#422 Maggie Freleng with Angela Garcia

On the night of November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Angela Garcia, a single mother, was at home with her two toddlers. It was a quiet, peaceful evening. The girls were upstairs in her bedroom watching Rugrats on TV. Downstairs, Angela was on the phone with her family making Thanksgiving plans. Angela went up to use the bathroom, and while there, she noticed it was getting hard to breathe. She began coughing.

I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really figure out what was happening in the house.

When she came out of the bathroom, Angela saw smoke billowing up from downstairs. Frantically, she searched for her daughters, but the smoke was too thick.

I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I thought about was I needed somebody to help me.

Angela broke the window, jumped down from the second story, and ran to the neighbor's house.

I went to her house, and not to please help me, Please help me find my kids. Can't get I can't get my kids.

Both of her children died in the fire. Angela was convicted of arson and murder and given a life sentence, and then after spending over sixteen years in prison, she was faced with an agonizing choice.

I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do or do because I just I had to make a decision within a couple of minutes that was gonna change the rest of my life.

From lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Angela Garcia. Angela Garcia was born in New York in nineteen seventy seven. She moved to Cleveland when she was fourteen.

My mom got married to my stepdad when I was really young, so he kind of raised me.

I lived with him and my mom.

So I have a bunch of step brothers and sisters, but for my mom, I only have. It's me and I have one sister, my sister Judy, for my mom were seven years apart.

She was just a little sister. She always wanted to be up under me, as little sisters always want to do.

This is Angela's older sister, Judy Caddo Nichols, and despite their age difference, the two have always been close.

I have this one memory that I always think about my mom had I don't know how old I was.

I had been really young.

My mom had bought these telephones and we had this long hallway, and I remember us being on these like I think they were blue phones.

Oh my god, that is so silly.

Yes, my mother had bought her for Christmas, these little phones, remember them princess phones. Well there was two of them attached to one that She'd be in one room and I'd be in the other room. We talked. Oh my god, that is so silly.

Hi Angela, Hi Judy.

I just that's like one of the memories from my childhood that is so fond in my mind.

I think we had a good childhood. You know, we would know it was never hungry. We lived nicely.

The sisters stayed close as they grew older and both started families. Judy had a son, dj and Angela had two girls, Nayima and Nysa. Their children were around the same age and constantly together.

My oldest daughter was like real bubbly, real talkative and just really outgoing. And then my youngest daughter was kind of quiet, like real observant. She would be quick to speak to people, but like she would try to get a feel of people. I A would say that they like they were both of my characters kind of like split up and got into both of them.

Naima, she was always smiling. She thought she was big sister to her little sister and my son. Yeah, she was a smart one. And Nida, Yeah she was the.

Roly poly one.

She was more quiet. She was just she was like a little Buddha. She's so adorable.

And I used to love to do to hear, used to like braid to hear and for men here.

And it was spoiled by everyone. They were babies that couldn't.

Do no wrong. How was she as a mom?

She was a good mom. Yeah. I kept the kids a lot because I had a younger son, so so they can play together all the time. So basically I had them mostly all the weekends.

Angela was a single mother, twenty two years old and engaged to be married. She was raising her daughters in a two story house she rented from her parents in East Cleveland. Judy and her family lived nearby. Angela was in school and dreamed of becoming a paramedic.

But it was like schooling was expensive. So me and my sister had I think we had.

Went somewhere and we met a recruiter, and he told me like, hey, if you sign up for you know, to be in a navy, you know, we'll.

Pay for you go to school.

So I mean, I just figured why not, Like, who wouldn't want to do that? And knowing that somebody that your whole schooling is going to be paid for.

Basic training would take six weeks, and Angela knew she would need someone to take care of her daughters during that time, So naturally she asked Judy.

Yeah, that's not a problem. It wasn't a problem.

You know.

I just say, it takes a village to raise a family, you know, so we was our little village.

But yeah, of course that never happened.

So this case started with a fire at Angela's house on November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine.

This is Joanna Sanchez.

Managing counsel of the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office of the Ohio Public Defender.

It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and Angela was at home with the girls.

My daughters used to love Rugrats, so we used to watch that all the time they were two and three, So it really wasn't like we were doing like a whole lot.

The house was calm and quiet. While the girls watched TV. Up in her bedroom, Angela lit a couple of candles. I was talking with her stepsister on the phone downstairs.

And we were just talking about Thanksgiving and who's gonna cook and what they're gonna cook and all that. I had Winnes say as he used the restroom, and my oldest daughter, Naima, she had came in.

The bathroom and I told him, like, get out the bathroom.

And she said something to me, but I didn't pay any attention whatever she was saying. And to this day, I always think about if I would have listened to her. Maybe she was telling me something, maybe she seen something, heard something and was trying to tell me, But at the time I didn't think anything of it.

When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed she was coughing and she saw smoke, so she kind of went towards the stairs and saw just smoke billowing up the stairs.

I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really figure out what was happening in the house. And I knew I was having problems breathing and I couldn't breathe.

The first thing Angela thought of was her children.

They were in my bedroom at the time, and so I was feeling all over my bed for them, and I couldn't find them.

And by this point the house was just filling with thick black smoke.

I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I thought about was I needed somebody to help me. So I opened up the window and I was screaming out the window, and then somehow I broke. I busted the window out trying to get out, and then I jumped down.

I jumped out the house.

And in my mind at the time, I thought that if I jump, if I jumped out and found somebody to help me, I could find my daughters.

So she did break out the second story window, went onto what was the roof of the porch, jumped down to the yard, and ran to her neighbor's house to get help.

You don't think like I didn't think about if you jump out the window, how are you gonna get back in the house.

I never even thought about that.

The only thing I thought about was trying to get back in, you know, trying to trying to stay them, trying to find them. And so I went to the next door neighbor's house, and to please help me, please help me find my kids. Can't get I can't get my kids, and me and her went back to the house.

I don't remember everything that happened. I remember me and her being on the porch because we couldn't get back in the house.

Unfortunately, by the time the firefighters came, Nija and Naima had died. Initially, the firefighters, they looked at the house, they documented the scene. They brought in an accelerant sniffing dog who found no accelerant, and they determined that this was an accidental fire, and they destroyed the house.

Is that normal? I thought that was so crazy. Two days later, the house is destroyed.

It's very quick. I mean it prevented certainly the defense from ever collecting any evidence in the house. But really no evidence was collected. I mean they took photos, but no materials were collected for any store of testing for accelerance or anything of that nature. So it's very strange.

So then walk me through. It's an accident. The house is leveled. How do we get to where we are?

So the house is leveled. A couple months later, Angela submitted her insurance claim for her renter's insurance, and they believed that she had overvalued the contents of her home. And so at that point the police and the fire investigation unit started looking at this again and determined instead that this was an incendiary fire.

How do they come to that conclusion without the house?

So what they did was they looked back at some of the photographs. There's a large burned through pattern in the dining room floor, and so they believed that was the area of origin. I think when they had called it an accidental fire, the presumption had been that maybe one of the gandals had fallen over and caused this fire.

Angela was barely into her twenties. She had lost both her daughters as well as her home.

That whpe time period.

I can't even say, you know how when you're sleep in like you think you're dreaming, but you're not sure because sometimes it looks real something parts of the dream looks real something, parts to fake.

And that's just how I felt for that time period.

You know, I was I was a young mom, and I never really experienced losing anybody. I didn't know how to feel. I didn't how to feel. I didn't know what I was supposed to feel. Now I know that I was in a real bad depression.

And then just three months later, in February of two thousand, Angela was arrested. She was charged with insurance fraud and aggravated murder.

I couldn't believe I was arrested. Actually, I was like, what, this is crazy? You know, it didn't make no sense to me, none whatsoever.

I knew I didn't hurt my daughters. You know, I knew I didn't them.

I love them like I love myself. You know, I always believed that the truth will prevail. I always thought that if somebody got arrested, whatever they got arrested for, they did because that's what society teaches you to think, That's what the news teaches you to think. So why would I ever think that the system would let me down?

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 Podcasts. Angela's two daughters, three year old Naima and two year old Nyja, had died in the house fire, and on August twenty first, two thousand, Angela went to trial for the first time before Judge Bridget McCafferty. The state sought the death penalty.

She had a render's insurance policy. She had life insurance on herself, and their theory was that she burned down her house and murdered her children so that she could collect some money on those insurance policies and sort of start a new life child free.

Remember the year before, Angela had been thinking about joining the navy.

And because she was a single mother, she was told, you can't join the navy with dependence, you know. So Angela looked into having her older sister, who she was very close with and very close with her children, to take temporary custody of them while she pursued this navy career. Ultimately, Angela changed her mind and didn't do that.

Nevertheless, the state used that information at trial to bolster their narrative that Angela was trying to free herself from the responsibility of motherhood by setting fire to her own home.

They put on their fire investigation unit, a couple officers from there, and they testified about what we now know are really outdated myths that used to use that indicated arson in their minds. So different types of char like alligator char on the walls, burned through pattern. They put that evidence on.

The prosecution also presented an insurance adjuster to testify that Angela had recently purchased a large renter's insurance policy as well as a policy on herself and her daughters.

The defense put on evidence that indicated she actually hadn't sought out those policies. These are salesmen who had come to her work and sort of given her a sales pitch, and she had reluctantly signed up for insurance.

In addition to those witnesses, the prosecution presented firefighters and neighbors who had witnessed the events that night. They also presented a hospital worker who testified that when Naimo was brought into the er. She was wrapped in a cord from the window blind.

They alleged that Angela had tied up one of her children. There's lots of testimony that shows why she might have ended up bound in those blinds. There was testimony from the firefighters that they actually came in and they used a tool to knock out the windows and knock down all the blinds and curtains, and so those blinds would have landed on her child. The firefighter then scooped her up with the blinds, went outside with her, handed her to an EMS worker, who then handed her to someone else.

The prosecution also alleged that Angela wasn't reacting properly at the hospital, that she wasn't behaving the way a grieving mother should.

You know, that's something that's really interesting about this case because originally what the witnesses that the scene were saying was that Angela was hysterical. She was sitting on the ground, she was rocking back and forth. You know, she was screaming about her children. Really, you know, couldn't be consoled and when she was interviewed at the hospital by the firefighters and the police detectives, they wrote up a report

When the defense presented their case, they didn't call any witnesses to testify.

What they did was aggressively cross examine the state's witnesses. So these trials happened in two thousand and two thousand and one, and by then fire science was starting to evolve. This guide that fire investigators use n FPA nine to twenty one had started to debunk some of these long held myths, and so the defense at trial really used that to cross examine the fire investigators about, you know, all these things that they were relying on that weren't supported by science.

The first trial ended in a hung jury. A few months later, there was a second trial, which started in January of two thousand and one. The same judge and prosecutors.

For the second trial, the state presented much of the same evidence they did at the first, but then also brought in a jailhouse informant.

That informant's name was Tanya Lanham.

Tanya and her husband Tim were arrested for passing bad checks and they hit the jail at the same time. He was on the men's side. She was on the women's side with Angela, and so then she would later testify that Angela confessed to her during that time.

And as we've seen in so many wrongful conviction cases, that jailhouse confession never actually happened.

Years later, Tim would write a letter to Angela indicating that you know that was a lie, and what he said was that the police approached them. After her first trial about testifying against Angela.

The prosecution denied that Tanya and Tim had been offered any kind of deal, but after she gave that information to the police, Hanya received a sixty day suspended sentence for the bad checks charge. That second trial also ended in a mistrial. The jury couldn't reach a verdict there either, but the state just would not give up.

By the time we got to the third trial, the prosecution had completely changed its prosecutors. They really enhanced their evidence about the financial motives. It really became a trial almost entirely about that. And they also alleged that in between the second and third trial, they had discovered a second area of origin for the fire in the house, So now they were saying this didn't just start in

By the time my second trial happened, I just I really believe that, you know, I had two hung juries. Okay, they're gonna let me go, because why would you still why would you still keep trying me? And it's like mentally it starts to weigh you down, and you know, hearing people say things about me that's not true, or you know, certain people call me a predator, and you know, all these different type of names and stuff like that.

Joana. I feel like we'd think after one or two mistrials they would just let this go, but they did not. The state kept coming for Angela. Was there something else going on?

Yeah?

I think that there's certainly Racism and misogyny are a big factor in Angela's conviction. You know, we often see this with women who are wrongfully convicted of killing their children. This idea that they're a horrible mutter is running throughout their trial, right And in Angela's trial, there's also a huge degree of racism the way she was characterized throughout the trial. Angela's Puerto Rican She was referred to as

Angela was convicted of three counts of arson, two counts of murder, and four counts of aggravated murder. She was given two life sentences. She would not become eligible for parole for almost fifty years. When they convicted you, what did you think? I mean, that was the moment that it all became pretty real.

Do you know I wasn't in like a state of shock, because when I got found guilty, I didn't believe it.

I didn't believe it.

How do you send someone innocent to prison when you know I didn't do this. I was like in never never Land, like I was in a world by myself, in my own head, because I just could not believe that these people are sending me to prison for forty nine and a half the life life. When I was in prison, you know, sometimes women can be very cruel, you know, and people would say, oh, I would have died with my kids, I would have did this, and

And so what was life like for you in prison before this happened? You were going to school? Were you able to continue with that when you entered prison?

So initially I was doing forty nine and a half the life, so I wasn't able to go to school. So I just kind of like had nothing to do for the most part. And so until I Gentleman as he was a teacher there. He helped me a whole lot, and he taught me a whole lot of like by construction and things like that. And Blue Princess just like a lot of different things, and so like he let me become his aid for the class, and he let me take an apprenticeship, and so he let me weld

Some Judy, your two nieces died and then your sister is arrested for their deaths. What were you thinking when all of this was happening.

For one, I used to live in that house and there was already issues going on with the electrical, and there was already issues going on. Everyone already knew that, you know. The first thing my dad said, oh my god, the electrical. You know, I should have got the guys in there. And electrician actually went in there. He told Angela, I'll be back. So many people have guilt over this. The guy that's supposed to come back to the electricity, he had guilt. Everyone felt I had some sort of

When she was in prison. Were you guys still close? Did you talk often? Oh?

Yes, one hundred and ten percent. We was going every weekend. Wow, until they changed the visitation and it got to the point where the guards knew us. They would be like, hey, how you doing, Hi? I see it from Yeah, it got to that point. But we was there all the time.

You know, I didn't ask her, and I usually do, but did she struggle in prison? Did she ever tell you about any really hard times she was having in there?

She didn't want us to know anything that was going on. You know, I don't ask any questions. I told her, whatever happened in here, leave it there. Don't nobody want to relive that. You know, if she wants to share, whenever she's ready, she can share. But I told her, when you come home, you leave that there.

Angela's family continued to support her and believe in her innocence, and so did the fathers of Naima and Nija.

Both my daughter's fathers did yes anything I needed.

They were there for me. Even after we had children together.

We still we had a good relationship, and I've talked them through my whole the whole time I was in prison.

In two thousand and nine, Angela applied for assistance to the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Ohio Public Defender's Office.

We had just started that year, in fact, and so it was one of our very first cases that we really dug into. And what we did is we had some expert witnesses look at the fire in light of new evidence and particularly the shift in science related to fire investigation.

One of those witnesses was the renowned fire expert John de Haan. His expertise has been key in reinvestigating many other Arsen convictions, including Karen Bow's and Deborah Nichols. We've covered them both on previous episodes.

What he found was that, again the state really relied on unreliable factors, unscientific signs of arson. He also noted that there were other potential accidental causes of the fire that the state completely failed to consider.

And one of those possible causes ties in with something Judy told us about earlier.

They found pretty compelling proof that this was actually an electrical fire. There was what they called like an unsystemic mix of wires and that was visible in the ceiling of the basement, the floor of the dining room, and there's evidence that there was like a low burning, sustained fire in that section. They were also able to use fire toxicology, which wasn't really used in fire investigation in nineteen eighty nine, to show that there couldn't possibly have

And then on the morning of the hearing, there was a surprise development.

The prosecution came in and they offered Angela a plea deal and essentially what they said is plead guilty to a lesser offensive involuntary manslaughter, will let you go home from prison in five years.

This type of plea is known as a dark plea.

Dark plea is a term that Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly actually coined after learning about Angela's case, and he uses it to refer to please that happened exactly like how angelus did. So we think about plea bargaining in the system, and we usually think about it before trial, right, somebody decides to enter into a plea instead of going to trial. A dark plea is one that happens after

I always said that I'm innocent and I would never plead anything.

Nope, I'm going to fight, fight, fight.

However, as time go on, I stepdad, past, my moms, getting older, you know, you start thinking differently.

So Joanna said, hey, they offered you something.

I'm like what she was like, I don't know what to do.

And it was like a last minute thing they gave her, you know, didn't even give it time to think about anything, but what ten minutes, fifteen minutes, not even you know, there was like make a decision to make it now? You know, come on, does somebody's life you don't just tell them, make a decision to make it now.

I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do, I'll do. I can't do this on my own. I need you, you know. And that's the one time in my life that I was all by myself.

But I didn't feel alone.

And I'm not a very like religious person, but I felt like God's spirit with me because I just I had to make a decision within a couple of minutes that was gonna end change the rest of my life.

This deal.

I told her, Angela, you have all the people standing behind you.

We had the.

Workers, the kids' fathers all standing behind her. But Angela was frightened. She was scared.

I think I was forty at the time and don't have to worry about doing another thirty seventhing years in prison for something I didn't do.

And then, you know what makes it.

Even worse for me is that I didn't take my children's lives, and now here I am.

I did the one thing that I said I would never do.

I took the tlee that morning. Rather than face a fourth trial, Angela pled guilty to one count of aggravated arson and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Under the Plea agreement, her sentence was reduced to twenty two years. She would be out in less than six years.

I didn't have time to think about, Oh, when you get out, you're gonna be a convicted felon.

Angela was finally released in January of twenty twenty two, but life isn't exactly back to normal with the felony convictions still on her record. Even the most basic things in life can be a challenge when.

You get out.

You can never get an apartment because they don't rent apartments to convict the felons. You know how hard it is to get a job having a record. You know, it's so many different things that I didn't get a chance to think about, you know, And then now I you know, of course, now I think about, like, did I make the right decision?

Well, do you regret doing it?

Sometimes I do? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I wish I had the courage to fight.

But you know, all the things that I've seen that happen in the courtroom, and I was scared, did I have the mental strength to go through all that again? Did I want to take my mom through all that again? Or anybody else in my family, you know? And I just figured, like, if I took this plea, like I could be home. I could be home my mom. I could take her out to eat, you know, and I can lay to bed with her and stuff like that.

When Angela first got out of prison, adjusting to her new life was harder than she expected.

When I first got locked up, I had to figure out prison. I had to figure out how and what I had to do to survive.

And it's like kind of the.

Same concept, but being free, it's not like the prison or anybody says, you know, hey, listen, here's a manual. This is what this is, this is life, this is what you need to do. This is how things are going to be. You know, you don't get that.

When I I came home, it was weird being around my friends because we were all once young.

Now they're older women, and not only are they older women, but their grandmas. Sometimes I will you go out with my friends, and I will feel out of place, because it's just like I think that, like when you're in prison, especially for a long time, it's like that's how you picture them.

Even with my mom, Like my mom's.

In her seventies now, but I still picture her as this forty seven year old woman, you know, And so like sometimes I look at my mom and she'll do something and I'll be.

Like, man, my mom's old lady now.

But Angela, still in the prime of her life and with a renewed sense of purpose, plans to get married and start a nonprofit organization like a.

Sober living home to help people that have been in prison, let them have a place to come to.

So I've been trying to work on that.

And just trying to work on myself and just trying to become a better me, a better daughter.

A bet it's still a better ant.

You're still quite young, do you do you want to have kids or adopt kids or anything like that.

I'm young.

I think you're forty six.

Yeah, and I can know fifties doors like, come on in, No, I can't have any more children.

After I had my children, I had complications. And that's another reason why my daughters meant so much to me because I just felt like God gave me these two.

So let me ask you. I mean, this is so hard to talk about, so how come you do talk about it?

I talk about it because my situation can happen to anybody else out there, and I want people to be aware of the things that.

Happened to me and to many others. I want people to.

Understand that our judicious system is not always right, and our judicial system.

Is not always fair.

And you know a lot of people are not aware of all the people that have been wrongfully convicted.

It's my same situation. Could be your daughter, your mother, your sister. You know, it could happen to anybody.

I want people to understand that everybody that takes it plea is not guilty.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freelink. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis, as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink, story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional