July 13, 2023 • 36 mins
On August 10, 2017, police executed a search warrant at a home in San Antonio, TX and found nearly three pounds of methamphetamine hidden in a bathroom. Upon this discovery, police arrested 45-year-old Louie Garcia and two other individuals. It turns out that the search warrant stemmed from the word of a confidential informant, and nothing else. Further, upon their arrest, Louie and his co-defendants urged that they had been framed. Shortly before the police arrived, a man had stopped at the house with a young girl. They asked to use the bathroom, and then left. When the police did arrive, the officers immediately went up to the bathroom, where they found the drugs. Their claims fell on deaf ears, and Louie was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Greg Glod and Clayton English talk to Louie Garcia and Dayna Jones, Louie's attorney.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
One hot August afternoon in twenty seventeen, Louis Garcia was
helping his friend John K build a wheelchair ran for
John's girlfriend Rexina at their house.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In San Antonio.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Suddenly, Bear County police showed up with a search warrant.
They took Louis and John inside, cuffed them, and quickly
found a stash of drugs that were hidden in the house.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Bodycam footage later showed more drugs on the floor near
Louie's feet.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
John, Rixina, and Louis were all arrested in charge with
drug possession and trafficking. Louie insisted he knew nothing about it.
Those drugs on the floor didn't belong to him.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This wasn't even his house, but.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
His lawyer said it didn't look good. If they went
to trial and the jury saw that footage, Louie could
be facing twenty five years to life. Reluctantly, he pled
guilty and got a lighter sentence.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I mean, after all, the drugs were right there on camera.
But this is wrong for.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Conviction, all right, Welcome back to wrongful conviction. We are
(01:19):
guest hosting Dave.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
My name is Greg Glatt and I'm English.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You might recognize our voices from the War on Drugs
podcast that Clayton and I co host, and you know,
we're really excited to share the story that we have
for you today on wrongful Conviction because I really think
it aligns to a lot of things that we're talking
about there, you know, perverse incentives within the criminal justice system,
within the drug war that lead to devastating consequences, and
in the case that we have today, an actual wrongful conviction.
(01:45):
There really isn't a greater example than Louis Garcia, who
was the subject and victim of wrongful conviction in the
San Antonio of Texas. So we have Louis here and
we also have his attorney, Dana Jones. Guys, thank you
so much for being on the Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Thank you, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, and let's just kind of get into it a
little bit. Louis, let's talk about prior to the incident here,
back in twenty seventeen. You know, where were you born,
where'd you grow up?
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I was born in San Antonio. I went to school,
I played ball, I lifted a lot of weights, and
you know, I was just enjoying myself dating off.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
And on any minor run ins with the law, things
like that.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
I've had run into with the law before, and it's
it's just, you know, like when you're in your early
twenties and you started drinking alcohol. So I've had some
run into with the authorities, and yeah, you know I've yeah,
i iuld say I've learned some of my lessons.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Typical stuff for being a young for being a young adult.
Like you said, you start drinking, you get you know,
you're irresponsible at that age. You get pulled over for
tail lights tags, and then something else goes on. But
it's not like this was your life or you were
in and out of the system before.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
No, I was a that's just electrician. I had a
real good job. I was running jobs, I was I
was doing everything, you know, I was going down a
good path.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Right. So when all of this went down August of
twenty seventeen, you were like, what forty five years old. Yeah,
you were living in San Antonio working, you know, doing
your thing, electrician work, and you were friends with a
couple of your neighbors, John Kate and Rexina Lenon Wadez
who lived across the street.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Yeah, my neighbors are great. Sometimes I have barbecue, sometimes
they do, and we'll send plates back and forth. I'm
the kind of guy that you invite to the barbecue
and bring your tools, right, So I'm like, okay, so
I'm always out there, you know, having a good time.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Gotcha. And Mexina, who also went by Mona. You helped
her out a lot. You know, she had lost her
legs to diabetes. She was in a wheelchair, and in fact,
this one day, you'd actually seen her fall off her
ramp to get into her house because the ramp was
in you know, pretty rough shape, right.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Then I go across the street and start helping her up,
and I started looking at this little just you know,
whatever you want to call it that was built. It
was just a bunch of scrap would put together. And
I looked around and I told her, you know, Mona,
I'll help you build all this up and clean your
fence up.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And you were like, hey, let me get this together
so this won't happen again.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
And yeah, So I had extra plywood two by fours
and a lot of stuff out there that we could have.
We were going to build her a better round, and
she she was excited about it. But she kept on
telling me I can't pay you. I can't pay you.
And I told her, you know, well, on the first
of the month when you get your food stamp. So
you know, I'm a real sucker for some chicken mole.
(04:36):
She goes, oh, I can make that. I can say.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
We'll be good man.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Listen, home cooked meal sometimes that's more than enough for
a hard day's work. So that's what you and Mona's boyfriend,
John Cape were up to that day, August tenth, twenty seventeen.
You're out in front of their house. You're building a
new wheelchair ramp, and Mona had gone off to the
dollar store to you know, grab some snacks and some
gatorade for you guys.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Right, yeah, And while we were, you know, putting everything together.
I don't know who the guy was, but uh this,
uh you know, John was communicating with him and he
told him that, hey, do you mind if my daughter
uses the restroom. She had a pink backpack with her
and they go inside. John comes right back out with
me and we're taking stuff apart and they leave. And
(05:23):
another thing that caught my eyes. She didn't have a
backpack this time.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So this guy who you didn't know, and daughter has
a backpack, come up and say, hey, just need to
use the rest room. You guys are just being good
host and let them in. Daughter comes back out, no
backpack on her, no backpack on the way back out.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And as soon as.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
You hear their car take off of the block, and
I looked up and I just see a Bear County
Sheriff sticker on the side of a vent and everybody
starts jumping out. And I told John, Amen, we're in
the RAI dude.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So Dane, let me throw it to you for some
background here. Can you kind of run through the facts
of the case, Like what's going on at this point?
I mean, you know, the listener like, why are the
cops even here?
Speaker 6 (06:04):
So Bear County Narcotics Division it goes and gets a
search warrant for the house where Louis happened to be.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Louie did not live there at all.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
They relied on a confidential informant to get into this
particular house with really nothing corroborating the confidential informance information
at all. This confidential informant had never been relied on before.
How they made this person credible in the FI David
was that they had conducted a controlled buy for the officer.
The officer says he met with the informant, gave the
(06:34):
informant an undisclosed amount of US currency, dropped the informant
off down the road, and observe the informant go into
a location. Then they later picked up the informant and
he had drugs.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
No, I'm just saying that the informant had never been
used as a CI.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Or anything before first time.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And they're just going off somebody's word. Who essentially, you
dropped them off somewhere, you saw him go in a
place in later on they had drugs, and you will
equate that to them being credible.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
That's crazy.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
I mean, that doesn't even prove that the person knows
what drugs are. They just went in there and said,
here's money, give me, give me meth. And then they're like,
they came back with meth, they must know what it is.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
But that's essentially what it was. That's the credibility there.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
That information got police lawfully into a house. I mean
lawfully in the sense of that's the paperwork the judge
signed off on. This got them into a house, took
people down, searched their house made a rest base.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
On that, and you know, this is the kind of
problem that we see with a lot of these warrants,
and Clayton, I'm sure you're thinking what I'm thinking. We
did an episode of the War on Drugs podcast called
The War at Your Door on no knock warrants, and
this is not a no knock warrant, but it has
a lot of those similarities to it. It kind of has
that same feel, right.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, no, it definitely has that no knock feel. It
reminds me of what Radley Balco talked about on our
episode that we had.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it feels exactly like that. And really,
you know, judges are supposed to be this check a
lot of these warrants and they just they kind of
rubber stant them quite a bit. And you really look
at a lot of the evidence that comes to allow
the government just to barrel into your door not announcing themselves,
and how shoddy and minor that is. And then you
look at a case like this and you're using an untested, untrained,
(08:15):
confidential format has all the incentive of the world to
essentially do things to get themselves off, and you're rubber
stamping these things and the consequences of that. I think
it's just it's a pretty scary, scary circumstances one that
you know, we could all find ourselves there. You know,
Louis was just doing a good deed for a neighbor
and look at the circumstances that he found himself.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, justice being served out in the name of a
lie is scary anyway, exactly, all right, So Louis, let's
wind it back a minute. You and John are building
the ram. The guy and his daughter come in use
the bathroom and take off, and police show up in
a hot second with his warrant.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
What happened next?
Speaker 5 (08:51):
They started cuffing us up and they secured the location.
And uh, I have been cu from the back like
everybody else does, and I'll already on the floor. Well
I look up and I just an officer comes and
he jumps on top of me and he messes up
my right shoulder and you know, I can't lift it
up over my shoulders right now. And I was like, man,
(09:12):
what did you do that for?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Man?
Speaker 6 (09:14):
So almost immediately they go back to the bathroom and
they come back and they're like, what's this With a huge,
large quantity of drugs and that's exactly where this guy
and his little girl with the backpack had just gone
and they supposedly found it between like there was like
a loose board in the wall and like in a
hole and that's where they found it.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Wow, So was this We don't know about these people?
Are they? Because I'm gonna say what it looks like
and what it sounds like is this dude came in
with his daughter and planet drugs in there.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
So I'm just sitting there and everything, and then they
pointed me out and said, hey, get your drugs on
the floor. And you guys been looking at me the
whole time. My hands have been handcuffed, and so they
they jump on me again and they some some narcotics
that were found on the floor, and they were saying
that it's fine. I was like, I said, no, it's
not one. That's that.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
What he's talking about is when they handcuffed him, they
took they led them in it's on body camp into
it inside to sit on a couch and you can
kind of see the general area. There's an officer sitting
with them the entire time. You don't see anything on
the ground. He's handcuffed the entire time, and when they
stand him up to leave, there's all of a sudden,
like a little bit of drugs sitting on the floor
next to him that was not there before. I don't
(10:29):
know how he could be sitting on a couch with
his hands behind him and next next to a police
officer and somehow get I mean, the implication to me
when I was reading the reports was he somehow pulled
these out of his pockets or something. But they were
accusing him of having this small quantity sitting next to
on the floor.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Oh wow, that wasn't there when he sat him down, okay.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And then right about then, that's when Xina came back
from the dollar store and saw everything that was going
on her.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So she came back to the race.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
She came back in the middle of the race.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
She came back police there you win, coach.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
And she sees like she sat cussing them out. What
the hell are y'all doing in my house?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Is that?
Speaker 5 (11:01):
You know, she might be in a wheelchair, but she's
going to stand the ground sure, and she telling me,
you get the hell out of my house. I don't
know who y'all are. We're bear County Sheriff and hand
there the warrant and she knows she's in cups.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
They were Bear County Narcotics Division, where the officers, interesting enough,
just a side piece of information is this is not
my first case overturning a Bear County narcotics case. Like
years ago the same division, they had some lying officers
who were in trouble in the same unit, who were
just kind of making up information and on search warrants
and go.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I was gonna ask that. I was gonna ask, like
they have a little bit of history of being.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Dirty, at least with me, they do.
Speaker 6 (12:00):
I mean, not every officer is bad. I can put
that out there, but I haven't had a good, really
positive experience in my career with that particular.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Unit, right, And there's been a history, like you said,
within Bear County. I know, back in what March twenty ten,
there was you know, I think two hundred and thirty
nine warnings of defensive hernees whose cases evolved to narcotics
deputies when they're accused of pocketing money that was supposed
to be paid to SEIS. And like you said, there's
been other cases there and so this is something I
(12:32):
don't know if the term systemic, but there has been
a routine within Bear County of this type of stuff
going on within their narcotics division.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
Correct, Yeah, okay, So each one of them was charged
with four to two hundred grams, I believe is what
the ultimate charge ended up being with intent to deliver,
which in Texas that elevates it up to another offense
level range of punishment.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Everything.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
So I wait to go see the lawyer, and that's
told the racina. She gave me an affidavit stating that
it's her house. Everything is found on the property is
she's solely responsible for. He looked at that thing and
he was like, you don't live there. They searched your stuff,
there was nothing found on your person. He goes, I'm
taking this all the way to trial, and this is
(13:14):
immediately dismissal. Oh man, I just that was a quarter
pointed telling me this man, I'm high five of him.
He goes, man, keep your nose clean. Stead He goes,
you're gonna beat your case. So I went hopping home,
skipping happy them go back to working again and helping
out and stuff like that. And there wasn't It wasn't
(13:35):
the same when I went to court.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
Eventually your bond got revoked and you were back in
jail waiting for these charges. And somehow, I don't know,
nobody can figure out, but his lawyers like switched and
he didn't have the same lawyer anymore, and he got
a new quarter appointed a lawyer.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
He's already telling me, man, they don't look good.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Wait a minute, man, whoa we go from?
Speaker 1 (13:55):
This trial's about to get thrown The case gonna get
thrown out, So it doesn't look good.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
They were ten years and I was like, what are
you serious? Ten years from having all this confidence about
me getting this case dismissed to this guy looking at
me like, swell, what can you say? You've been in
trouble before, and I'm just but this isn't mine. Wow,
in the eyes of the court, you're guilty and you're
(14:22):
gonna have to sign for something today.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So they immediately wanted you to take a plea yes.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
And I just put my head down and just that's
when I started like thinking, like, maybe I need to
do this. Maybe I knew that maybe. And it wasn't
until this case got opened up about me having these
drugs that were found come to find out, all these
police officers, none of them are credible in court. That's
(14:50):
the reason why they didn't want me to take this trial.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Wow, okay, okay, So this goes just going back to
what you were saying.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
They were trying to get you to admit to those
drugs in the house when they put their knee on
your chest and everything. They were trying to get a
mission then and then when you got the first one
saw it for what it was, that it should be
thrown out or whatever, then they switched it to somebody
that told you to take the plea.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And it just sounds like what we've talked.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
About Greg on our podcast, with that whole system of
trying to get people to get through the system as
fast as possible, get them the plea, Like it's almost
shock and all, like we're trying to scare you into.
Speaker 6 (15:29):
This, Like you know, I think there's also something to
be said there that when somebody is in custody already,
like his bond got revoked, he's in custody, the balance
of well, okay, if I just take the plea and
do a little bit of time, I can get out.
It's a lot easier to fight charges when you're actually
out of jail, you're working with your lawyer, you can
(15:50):
have better meetings with them. There's a lot more discussion
that way. But when sometimes when you're in custody and
you have a lawyer who's like, look, not fighting for you,
but they're also not meeting with you. Because they're not,
you're not able to call their office and talk with them.
I think Louie and I have talked about this before,
just the okay, well if they want me to do
ten and he ended up getting eight years ultimately, But
(16:10):
you start running through I could do. I've been in
here a little bit of time already, I'm facing life
in prison for this amount of drugs. The reality is
you never know what a jury's going to do if
you can't get your case dismissed, and you start kind
of justifying to yourself, Okay, I can maybe make parole
in a couple of years, and those thoughts start going
through your mind.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
So Louis, now we're over a year and a half
out from the actual arrest. You're initially thinking that this
is going to get dismissed. Those hopes that kind of
just start to dwindle, and then you have to accept
a plea deal on something that you know in your
heart you had nothing.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
I was so twenty five to life if I take
this trial, and I'm like, you know, what do you say?
It's hard? And uh, You're like, okay, I might beat
this one, but this one's over your opinion and what
are the chances? And you just put your and just
you know, I have to take this. I have to
take what they're offering me twenty five to life each case.
(17:06):
And I was like, I know I have a history.
It's it's you know, I've learned from the mistakes. I
have been making mistakes. And it's just like you totally
cos you get a cashp cash, you don't don't do
it this way.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Okay. So Louis pled out to serve eight years in prison,
and there was time served and all that. What about
the other two defendants, Mona and John?
Speaker 6 (17:28):
So John ended up taking time in prison. I think
he got ten years on his case. And then they
call her Mona. Her official name is Rexina. Rexina was
very very ill. So John actually took a little bit
more time on his sentence so that Rexina could get probation.
That's kind of also another reason that these plea. Bargains
were all offered so that Rexina could get out because
(17:50):
of her health problems, and Louis and John recognized that.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
So Rexina got out, she served her probation.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
And John and Louis went off to start their sentences.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
You get there, you already kind of got your mindset
on you know how, You're just going to tread through.
You don't want to get involved, you don't want to
stay out of the way, Go to the library, read books,
do this, and that's what you're mostly focused on. You
can't sit there and tell yourself that you know what
you do is wrong. You sold yourself out. You know
(18:21):
you had nothing to do with this. You know why
did you do what you did. I'm just here to
do my time. That's all in my mind for it.
There's a lot of disordering, chaos that goes on in there,
and you just don't want no part of it. You
don't conversate with certain people. You just leave all this
stuff alone. And every now and then you're gonna have
(18:42):
a clash with these groups or with this or with that,
and it's how you deal it. You just got to
keep moving forward. I had a real tough time in
there because I had a silly and you know, he
was five years older than I was, and we would
talk and next thing, I know, the more he's there,
we were just talking, talk and talk. Well he had
(19:04):
he was making some hooch when I was at the library,
and they fought for the bottle or whatever it was,
and uh, you know, my my celling. You know he
was he died. He beating the death and uh, he
still bothers. It still bothers me today.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
But hey, do you want me to tell this part? Louis? Okay?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
So they I've heard him tell this before and it's
really heartbreaking. But they basically brought him like a bucket
of water and told him to clean up the blood
that was in his cell himself.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
So it's his friend's blood and he had to clean.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
It all up. I told him, I don't want to
go in there. I don't want to go in there.
And they said, aren't you coming up for parol? You know,
I'm giving you a direct order to get inside your cell.
And do you just do that? You know you don't
want to get in there. You know, Okay, you lose
your pearl next yere, you know, following year. So I
(20:01):
put my head down and I cleaned up the blood.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
So, Dana, you get involved in this case in twenty nineteen,
can you know there's a parallel case to this that
is really tied into Louis. Can you kind of talk
about what you discovered between Louis case and obviously the
other case of Ruby Sandoval, which happened in October that
same year in San Antonio, Texas.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
So, when I was asked by the Conviction Integrity Union
and then appointed by the judge to represent them, I
did reach out to Louis and John. I just wanted
to know what was going on, what their thoughts on
their own case were, and saying I'm looking into this.
This is what I've been told so far, but I
need to get some information. And both of their letters
back finally were kind of the same thing. We've always
(21:08):
said that this guy came into the house and he
must have planted the drugs because they weren't ours, and
it was a really weird situation and nobody believed us,
which it matched up with with Ruby's case as well.
So what I find out later is somebody had messaged
her or talked to her about storing like a box
or a bag, leaving it at her house for a
(21:29):
little while. She said, sure, that's fine. She had a
lot of text messages with this person. The person was like,
when are you going to be home? When are you
going to be home? You know that kind of stuff.
And as soon as she gets home, cops raided her
house with the search warrant and they have find drugs
in this bag that this person asked.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
To leave at her house.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
So based on that, she starts immediately fighting her case.
And it takes her quite a while to prove to
the prosecutor and to everyone you know, with her lawyer,
get her text messages and everything in line to show
this person us have left the drugs here. The state
now feels comfortable enough that that's what happened in her case.
So that prosecutor in her case went to a conviction
(22:09):
integrity unit that the DA's office has. They immediately pulled
every case that this confidential informant had worked on previously,
and it was Louis Rexina and John's case. They sent
me a memorandum explaining everything that went on and why
they think that you know what happened in John and
Louise case and Rexina's case might have happened just like
(22:30):
it happened in this other woman's case.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Wow, so the same informant, So the same playbook of
somebody comes by and leave something there and then the
police come the same county.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Wow, No it was It was the same informant, the
same situation, same informant. Thankfully, in her case, she had
a bunch of text messages from the individual and she
was able to establish all of that.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Okay, gotcha? Okay? What was the between Roxine and the
confidential informant? Like, was there a connection? Why would is
he drawn to this house even plant things? Or was
it completely random?
Speaker 6 (23:04):
I think that he knew John and Rexina just from
the neighborhood, is my understanding. They knew who he was,
but that was kind of the extent of it. Louie
didn't know who he was at all.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
No, no, no, and the person used their daughter.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
It just shows the lengths that confidential informants go to
to work off their own cases.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Gotcha, So was it readily apparent when you were kind
of reading through this and going through What were some
of the things that you feel could have nipped us
in the bud earlier? What was the kind of the
things that stood out to you. The most red.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
Flag Number one to me was reading this search warrant,
that this is the first time they've ever used this
confidential informant. I don't think that they had enough to
get a search warrant based on that.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I would have challenged that.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
The bodycam footage that what I had said earlier, that
they're trying to say that these drugs that are near
Louis but they weren't there before.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
It doesn't if you see the video, there's turn the
camera on and snaked your name and what's your address,
and then it turned it back off, then it turned
it back on, is that these drugs were found right here.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
Officers that turn on and off their cameras or mute
their mics always red flag for me. It just all
seemed weird, and when something seems weird or off, there's
usually some problems there is, in my opinion, So there's
definitely was a lot to work with.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah, wow, Okay, So you talked about Dana a lot
of the work that the Bear County Conviction Integrity Union
has done and the good work that they've done, and
they've actually been you know, a really big bright spot
within the Prostitorial's office there. Can you talk about, you know,
what their involvement throughout this process with Louis once you
got into the case and how that looked.
Speaker 6 (24:45):
So initially it was the chief of that office. She's
not there anymore. She works for a different court, but
Matt Howard is now the chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit.
I work with Matt quite a bit. I can't I
can't ever say that he and I always are going
to agree on every case, but I can assure you
that he gives everything a thorough review, and if it's
a wrongful conviction, he will stand up and say it's
(25:06):
a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
He's not afraid to do it.
Speaker 6 (25:08):
So I really do commend the work our das Jo Gonzalez.
He didn't start the Conviction Integrity Unit, but he's kept
it going and really built on it, and they do
a great job of overturning wrongful convictions when the proof
is there. So in my work, when I file the claims,
I got every claim together that I could possibly file
for Louis and John and Rexina, and then I file
(25:30):
them in the writ, application and memorandum of.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Law from there.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
I worked with the conviction Integrity unit on what facts
and details we're going to agree to, and we put
those agreed orders together and we get those in front
of the judge. And we also had a great judge,
Judge Mesa here in town. She agreed on a lot
of this. She actually went even further than what the
Court of Criminal Appeals was willing to do. Judge Mesa
(25:55):
recommended that all three of them are actually innocent of
the charges. That's kind of the process when, especially when
we have agreed facts and agreed relief. The DA's office
here is willing to get on board and we file
a lot of agreed stuff together, which is unique. As
a defense attorney, it does feel weird to give so
much credit, but every DA's office, because of situations like this,
(26:19):
need conviction integrity units and true ones that are willing
to say our das messed up, our sheriffs messed up.
So they are they're willing to make those hard calls.
And the convection Integrity Unit here and I appreciate the
work that they do, especially on this case.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh Man, a conviction integrity unit, I think that that
needs to be implemented everywhere.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Man likes that's something that.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
It's a resource I think that can hopefully get a
lot more cases overturned.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
You know, Yeah, Clayton, I totally agree, and you know
we're seeing them pop up a lot more and more,
and yeah, to your point, we definitely need more oversight
on these things.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
All right.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
So, Dana, as you said, Judge Mesa recommended that Louis
and John's convictions be overturned and they should be found innocent.
But then it went up to the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals. Can you explain what happened next?
Speaker 6 (27:09):
Yeah, the Court of Criminal Appeals for John and Louie
said no, that they should their case is overturned, but
they're not actually innocent, which it's it's a really high
difficult burden to prove with actual innocence. So I can
go into why they didn't. There were because in John's
house there was some little minor amounts of drugs that
were found, like personal use, small amounts like that, and
(27:31):
because they said that that's a lesser included of the
greater amount, they're not going to give them an actual
innocence finding. That's why they went that route. But Louie
didn't live there, and there was nothing directly linked to Louis.
I really felt like, at least in Louie's case, he
should have had the actual innocence finding in this case.
So since they don't get an actual innocence, it gets
sent back down to the trial court level, and the
(27:51):
DA's office immediately filed dismissals and all the cases just
to make it official that it's overturned and now dismissed officially.
So they don't have a conviction on their record for
these cases.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
And because they are not found actually innocent, Texas law
does not allow them to be entitled a compensation because
of that.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Correct, Have anyone, any officers or anyone else been disciplined
that were connected to this case?
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Was the informant ever charged with anything about lying.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
In this case?
Speaker 4 (28:23):
No, not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Okay, And so we're now looking into what August twenty twenty,
Judge Maza finally finds for wrongful conviction and then Louis
you're released at the same time as John on bond
in September twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, you had like kind of a turn, because you
sound like you kind of gave up and just like said,
I'm gonna put my head down and do my time
in too, be walking free. Man.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
What was that like?
Speaker 5 (28:54):
It was the meeting my little grand baby, playing with
her is just I just started smiling, like be there
for my parents. You know, I'm the only son, I'm
big little brother, and so it's kind of, you know,
gonna go do what I'm'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
One other little kind of piece of sad part of
this whole case is the whole time that I represented Rexina,
she was on hospice care because of her illness, and
the day that the judge signed these orders for them,
like for her case to be overturned, it didn't need
to go up to the Quarter of Criminal Appeals, but
the day she signed it. I called the next day
after I got the order, and she had passed away
(29:35):
the night before, so I never got a chance to
tell Rexina her case was overturned.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
The first thing that John and Louis did was they
were pall bearers at Rexina's funeral.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
Yeah, her sister had told us that she knew, you
know that young guys are going to get out. She
was happy we got out. I think about a year
into my sentence, she wrote me a letter. I know
with her it is that probably took a lot out
of her. Even when I was incarcerated, we still kept
in touch what little she could say, because it was like, Hi,
(30:10):
thinking about you, how have you been? And pretty much
is it? You know, I still keep in touch with John.
I still keep in touch with Delma Rexina's sister. Yeah,
we're still, like I guess, easing our way through this
and just slowly turning pages and moving forward.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Just an unbelievable story. I think this, this case really
does exemplify so much that's wrong with our criminal justice
system and the war on drugs and how these negative
incentives can really, you know, impact people's lives in such
a dramatic fashion that you know, you see where these
(30:53):
negative sentences can lie with the confidential informant and where
his incentives are are drawn from the detectives to garner
or two more convictions kind of fairly easily without kind
of you know, really respecting someone's constitutional rights. It's such
an exemplification of all the negative that we see within
the criminal justice and the fact that we have, you know,
(31:13):
somewhat of a happy ending with Louis, and how many
other thousands of people have probably gone through similar things
and never got this opportunity to actually be you know,
have their cases dismissed because there wasn't this commision integrity
or there's wasn't this piece of evidence. And so yeah,
I just want to thank you Louis for coming on
today and discuss this case.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well that's one thing with our podcast, we don't have
a lot of happy ending. Yeah, so to have somebody
who's actually been through everything and come out the other
side and it's great.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
So thank you, Thank you both, Louis.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Is there any call to action? Is there a go
fundme page? Is there a number for people can reach
out about you know, you and your your your skills
as an electrician, anything else with that that we can
we can plug for you.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
If anybody needs to help, we need some work or
stuff like that, you can go through Dana.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
It's all right with her.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
I'll be your secretary, Louis.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
But I mean, you.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
Need you need plumbing in the electrical you need to
fix your fence, and I ain't gonna wash your dogs,
but you know all that other stuff like anything to
keep uself busy, keep myself moving. Keep some guess it
in the truck and a little change in my bucket.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
I'm fine.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I'm looking at some curtains right now that are crooked
because I couldn't do that. You look at the whole
fucking house by yourself. God damn worthless.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Man. Come on, you gotta get your skills up. No,
I take that back. We got to get our skills,
that's what we think. We gotta get our skills up.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah. Man, Look, we've come to this segment of our
show called closing Arguments. Louis and Dana, thank you so
much for being here with us today. This is the
last segment of the show, so we turn it over
to YouTube for any final thoughts that you may have
for your closing arguments. So, Dana, why don't you start
(32:59):
us off.
Speaker 6 (33:00):
I always say that I would love to not do
this job anymore, only because I would love that there's
never another.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Wrongful conviction ever.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
But there's always going to be this job because humans
are involved in this process, in this system, the use
of confidential informants really needs to be questioned in every
single case. If they're going to do it, I don't
personally think they should be doing it. But that's I'm
not a law enforcement officer. Judges who review search Warren
Affi Davids and arrest Warren Affi Davids. I mean the
whole process. Everybody needs to have better training so that
(33:28):
we can catch these things on the front end and
prevent them from ever even happening. I just think, I
hope and I love podcasts like this where we're getting
the word out that wrongful convictions do happen. They absolutely
do happen, and we can't just incarcerate somebody and turn
a blind eye anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
That we need to start working.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
So if there's any local organizations innocence projects in your
state or local community, get involved, if you can donate.
If you ever get called on jury duty, really take
it serious because you could be deciding somebody's fate.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Keep your head up and keep going. You get enough
wrong two you're out there doing right. So yeah, I've
had enough wrong done to me. So now it's just
you know, I go out there and help out all
I can, and I don't hold any negativity, any grudge
or nothing like that. You know, I still have a
lot of respect for the law, and I still respect
(34:22):
you know, these people that are doing a hell of
a job out there. And it wasn't until I was
released and I saw all the effort that Dya and
the Judge mess It put into getting me out. It's
like these people already they didn't know me for any date,
they didn't owe me anything, but they fought hard to
get me out. They fought hard to where I'm at.
(34:43):
And so that's you know, I guess check marks on
my side. You know, you do have people looking out
at me. Not everybody's there to hang in.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. We are your
guest hosts Clayton.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
English and I'm Greg Glott, and.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
We'd like to give a shout out to executive producers
Jason Flamm and Kevin Wadis.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Plus everybody on the Wrongful Conviction production team Connor Hall, Anny, Chelsea,
Lyla Robinson and Jeff Cliber.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
The music in the production comes from three time OSCAR
nominated composer shave Rout.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction, as well as Lava for Good on all
three platforms so.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
You can find US online too. I'm Clayton English on Instagram.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
And I'm on Twitter at greg Glott.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And For more about the state of drug criminalization in
your society, listen to the War on Drugs podcast wherever
you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
One hot August afternoon in twenty seventeen, Louis Garcia was
helping his friend John K build a wheelchair ran for
John's girlfriend Rexina at their house.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In San Antonio.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Suddenly, Bear County police showed up with a search warrant.
They took Louis and John inside, cuffed them, and quickly
found a stash of drugs that were hidden in the house.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Bodycam footage later showed more drugs on the floor near
Louie's feet.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
John, Rixina, and Louis were all arrested in charge with
drug possession and trafficking. Louie insisted he knew nothing about it.
Those drugs on the floor didn't belong to him.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This wasn't even his house, but.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
His lawyer said it didn't look good. If they went
to trial and the jury saw that footage, Louie could
be facing twenty five years to life. Reluctantly, he pled
guilty and got a lighter sentence.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I mean, after all, the drugs were right there on camera.
But this is wrong for.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Conviction, all right, Welcome back to wrongful conviction. We are
(01:19):
guest hosting Dave.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
My name is Greg Glatt and I'm English.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You might recognize our voices from the War on Drugs
podcast that Clayton and I co host, and you know,
we're really excited to share the story that we have
for you today on wrongful Conviction because I really think
it aligns to a lot of things that we're talking
about there, you know, perverse incentives within the criminal justice system,
within the drug war that lead to devastating consequences, and
in the case that we have today, an actual wrongful conviction.
(01:45):
There really isn't a greater example than Louis Garcia, who
was the subject and victim of wrongful conviction in the
San Antonio of Texas. So we have Louis here and
we also have his attorney, Dana Jones. Guys, thank you
so much for being on the Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Thank you, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, and let's just kind of get into it a
little bit. Louis, let's talk about prior to the incident here,
back in twenty seventeen. You know, where were you born,
where'd you grow up?
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I was born in San Antonio. I went to school,
I played ball, I lifted a lot of weights, and
you know, I was just enjoying myself dating off.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
And on any minor run ins with the law, things
like that.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
I've had run into with the law before, and it's
it's just, you know, like when you're in your early
twenties and you started drinking alcohol. So I've had some
run into with the authorities, and yeah, you know I've yeah,
i iuld say I've learned some of my lessons.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Typical stuff for being a young for being a young adult.
Like you said, you start drinking, you get you know,
you're irresponsible at that age. You get pulled over for
tail lights tags, and then something else goes on. But
it's not like this was your life or you were
in and out of the system before.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
No, I was a that's just electrician. I had a
real good job. I was running jobs, I was I
was doing everything, you know, I was going down a
good path.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Right. So when all of this went down August of
twenty seventeen, you were like, what forty five years old. Yeah,
you were living in San Antonio working, you know, doing
your thing, electrician work, and you were friends with a
couple of your neighbors, John Kate and Rexina Lenon Wadez
who lived across the street.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Yeah, my neighbors are great. Sometimes I have barbecue, sometimes
they do, and we'll send plates back and forth. I'm
the kind of guy that you invite to the barbecue
and bring your tools, right, So I'm like, okay, so
I'm always out there, you know, having a good time.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Gotcha. And Mexina, who also went by Mona. You helped
her out a lot. You know, she had lost her
legs to diabetes. She was in a wheelchair, and in fact,
this one day, you'd actually seen her fall off her
ramp to get into her house because the ramp was
in you know, pretty rough shape, right.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Then I go across the street and start helping her up,
and I started looking at this little just you know,
whatever you want to call it that was built. It
was just a bunch of scrap would put together. And
I looked around and I told her, you know, Mona,
I'll help you build all this up and clean your
fence up.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And you were like, hey, let me get this together
so this won't happen again.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
And yeah, So I had extra plywood two by fours
and a lot of stuff out there that we could have.
We were going to build her a better round, and
she she was excited about it. But she kept on
telling me I can't pay you. I can't pay you.
And I told her, you know, well, on the first
of the month when you get your food stamp. So
you know, I'm a real sucker for some chicken mole.
(04:36):
She goes, oh, I can make that. I can say.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
We'll be good man.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Listen, home cooked meal sometimes that's more than enough for
a hard day's work. So that's what you and Mona's boyfriend,
John Cape were up to that day, August tenth, twenty seventeen.
You're out in front of their house. You're building a
new wheelchair ramp, and Mona had gone off to the
dollar store to you know, grab some snacks and some
gatorade for you guys.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Right, yeah, And while we were, you know, putting everything together.
I don't know who the guy was, but uh this,
uh you know, John was communicating with him and he
told him that, hey, do you mind if my daughter
uses the restroom. She had a pink backpack with her
and they go inside. John comes right back out with
me and we're taking stuff apart and they leave. And
(05:23):
another thing that caught my eyes. She didn't have a
backpack this time.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So this guy who you didn't know, and daughter has
a backpack, come up and say, hey, just need to
use the rest room. You guys are just being good
host and let them in. Daughter comes back out, no
backpack on her, no backpack on the way back out.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And as soon as.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
You hear their car take off of the block, and
I looked up and I just see a Bear County
Sheriff sticker on the side of a vent and everybody
starts jumping out. And I told John, Amen, we're in
the RAI dude.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So Dane, let me throw it to you for some
background here. Can you kind of run through the facts
of the case, Like what's going on at this point?
I mean, you know, the listener like, why are the
cops even here?
Speaker 6 (06:04):
So Bear County Narcotics Division it goes and gets a
search warrant for the house where Louis happened to be.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Louie did not live there at all.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
They relied on a confidential informant to get into this
particular house with really nothing corroborating the confidential informance information
at all. This confidential informant had never been relied on before.
How they made this person credible in the FI David
was that they had conducted a controlled buy for the officer.
The officer says he met with the informant, gave the
(06:34):
informant an undisclosed amount of US currency, dropped the informant
off down the road, and observe the informant go into
a location. Then they later picked up the informant and
he had drugs.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
No, I'm just saying that the informant had never been
used as a CI.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Or anything before first time.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And they're just going off somebody's word. Who essentially, you
dropped them off somewhere, you saw him go in a
place in later on they had drugs, and you will
equate that to them being credible.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
That's crazy.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
I mean, that doesn't even prove that the person knows
what drugs are. They just went in there and said,
here's money, give me, give me meth. And then they're like,
they came back with meth, they must know what it is.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
But that's essentially what it was. That's the credibility there.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
That information got police lawfully into a house. I mean
lawfully in the sense of that's the paperwork the judge
signed off on. This got them into a house, took
people down, searched their house made a rest base.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
On that, and you know, this is the kind of
problem that we see with a lot of these warrants,
and Clayton, I'm sure you're thinking what I'm thinking. We
did an episode of the War on Drugs podcast called
The War at Your Door on no knock warrants, and
this is not a no knock warrant, but it has
a lot of those similarities to it. It kind of has
that same feel, right.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, no, it definitely has that no knock feel. It
reminds me of what Radley Balco talked about on our
episode that we had.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it feels exactly like that. And really,
you know, judges are supposed to be this check a
lot of these warrants and they just they kind of
rubber stant them quite a bit. And you really look
at a lot of the evidence that comes to allow
the government just to barrel into your door not announcing themselves,
and how shoddy and minor that is. And then you
look at a case like this and you're using an untested, untrained,
(08:15):
confidential format has all the incentive of the world to
essentially do things to get themselves off, and you're rubber
stamping these things and the consequences of that. I think
it's just it's a pretty scary, scary circumstances one that
you know, we could all find ourselves there. You know,
Louis was just doing a good deed for a neighbor
and look at the circumstances that he found himself.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, justice being served out in the name of a
lie is scary anyway, exactly, all right, So Louis, let's
wind it back a minute. You and John are building
the ram. The guy and his daughter come in use
the bathroom and take off, and police show up in
a hot second with his warrant.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
What happened next?
Speaker 5 (08:51):
They started cuffing us up and they secured the location.
And uh, I have been cu from the back like
everybody else does, and I'll already on the floor. Well
I look up and I just an officer comes and
he jumps on top of me and he messes up
my right shoulder and you know, I can't lift it
up over my shoulders right now. And I was like, man,
(09:12):
what did you do that for?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Man?
Speaker 6 (09:14):
So almost immediately they go back to the bathroom and
they come back and they're like, what's this With a huge,
large quantity of drugs and that's exactly where this guy
and his little girl with the backpack had just gone
and they supposedly found it between like there was like
a loose board in the wall and like in a
hole and that's where they found it.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Wow, So was this We don't know about these people?
Are they? Because I'm gonna say what it looks like
and what it sounds like is this dude came in
with his daughter and planet drugs in there.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
So I'm just sitting there and everything, and then they
pointed me out and said, hey, get your drugs on
the floor. And you guys been looking at me the
whole time. My hands have been handcuffed, and so they
they jump on me again and they some some narcotics
that were found on the floor, and they were saying
that it's fine. I was like, I said, no, it's
not one. That's that.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
What he's talking about is when they handcuffed him, they
took they led them in it's on body camp into
it inside to sit on a couch and you can
kind of see the general area. There's an officer sitting
with them the entire time. You don't see anything on
the ground. He's handcuffed the entire time, and when they
stand him up to leave, there's all of a sudden,
like a little bit of drugs sitting on the floor
next to him that was not there before. I don't
(10:29):
know how he could be sitting on a couch with
his hands behind him and next next to a police
officer and somehow get I mean, the implication to me
when I was reading the reports was he somehow pulled
these out of his pockets or something. But they were
accusing him of having this small quantity sitting next to
on the floor.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Oh wow, that wasn't there when he sat him down, okay.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And then right about then, that's when Xina came back
from the dollar store and saw everything that was going
on her.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So she came back to the race.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
She came back in the middle of the race.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
She came back police there you win, coach.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
And she sees like she sat cussing them out. What
the hell are y'all doing in my house?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Is that?
Speaker 5 (11:01):
You know, she might be in a wheelchair, but she's
going to stand the ground sure, and she telling me,
you get the hell out of my house. I don't
know who y'all are. We're bear County Sheriff and hand
there the warrant and she knows she's in cups.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
They were Bear County Narcotics Division, where the officers, interesting enough,
just a side piece of information is this is not
my first case overturning a Bear County narcotics case. Like
years ago the same division, they had some lying officers
who were in trouble in the same unit, who were
just kind of making up information and on search warrants
and go.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I was gonna ask that. I was gonna ask, like
they have a little bit of history of being.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Dirty, at least with me, they do.
Speaker 6 (12:00):
I mean, not every officer is bad. I can put
that out there, but I haven't had a good, really
positive experience in my career with that particular.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Unit, right, And there's been a history, like you said,
within Bear County. I know, back in what March twenty ten,
there was you know, I think two hundred and thirty
nine warnings of defensive hernees whose cases evolved to narcotics
deputies when they're accused of pocketing money that was supposed
to be paid to SEIS. And like you said, there's
been other cases there and so this is something I
(12:32):
don't know if the term systemic, but there has been
a routine within Bear County of this type of stuff
going on within their narcotics division.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
Correct, Yeah, okay, So each one of them was charged
with four to two hundred grams, I believe is what
the ultimate charge ended up being with intent to deliver,
which in Texas that elevates it up to another offense
level range of punishment.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Everything.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
So I wait to go see the lawyer, and that's
told the racina. She gave me an affidavit stating that
it's her house. Everything is found on the property is
she's solely responsible for. He looked at that thing and
he was like, you don't live there. They searched your stuff,
there was nothing found on your person. He goes, I'm
taking this all the way to trial, and this is
(13:14):
immediately dismissal. Oh man, I just that was a quarter
pointed telling me this man, I'm high five of him.
He goes, man, keep your nose clean. Stead He goes,
you're gonna beat your case. So I went hopping home,
skipping happy them go back to working again and helping
out and stuff like that. And there wasn't It wasn't
(13:35):
the same when I went to court.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
Eventually your bond got revoked and you were back in
jail waiting for these charges. And somehow, I don't know,
nobody can figure out, but his lawyers like switched and
he didn't have the same lawyer anymore, and he got
a new quarter appointed a lawyer.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
He's already telling me, man, they don't look good.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Wait a minute, man, whoa we go from?
Speaker 1 (13:55):
This trial's about to get thrown The case gonna get
thrown out, So it doesn't look good.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
They were ten years and I was like, what are
you serious? Ten years from having all this confidence about
me getting this case dismissed to this guy looking at
me like, swell, what can you say? You've been in
trouble before, and I'm just but this isn't mine. Wow,
in the eyes of the court, you're guilty and you're
(14:22):
gonna have to sign for something today.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So they immediately wanted you to take a plea yes.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
And I just put my head down and just that's
when I started like thinking, like, maybe I need to
do this. Maybe I knew that maybe. And it wasn't
until this case got opened up about me having these
drugs that were found come to find out, all these
police officers, none of them are credible in court. That's
(14:50):
the reason why they didn't want me to take this trial.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Wow, okay, okay, So this goes just going back to
what you were saying.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
They were trying to get you to admit to those
drugs in the house when they put their knee on
your chest and everything. They were trying to get a
mission then and then when you got the first one
saw it for what it was, that it should be
thrown out or whatever, then they switched it to somebody
that told you to take the plea.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And it just sounds like what we've talked.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
About Greg on our podcast, with that whole system of
trying to get people to get through the system as
fast as possible, get them the plea, Like it's almost
shock and all, like we're trying to scare you into.
Speaker 6 (15:29):
This, Like you know, I think there's also something to
be said there that when somebody is in custody already,
like his bond got revoked, he's in custody, the balance
of well, okay, if I just take the plea and
do a little bit of time, I can get out.
It's a lot easier to fight charges when you're actually
out of jail, you're working with your lawyer, you can
(15:50):
have better meetings with them. There's a lot more discussion
that way. But when sometimes when you're in custody and
you have a lawyer who's like, look, not fighting for you,
but they're also not meeting with you. Because they're not,
you're not able to call their office and talk with them.
I think Louie and I have talked about this before,
just the okay, well if they want me to do
ten and he ended up getting eight years ultimately, But
(16:10):
you start running through I could do. I've been in
here a little bit of time already, I'm facing life
in prison for this amount of drugs. The reality is
you never know what a jury's going to do if
you can't get your case dismissed, and you start kind
of justifying to yourself, Okay, I can maybe make parole
in a couple of years, and those thoughts start going
through your mind.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
So Louis, now we're over a year and a half
out from the actual arrest. You're initially thinking that this
is going to get dismissed. Those hopes that kind of
just start to dwindle, and then you have to accept
a plea deal on something that you know in your
heart you had nothing.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
I was so twenty five to life if I take
this trial, and I'm like, you know, what do you say?
It's hard? And uh, You're like, okay, I might beat
this one, but this one's over your opinion and what
are the chances? And you just put your and just
you know, I have to take this. I have to
take what they're offering me twenty five to life each case.
(17:06):
And I was like, I know I have a history.
It's it's you know, I've learned from the mistakes. I
have been making mistakes. And it's just like you totally
cos you get a cashp cash, you don't don't do
it this way.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Okay. So Louis pled out to serve eight years in prison,
and there was time served and all that. What about
the other two defendants, Mona and John?
Speaker 6 (17:28):
So John ended up taking time in prison. I think
he got ten years on his case. And then they
call her Mona. Her official name is Rexina. Rexina was
very very ill. So John actually took a little bit
more time on his sentence so that Rexina could get probation.
That's kind of also another reason that these plea. Bargains
were all offered so that Rexina could get out because
(17:50):
of her health problems, and Louis and John recognized that.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
So Rexina got out, she served her probation.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
And John and Louis went off to start their sentences.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
You get there, you already kind of got your mindset
on you know how, You're just going to tread through.
You don't want to get involved, you don't want to
stay out of the way, Go to the library, read books,
do this, and that's what you're mostly focused on. You
can't sit there and tell yourself that you know what
you do is wrong. You sold yourself out. You know
(18:21):
you had nothing to do with this. You know why
did you do what you did. I'm just here to
do my time. That's all in my mind for it.
There's a lot of disordering, chaos that goes on in there,
and you just don't want no part of it. You
don't conversate with certain people. You just leave all this
stuff alone. And every now and then you're gonna have
(18:42):
a clash with these groups or with this or with that,
and it's how you deal it. You just got to
keep moving forward. I had a real tough time in
there because I had a silly and you know, he
was five years older than I was, and we would
talk and next thing, I know, the more he's there,
we were just talking, talk and talk. Well he had
(19:04):
he was making some hooch when I was at the library,
and they fought for the bottle or whatever it was,
and uh, you know, my my celling. You know he
was he died. He beating the death and uh, he
still bothers. It still bothers me today.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
But hey, do you want me to tell this part? Louis? Okay?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
So they I've heard him tell this before and it's
really heartbreaking. But they basically brought him like a bucket
of water and told him to clean up the blood
that was in his cell himself.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
So it's his friend's blood and he had to clean.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
It all up. I told him, I don't want to
go in there. I don't want to go in there.
And they said, aren't you coming up for parol? You know,
I'm giving you a direct order to get inside your cell.
And do you just do that? You know you don't
want to get in there. You know, Okay, you lose
your pearl next yere, you know, following year. So I
(20:01):
put my head down and I cleaned up the blood.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
So, Dana, you get involved in this case in twenty nineteen,
can you know there's a parallel case to this that
is really tied into Louis. Can you kind of talk
about what you discovered between Louis case and obviously the
other case of Ruby Sandoval, which happened in October that
same year in San Antonio, Texas.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
So, when I was asked by the Conviction Integrity Union
and then appointed by the judge to represent them, I
did reach out to Louis and John. I just wanted
to know what was going on, what their thoughts on
their own case were, and saying I'm looking into this.
This is what I've been told so far, but I
need to get some information. And both of their letters
back finally were kind of the same thing. We've always
(21:08):
said that this guy came into the house and he
must have planted the drugs because they weren't ours, and
it was a really weird situation and nobody believed us,
which it matched up with with Ruby's case as well.
So what I find out later is somebody had messaged
her or talked to her about storing like a box
or a bag, leaving it at her house for a
(21:29):
little while. She said, sure, that's fine. She had a
lot of text messages with this person. The person was like,
when are you going to be home? When are you
going to be home? You know that kind of stuff.
And as soon as she gets home, cops raided her
house with the search warrant and they have find drugs
in this bag that this person asked.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
To leave at her house.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
So based on that, she starts immediately fighting her case.
And it takes her quite a while to prove to
the prosecutor and to everyone you know, with her lawyer,
get her text messages and everything in line to show
this person us have left the drugs here. The state
now feels comfortable enough that that's what happened in her case.
So that prosecutor in her case went to a conviction
(22:09):
integrity unit that the DA's office has. They immediately pulled
every case that this confidential informant had worked on previously,
and it was Louis Rexina and John's case. They sent
me a memorandum explaining everything that went on and why
they think that you know what happened in John and
Louise case and Rexina's case might have happened just like
(22:30):
it happened in this other woman's case.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Wow, so the same informant, So the same playbook of
somebody comes by and leave something there and then the
police come the same county.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Wow, No it was It was the same informant, the
same situation, same informant. Thankfully, in her case, she had
a bunch of text messages from the individual and she
was able to establish all of that.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Okay, gotcha? Okay? What was the between Roxine and the
confidential informant? Like, was there a connection? Why would is
he drawn to this house even plant things? Or was
it completely random?
Speaker 6 (23:04):
I think that he knew John and Rexina just from
the neighborhood, is my understanding. They knew who he was,
but that was kind of the extent of it. Louie
didn't know who he was at all.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
No, no, no, and the person used their daughter.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
It just shows the lengths that confidential informants go to
to work off their own cases.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Gotcha, So was it readily apparent when you were kind
of reading through this and going through What were some
of the things that you feel could have nipped us
in the bud earlier? What was the kind of the
things that stood out to you. The most red.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
Flag Number one to me was reading this search warrant,
that this is the first time they've ever used this
confidential informant. I don't think that they had enough to
get a search warrant based on that.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I would have challenged that.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
The bodycam footage that what I had said earlier, that
they're trying to say that these drugs that are near
Louis but they weren't there before.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
It doesn't if you see the video, there's turn the
camera on and snaked your name and what's your address,
and then it turned it back off, then it turned
it back on, is that these drugs were found right here.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
Officers that turn on and off their cameras or mute
their mics always red flag for me. It just all
seemed weird, and when something seems weird or off, there's
usually some problems there is, in my opinion, So there's
definitely was a lot to work with.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah, wow, Okay, So you talked about Dana a lot
of the work that the Bear County Conviction Integrity Union
has done and the good work that they've done, and
they've actually been you know, a really big bright spot
within the Prostitorial's office there. Can you talk about, you know,
what their involvement throughout this process with Louis once you
got into the case and how that looked.
Speaker 6 (24:45):
So initially it was the chief of that office. She's
not there anymore. She works for a different court, but
Matt Howard is now the chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit.
I work with Matt quite a bit. I can't I
can't ever say that he and I always are going
to agree on every case, but I can assure you
that he gives everything a thorough review, and if it's
a wrongful conviction, he will stand up and say it's
(25:06):
a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
He's not afraid to do it.
Speaker 6 (25:08):
So I really do commend the work our das Jo Gonzalez.
He didn't start the Conviction Integrity Unit, but he's kept
it going and really built on it, and they do
a great job of overturning wrongful convictions when the proof
is there. So in my work, when I file the claims,
I got every claim together that I could possibly file
for Louis and John and Rexina, and then I file
(25:30):
them in the writ, application and memorandum of.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Law from there.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
I worked with the conviction Integrity unit on what facts
and details we're going to agree to, and we put
those agreed orders together and we get those in front
of the judge. And we also had a great judge,
Judge Mesa here in town. She agreed on a lot
of this. She actually went even further than what the
Court of Criminal Appeals was willing to do. Judge Mesa
(25:55):
recommended that all three of them are actually innocent of
the charges. That's kind of the process when, especially when
we have agreed facts and agreed relief. The DA's office
here is willing to get on board and we file
a lot of agreed stuff together, which is unique. As
a defense attorney, it does feel weird to give so
much credit, but every DA's office, because of situations like this,
(26:19):
need conviction integrity units and true ones that are willing
to say our das messed up, our sheriffs messed up.
So they are they're willing to make those hard calls.
And the convection Integrity Unit here and I appreciate the
work that they do, especially on this case.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh Man, a conviction integrity unit, I think that that
needs to be implemented everywhere.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Man likes that's something that.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
It's a resource I think that can hopefully get a
lot more cases overturned.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
You know, Yeah, Clayton, I totally agree, and you know
we're seeing them pop up a lot more and more,
and yeah, to your point, we definitely need more oversight
on these things.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
All right.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
So, Dana, as you said, Judge Mesa recommended that Louis
and John's convictions be overturned and they should be found innocent.
But then it went up to the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals. Can you explain what happened next?
Speaker 6 (27:09):
Yeah, the Court of Criminal Appeals for John and Louie
said no, that they should their case is overturned, but
they're not actually innocent, which it's it's a really high
difficult burden to prove with actual innocence. So I can
go into why they didn't. There were because in John's
house there was some little minor amounts of drugs that
were found, like personal use, small amounts like that, and
(27:31):
because they said that that's a lesser included of the
greater amount, they're not going to give them an actual
innocence finding. That's why they went that route. But Louie
didn't live there, and there was nothing directly linked to Louis.
I really felt like, at least in Louie's case, he
should have had the actual innocence finding in this case.
So since they don't get an actual innocence, it gets
sent back down to the trial court level, and the
(27:51):
DA's office immediately filed dismissals and all the cases just
to make it official that it's overturned and now dismissed officially.
So they don't have a conviction on their record for
these cases.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
And because they are not found actually innocent, Texas law
does not allow them to be entitled a compensation because
of that.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Correct, Have anyone, any officers or anyone else been disciplined
that were connected to this case?
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Was the informant ever charged with anything about lying.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
In this case?
Speaker 4 (28:23):
No, not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Okay, And so we're now looking into what August twenty twenty,
Judge Maza finally finds for wrongful conviction and then Louis
you're released at the same time as John on bond
in September twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, you had like kind of a turn, because you
sound like you kind of gave up and just like said,
I'm gonna put my head down and do my time
in too, be walking free. Man.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
What was that like?
Speaker 5 (28:54):
It was the meeting my little grand baby, playing with
her is just I just started smiling, like be there
for my parents. You know, I'm the only son, I'm
big little brother, and so it's kind of, you know,
gonna go do what I'm'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
One other little kind of piece of sad part of
this whole case is the whole time that I represented Rexina,
she was on hospice care because of her illness, and
the day that the judge signed these orders for them,
like for her case to be overturned, it didn't need
to go up to the Quarter of Criminal Appeals, but
the day she signed it. I called the next day
after I got the order, and she had passed away
(29:35):
the night before, so I never got a chance to
tell Rexina her case was overturned.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
The first thing that John and Louis did was they
were pall bearers at Rexina's funeral.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
Yeah, her sister had told us that she knew, you
know that young guys are going to get out. She
was happy we got out. I think about a year
into my sentence, she wrote me a letter. I know
with her it is that probably took a lot out
of her. Even when I was incarcerated, we still kept
in touch what little she could say, because it was like, Hi,
(30:10):
thinking about you, how have you been? And pretty much
is it? You know, I still keep in touch with John.
I still keep in touch with Delma Rexina's sister. Yeah,
we're still, like I guess, easing our way through this
and just slowly turning pages and moving forward.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Just an unbelievable story. I think this, this case really
does exemplify so much that's wrong with our criminal justice
system and the war on drugs and how these negative
incentives can really, you know, impact people's lives in such
a dramatic fashion that you know, you see where these
(30:53):
negative sentences can lie with the confidential informant and where
his incentives are are drawn from the detectives to garner
or two more convictions kind of fairly easily without kind
of you know, really respecting someone's constitutional rights. It's such
an exemplification of all the negative that we see within
the criminal justice and the fact that we have, you know,
(31:13):
somewhat of a happy ending with Louis, and how many
other thousands of people have probably gone through similar things
and never got this opportunity to actually be you know,
have their cases dismissed because there wasn't this commision integrity
or there's wasn't this piece of evidence. And so yeah,
I just want to thank you Louis for coming on
today and discuss this case.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well that's one thing with our podcast, we don't have
a lot of happy ending. Yeah, so to have somebody
who's actually been through everything and come out the other
side and it's great.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
So thank you, Thank you both, Louis.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Is there any call to action? Is there a go
fundme page? Is there a number for people can reach
out about you know, you and your your your skills
as an electrician, anything else with that that we can
we can plug for you.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
If anybody needs to help, we need some work or
stuff like that, you can go through Dana.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
It's all right with her.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
I'll be your secretary, Louis.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
But I mean, you.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
Need you need plumbing in the electrical you need to
fix your fence, and I ain't gonna wash your dogs,
but you know all that other stuff like anything to
keep uself busy, keep myself moving. Keep some guess it
in the truck and a little change in my bucket.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
I'm fine.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I'm looking at some curtains right now that are crooked
because I couldn't do that. You look at the whole
fucking house by yourself. God damn worthless.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Man. Come on, you gotta get your skills up. No,
I take that back. We got to get our skills,
that's what we think. We gotta get our skills up.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah. Man, Look, we've come to this segment of our
show called closing Arguments. Louis and Dana, thank you so
much for being here with us today. This is the
last segment of the show, so we turn it over
to YouTube for any final thoughts that you may have
for your closing arguments. So, Dana, why don't you start
(32:59):
us off.
Speaker 6 (33:00):
I always say that I would love to not do
this job anymore, only because I would love that there's
never another.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Wrongful conviction ever.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
But there's always going to be this job because humans
are involved in this process, in this system, the use
of confidential informants really needs to be questioned in every
single case. If they're going to do it, I don't
personally think they should be doing it. But that's I'm
not a law enforcement officer. Judges who review search Warren
Affi Davids and arrest Warren Affi Davids. I mean the
whole process. Everybody needs to have better training so that
(33:28):
we can catch these things on the front end and
prevent them from ever even happening. I just think, I
hope and I love podcasts like this where we're getting
the word out that wrongful convictions do happen. They absolutely
do happen, and we can't just incarcerate somebody and turn
a blind eye anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
That we need to start working.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
So if there's any local organizations innocence projects in your
state or local community, get involved, if you can donate.
If you ever get called on jury duty, really take
it serious because you could be deciding somebody's fate.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Keep your head up and keep going. You get enough
wrong two you're out there doing right. So yeah, I've
had enough wrong done to me. So now it's just
you know, I go out there and help out all
I can, and I don't hold any negativity, any grudge
or nothing like that. You know, I still have a
lot of respect for the law, and I still respect
(34:22):
you know, these people that are doing a hell of
a job out there. And it wasn't until I was
released and I saw all the effort that Dya and
the Judge mess It put into getting me out. It's
like these people already they didn't know me for any date,
they didn't owe me anything, but they fought hard to
get me out. They fought hard to where I'm at.
(34:43):
And so that's you know, I guess check marks on
my side. You know, you do have people looking out
at me. Not everybody's there to hang in.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. We are your
guest hosts Clayton.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
English and I'm Greg Glott, and.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
We'd like to give a shout out to executive producers
Jason Flamm and Kevin Wadis.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Plus everybody on the Wrongful Conviction production team Connor Hall, Anny, Chelsea,
Lyla Robinson and Jeff Cliber.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
The music in the production comes from three time OSCAR
nominated composer shave Rout.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction, as well as Lava for Good on all
three platforms so.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
You can find US online too. I'm Clayton English on Instagram.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
And I'm on Twitter at greg Glott.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And For more about the state of drug criminalization in
your society, listen to the War on Drugs podcast wherever
you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
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