it was Wilson who had shot at his partner, Officer Ayala.

He was I think central to this case and maybe maybe you know, part of the reason they didn't investigate e from any further or any other possible suspects. Ephrom Garcia was indicted for the exact same homicide five years later. He never actually ended up with that homicide conviction. He's incarcerated now for several additional homicides.

They've also uncovered previously undisclosed information about Cal's testimony.

Cal was on probation, and he also was found and arrested with guns and drugs in a known gang location. His probation was dismissed very shortly after Wilson's trial and sentencing, and he was never charged. He was initially actually charged with the homicide, and then ultimately they dismissed that, and then they never even charged him with any of the other offenses.

Then there's the matter of proving Wilson's alibi.

So he had his girlfriend at the time. He was with her at her mother's house. He stayed the night there, i think until early in the morning, early morning hours, We're talking like two am, three am.

Wilson's girlfriend never testified to this at trial. When Rachel interviewed her, she found out why because she was scared.

She says an individual in a suit approached her in the hallway outside of the courtroom and said, look, we're holding your brother. He's currently facing these additioninal charges. If you go in there and testify, you know we're going to reconsider the severity of the charges in the possible sentence against your brother. And so she was too afraid to testify, and I think her testimony probably would have made a difference.

Rachel says she's spoken with other potential witnesses from the neighborhood. People will have knowledge of what actually happened, but they have similar reasons for not coming forward.

They're all afraid of the police. They're all afraid of the prosecutor and of coming into court, just because I think that's what their lived experience has taught them to fear. They are hesitant to come into court. And that's made the investigation of this case a little more difficult as well, is that I have witnesses who were willing to provide me with information that are not willing to come in and testify in court. They're not willing to talk to

That's so interesting. They're more scared of the law enforcement than they are of snitching and being a snitch on the street.

Yeah, at least that's what they're telling me.

According to Rachel, all of this is tied in with the culture in the Detroit Police Department at the time. People in the community had little reason to trust the cops and plenty of reason to fear them.

They had this practice, they called it witness roundups. You're not supposed to arrest somebody without probable cause. But what they would do, and they did it in Wilson's case, they would go and everybody who they thought was a possible witness, they would charge them with the underlying offense. So in a homicide investigation, you're all charged with homicide. And then they would bring them in, hold them, interview them.

The place was Detroit Police Headquarters at thirteen hundred Bobian, and it was notorious for being the seat of police corruption.

All the witnesses, all of the clients that I have, you say, thirteen hundred Bobian, everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. That interview room that they used to take people is awful, like cockroaches are in there. They don't give you food. You know, you can't see out, so you'll see through the nineteen nineties, these witnesses all testifying

In the year two thousand, seven, years after Wilson's conviction, the Department of Justice ran an investigation of the DPD that turned up a number of significant violations.

In nineteen ninety five, Carlos Rodriguez, who was one of the investigators on Wilson's homicide team, was indicted along with four other officers for operating a narcotic spring through the fourth Precinct in the city of Detroit. The entire DPD forensics lab was shut down in two thousand and eight because the investigators had found widespread errors in their analysis.

With all of this new information to present, Rachel is hopeful that Wilson will be granted a new trial.

Short of a commutation or pardon from the governor. There's one other way you can get out of prison when you have a life without parole sentence, and that is through a motion fu a leaf from judgment. So basically what you do is you go back to the state court, back to the same court that convicted you in the first place, and you say I'm entitled to a new trial for this reason, this reason, and this reason. So you investigate the hell out of everything because you only

And in the meantime. In addition to becoming a prison paralegal, Wilson has accomplished another important goal. In May of twenty twenty three, he graduated magna cum laude from Calvin University.

Was going for a bachelor's degree in Faith and Community Leadership with a minor and social work. The highest grade I ever completed with the seventh grade. I never went to high school, and so being able to kind of like accomplish not just a gain in a college degree, but with a high GDA three point ninety three, it was personally a huge accomplishment and it just gave me a huge sense of self work as well.

So your daughter Sierra was telling me that she was able to go to your graduation.

Yeah, to me, right is invaluable. I mean it's a moment there and I look at the picture and that I'm still with such a man. I'm extremely proud of my daughter that got fishes my heart.

It was nice, you know, to be able to be there and watch him do like kind of like this normal thing. It was awesome to see and maybe feel proud of him, you know. I feel like it was a great example of how he, even given his circumstances, he was able to accomplish something so great.

It was very inspiring, and Sierra credits her father with inspiring her in other ways.

I've seen what a wonderful person he is and how someone like I said, can make bad choices at one point in their life, but then you know they can turn that around and not let that define them and contain them no matter where they're at, being in prison. I think it's important to know your own worth and not see other people's decisions as how worthy you are. I guess because that's how I felt. I felt like I was unworthy of love and I was someone who

Do you and your dad ever talk about maybe the future anything like that.

He talks to me when you know, if he gets out, he would love to move here. Yeah, he would love to move here and you know spend time with me, and I'm my daughter, and you know, I may not have been able to have a childhood with him, but my children being able to have him around and you know, see that side of him that I never got to see that I will grow to see. I think that would be pretty awesome.

Wilson believes that his experience gave him a perspective that can make a difference to others even while he remains behind bars.

I think people depressed. I think people can be full sid I don't think people can't suicide, you know. And so this is the environment. And I told myself, well, because I have this education, while I'm still fighting to prove my innocent, I could be a summer of assistance to these individuals around me as well.

So when you get out, what do you want to do.

I would love to be able to work with youth and games. I would love to be able to step out of prison and start programs, mentioning programs, tutoring programs, because I know the value of that, Programs that help interpret, you know, because I know how that feels not to be able to express your feelings because you have the you don't have the proper words in English to do so. So these are kind of things that I would love

If you'd like to help support Wilson in his fight to prove his innocence, go to Freewilson rivera dot com. We'll post that link in the episode description. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in