January 22, 2024 • 39 mins
On September 15, 1993, two gunmen entered a home in Detroit, Michigan, and murdered Lavonda Brown and her son, 20-year old Douglas Williams. Detroit police rounded up a number of suspects, questioning them for hours, including Wilson Rivera. Wilson had a solid alibi for that night. Not only that - the shooter had actually confessed to Wilson that he’d done it. “I asked Roger, like, what's going on?” Wilson recalls. “And he explained to me what had actually taken place with the murder. I’m assuming the facts are gonna bear me out.” But one by one, the other suspects were dropped from the investigation. By the time the trial began, Wilson was the only one left.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
In September of nineteen ninety three, Wilson Rivera and his
friend Roger Murfick were lying in wait to rub a
pizza delivery driver in South Detroit. They'd been tipped off
that the pizza guy was carrying a couple thousand dollars
in drug money, but the payoff was less than they expected,
only a few hundred dollars. A few nights later, two
(00:27):
masked gunmen burst into a nearby house. Twenty year old
Doug Williams and his mother, Lavanda were both shot and killed.
The investigator's theory was that Doug had known about the
robbery and was killed to keep him from snitching. The
police wasted no time in rounding up some local gang
members for questioning, including Wilson Rivera.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
They are risk me at my house. I'm under the
assumption that they're looking for me for the robbery, and
so when they take me to homicide, I'm thinking that
this is a trick that they're playing on me, so
that I could go ahead and admit to the robbery.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Wilson had a solid alibi for that night, but one
by one, the other suspects were dropped from the investigation.
By the time Wilson went to trial, he was the
only one left.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
My name is Wilson Rivera and for the last thirty
years I've been seven times for crima.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Did not come in from lava for good. This is
wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Wilson Rivera. Wilson Rivera
(01:45):
was born in nineteen seventy four in southwest Detroit.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
My whole family's porter. My mother was born in Chicago,
but my father I was born in Puerto Rico, so
we have family on both sides of the ocean, if
you will. I spent most of my time as a
teenager in Detroit, but I was raised in Puerto Rico.
(02:10):
My mother tells me that as a child, she said,
I was I was a pretty lively individu you. As
a child, I'm animated, hyper to a degree. Always, she said.
I always always smiled.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
But the family had its troubles. Both of Wilson's parents
struggled with substance abuse.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
My father was an alcoholic. He was as far as
I could remember images, I could see my father being
a man abuser, getting in domestical youth. My mother ended
up engaging drugs, drinking, and so her life at that
time she did. My mother had a lot of personal
issues and personal demons that she was struggling against that
she never could deal with at the time, so her
(02:52):
life was spiraling out of control.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Wilson's parents separated, and his father ended up moving back
to Puerto Rico. His mother did her best to care
for Wilson and his brother Antonio.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
My mother did struggle at the time, but she may
do with what we had. I don't remember going hungry,
and we always have something to eat, whether it was
some wig or food stamps or focus home. I can
honestly said that we became somewhat of introverts, Me and
my brother. We could depend on each other, but that
was about it only because throughout our childhood it was
(03:27):
always me and hand that were together, Me and my
older brother. It's alway about one year Antonio.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
For most of his childhood, Wilson went back and forth
between their mother in Detroit and their father in Puerto Rico.
In nineteen eighty four, when he was ten, they moved
back to Detroit, but he struggled in school.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I had the language barrier. We didn't really speak English.
They placed us in bilingual classes where basically we were
just put in a classroom and as far as I
can remember, just left there. That you become kind of
like ostracized, and I began to resent school. I was
constantly getting to fight in school and get in trouble.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
The trouble continued through his teens.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I used to be a member. We were through a
local street gang, Camel Boys Incorporated CBI, and consequently we
was involved in a lot of mischievous behavior as in
the neighborhood. And I started getting trouble shoplifting and things
of that nature at the time and skipping out of school.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
But soon the neighborhood mischief was escalating into something else.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
About nineteen eighty seven, Southwest Detroit began to receive the
influx of national gangs. There were two or three primary
gags for Chicago who ended up coming to Southwest Detroit
and they began to recruit individuals and what ends up
happening local street gangs in the neighborhood. We all bended
us one together and what we were constantly fighting with
(04:59):
these the gangs.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
In nineteen ninety, when Wilson was sixteen, one of his
friends was shot in the face by a member of
a rival gang. This led to an incident that would
end up having deep repercussions for Wilson.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Basically, one of my other friends went and got a weapon,
a shotgun, and brought me the shotgun and I opened
fire at the rival gang, and as I fled the scene,
I came face to face with a member of the
Detroit Police. I pulled the webinarut and as I pulled
the webin out, I hope discharged it and it didn't
(05:37):
hit him. Later on the following day, I was arrested
and eventually I pled guilty to the offense.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
He was charged with attempt to commit bodily harm on
a police officer.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's what I want you to do, w I'm for.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Wilson spent over two years at the Maxie Boys Training School,
a juvenile correction facility about an hour outside of Detroit,
and when he was released in nineteen ninety three, he
still hadn't graduated high school, but he did manage to
find a job in a factory.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
At the time I was working, but then I had
suffered a hand injury or gusha wound where I couldn't
really use my hand and keep up with the production.
So instead of being fired. I quit the job, and
the way that I will survive it would be either
petty hustle or I will engage in small and I'm
not minimizing it, but it was what we would consider
small robberies in the neighborhood, and it would be dope
(06:36):
dealers or things of the source.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Wilson got by on the petty crimes and was still
running with the Camel Boys, but when he was around nineteen,
his girlfriend told him some news that made him want
to change his lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I was excited when I found out that Sho was pregnant.
I wasn't I wouldn't say I was scared, but I
knew that I want to make like a shift in
my life. I wanted to be a person for my daughters, and.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
To Wilson, that meant leaving gang life behind, but he
found that was easier said than done.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I had started applying for jobs. I wanted to try
to see if I could get back in the old
factory where I was working at, but maybe in a
different position where it then requires for me to work
in the machines that I had to be working on before. Unfortunately,
though I still live in the same environment. Though the
neighborhood where I lived at, like my house was smacked.
It in the middle of basically all the rival gangs
(07:36):
that I was in fights with, So there was one
of them things where it was kind of constantly going
back and forth.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Wilson was living in the neighborhood, spending his nights at
his girlfriend's house and leaving early in the morning to
try and avoid the other gangs.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I figured that me going home in the mornings would
be a lot safer as opposed to you know, coming
home at midnight or late at night time because said
by that company rival gangs, because he that you're home.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Wilson had decided to give up the petty crime in
gang life, but he hadn't found a job yet and
he was still involved with the same crowd. One of
his friends, kal Matta, was in a gang called the
cash Flow Posse, a gang that the Camel Boys had
an alliance with. Cal also worked at a local pizza shop,
and one day Cal approached Wilson and his friend Roger
(08:25):
Murfk with a scheme to make some easy money.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
What he had informed those was that there was a
guy that was delivering pizzas, but he was doing so
while at the same time challenge drugs, we were led
to believe that this person had at least two thousand
dollars from drug proceeds on himself.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
On September twelfth, nineteen ninety three, Wilson and Roger were
armed and waiting to rob the pizza guy along his route,
but he was taking longer than they expected, so they
thought they might have missed him. Roger knew a guy
named Douglas Williams who lived across the street, and he
went over to Doug's house to ask if he could
use the phone.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Eventually, the piece that every guy comes and we robbed
a guy and he didn't have no two thousand dollars.
He didn't have eight hundred dollars. The individual actually only
had four hundred dollars. So when Kel comes to the
apartment after he gets out of work at ten o'clock
and he asked for his portion of the money, I
told him he wasn't going to get the money because
(09:29):
he lied about what the guy had, and so we
fell out over there.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And that should have been that robbery and a small
argument over a few hundred dollars, but it wasn't. Twenty
year old Douglas Williams lived with his parents, Lavanda and
Daniel Brown, and three days after the pizza man was robbed,
two men burst into their house wearing ski masks. One
of the intruders shot and killed both Doug and Lavanda,
(09:56):
but Daniel, Doug's father survived. He talked with police shortly afterwards.
Daniel told them that Doug had known about the armed
robbery from a few days before.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Daniel Brown said that his son Doug had told him
that Wilson Rivera and Roger Murfick were the two individuals
involved in that armed robbery.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
This is Wilson's post conviction attorney, Rachel Wolfe.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
There was plenty there for the prosecution to latch onto
and for the police to investigate, because they knew exactly
who Roger Murfick and Wilson Rivera were at the time.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And one member of the Detroit Police Department, Officer Gerald Packard,
had his own reasons for focusing on Wilson. The officer
that Wilson had shot at back when he was sixteen.
Officer Ayala was Packard's partner.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So Officer Packard knew Wilson. He knew that he had
gotten what I imagine Packard would assume is a short
sentence for something like that. He is not on the
homicide team. He was not part of the homicide investigation,
but he was the one when he heard that Roger
(11:10):
and Wilson were potentially suspects. He was the one that
went to Wilson's apartment knocking on the door, and then ultimately,
once the warrant was obtained, just busted right in to
the apartment.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And when they arrest me at my house, I'm under
the assumption that they're looking for me for the robbery,
and so when they take me to homicide, Sergeant Morell
tells me that he's arrested me for murder. I'm thinking
that this is a trick that they're playing on me
so that I could go ahead and admit to the robbery.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
But Wilson knew nothing about the homicide. The night of
the shooting, he had been with his girlfriend and her
mother at their house. He didn't learn about the shooting
until the next day, when he found out that Roger
had also been arrested.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I've seen Roger aside, and when they put him in
a bulkin, and that's when I asked Rogers like what's
going on, and he explained to me what had actually
taken place with the murder with the ham size. Now again,
I'm operating under this concept of loads that we have
within the gang, right, so I'm not going to say nothing.
(12:20):
They're not going to say nothing, you know, and we
just take it out and see what happens. In my mind,
I'm assuming that eventually the facts are going to bear
me out. Since I don't have nothing to do with it,
it's just a matter of time before I'm clear. Unfortunately,
if we could see, that's not where I ended up
taking place.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Pods cast. In
(13:10):
the aftermath of the shooting, the Detroit homicide squad, headed
up by Officer Carrie Russell, rounded up a number of
local gang members and charged them with the murders. One
of the first to be arrested with cal Mata.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
They knew they were looking for Wilson and Roger. They
went to this house that was a known location for
both the cash Flow Posse gang and the Camel Boys Gang,
so they they came in, they arrested Cal. At that time,
he was the only person in that apartment with a
number of firearms. They also found a ski mask and
(13:47):
a jacket inside of that apartment that they ultimately seized
and ended up admitting at trial as well.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
While in custody, Cal told Officer Packard that he had
heard Wilson and Roger talking about Doug Williams calling him
a snitch. Cal took that to me and they were
going to take steps to make sure Doug couldn't report
them for the robbery. The police also brought in a
couple of other gang members for questioning, Armando Campos and
Ephram Garcia. Both of them were in the cash Flow
(14:17):
Posse and according to Wilson, Ephram was trying to climb
the ranks in the gang.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
The way that the gang was operating was that in
order for an individual to move up in the ranks,
right to either become an enforcer or treasurer or whatever
other upper echeline in the gang, what they would have
to do is they would have to what we call
back then put in work, you know, whether it be
if you rob somebody, if you shout somebody, he jumped
(14:44):
somebody in the schools and all that. The reputation of that,
whatever you do, goes to the gang. So in order
for Ethom to move up in the ranks in his gang,
he wanted to put in the work, and in.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
This case, the work was to keep Doug Williams from
snitching a about the pizza robbery. Wilson says that that
day at the jail, Roger told him exactly how it
had gone down.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And so Roger and Etham go to the house where
the witness of the robbery was and Ethel kicks down
the door and opens fire and hits Dug, and then
Roger comes from the other side and hits Doug. And
then as Doug's mother attempts to flee that the residence,
Roger opens fire on him and he hits her as well.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
After what Roger told him, Wilson was confident that the
truth would come out and he'd be released. But Roger
never confessed to anyone else, and the homicide team continued
to question.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Wilson, and I told him exactly where I was at, Sohm.
I was spending the night with my daughter's mother, and
she was at the time, I was twenty half months pregnant.
In my mind, I know where I was at. So
I gave him to Alibi and gave him everything where
I was, that and everything. And my expectation was that
they were walk through my daughter's mother, but that never
took place.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
When Armando Compost was questioned, he told police that the
day after the homicide, Roger had turned up at his
house desperate for money.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Roger vad I just smoked someone. I just smoked someone.
I need as much money as possible. I got to
get out of town. And then when questioned a little further,
Armando also said, yeah, he mentioned Wilson too. He mentioned
Wilson was there too.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Wilson and Roger were now the primary suspects, and both
were charged with the murders. In September of nineteen ninety three,
a joint preliminary hearing was held at which cal and
Armando testified. Both repeated what they had told police, but
when Roger Murphick went to trial in April of nineteen
ninety four, Armando changed his story.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Armando recanted everything he had said at the preliminary examination.
He said, no, I never made those statements. The only
reason that I made those statements is because I was arrested.
You know, I was charged. I was threatened by the police.
I said exactly what they wanted me to say. Roger,
of course, was acquitted of all of the.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Charges, but Wilson remained in jail. He went to trial
a few months later on September sixth, nineteen ninety four.
The judge was Helen Brown and the prosecutor was Lisa Lindsay.
As far as physical evidence, there wasn't much for the
state to present.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
We don't have fingerprints, They didn't fingerprint the shell casings
or anything in the house at the time. Obviously there's
no DNA or anything like that. It was a really
quick homicide.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Officer Packard and the homicide squad had searched Wilson's home
the day they arrested him.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And they find two firearms and two ski masks, one
of which was black or dark blue in color. The
other one was a multicolored. Those guns were tested against
some of the shell casings that were recovered in the house,
and the there was a bullet I believe recovered from
Doug's body during the autopsy, and there wasn't a match,
(18:12):
so conclusively, neither of the weapons found in Wilson's home
were involved in the homicide. They were allowed, however, to
admit them at trial, along with a bunch of ammunition
that they found in Wilson's home, none of which was
the right caliber to be involved in the homicide either.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
But they presented it as if it could be.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
They sure did. Yeah, they presented all of that to
the jury.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
The state relied heavily on police and witness testimony to
make their case, but there wasn't much of that either.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Daniel Brown testified to the armed robbery and named these
two co defendants as perpetrators of that armed robbery, and
then they also had testimony from one other witness, kal Matta.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Cal repeated the statement he had given the police that
he had heard Wilson and Roger talking about getting rid
of Doug Williams, and that was about it for the
prosecution's case.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
The officer in charge of the case, you know who,
was basically the one that was responsible for taking other
testimonies from all these witnesses and all that she felt
to shored up for my trial, even though she knew
my trouble set for that day, and so all of
these things that was taken place, I'm looking at what
was going on, I was like, yeah, at least in
my mind, I was hoping that the judge was going
(19:28):
to say, you know, I'm going to interfere in this
thing here and I'm going to dismiss it for the
lack of evidence. And because of what was going on
with the prosecute fell to produce their witnesses.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And not only that, Wilson had an alibi. Remember on
the night of the murders, he'd been with his girlfriend,
but she never testified at trial, and surprisingly Armando Compos
did not appear either.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So when my attorney at the time, mister Griffin, asked
to I have a due diligence hearing as to why
Armando has not shown up to testify, we find out
that the prosecutor at the time has failed to subpoena
Armando and so he never showed up to testify because
he never knew.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I think ultimately it's entirely possible that Roger was acquitted
and Wilson was convicted because of the absence of Armando
Compos's testimony.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
On September ninth of nineteen ninety four, the jury found
Wilson Rivera guilty of the premeditated murders of Donald Williams
and Lavanda Brown. He was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
After I came to Prey within the first year, I
winned for an enimy to get into a fight and
he got stamped. Eventually he died understade and he basically
la out and so they locked us down, and I
told myself, Yeah, that's not going to happen to me,
you know. So I wanted to hope defensive posturing and
(21:22):
any issue that I had, I either was going to
get into a fight. I wasn't going to wait for
anybody to stab me to try to kill me in prison.
And so what I ended up doing I started acting
our first. So if I felt that we had an issue,
I would act first. And I actually caught a couple
of assault tickets in prison. I spent several years in
mechimum security, several years, and the whole you know, I
(21:45):
didn't care much about where I was at in prison
at that time, you know, and had just turned twenty
and being sentenced to life without parole, and the only
thing that kind of set me to a degree balanced
out was that I was I wanted to see my daughter.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
While Wilson was in jail awaiting trial, his daughter, Sierra
was born.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
The first time that I got a chance to see
her was actually doing my sentencing. So the time that
I'm being sentenced to life without parole, I'm actually paying
more so attention to my daughter, who basically just a
few months old at the time.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
You know, he's been in prison my whole life. So
what I do know is from the relationship we formed
with him being in prison.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
This is Wilson's daughter, Sierra Ramirez.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
He's funny, he's intelligent, and I are a lot of
like very talkative. He's an encourager. You know, it's only
fifteen minute phone calls at a time, but I feel
pretty open when I talk with him.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
What was that like, growing up only knowing your father
from prison from visiting rooms.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
I guess for me, it was a norm. I didn't
see it as anything weird because it was all I knew, basically,
you know, when I started getting old and going to
my friend's house and I'm like, oh, okay, this is
a little bit different. You know, there's There's a different
dynamic that comes from having.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Your dad in your life.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
And I had him to an extent, but not fully.
And now as an adult, when I look back, I
see how that impacted me just as a woman, as
a girl growing up, you know, as a white how
it impacted me.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Did you ever feel angry or resentful towards your dad.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I did feel some anger with him when I was younger.
I felt very abandoned, and I did tell him I
was angry at him and felt like he made the
choice to leave me no, and I was coming. He
was very receptive, you know, he apologized, and he's definitely
done what he can as a father to his best
of his ability. You know, whether when I was young,
(23:47):
he would send me, you know, we're Hispanic. He would
send me tapes to learn Spanish, and he would send
me these books and make me bracelets and stuff like that.
He's always caught. I've always seen him. He's always sent cards.
He's definitely done what he can. I give that to
him for sure.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Soon after his conviction, Wilson's attorney filed a direct appeal
based on prosecutorial misconduct and the improper admission of the
firearms founded his house, which had been found to be
not connected to the murders. The courts denied the appeal,
and Wilson knew that if he wanted to get out
of prison, he would have to dedicate all of his
(24:27):
time and resources to proving his innocence.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
After about seventeen years in prison, of going to all
these up and downs and the disappointment was the case,
I started investing more time and the pace, and I
started working, saving my money that I learned for my
prison detail and basically I will try to hire my
private investigators to try to find the information that I
needed to prove my innocence. I decided to start studying
(24:55):
the law myself, and eventually I got trained as a
legal writer or prison pail. And I did this shit
in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Then in twenty eighteen, Rachel Wolf began working on Wilson's case.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It was funny when Wilson and I first met, he
was worried about me because I was young, and because
I and he said, this is a quote sound like
a Republican. So I had to I had to assure
him that that wasn't going to be an issue. So
when I first went to meet him. I didn't know
what to expect, but we clicked right away.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Initially, Rachel was skeptical about the strength of Wilson's argument.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
You know, how are we going to prove this case
there is a motive? And people find that very, very convincing.
So regardless of the strength of the evidence as it exists,
or the existence of other possible suspects, which there are,
it's easy for people to latch onto and easy for
them to say.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Well, of course he did it.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
He had a reason to do it, you know, without
looking at any closer at the case.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So what convinced you of his innocence or what made
you want to keep digging?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
When I started talking to people, and especially like the
leaders of the cash Flow posse and some other members
of you know, some other people who were involved in
the gang activity at that time, I started just getting
some information that did not jive with the prosecutor's theory.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
For one thing, remember ephrom Garcia. He was arrested in
the DPD roundup along with Roger Murfik, and Roger had
told Wilson straight out that he and Ephram had done
the killings, But somehow Ephram was dropped from the case
early on.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
We didn't know at the time. They subjected e from
Garcia two way polygraph and he failed it, but they
didn't disclose it to Wilson's defense counsel. He didn't know
about it at the time of trial. We discovered that
much later, and that's you know, part of the basis
from my legal challenge to his case is that he
should have had this evidence. There was this suspect, and
(27:07):
we know that e from Garcia was released after that.
He wasn't investigated for involvement in this homicide any further
by the Detroit Police Department. They started looking for Roger
and Wilson, and I don't think they were going to
change their minds at any point. Yeah, from the description
he was there, he failed as Polly, but they did.
(27:27):
They wanted Roger and they wanted Wilson.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Officer Packard especially wanted Wilson. He hadn't forgotten it was
Wilson who had shot at his partner, Officer Ayala.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
He was I think central to this case and maybe
maybe you know, part of the reason they didn't investigate
e from any further or any other possible suspects. Ephrom
Garcia was indicted for the exact same homicide five years later.
He never actually ended up with that homicide conviction. He's
(28:00):
incarcerated now for several additional homicides.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
They've also uncovered previously undisclosed information about Cal's testimony.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Cal was on probation, and he also was found and
arrested with guns and drugs in a known gang location.
His probation was dismissed very shortly after Wilson's trial and sentencing,
and he was never charged. He was initially actually charged
(28:31):
with the homicide, and then ultimately they dismissed that, and
then they never even charged him with any of the
other offenses.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Then there's the matter of proving Wilson's alibi.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
So he had his girlfriend at the time. He was
with her at her mother's house. He stayed the night there,
i think until early in the morning, early morning hours,
We're talking like two am, three am.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Wilson's girlfriend never testified to this at trial. When Rachel
interviewed her, she found out why because she was scared.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
She says an individual in a suit approached her in
the hallway outside of the courtroom and said, look, we're
holding your brother. He's currently facing these additioninal charges. If
you go in there and testify, you know we're going
to reconsider the severity of the charges in the possible
sentence against your brother. And so she was too afraid
(29:27):
to testify, and I think her testimony probably would have
made a difference.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Rachel says she's spoken with other potential witnesses from the neighborhood.
People will have knowledge of what actually happened, but they
have similar reasons for not coming forward.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
They're all afraid of the police. They're all afraid of
the prosecutor and of coming into court, just because I
think that's what their lived experience has taught them to fear.
They are hesitant to come into court. And that's made
the investigation of this case a little more difficult as well,
is that I have witnesses who were willing to provide
(30:09):
me with information that are not willing to come in
and testify in court. They're not willing to talk to
the prosecutor's conviction integrity unit. They're just not going to
do that.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's so interesting. They're more scared of the law enforcement
than they are of snitching and being a snitch on
the street.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, at least that's what they're telling me.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
According to Rachel, all of this is tied in with
the culture in the Detroit Police Department at the time.
People in the community had little reason to trust the
cops and plenty of reason to fear them.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
They had this practice, they called it witness roundups. You're
not supposed to arrest somebody without probable cause. But what
they would do, and they did it in Wilson's case,
they would go and everybody who they thought was a
possible witness, they would charge them with the underlying offense.
So in a homicide investigation, you're all charged with homicide.
(31:06):
And then they would bring them in, hold them, interview them.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
The place was Detroit Police Headquarters at thirteen hundred Bobian,
and it was notorious for being the seat of police corruption.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
All the witnesses, all of the clients that I have,
you say, thirteen hundred Bobian, everybody knows exactly what you're
talking about. That interview room that they used to take
people is awful, like cockroaches are in there. They don't
give you food. You know, you can't see out, so
you'll see through the nineteen nineties, these witnesses all testifying
like I was held for like three days. I was
(31:40):
charged with the homicide, and of course they weren't involved,
you know, they weren't, But that's what DPD was doing.
So in the late nineteen eighties and all throughout the nineties,
there was significant corruption within the Detroit Police Department.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
In the year two thousand, seven, years after Wilson's conviction,
the Department of Justice ran an investigation of the DPD
that turned up a number of significant violations.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
In nineteen ninety five, Carlos Rodriguez, who was one of
the investigators on Wilson's homicide team, was indicted along with
four other officers for operating a narcotic spring through the
fourth Precinct in the city of Detroit. The entire DPD
forensics lab was shut down in two thousand and eight
(32:27):
because the investigators had found widespread errors in their analysis.
And then a few years later, David Pouch, the firearms
examiner in Wilson's case, was found to have intentionally fabricated
ballistics evidence to obtain a conviction in a nineteen ninety
two case, so a year before he testified at Wilson's trial,
(32:50):
he had intentionally fabricated ballistics evidence that individual to his case.
His name is Desmond Rix. He was also exonerated on
that basis.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
With all of this new information to present, Rachel is
hopeful that Wilson will be granted a new trial.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Short of a commutation or pardon from the governor. There's
one other way you can get out of prison when
you have a life without parole sentence, and that is
through a motion fu a leaf from judgment. So basically
what you do is you go back to the state court,
back to the same court that convicted you in the
first place, and you say I'm entitled to a new
trial for this reason, this reason, and this reason. So
(33:30):
you investigate the hell out of everything because you only
get one chance. So now that we have all of
that evidence collected, there are some significant legal challenges that
we can raise. One of them, of course, is the
Brady violation. Wilson should have had information that e from
(33:51):
Garcia was given a polygraph examination and failed it so
that he would be able to properly investigate that avenue
of defense, and he wasn't. So that's certainly one of
our claims. I think we were prepared to go to
court probably about two years ago, and so we'll be
moving forward very quickly now.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
And in the meantime. In addition to becoming a prison paralegal,
Wilson has accomplished another important goal. In May of twenty
twenty three, he graduated magna cum laude from Calvin University.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Was going for a bachelor's degree in Faith and Community
Leadership with a minor and social work. The highest grade
I ever completed with the seventh grade. I never went
to high school, and so being able to kind of
like accomplish not just a gain in a college degree,
but with a high GDA three point ninety three, it
(34:49):
was personally a huge accomplishment and it just gave me
a huge sense of self work as well.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So your daughter Sierra was telling me that she was
able to go to your graduation.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, to me, right is invaluable. I mean it's a
moment there and I look at the picture and that
I'm still with such a man. I'm extremely proud of
my daughter that got fishes my heart.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
It was nice, you know, to be able to be
there and watch him do like kind of like this
normal thing. It was awesome to see and maybe feel
proud of him, you know. I feel like it was
a great example of how he, even given his circumstances,
he was able to accomplish something so great.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
It was very inspiring, and Sierra credits her father with
inspiring her in other ways.
Speaker 4 (35:36):
I've seen what a wonderful person he is and how
someone like I said, can make bad choices at one
point in their life, but then you know they can
turn that around and not let that define them and
contain them no matter where they're at, being in prison.
I think it's important to know your own worth and
not see other people's decisions as how worthy you are.
(36:00):
I guess because that's how I felt. I felt like
I was unworthy of love and I was someone who
just had this abandonment. And you know, I guess it
would be that doesn't define who you are as a person.
I guess for me, it was just you know, learning
my identity and who I am. Aside from that, you know, So.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Do you and your dad ever talk about maybe the
future anything like that.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
He talks to me when you know, if he gets out,
he would love to move here. Yeah, he would love
to move here and you know spend time with me,
and I'm my daughter, and you know, I may not
have been able to have a childhood with him, but
my children being able to have him around and you know,
see that side of him that I never got to
see that I will grow to see. I think that
would be pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Wilson believes that his experience gave him a perspective that
can make a difference to others even while he remains
behind bars.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I think people depressed. I think people can be full
sid I don't think people can't suicide, you know. And
so this is the environment. And I told myself, well,
because I have this education, while I'm still fighting to
prove my innocent, I could be a summer of assistance
to these individuals around me as well.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
So when you get out, what do you want to do.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I would love to be able to work with youth
and games. I would love to be able to step
out of prison and start programs, mentioning programs, tutoring programs,
because I know the value of that, Programs that help interpret,
you know, because I know how that feels not to
be able to express your feelings because you have the
you don't have the proper words in English to do so.
(37:34):
So these are kind of things that I would love
to be affected in our community as well. I no
longer kind of view myself as this individual who's just
in prison and poor me. You know, when I figured
out that even though I'm still fighting for my freedom
to prove my innocent, I could still be effective in
helping other individuals.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
If you'd like to help support Wilson in his fight
to prove his innocence, go to Freewilson rivera dot com.
We'll post that link in the episode description. Thank you
for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support
your local innocence organizations and go to the links in
(38:29):
the episode description to see how you can help. I'd
like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, 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
production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in
(38:52):
this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on all social media platforms
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
In September of nineteen ninety three, Wilson Rivera and his
friend Roger Murfick were lying in wait to rub a
pizza delivery driver in South Detroit. They'd been tipped off
that the pizza guy was carrying a couple thousand dollars
in drug money, but the payoff was less than they expected,
only a few hundred dollars. A few nights later, two
(00:27):
masked gunmen burst into a nearby house. Twenty year old
Doug Williams and his mother, Lavanda were both shot and killed.
The investigator's theory was that Doug had known about the
robbery and was killed to keep him from snitching. The
police wasted no time in rounding up some local gang
members for questioning, including Wilson Rivera.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
They are risk me at my house. I'm under the
assumption that they're looking for me for the robbery, and
so when they take me to homicide, I'm thinking that
this is a trick that they're playing on me, so
that I could go ahead and admit to the robbery.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Wilson had a solid alibi for that night, but one
by one, the other suspects were dropped from the investigation.
By the time Wilson went to trial, he was the
only one left.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
My name is Wilson Rivera and for the last thirty
years I've been seven times for crima.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Did not come in from lava for good. This is
wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Wilson Rivera. Wilson Rivera
(01:45):
was born in nineteen seventy four in southwest Detroit.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
My whole family's porter. My mother was born in Chicago,
but my father I was born in Puerto Rico, so
we have family on both sides of the ocean, if
you will. I spent most of my time as a
teenager in Detroit, but I was raised in Puerto Rico.
(02:10):
My mother tells me that as a child, she said,
I was I was a pretty lively individu you. As
a child, I'm animated, hyper to a degree. Always, she said.
I always always smiled.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
But the family had its troubles. Both of Wilson's parents
struggled with substance abuse.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
My father was an alcoholic. He was as far as
I could remember images, I could see my father being
a man abuser, getting in domestical youth. My mother ended
up engaging drugs, drinking, and so her life at that
time she did. My mother had a lot of personal
issues and personal demons that she was struggling against that
she never could deal with at the time, so her
(02:52):
life was spiraling out of control.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Wilson's parents separated, and his father ended up moving back
to Puerto Rico. His mother did her best to care
for Wilson and his brother Antonio.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
My mother did struggle at the time, but she may
do with what we had. I don't remember going hungry,
and we always have something to eat, whether it was
some wig or food stamps or focus home. I can
honestly said that we became somewhat of introverts, Me and
my brother. We could depend on each other, but that
was about it only because throughout our childhood it was
(03:27):
always me and hand that were together, Me and my
older brother. It's alway about one year Antonio.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
For most of his childhood, Wilson went back and forth
between their mother in Detroit and their father in Puerto Rico.
In nineteen eighty four, when he was ten, they moved
back to Detroit, but he struggled in school.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I had the language barrier. We didn't really speak English.
They placed us in bilingual classes where basically we were
just put in a classroom and as far as I
can remember, just left there. That you become kind of
like ostracized, and I began to resent school. I was
constantly getting to fight in school and get in trouble.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
The trouble continued through his teens.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I used to be a member. We were through a
local street gang, Camel Boys Incorporated CBI, and consequently we
was involved in a lot of mischievous behavior as in
the neighborhood. And I started getting trouble shoplifting and things
of that nature at the time and skipping out of school.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
But soon the neighborhood mischief was escalating into something else.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
About nineteen eighty seven, Southwest Detroit began to receive the
influx of national gangs. There were two or three primary
gags for Chicago who ended up coming to Southwest Detroit
and they began to recruit individuals and what ends up
happening local street gangs in the neighborhood. We all bended
us one together and what we were constantly fighting with
(04:59):
these the gangs.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
In nineteen ninety, when Wilson was sixteen, one of his
friends was shot in the face by a member of
a rival gang. This led to an incident that would
end up having deep repercussions for Wilson.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Basically, one of my other friends went and got a weapon,
a shotgun, and brought me the shotgun and I opened
fire at the rival gang, and as I fled the scene,
I came face to face with a member of the
Detroit Police. I pulled the webinarut and as I pulled
the webin out, I hope discharged it and it didn't
(05:37):
hit him. Later on the following day, I was arrested
and eventually I pled guilty to the offense.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
He was charged with attempt to commit bodily harm on
a police officer.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's what I want you to do, w I'm for.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Wilson spent over two years at the Maxie Boys Training School,
a juvenile correction facility about an hour outside of Detroit,
and when he was released in nineteen ninety three, he
still hadn't graduated high school, but he did manage to
find a job in a factory.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
At the time I was working, but then I had
suffered a hand injury or gusha wound where I couldn't
really use my hand and keep up with the production.
So instead of being fired. I quit the job, and
the way that I will survive it would be either
petty hustle or I will engage in small and I'm
not minimizing it, but it was what we would consider
small robberies in the neighborhood, and it would be dope
(06:36):
dealers or things of the source.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Wilson got by on the petty crimes and was still
running with the Camel Boys, but when he was around nineteen,
his girlfriend told him some news that made him want
to change his lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I was excited when I found out that Sho was pregnant.
I wasn't I wouldn't say I was scared, but I
knew that I want to make like a shift in
my life. I wanted to be a person for my daughters, and.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
To Wilson, that meant leaving gang life behind, but he
found that was easier said than done.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I had started applying for jobs. I wanted to try
to see if I could get back in the old
factory where I was working at, but maybe in a
different position where it then requires for me to work
in the machines that I had to be working on before. Unfortunately,
though I still live in the same environment. Though the
neighborhood where I lived at, like my house was smacked.
It in the middle of basically all the rival gangs
(07:36):
that I was in fights with, So there was one
of them things where it was kind of constantly going
back and forth.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Wilson was living in the neighborhood, spending his nights at
his girlfriend's house and leaving early in the morning to
try and avoid the other gangs.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I figured that me going home in the mornings would
be a lot safer as opposed to you know, coming
home at midnight or late at night time because said
by that company rival gangs, because he that you're home.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Wilson had decided to give up the petty crime in
gang life, but he hadn't found a job yet and
he was still involved with the same crowd. One of
his friends, kal Matta, was in a gang called the
cash Flow Posse, a gang that the Camel Boys had
an alliance with. Cal also worked at a local pizza shop,
and one day Cal approached Wilson and his friend Roger
(08:25):
Murfk with a scheme to make some easy money.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
What he had informed those was that there was a
guy that was delivering pizzas, but he was doing so
while at the same time challenge drugs, we were led
to believe that this person had at least two thousand
dollars from drug proceeds on himself.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
On September twelfth, nineteen ninety three, Wilson and Roger were
armed and waiting to rob the pizza guy along his route,
but he was taking longer than they expected, so they
thought they might have missed him. Roger knew a guy
named Douglas Williams who lived across the street, and he
went over to Doug's house to ask if he could
use the phone.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Eventually, the piece that every guy comes and we robbed
a guy and he didn't have no two thousand dollars.
He didn't have eight hundred dollars. The individual actually only
had four hundred dollars. So when Kel comes to the
apartment after he gets out of work at ten o'clock
and he asked for his portion of the money, I
told him he wasn't going to get the money because
(09:29):
he lied about what the guy had, and so we
fell out over there.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And that should have been that robbery and a small
argument over a few hundred dollars, but it wasn't. Twenty
year old Douglas Williams lived with his parents, Lavanda and
Daniel Brown, and three days after the pizza man was robbed,
two men burst into their house wearing ski masks. One
of the intruders shot and killed both Doug and Lavanda,
(09:56):
but Daniel, Doug's father survived. He talked with police shortly afterwards.
Daniel told them that Doug had known about the armed
robbery from a few days before.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Daniel Brown said that his son Doug had told him
that Wilson Rivera and Roger Murfick were the two individuals
involved in that armed robbery.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
This is Wilson's post conviction attorney, Rachel Wolfe.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
There was plenty there for the prosecution to latch onto
and for the police to investigate, because they knew exactly
who Roger Murfick and Wilson Rivera were at the time.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And one member of the Detroit Police Department, Officer Gerald Packard,
had his own reasons for focusing on Wilson. The officer
that Wilson had shot at back when he was sixteen.
Officer Ayala was Packard's partner.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So Officer Packard knew Wilson. He knew that he had
gotten what I imagine Packard would assume is a short
sentence for something like that. He is not on the
homicide team. He was not part of the homicide investigation,
but he was the one when he heard that Roger
(11:10):
and Wilson were potentially suspects. He was the one that
went to Wilson's apartment knocking on the door, and then ultimately,
once the warrant was obtained, just busted right in to
the apartment.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And when they arrest me at my house, I'm under
the assumption that they're looking for me for the robbery,
and so when they take me to homicide, Sergeant Morell
tells me that he's arrested me for murder. I'm thinking
that this is a trick that they're playing on me
so that I could go ahead and admit to the robbery.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
But Wilson knew nothing about the homicide. The night of
the shooting, he had been with his girlfriend and her
mother at their house. He didn't learn about the shooting
until the next day, when he found out that Roger
had also been arrested.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I've seen Roger aside, and when they put him in
a bulkin, and that's when I asked Rogers like what's
going on, and he explained to me what had actually
taken place with the murder with the ham size. Now again,
I'm operating under this concept of loads that we have
within the gang, right, so I'm not going to say nothing.
(12:20):
They're not going to say nothing, you know, and we
just take it out and see what happens. In my mind,
I'm assuming that eventually the facts are going to bear
me out. Since I don't have nothing to do with it,
it's just a matter of time before I'm clear. Unfortunately,
if we could see, that's not where I ended up
taking place.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Pods cast. In
(13:10):
the aftermath of the shooting, the Detroit homicide squad, headed
up by Officer Carrie Russell, rounded up a number of
local gang members and charged them with the murders. One
of the first to be arrested with cal Mata.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
They knew they were looking for Wilson and Roger. They
went to this house that was a known location for
both the cash Flow Posse gang and the Camel Boys Gang,
so they they came in, they arrested Cal. At that time,
he was the only person in that apartment with a
number of firearms. They also found a ski mask and
(13:47):
a jacket inside of that apartment that they ultimately seized
and ended up admitting at trial as well.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
While in custody, Cal told Officer Packard that he had
heard Wilson and Roger talking about Doug Williams calling him
a snitch. Cal took that to me and they were
going to take steps to make sure Doug couldn't report
them for the robbery. The police also brought in a
couple of other gang members for questioning, Armando Campos and
Ephram Garcia. Both of them were in the cash Flow
(14:17):
Posse and according to Wilson, Ephram was trying to climb
the ranks in the gang.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
The way that the gang was operating was that in
order for an individual to move up in the ranks,
right to either become an enforcer or treasurer or whatever
other upper echeline in the gang, what they would have
to do is they would have to what we call
back then put in work, you know, whether it be
if you rob somebody, if you shout somebody, he jumped
(14:44):
somebody in the schools and all that. The reputation of that,
whatever you do, goes to the gang. So in order
for Ethom to move up in the ranks in his gang,
he wanted to put in the work, and in.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
This case, the work was to keep Doug Williams from
snitching a about the pizza robbery. Wilson says that that
day at the jail, Roger told him exactly how it
had gone down.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And so Roger and Etham go to the house where
the witness of the robbery was and Ethel kicks down
the door and opens fire and hits Dug, and then
Roger comes from the other side and hits Doug. And
then as Doug's mother attempts to flee that the residence,
Roger opens fire on him and he hits her as well.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
After what Roger told him, Wilson was confident that the
truth would come out and he'd be released. But Roger
never confessed to anyone else, and the homicide team continued
to question.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Wilson, and I told him exactly where I was at, Sohm.
I was spending the night with my daughter's mother, and
she was at the time, I was twenty half months pregnant.
In my mind, I know where I was at. So
I gave him to Alibi and gave him everything where
I was, that and everything. And my expectation was that
they were walk through my daughter's mother, but that never
took place.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
When Armando Compost was questioned, he told police that the
day after the homicide, Roger had turned up at his
house desperate for money.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Roger vad I just smoked someone. I just smoked someone.
I need as much money as possible. I got to
get out of town. And then when questioned a little further,
Armando also said, yeah, he mentioned Wilson too. He mentioned
Wilson was there too.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Wilson and Roger were now the primary suspects, and both
were charged with the murders. In September of nineteen ninety three,
a joint preliminary hearing was held at which cal and
Armando testified. Both repeated what they had told police, but
when Roger Murphick went to trial in April of nineteen
ninety four, Armando changed his story.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Armando recanted everything he had said at the preliminary examination.
He said, no, I never made those statements. The only
reason that I made those statements is because I was arrested.
You know, I was charged. I was threatened by the police.
I said exactly what they wanted me to say. Roger,
of course, was acquitted of all of the.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Charges, but Wilson remained in jail. He went to trial
a few months later on September sixth, nineteen ninety four.
The judge was Helen Brown and the prosecutor was Lisa Lindsay.
As far as physical evidence, there wasn't much for the
state to present.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
We don't have fingerprints, They didn't fingerprint the shell casings
or anything in the house at the time. Obviously there's
no DNA or anything like that. It was a really
quick homicide.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Officer Packard and the homicide squad had searched Wilson's home
the day they arrested him.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And they find two firearms and two ski masks, one
of which was black or dark blue in color. The
other one was a multicolored. Those guns were tested against
some of the shell casings that were recovered in the house,
and the there was a bullet I believe recovered from
Doug's body during the autopsy, and there wasn't a match,
(18:12):
so conclusively, neither of the weapons found in Wilson's home
were involved in the homicide. They were allowed, however, to
admit them at trial, along with a bunch of ammunition
that they found in Wilson's home, none of which was
the right caliber to be involved in the homicide either.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
But they presented it as if it could be.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
They sure did. Yeah, they presented all of that to
the jury.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
The state relied heavily on police and witness testimony to
make their case, but there wasn't much of that either.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Daniel Brown testified to the armed robbery and named these
two co defendants as perpetrators of that armed robbery, and
then they also had testimony from one other witness, kal Matta.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Cal repeated the statement he had given the police that
he had heard Wilson and Roger talking about getting rid
of Doug Williams, and that was about it for the
prosecution's case.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
The officer in charge of the case, you know who,
was basically the one that was responsible for taking other
testimonies from all these witnesses and all that she felt
to shored up for my trial, even though she knew
my trouble set for that day, and so all of
these things that was taken place, I'm looking at what
was going on, I was like, yeah, at least in
my mind, I was hoping that the judge was going
(19:28):
to say, you know, I'm going to interfere in this
thing here and I'm going to dismiss it for the
lack of evidence. And because of what was going on
with the prosecute fell to produce their witnesses.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And not only that, Wilson had an alibi. Remember on
the night of the murders, he'd been with his girlfriend,
but she never testified at trial, and surprisingly Armando Compos
did not appear either.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So when my attorney at the time, mister Griffin, asked
to I have a due diligence hearing as to why
Armando has not shown up to testify, we find out
that the prosecutor at the time has failed to subpoena
Armando and so he never showed up to testify because
he never knew.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I think ultimately it's entirely possible that Roger was acquitted
and Wilson was convicted because of the absence of Armando
Compos's testimony.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
On September ninth of nineteen ninety four, the jury found
Wilson Rivera guilty of the premeditated murders of Donald Williams
and Lavanda Brown. He was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
After I came to Prey within the first year, I
winned for an enimy to get into a fight and
he got stamped. Eventually he died understade and he basically
la out and so they locked us down, and I
told myself, Yeah, that's not going to happen to me,
you know. So I wanted to hope defensive posturing and
(21:22):
any issue that I had, I either was going to
get into a fight. I wasn't going to wait for
anybody to stab me to try to kill me in prison.
And so what I ended up doing I started acting
our first. So if I felt that we had an issue,
I would act first. And I actually caught a couple
of assault tickets in prison. I spent several years in
mechimum security, several years, and the whole you know, I
(21:45):
didn't care much about where I was at in prison
at that time, you know, and had just turned twenty
and being sentenced to life without parole, and the only
thing that kind of set me to a degree balanced
out was that I was I wanted to see my daughter.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
While Wilson was in jail awaiting trial, his daughter, Sierra
was born.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
The first time that I got a chance to see
her was actually doing my sentencing. So the time that
I'm being sentenced to life without parole, I'm actually paying
more so attention to my daughter, who basically just a
few months old at the time.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
You know, he's been in prison my whole life. So
what I do know is from the relationship we formed
with him being in prison.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
This is Wilson's daughter, Sierra Ramirez.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
He's funny, he's intelligent, and I are a lot of
like very talkative. He's an encourager. You know, it's only
fifteen minute phone calls at a time, but I feel
pretty open when I talk with him.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
What was that like, growing up only knowing your father
from prison from visiting rooms.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
I guess for me, it was a norm. I didn't
see it as anything weird because it was all I knew, basically,
you know, when I started getting old and going to
my friend's house and I'm like, oh, okay, this is
a little bit different. You know, there's There's a different
dynamic that comes from having.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Your dad in your life.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
And I had him to an extent, but not fully.
And now as an adult, when I look back, I
see how that impacted me just as a woman, as
a girl growing up, you know, as a white how
it impacted me.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Did you ever feel angry or resentful towards your dad.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
I did feel some anger with him when I was younger.
I felt very abandoned, and I did tell him I
was angry at him and felt like he made the
choice to leave me no, and I was coming. He
was very receptive, you know, he apologized, and he's definitely
done what he can as a father to his best
of his ability. You know, whether when I was young,
(23:47):
he would send me, you know, we're Hispanic. He would
send me tapes to learn Spanish, and he would send
me these books and make me bracelets and stuff like that.
He's always caught. I've always seen him. He's always sent cards.
He's definitely done what he can. I give that to
him for sure.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Soon after his conviction, Wilson's attorney filed a direct appeal
based on prosecutorial misconduct and the improper admission of the
firearms founded his house, which had been found to be
not connected to the murders. The courts denied the appeal,
and Wilson knew that if he wanted to get out
of prison, he would have to dedicate all of his
(24:27):
time and resources to proving his innocence.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
After about seventeen years in prison, of going to all
these up and downs and the disappointment was the case,
I started investing more time and the pace, and I
started working, saving my money that I learned for my
prison detail and basically I will try to hire my
private investigators to try to find the information that I
needed to prove my innocence. I decided to start studying
(24:55):
the law myself, and eventually I got trained as a
legal writer or prison pail. And I did this shit
in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Then in twenty eighteen, Rachel Wolf began working on Wilson's case.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It was funny when Wilson and I first met, he
was worried about me because I was young, and because
I and he said, this is a quote sound like
a Republican. So I had to I had to assure
him that that wasn't going to be an issue. So
when I first went to meet him. I didn't know
what to expect, but we clicked right away.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Initially, Rachel was skeptical about the strength of Wilson's argument.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
You know, how are we going to prove this case
there is a motive? And people find that very, very convincing.
So regardless of the strength of the evidence as it exists,
or the existence of other possible suspects, which there are,
it's easy for people to latch onto and easy for
them to say.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Well, of course he did it.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
He had a reason to do it, you know, without
looking at any closer at the case.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So what convinced you of his innocence or what made
you want to keep digging?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
When I started talking to people, and especially like the
leaders of the cash Flow posse and some other members
of you know, some other people who were involved in
the gang activity at that time, I started just getting
some information that did not jive with the prosecutor's theory.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
For one thing, remember ephrom Garcia. He was arrested in
the DPD roundup along with Roger Murfik, and Roger had
told Wilson straight out that he and Ephram had done
the killings, But somehow Ephram was dropped from the case
early on.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
We didn't know at the time. They subjected e from
Garcia two way polygraph and he failed it, but they
didn't disclose it to Wilson's defense counsel. He didn't know
about it at the time of trial. We discovered that
much later, and that's you know, part of the basis
from my legal challenge to his case is that he
should have had this evidence. There was this suspect, and
(27:07):
we know that e from Garcia was released after that.
He wasn't investigated for involvement in this homicide any further
by the Detroit Police Department. They started looking for Roger
and Wilson, and I don't think they were going to
change their minds at any point. Yeah, from the description
he was there, he failed as Polly, but they did.
(27:27):
They wanted Roger and they wanted Wilson.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Officer Packard especially wanted Wilson. He hadn't forgotten it was
Wilson who had shot at his partner, Officer Ayala.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
He was I think central to this case and maybe
maybe you know, part of the reason they didn't investigate
e from any further or any other possible suspects. Ephrom
Garcia was indicted for the exact same homicide five years later.
He never actually ended up with that homicide conviction. He's
(28:00):
incarcerated now for several additional homicides.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
They've also uncovered previously undisclosed information about Cal's testimony.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Cal was on probation, and he also was found and
arrested with guns and drugs in a known gang location.
His probation was dismissed very shortly after Wilson's trial and sentencing,
and he was never charged. He was initially actually charged
(28:31):
with the homicide, and then ultimately they dismissed that, and
then they never even charged him with any of the
other offenses.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Then there's the matter of proving Wilson's alibi.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
So he had his girlfriend at the time. He was
with her at her mother's house. He stayed the night there,
i think until early in the morning, early morning hours,
We're talking like two am, three am.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Wilson's girlfriend never testified to this at trial. When Rachel
interviewed her, she found out why because she was scared.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
She says an individual in a suit approached her in
the hallway outside of the courtroom and said, look, we're
holding your brother. He's currently facing these additioninal charges. If
you go in there and testify, you know we're going
to reconsider the severity of the charges in the possible
sentence against your brother. And so she was too afraid
(29:27):
to testify, and I think her testimony probably would have
made a difference.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Rachel says she's spoken with other potential witnesses from the neighborhood.
People will have knowledge of what actually happened, but they
have similar reasons for not coming forward.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
They're all afraid of the police. They're all afraid of
the prosecutor and of coming into court, just because I
think that's what their lived experience has taught them to fear.
They are hesitant to come into court. And that's made
the investigation of this case a little more difficult as well,
is that I have witnesses who were willing to provide
(30:09):
me with information that are not willing to come in
and testify in court. They're not willing to talk to
the prosecutor's conviction integrity unit. They're just not going to
do that.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's so interesting. They're more scared of the law enforcement
than they are of snitching and being a snitch on
the street.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, at least that's what they're telling me.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
According to Rachel, all of this is tied in with
the culture in the Detroit Police Department at the time.
People in the community had little reason to trust the
cops and plenty of reason to fear them.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
They had this practice, they called it witness roundups. You're
not supposed to arrest somebody without probable cause. But what
they would do, and they did it in Wilson's case,
they would go and everybody who they thought was a
possible witness, they would charge them with the underlying offense.
So in a homicide investigation, you're all charged with homicide.
(31:06):
And then they would bring them in, hold them, interview them.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
The place was Detroit Police Headquarters at thirteen hundred Bobian,
and it was notorious for being the seat of police corruption.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
All the witnesses, all of the clients that I have,
you say, thirteen hundred Bobian, everybody knows exactly what you're
talking about. That interview room that they used to take
people is awful, like cockroaches are in there. They don't
give you food. You know, you can't see out, so
you'll see through the nineteen nineties, these witnesses all testifying
like I was held for like three days. I was
(31:40):
charged with the homicide, and of course they weren't involved,
you know, they weren't, But that's what DPD was doing.
So in the late nineteen eighties and all throughout the nineties,
there was significant corruption within the Detroit Police Department.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
In the year two thousand, seven, years after Wilson's conviction,
the Department of Justice ran an investigation of the DPD
that turned up a number of significant violations.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
In nineteen ninety five, Carlos Rodriguez, who was one of
the investigators on Wilson's homicide team, was indicted along with
four other officers for operating a narcotic spring through the
fourth Precinct in the city of Detroit. The entire DPD
forensics lab was shut down in two thousand and eight
(32:27):
because the investigators had found widespread errors in their analysis.
And then a few years later, David Pouch, the firearms
examiner in Wilson's case, was found to have intentionally fabricated
ballistics evidence to obtain a conviction in a nineteen ninety
two case, so a year before he testified at Wilson's trial,
(32:50):
he had intentionally fabricated ballistics evidence that individual to his case.
His name is Desmond Rix. He was also exonerated on
that basis.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
With all of this new information to present, Rachel is
hopeful that Wilson will be granted a new trial.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Short of a commutation or pardon from the governor. There's
one other way you can get out of prison when
you have a life without parole sentence, and that is
through a motion fu a leaf from judgment. So basically
what you do is you go back to the state court,
back to the same court that convicted you in the
first place, and you say I'm entitled to a new
trial for this reason, this reason, and this reason. So
(33:30):
you investigate the hell out of everything because you only
get one chance. So now that we have all of
that evidence collected, there are some significant legal challenges that
we can raise. One of them, of course, is the
Brady violation. Wilson should have had information that e from
(33:51):
Garcia was given a polygraph examination and failed it so
that he would be able to properly investigate that avenue
of defense, and he wasn't. So that's certainly one of
our claims. I think we were prepared to go to
court probably about two years ago, and so we'll be
moving forward very quickly now.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
And in the meantime. In addition to becoming a prison paralegal,
Wilson has accomplished another important goal. In May of twenty
twenty three, he graduated magna cum laude from Calvin University.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Was going for a bachelor's degree in Faith and Community
Leadership with a minor and social work. The highest grade
I ever completed with the seventh grade. I never went
to high school, and so being able to kind of
like accomplish not just a gain in a college degree,
but with a high GDA three point ninety three, it
(34:49):
was personally a huge accomplishment and it just gave me
a huge sense of self work as well.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So your daughter Sierra was telling me that she was
able to go to your graduation.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, to me, right is invaluable. I mean it's a
moment there and I look at the picture and that
I'm still with such a man. I'm extremely proud of
my daughter that got fishes my heart.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
It was nice, you know, to be able to be
there and watch him do like kind of like this
normal thing. It was awesome to see and maybe feel
proud of him, you know. I feel like it was
a great example of how he, even given his circumstances,
he was able to accomplish something so great.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
It was very inspiring, and Sierra credits her father with
inspiring her in other ways.
Speaker 4 (35:36):
I've seen what a wonderful person he is and how
someone like I said, can make bad choices at one
point in their life, but then you know they can
turn that around and not let that define them and
contain them no matter where they're at, being in prison.
I think it's important to know your own worth and
not see other people's decisions as how worthy you are.
(36:00):
I guess because that's how I felt. I felt like
I was unworthy of love and I was someone who
just had this abandonment. And you know, I guess it
would be that doesn't define who you are as a person.
I guess for me, it was just you know, learning
my identity and who I am. Aside from that, you know, So.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Do you and your dad ever talk about maybe the
future anything like that.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
He talks to me when you know, if he gets out,
he would love to move here. Yeah, he would love
to move here and you know spend time with me,
and I'm my daughter, and you know, I may not
have been able to have a childhood with him, but
my children being able to have him around and you know,
see that side of him that I never got to
see that I will grow to see. I think that
would be pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Wilson believes that his experience gave him a perspective that
can make a difference to others even while he remains
behind bars.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I think people depressed. I think people can be full
sid I don't think people can't suicide, you know. And
so this is the environment. And I told myself, well,
because I have this education, while I'm still fighting to
prove my innocent, I could be a summer of assistance
to these individuals around me as well.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
So when you get out, what do you want to do.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I would love to be able to work with youth
and games. I would love to be able to step
out of prison and start programs, mentioning programs, tutoring programs,
because I know the value of that, Programs that help interpret,
you know, because I know how that feels not to
be able to express your feelings because you have the
you don't have the proper words in English to do so.
(37:34):
So these are kind of things that I would love
to be affected in our community as well. I no
longer kind of view myself as this individual who's just
in prison and poor me. You know, when I figured
out that even though I'm still fighting for my freedom
to prove my innocent, I could still be effective in
helping other individuals.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
If you'd like to help support Wilson in his fight
to prove his innocence, go to Freewilson rivera dot com.
We'll post that link in the episode description. Thank you
for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support
your local innocence organizations and go to the links in
(38:29):
the episode description to see how you can help. I'd
like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, 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
production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in
(38:52):
this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on all social media platforms
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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