Friday, July 08, 2011

'Two freed men target those who put them away'

The Am Law Daily has a story ("In Texas, two freed men target those who put them away," July 6) about two Mexican nationals who were exonerated and are now suing those responsible for their convictions in a federal civil rights suit:
Thirteen years after being convicted of a killing they say they didn't commit--and three years after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated their convictions--Jesus Ramirez and Alberto Sifuentes are back before a jury this week. This time around, though, the two men are on the offensive.

Ramirez and Sifuentes are plaintiffs in a civil rights case filed against a variety of individuals and entities that they blame for their wrongful convictions. The two men are represented in the matter, which went to trial Monday in Lubbock federal district court, by the same Haynes and Boone lawyers who helped free them from prison after 12 years.

The defendants in the case include Lamb County, Tx., prosecutor Mark Yarbrough, Lamb County, the City of Littlefield, Tx., a Littlefield police officer, and a Texas Ranger.

At issue are claims by Ramirez and Sifuentes--who were charged in the 1996 killing of a woman at a Littlefield convenience store--that their convictions and incarceration did not come simply as the result of a flawed investigation or incompetent prosecution, but were the products of a conspiracy hatched by authorities to secure a courtroom victory at the expense of justice.

In addition to seeking compensation and damages, the Mexican nationals state in their complaints that they aim to "prevent such misconduct from ever happening again."

The men are back in a Texas courtroom this week thanks in large part to the efforts of a Haynes and Boone team led by partner Barry McNeil, who agreed to represent the pair on appeal pro bono beginning in 2001.
McNeil and his team wound up devoting nearly 7,500 hours to the effort. Along the way, the lawyers found several significant inconsistencies in the case. McNeil told sibling publication Texas Lawyer in 2008 that he was especially troubled that the dying victim's description of her assailants did not match those of Sifuentes and Ramirez.

Ultimately, the appeal filed by the two men's lawyers claimed ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The Haynes and Boone attorneys specifically cited the failure of the two men's original defense attorneys to turn up any alibi witnesses to testify on their behalf, even though they had been given the name of a waitress who served the accused at a Lubbock club around the time of the murder.

The appellate effort paid off in when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated the convictions in 2008 and a Lamb County grand jury refused to reindict the men. "How tragic it is that Alberto and Jesus have been deprived of their freedom for more than a decade," McNeil said in a 2008 statement. "Our state and our country cannot afford mistakes like this. Each one is a horrible tragedy for both the victim’s family and the wrongly accused."
As to the specific allegations:
The two men's complaints include multiple allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

For instance, the complaints (click here for Ramirez's complaint; click here for part 1 of Sifuentes's complaint, and here for part 2) allege that Littlefield police officer Leonel Ponce, despite knowing that the descriptions of the assailants did not match Sifuentes and Ramirez, used a highly suggestive single-photo identification procedure to induce a witness to identify Sifuentes as one of the gunmen.


The plaintiffs also claim that police officers, particularly Texas Ranger Salvador Abreo, the lead investigator on the case, pressured witnesses to alter their statements in order to strengthen the case against Sifuentes and Ramirez.

McNeil and his team also allege that Yarbrough, who is still the Lamb County district attorney, knew the case was based on a lie, but went all out for a conviction anyway, ignoring exculpatory evidence and even manufacturing false evidence against Sifuentes and Ramirez in the form of a jailhouse informant.

Finally, the plaintiffs allege that Yarbrough defamed them when he gave an interview in 2008 the day after the grand jury refused to reindict them.
From the description, it sounds like these men are ineligible for compensation from the state for the same reason Anthony Graves was before the state law was changed. Their convictions were vacated instead of overturned by a habeas writ on actual innnocence grounds. But to qualify under the exception created for
Graves, the prosecutor's office must agree and that appears unlikely in this instance. What's left, then, is civil litigation, which is a lot messier and more public but which also does a better job of exposing lingering problems and bringing them out of the shadows in a public venue.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good for them. bankrupt the town and every individual involved! More cases like this and the punks in the DA's office and at the Police Departments might start doing their jobs legally!

Anonymous said...

Looks like the courts will get another shot at the issue of prosecutorial immunity. Maybe they'll do the right thing this time.

Hook Em Horns said...

This might be the beginning of restoration of ethics to the judicial and law enforcement communities. More cases like this make it hard to ignore.

Lee said...

There is a special place in hell for Texas Prosecutors

Thomas R. Griffith said...

Hey Grits - "The defendants in the case include Lamb County, Tx., prosecutor Mark Yarbrough, Lamb County, the City of Littlefield, Tx., a Littlefield police officer, and a Texas Ranger."

Is there any reason as to why we don't see the name(s) of their original defense team(s), the ADAs, the snitch & the judge listed as defendants and in the Post? Thanks.

*I'm going to look for this info. in the links you provided. C-ya.

Anonymous said...

Manufactured jailhouse snitch?

Sounds awful familiar. (Cough) Willingham (cough)

Rage

Anonymous said...

Good for them. Bankrupt the town! Bankrupt the state!

Anonymous said...

The article could be about Wise County (Decatur) - meaning:
271st District Court Judge: John H. Fostel (recognized as one of the WORST Judges in the Nation), their D.A.'s Office, and Texas DPS Trooper David Riggs. All of them extremely corrupt....

rob owen said...

Not sure I agree that civil litigation "does a better job of exposing lingering problems and bringing them out of the shadows in a public venue." The (unjustifiably) broad sweep of qualified immunity doctrine generally protects police and prosecutors -- even the genuinely corrupt ones -- from having to answer in court for their misdeeds (as the Supreme Court demonstrated yet again this Term in the Connick v. Thompson case).

Anonymous said...

Ever heard of a thing called the Statute of Limitations?? Seems to me they should be in full swing here. Also, res judicata as the Court of Appeals and Court of Criminal Appeals declined to overturn the convictions based on any misdeeds by the parties now being sued.

Thomas R. Griffith said...

*Update: After reading thru 75 pages of Mr. Ramirez's complaint, I've located the words "defense counsel" 6 to 8 times but no names.

The legal mumbo-jumbo in the form of redundancy & repeating everything over & over & over is overkill. Could've been straight English backed up with facts in less than 20 pages. But since it's Pro-bono... Thanks.

Still looking.

Thomas R. Griffith said...

Hey folks, Grits has the name of Mr. Ramirez's original court appointed trial attorney in the Post below.

"'Lamb district attorney says Texas Ranger lied, but not really'"

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
The article could be about Wise County (Decatur) - meaning: 271st District Court Judge: John H. Fostel (recognized as one of the WORST Judges in the Nation), their D.A.'s Office, and Texas DPS Trooper David Riggs. All of them extremely corrupt....

This article could be about Jefferson County (Beaumont) - meaning Criminal District Court Judge: John Stevens and 252 Criminal District Court Judge: Layne Walker. (Known in Jefferson County as being biased and corrupt), along with the D.A.'s office and numerous corrupt police officers employeed by Port Arthur and Beaumont.