January 29, 2024 • 38 mins
In November of 1999, a fire broke out in Angela Garcia’s home in Cleveland, OH. Angela jumped out of a second-story window and ran for help, but her two young daughters died of smoke inhalation. Several months later, she was charged with their murder and received two life sentences. “I didn't hurt my daughters…I loved them like I love myself,” Angela tells Maggie. “I always believed that the truth would prevail…that's what the news teaches you to think. So why would I ever think that the system would let me down?”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
On the night of November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Angela Garcia,
a single mother, was at home with her two toddlers.
It was a quiet, peaceful evening. The girls were upstairs
in her bedroom watching Rugrats on TV. Downstairs, Angela was
on the phone with her family making Thanksgiving plans. Angela
went up to use the bathroom, and while there, she
(00:27):
noticed it was getting hard to breathe. She began coughing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really
figure out what was happening in the house.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
When she came out of the bathroom, Angela saw smoke
billowing up from downstairs. Frantically, she searched for her daughters,
but the smoke was too thick.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I
thought about was I needed somebody to help me.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Angela broke the window, jumped down from the second story,
and ran to the neighbor's house.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I went to her house, and not to please help me,
Please help me find my kids. Can't get I can't
get my kids.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Both of her children died in the fire. Angela was
convicted of arson and murder and given a life sentence,
and then after spending over sixteen years in prison, she
was faced with an agonizing choice.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God
and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do
or do because I just I had to make a
decision within a couple of minutes that was gonna change
the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
From lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today Angela Garcia. Angela Garcia was born in New
(02:00):
York in nineteen seventy seven. She moved to Cleveland when
she was fourteen.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
My mom got married to my stepdad when I was
really young, so he kind of raised me.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I lived with him and my mom.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So I have a bunch of step brothers and sisters,
but for my mom, I only have. It's me and
I have one sister, my sister Judy, for my mom
were seven years apart.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
She was just a little sister. She always wanted to
be up under me, as little sisters always want to do.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
This is Angela's older sister, Judy Caddo Nichols, and despite
their age difference, the two have always been close.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I have this one memory that I always think about
my mom had I don't know how old I was.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I had been really young.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My mom had bought these telephones and we had this
long hallway, and I remember us being on these like
I think they were blue phones.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Oh my god, that is so silly.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yes, my mother had bought her for Christmas, these little phones,
remember them princess phones. Well there was two of them
attached to one that She'd be in one room and
I'd be in the other room. We talked. Oh my god,
that is so silly.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Hi Angela, Hi Judy.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I just that's like one of the memories from my
childhood that is so fond in my mind.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
I think we had a good childhood. You know, we
would know it was never hungry. We lived nicely.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
The sisters stayed close as they grew older and both
started families. Judy had a son, dj and Angela had
two girls, Nayima and Nysa. Their children were around the
same age and constantly together.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
My oldest daughter was like real bubbly, real talkative and
just really outgoing. And then my youngest daughter was kind
of quiet, like real observant. She would be quick to
speak to people, but like she would try to get
a feel of people. I A would say that they
like they were both of my characters kind of like
split up and got into both of them.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Naima, she was always smiling. She thought she was big
sister to her little sister and my son. Yeah, she
was a smart one. And Nida, Yeah she was the.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Roly poly one.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
She was more quiet. She was just she was like
a little Buddha. She's so adorable.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And I used to love to do to hear, used
to like braid to hear and for men here.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
And it was spoiled by everyone. They were babies that couldn't.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Do no wrong. How was she as a mom?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
She was a good mom. Yeah. I kept the kids
a lot because I had a younger son, so so
they can play together all the time. So basically I
had them mostly all the weekends.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Angela was a single mother, twenty two years old and
engaged to be married. She was raising her daughters in
a two story house she rented from her parents in
East Cleveland. Judy and her family lived nearby. Angela was
in school and dreamed of becoming a paramedic.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But it was like schooling was expensive. So me and
my sister had I think we had.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Went somewhere and we met a recruiter, and he told
me like, hey, if you sign up for you know,
to be in a navy, you know, we'll.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Pay for you go to school.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So I mean, I just figured why not, Like, who
wouldn't want to do that? And knowing that somebody that
your whole schooling is going to be paid for.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Basic training would take six weeks, and Angela knew she
would need someone to take care of her daughters during
that time, So naturally she asked Judy.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah, that's not a problem. It wasn't a problem.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
I just say, it takes a village to raise a family,
you know, so we was our little village.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
But yeah, of course that never happened.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
So this case started with a fire at Angela's house
on November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
This is Joanna Sanchez.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Managing counsel of the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office
of the Ohio Public Defender.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and Angela was at
home with the girls.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
My daughters used to love Rugrats, so we used to
watch that all the time they were two and three,
So it really wasn't like we were doing like a
whole lot.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
The house was calm and quiet. While the girls watched TV.
Up in her bedroom, Angela lit a couple of candles.
I was talking with her stepsister on the phone downstairs.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And we were just talking about Thanksgiving and who's gonna
cook and what they're gonna cook and all that. I
had Winnes say as he used the restroom, and my
oldest daughter, Naima, she had came in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
The bathroom and I told him, like, get out the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And she said something to me, but I didn't pay
any attention whatever she was saying. And to this day,
I always think about if I would have listened to her.
Maybe she was telling me something, maybe she seen something,
heard something and was trying to tell me, But at
the time I didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed she
was coughing and she saw smoke, so she kind of
went towards the stairs and saw just smoke billowing up
the stairs.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really
figure out what was happening in the house. And I
knew I was having problems breathing and I couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
The first thing Angela thought of was her children.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
They were in my bedroom at the time, and so
I was feeling all over my bed for them, and
I couldn't find them.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
And by this point the house was just filling with
thick black smoke.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I
thought about was I needed somebody to help me. So
I opened up the window and I was screaming out
the window, and then somehow I broke. I busted the
window out trying to get out, and then I jumped down.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I jumped out the house.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
And in my mind at the time, I thought that
if I jump, if I jumped out and found somebody
to help me, I could find my daughters.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
So she did break out the second story window, went
onto what was the roof of the porch, jumped down
to the yard, and ran to her neighbor's house to
get help.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You don't think like I didn't think about if you
jump out the window, how are you gonna get back
in the house.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I never even thought about that.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The only thing I thought about was trying to get
back in, you know, trying to trying to stay them,
trying to find them. And so I went to the
next door neighbor's house, and to please help me, please
help me find my kids. Can't get I can't get
my kids, and me and her went back to the house.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I don't remember everything that happened. I remember me and
her being on the porch because we couldn't get back
in the house.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
Unfortunately, by the time the firefighters came, Nija and Naima
had died. Initially, the firefighters, they looked at the house,
they documented the scene. They brought in an accelerant sniffing
dog who found no accelerant, and they determined that this
(09:39):
was an accidental fire, and they destroyed the house.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Is that normal? I thought that was so crazy. Two
days later, the house is destroyed.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
It's very quick. I mean it prevented certainly the defense
from ever collecting any evidence in the house. But really
no evidence was collected. I mean they took photos, but
no materials were collected for any store of testing for
accelerance or anything of that nature. So it's very strange.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
So then walk me through. It's an accident. The house
is leveled. How do we get to where we are?
Speaker 5 (10:14):
So the house is leveled. A couple months later, Angela
submitted her insurance claim for her renter's insurance, and they
believed that she had overvalued the contents of her home.
And so at that point the police and the fire
investigation unit started looking at this again and determined instead
(10:35):
that this was an incendiary fire.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
How do they come to that conclusion without the house?
Speaker 5 (10:42):
So what they did was they looked back at some
of the photographs. There's a large burned through pattern in
the dining room floor, and so they believed that was
the area of origin. I think when they had called
it an accidental fire, the presumption had been that maybe
one of the gandals had fallen over and caused this fire.
And so one of the fire investigating unit officers indicated
(11:05):
that he thought now the candle was too sturdy and
too far away from any combustibles to have caused the fire,
and so they came to the conclusion that it must
have been an intentional fire.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Angela was barely into her twenties. She had lost both
her daughters as well as her home.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
That whpe time period.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I can't even say, you know how when you're sleep
in like you think you're dreaming, but you're not sure
because sometimes it looks real something parts of the dream
looks real something, parts to fake.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
And that's just how I felt for that time period.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know, I was I was a young mom, and
I never really experienced losing anybody. I didn't know how
to feel. I didn't how to feel. I didn't know
what I was supposed to feel. Now I know that
I was in a real bad depression.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And then just three months later, in February of two thousand,
Angela was arrested. She was charged with insurance fraud and
aggravated murder.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I couldn't believe I was arrested. Actually, I was like, what,
this is crazy? You know, it didn't make no sense
to me, none whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I knew I didn't hurt my daughters. You know, I
knew I didn't them.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I love them like I love myself. You know, I
always believed that the truth will prevail. I always thought
that if somebody got arrested, whatever they got arrested for,
they did because that's what society teaches you to think,
That's what the news teaches you to think. So why
would I ever think that the system would let me down?
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Good Podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Angela's two daughters,
(13:32):
three year old Naima and two year old Nyja, had
died in the house fire, and on August twenty first,
two thousand, Angela went to trial for the first time
before Judge Bridget McCafferty. The state sought the death penalty.
Their case hinged on the theory that Angela had burned
down her house and killed her children to get the
(13:55):
insurance money.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
She had a render's insurance policy. She had life insurance
on herself, and their theory was that she burned down
her house and murdered her children so that she could
collect some money on those insurance policies and sort of
start a new life child free.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Remember the year before, Angela had been thinking about joining
the navy.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
And because she was a single mother, she was told,
you can't join the navy with dependence, you know. So
Angela looked into having her older sister, who she was
very close with and very close with her children, to
take temporary custody of them while she pursued this navy career. Ultimately,
Angela changed her mind and didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Nevertheless, the state used that information at trial to bolster
their narrative that Angela was trying to free herself from
the responsibility of motherhood by setting fire to her own home.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
They put on their fire investigation unit, a couple officers
from there, and they testified about what we now know
are really outdated myths that used to use that indicated
arson in their minds. So different types of char like
alligator char on the walls, burned through pattern. They put
that evidence on.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
The prosecution also presented an insurance adjuster to testify that
Angela had recently purchased a large renter's insurance policy as
well as a policy on herself and her daughters.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
The defense put on evidence that indicated she actually hadn't
sought out those policies. These are salesmen who had come
to her work and sort of given her a sales pitch,
and she had reluctantly signed up for insurance.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
In addition to those witnesses, the prosecution presented firefighters and
neighbors who had witnessed the events that night. They also
presented a hospital worker who testified that when Naimo was
brought into the er. She was wrapped in a cord
from the window blind.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
They alleged that Angela had tied up one of her children.
There's lots of testimony that shows why she might have
ended up bound in those blinds. There was testimony from
the firefighters that they actually came in and they used
a tool to knock out the windows and knock down
all the blinds and curtains, and so those blinds would
have landed on her child. The firefighter then scooped her
(16:13):
up with the blinds, went outside with her, handed her
to an EMS worker, who then handed her to someone else.
And so it's easy to see how during this whole
process she may have become entangled in the blinds.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
The prosecution also alleged that Angela wasn't reacting properly at
the hospital, that she wasn't behaving the way a grieving
mother should.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
You know, that's something that's really interesting about this case
because originally what the witnesses that the scene were saying
was that Angela was hysterical. She was sitting on the ground,
she was rocking back and forth. You know, she was
screaming about her children. Really, you know, couldn't be consoled
and when she was interviewed at the hospital by the
firefighters and the police detectives, they wrote up a report
(16:58):
said nothing about her demeanor thing out of sorts. Later,
after they changed the fire to incendiary, they went back
and added a report about their reflections of her demeanor
that night in the hospital and said that she was
too calm.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
When the defense presented their case, they didn't call any
witnesses to testify.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
What they did was aggressively cross examine the state's witnesses.
So these trials happened in two thousand and two thousand
and one, and by then fire science was starting to evolve.
This guide that fire investigators use n FPA nine to
twenty one had started to debunk some of these long
held myths, and so the defense at trial really used
(17:40):
that to cross examine the fire investigators about, you know,
all these things that they were relying on that weren't
supported by science.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
The first trial ended in a hung jury. A few
months later, there was a second trial, which started in
January of two thousand and one. The same judge and prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
For the second trial, the state presented much of the
same evidence they did at the first, but then also
brought in a jailhouse informant.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That informant's name was Tanya Lanham.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Tanya and her husband Tim were arrested for passing bad
checks and they hit the jail at the same time.
He was on the men's side. She was on the
women's side with Angela, and so then she would later
testify that Angela confessed to her during that time.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And as we've seen in so many wrongful conviction cases,
that jailhouse confession never actually happened.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Years later, Tim would write a letter to Angela indicating
that you know that was a lie, and what he
said was that the police approached them. After her first
trial about testifying against Angela.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
The prosecution denied that Tanya and Tim had been offered
any kind of deal, but after she gave that information
to the police, Hanya received a sixty day suspended sentence
for the bad checks charge. That second trial also ended
in a mistrial. The jury couldn't reach a verdict there either,
but the state just would not give up.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
By the time we got to the third trial, the
prosecution had completely changed its prosecutors. They really enhanced their
evidence about the financial motives. It really became a trial
almost entirely about that. And they also alleged that in
between the second and third trial, they had discovered a
second area of origin for the fire in the house,
(19:38):
So now they were saying this didn't just start in
the dining room. There was also a poor pattern on
the stairs, and so the state's theory was an accidental
fire couldn't start in two different locations. They also brought
on and this is kind of maybe one of the
more shocking parts of the third trial, they had a
firefighter testify that he was at the scene the night
(20:00):
of the fire and that on the stairs he found
an intact bit lighter that he didn't photograph, didn't tell
anyone about. He just looked at it, put it back down,
and never said anything until trial number three. And then
the other thing the defense did in the third trial,
which they hadn't done in the first two is they
called an expert witness. So they brought in doctor Richard Roby,
(20:24):
who was a chemical engineer and an expert on fire science,
and he testified that the fire investigators had relied on
outdated signs of arson. He really debunked a lot of
what the state's evidence was. He described this concept of
flashover that really changes how fire investigations should be conducted.
(20:45):
And so he was really kind of ahead of his time.
And the state at the third trial called him junk
science and said that he had kind of created a
quote miracle theory of flashover and tried to discredit him,
and they effectively so, and Angela was convicted at the
end of that trial.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
By the time my second trial happened, I just I
really believe that, you know, I had two hung juries. Okay,
they're gonna let me go, because why would you still
why would you still keep trying me? And it's like
mentally it starts to weigh you down, and you know,
(21:28):
hearing people say things about me that's not true, or
you know, certain people call me a predator, and you know,
all these different type of names and stuff like that.
So I was really going through it and I just
had like this overwhelmingly tired feeling, you know, I was.
(21:49):
I was just so overwhelmingly tired.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Joana. I feel like we'd think after one or two
mistrials they would just let this go, but they did not.
The state kept coming for Angela. Was there something else
going on?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (22:07):
I think that there's certainly Racism and misogyny are a
big factor in Angela's conviction. You know, we often see
this with women who are wrongfully convicted of killing their children.
This idea that they're a horrible mutter is running throughout
their trial, right And in Angela's trial, there's also a
(22:28):
huge degree of racism the way she was characterized throughout
the trial. Angela's Puerto Rican She was referred to as
a predator, as an animal. They suggested that her family
were engaged in fraudulent business or fraudulent practices without any
proof of that. Jurors were interviewed after the first and
(22:48):
second trial, and we know that the deliberations often broke
down along racial lines, and so I think race was
a huge undercurrent in this trial.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Angela was convicted of three counts of arson, two counts
of murder, and four counts of aggravated murder. She was
given two life sentences. She would not become eligible for
parole for almost fifty years. When they convicted you, what
(23:23):
did you think? I mean, that was the moment that
it all became pretty real.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Do you know I wasn't in like a state of shock,
because when I got found guilty, I didn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
I didn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
How do you send someone innocent to prison when you
know I didn't do this. I was like in never
never Land, like I was in a world by myself,
in my own head, because I just could not believe
that these people are sending me to prison for forty
nine and a half the life life. When I was
(24:24):
in prison, you know, sometimes women can be very cruel,
you know, and people would say, oh, I would have
died with my kids, I would have did this, and
I would have did that. But you know, at the
end of the day, no one could honestly say what
they would or wouldn't do.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
And so what was life like for you in prison
before this happened? You were going to school? Were you
able to continue with that when you entered prison?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So initially I was doing forty nine and a half
the life, so I wasn't able to go to school.
So I just kind of like had nothing to do
for the most part. And so until I Gentleman as
he was a teacher there. He helped me a whole lot,
and he taught me a whole lot of like by
construction and things like that. And Blue Princess just like
a lot of different things, and so like he let
(25:10):
me become his aid for the class, and he let
me take an apprenticeship, and so he let me weld
and stuff like that. So if it wasn't for him,
I don't know what I would have been doing in there,
because it's so easy to get caught up in drama
and all type of other stuff. So that kind of
kept me out the way.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Some Judy, your two nieces died and then your sister
is arrested for their deaths. What were you thinking when
all of this was happening.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
For one, I used to live in that house and
there was already issues going on with the electrical, and
there was already issues going on. Everyone already knew that,
you know. The first thing my dad said, oh my god,
the electrical. You know, I should have got the guys
in there. And electrician actually went in there. He told Angela,
I'll be back. So many people have guilt over this.
The guy that's supposed to come back to the electricity,
(26:06):
he had guilt. Everyone felt I had some sort of
guilt over this. You know, I did, because usually I
get the kids on the weekends, and I didn't have
the kids that day. I don't know what happened, but
I didn't have the kids that weekend.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
When she was in prison. Were you guys still close?
Did you talk often? Oh?
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Yes, one hundred and ten percent. We was going every weekend. Wow,
until they changed the visitation and it got to the
point where the guards knew us. They would be like, hey,
how you doing, Hi? I see it from Yeah, it
got to that point. But we was there all the time.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
You know, I didn't ask her, and I usually do,
but did she struggle in prison? Did she ever tell
you about any really hard times she was having in there?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
She didn't want us to know anything that was going on.
You know, I don't ask any questions. I told her,
whatever happened in here, leave it there. Don't nobody want
to relive that. You know, if she wants to share,
whenever she's ready, she can share. But I told her,
when you come home, you leave that there.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Angela's family continued to support her and believe in her innocence,
and so did the fathers of Naima and Nija.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Both my daughter's fathers did yes anything I needed.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
They were there for me. Even after we had children together.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
We still we had a good relationship, and I've talked
them through my whole the whole time I was in prison.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
In two thousand and nine, Angela applied for assistance to
the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Ohio Public Defender's Office.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
We had just started that year, in fact, and so
it was one of our very first cases that we
really dug into. And what we did is we had
some expert witnesses look at the fire in light of
new evidence and particularly the shift in science related to
fire investigation.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
One of those witnesses was the renowned fire expert John
de Haan. His expertise has been key in reinvestigating many
other Arsen convictions, including Karen Bow's and Deborah Nichols. We've
covered them both on previous episodes.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
What he found was that, again the state really relied
on unreliable factors, unscientific signs of arson. He also noted
that there were other potential accidental causes of the fire
that the state completely failed to consider.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And one of those possible causes ties in with something
Judy told us about earlier.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
They found pretty compelling proof that this was actually an
electrical fire. There was what they called like an unsystemic
mix of wires and that was visible in the ceiling
of the basement, the floor of the dining room, and
there's evidence that there was like a low burning, sustained
fire in that section. They were also able to use
(28:51):
fire toxicology, which wasn't really used in fire investigation in
nineteen eighty nine, to show that there couldn't possibly have
been a second poor pattern on the stairs. So with that,
we filed emotion asking for Angela to have a new trial,
and we are actually supposed to have a hearing on
that in May twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
And then on the morning of the hearing, there was
a surprise development.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
The prosecution came in and they offered Angela a plea
deal and essentially what they said is plead guilty to
a lesser offensive involuntary manslaughter, will let you go home
from prison in five years.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
This type of plea is known as a dark plea.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Dark plea is a term that Ohio Supreme Court Justice
Michael Donnelly actually coined after learning about Angela's case, and
he uses it to refer to please that happened exactly
like how angelus did. So we think about plea bargaining
in the system, and we usually think about it before trial, right,
somebody decides to enter into a plea instead of going
(29:58):
to trial. A dark plea is one that happens after
an individual has already been convicted. They're incarcerated, and they've
found proof of their innocence, and they're asking for a
new trial, and that dark plea offer comes right at
that time. The danger in it is that it's incredibly
coercive because this person has been convicted, they're living in prison,
(30:22):
they've lost their liberty, and what they're looking at is
take a risk, take a gamble on my future and
hope that the system that has wrongfully convicted me gets
it right, or have this certain freedom and justice. Donley
describes it as essentially negotiating with a gun to your head.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I always said that I'm innocent and I would never
plead anything.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Nope, I'm going to fight, fight, fight.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
However, as time go on, I stepdad, past, my moms,
getting older, you know, you start thinking differently.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
So Joanna said, hey, they offered you something.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
I'm like what she was like, I don't know what
to do.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
And it was like a last minute thing they gave her,
you know, didn't even give it time to think about anything,
but what ten minutes, fifteen minutes, not even you know,
there was like make a decision to make it now?
You know, come on, does somebody's life you don't just
tell them, make a decision to make it now.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God
and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do,
I'll do. I can't do this on my own. I
need you, you know. And that's the one time in
my life that I was all by myself.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
But I didn't feel alone.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
And I'm not a very like religious person, but I
felt like God's spirit with me because I just I
had to make a decision within a couple of minutes
that was gonna end change the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
This deal.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I told her, Angela, you have all the people standing
behind you.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
We had the.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Workers, the kids' fathers all standing behind her. But Angela
was frightened. She was scared.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I think I was forty at the time and don't
have to worry about doing another thirty seventhing years in
prison for something I didn't do.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
And then, you know what makes it.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Even worse for me is that I didn't take my
children's lives, and now here I am.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
I did the one thing that I said I would
never do.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I took the tlee that morning. Rather than face a
fourth trial, Angela pled guilty to one count of aggravated
arson and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Under the Plea agreement,
her sentence was reduced to twenty two years. She would
be out in less than six years.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I didn't have time to think about, Oh, when you
get out, you're gonna be a convicted felon.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Angela was finally released in January of twenty twenty two,
but life isn't exactly back to normal with the felony
convictions still on her record. Even the most basic things
in life can be a challenge when.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
You get out.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
You can never get an apartment because they don't rent
apartments to convict the felons. You know how hard it
is to get a job having a record. You know,
it's so many different things that I didn't get a
chance to think about, you know, And then now I
you know, of course, now I think about, like, did
I make the right decision?
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Well, do you regret doing it?
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Sometimes I do? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I wish I
had the courage to fight.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
But you know, all the things that I've seen that
happen in the courtroom, and I was scared, did I
have the mental strength to go through all that again?
Did I want to take my mom through all that again?
Or anybody else in my family, you know? And I
just figured, like, if I took this plea, like I
could be home. I could be home my mom. I
(34:18):
could take her out to eat, you know, and I
can lay to bed with her and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
When Angela first got out of prison, adjusting to her
new life was harder than she expected.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
When I first got locked up, I had to figure
out prison. I had to figure out how and what
I had to do to survive.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
And it's like kind of the.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Same concept, but being free, it's not like the prison
or anybody says, you know, hey, listen, here's a manual.
This is what this is, this is life, this is
what you need to do. This is how things are
going to be. You know, you don't get that.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
When I I came home, it was weird being around
my friends because we were all once young.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Now they're older women, and not only are they older women,
but their grandmas. Sometimes I will you go out with
my friends, and I will feel out of place, because
it's just like I think that, like when you're in prison,
especially for a long time, it's like that's how you
picture them.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Even with my mom, Like my mom's.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
In her seventies now, but I still picture her as
this forty seven year old woman, you know, And so
like sometimes I look at my mom and she'll do
something and I'll be.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Like, man, my mom's old lady now.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
But Angela, still in the prime of her life and
with a renewed sense of purpose, plans to get married
and start a nonprofit organization like a.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Sober living home to help people that have been in prison,
let them have a place to come to.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
So I've been trying to work on that.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
And just trying to work on myself and just trying
to become a better me, a better daughter.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
A bet it's still a better ant.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
You're still quite young, do you do you want to
have kids or adopt kids or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
I'm young.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
I think you're forty six.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, and I can know fifties doors like, come on in, No,
I can't have any more children.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
After I had my children, I had complications. And that's
another reason why my daughters meant so much to me
because I just felt like God gave me these two.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
So let me ask you. I mean, this is so
hard to talk about, so how come you do talk
about it?
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I talk about it because my situation can happen to
anybody else out there, and I want people to be
aware of the things that.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Happened to me and to many others. I want people to.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Understand that our judicious system is not always right, and
our judicial system.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Is not always fair.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And you know a lot of people are not aware
of all the people that have been wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
It's my same situation. Could be your daughter, your mother,
your sister. You know, it could happen to anybody.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I want people to understand that everybody that takes it
plea is not guilty.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freelink.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
and Kevin Wortis, as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea,
producer Kathleen Fink, story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels.
(38:11):
Mixing and sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional
production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in
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
(38:33):
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
On the night of November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Angela Garcia,
a single mother, was at home with her two toddlers.
It was a quiet, peaceful evening. The girls were upstairs
in her bedroom watching Rugrats on TV. Downstairs, Angela was
on the phone with her family making Thanksgiving plans. Angela
went up to use the bathroom, and while there, she
(00:27):
noticed it was getting hard to breathe. She began coughing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really
figure out what was happening in the house.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
When she came out of the bathroom, Angela saw smoke
billowing up from downstairs. Frantically, she searched for her daughters,
but the smoke was too thick.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I
thought about was I needed somebody to help me.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Angela broke the window, jumped down from the second story,
and ran to the neighbor's house.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I went to her house, and not to please help me,
Please help me find my kids. Can't get I can't
get my kids.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Both of her children died in the fire. Angela was
convicted of arson and murder and given a life sentence,
and then after spending over sixteen years in prison, she
was faced with an agonizing choice.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God
and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do
or do because I just I had to make a
decision within a couple of minutes that was gonna change
the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
From lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today Angela Garcia. Angela Garcia was born in New
(02:00):
York in nineteen seventy seven. She moved to Cleveland when
she was fourteen.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
My mom got married to my stepdad when I was
really young, so he kind of raised me.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I lived with him and my mom.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So I have a bunch of step brothers and sisters,
but for my mom, I only have. It's me and
I have one sister, my sister Judy, for my mom
were seven years apart.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
She was just a little sister. She always wanted to
be up under me, as little sisters always want to do.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
This is Angela's older sister, Judy Caddo Nichols, and despite
their age difference, the two have always been close.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I have this one memory that I always think about
my mom had I don't know how old I was.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I had been really young.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My mom had bought these telephones and we had this
long hallway, and I remember us being on these like
I think they were blue phones.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Oh my god, that is so silly.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yes, my mother had bought her for Christmas, these little phones,
remember them princess phones. Well there was two of them
attached to one that She'd be in one room and
I'd be in the other room. We talked. Oh my god,
that is so silly.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Hi Angela, Hi Judy.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I just that's like one of the memories from my
childhood that is so fond in my mind.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
I think we had a good childhood. You know, we
would know it was never hungry. We lived nicely.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
The sisters stayed close as they grew older and both
started families. Judy had a son, dj and Angela had
two girls, Nayima and Nysa. Their children were around the
same age and constantly together.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
My oldest daughter was like real bubbly, real talkative and
just really outgoing. And then my youngest daughter was kind
of quiet, like real observant. She would be quick to
speak to people, but like she would try to get
a feel of people. I A would say that they
like they were both of my characters kind of like
split up and got into both of them.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Naima, she was always smiling. She thought she was big
sister to her little sister and my son. Yeah, she
was a smart one. And Nida, Yeah she was the.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Roly poly one.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
She was more quiet. She was just she was like
a little Buddha. She's so adorable.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And I used to love to do to hear, used
to like braid to hear and for men here.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
And it was spoiled by everyone. They were babies that couldn't.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Do no wrong. How was she as a mom?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
She was a good mom. Yeah. I kept the kids
a lot because I had a younger son, so so
they can play together all the time. So basically I
had them mostly all the weekends.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Angela was a single mother, twenty two years old and
engaged to be married. She was raising her daughters in
a two story house she rented from her parents in
East Cleveland. Judy and her family lived nearby. Angela was
in school and dreamed of becoming a paramedic.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But it was like schooling was expensive. So me and
my sister had I think we had.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Went somewhere and we met a recruiter, and he told
me like, hey, if you sign up for you know,
to be in a navy, you know, we'll.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Pay for you go to school.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So I mean, I just figured why not, Like, who
wouldn't want to do that? And knowing that somebody that
your whole schooling is going to be paid for.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Basic training would take six weeks, and Angela knew she
would need someone to take care of her daughters during
that time, So naturally she asked Judy.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah, that's not a problem. It wasn't a problem.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
I just say, it takes a village to raise a family,
you know, so we was our little village.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
But yeah, of course that never happened.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
So this case started with a fire at Angela's house
on November twentieth, nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
This is Joanna Sanchez.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Managing counsel of the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office
of the Ohio Public Defender.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and Angela was at
home with the girls.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
My daughters used to love Rugrats, so we used to
watch that all the time they were two and three,
So it really wasn't like we were doing like a
whole lot.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
The house was calm and quiet. While the girls watched TV.
Up in her bedroom, Angela lit a couple of candles.
I was talking with her stepsister on the phone downstairs.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And we were just talking about Thanksgiving and who's gonna
cook and what they're gonna cook and all that. I
had Winnes say as he used the restroom, and my
oldest daughter, Naima, she had came in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
The bathroom and I told him, like, get out the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And she said something to me, but I didn't pay
any attention whatever she was saying. And to this day,
I always think about if I would have listened to her.
Maybe she was telling me something, maybe she seen something,
heard something and was trying to tell me, But at
the time I didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed she
was coughing and she saw smoke, so she kind of
went towards the stairs and saw just smoke billowing up
the stairs.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
I knew something was going on, but I couldn't really
figure out what was happening in the house. And I
knew I was having problems breathing and I couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
The first thing Angela thought of was her children.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
They were in my bedroom at the time, and so
I was feeling all over my bed for them, and
I couldn't find them.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
And by this point the house was just filling with
thick black smoke.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I couldn't find them, and so the only thing I
thought about was I needed somebody to help me. So
I opened up the window and I was screaming out
the window, and then somehow I broke. I busted the
window out trying to get out, and then I jumped down.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I jumped out the house.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
And in my mind at the time, I thought that
if I jump, if I jumped out and found somebody
to help me, I could find my daughters.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
So she did break out the second story window, went
onto what was the roof of the porch, jumped down
to the yard, and ran to her neighbor's house to
get help.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You don't think like I didn't think about if you
jump out the window, how are you gonna get back
in the house.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I never even thought about that.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The only thing I thought about was trying to get
back in, you know, trying to trying to stay them,
trying to find them. And so I went to the
next door neighbor's house, and to please help me, please
help me find my kids. Can't get I can't get
my kids, and me and her went back to the house.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I don't remember everything that happened. I remember me and
her being on the porch because we couldn't get back
in the house.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
Unfortunately, by the time the firefighters came, Nija and Naima
had died. Initially, the firefighters, they looked at the house,
they documented the scene. They brought in an accelerant sniffing
dog who found no accelerant, and they determined that this
(09:39):
was an accidental fire, and they destroyed the house.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Is that normal? I thought that was so crazy. Two
days later, the house is destroyed.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
It's very quick. I mean it prevented certainly the defense
from ever collecting any evidence in the house. But really
no evidence was collected. I mean they took photos, but
no materials were collected for any store of testing for
accelerance or anything of that nature. So it's very strange.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
So then walk me through. It's an accident. The house
is leveled. How do we get to where we are?
Speaker 5 (10:14):
So the house is leveled. A couple months later, Angela
submitted her insurance claim for her renter's insurance, and they
believed that she had overvalued the contents of her home.
And so at that point the police and the fire
investigation unit started looking at this again and determined instead
(10:35):
that this was an incendiary fire.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
How do they come to that conclusion without the house?
Speaker 5 (10:42):
So what they did was they looked back at some
of the photographs. There's a large burned through pattern in
the dining room floor, and so they believed that was
the area of origin. I think when they had called
it an accidental fire, the presumption had been that maybe
one of the gandals had fallen over and caused this fire.
And so one of the fire investigating unit officers indicated
(11:05):
that he thought now the candle was too sturdy and
too far away from any combustibles to have caused the fire,
and so they came to the conclusion that it must
have been an intentional fire.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Angela was barely into her twenties. She had lost both
her daughters as well as her home.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
That whpe time period.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I can't even say, you know how when you're sleep
in like you think you're dreaming, but you're not sure
because sometimes it looks real something parts of the dream
looks real something, parts to fake.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
And that's just how I felt for that time period.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know, I was I was a young mom, and
I never really experienced losing anybody. I didn't know how
to feel. I didn't how to feel. I didn't know
what I was supposed to feel. Now I know that
I was in a real bad depression.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And then just three months later, in February of two thousand,
Angela was arrested. She was charged with insurance fraud and
aggravated murder.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I couldn't believe I was arrested. Actually, I was like, what,
this is crazy? You know, it didn't make no sense
to me, none whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I knew I didn't hurt my daughters. You know, I
knew I didn't them.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I love them like I love myself. You know, I
always believed that the truth will prevail. I always thought
that if somebody got arrested, whatever they got arrested for,
they did because that's what society teaches you to think,
That's what the news teaches you to think. So why
would I ever think that the system would let me down?
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Good Podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Angela's two daughters,
(13:32):
three year old Naima and two year old Nyja, had
died in the house fire, and on August twenty first,
two thousand, Angela went to trial for the first time
before Judge Bridget McCafferty. The state sought the death penalty.
Their case hinged on the theory that Angela had burned
down her house and killed her children to get the
(13:55):
insurance money.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
She had a render's insurance policy. She had life insurance
on herself, and their theory was that she burned down
her house and murdered her children so that she could
collect some money on those insurance policies and sort of
start a new life child free.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Remember the year before, Angela had been thinking about joining
the navy.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
And because she was a single mother, she was told,
you can't join the navy with dependence, you know. So
Angela looked into having her older sister, who she was
very close with and very close with her children, to
take temporary custody of them while she pursued this navy career. Ultimately,
Angela changed her mind and didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Nevertheless, the state used that information at trial to bolster
their narrative that Angela was trying to free herself from
the responsibility of motherhood by setting fire to her own home.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
They put on their fire investigation unit, a couple officers
from there, and they testified about what we now know
are really outdated myths that used to use that indicated
arson in their minds. So different types of char like
alligator char on the walls, burned through pattern. They put
that evidence on.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
The prosecution also presented an insurance adjuster to testify that
Angela had recently purchased a large renter's insurance policy as
well as a policy on herself and her daughters.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
The defense put on evidence that indicated she actually hadn't
sought out those policies. These are salesmen who had come
to her work and sort of given her a sales pitch,
and she had reluctantly signed up for insurance.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
In addition to those witnesses, the prosecution presented firefighters and
neighbors who had witnessed the events that night. They also
presented a hospital worker who testified that when Naimo was
brought into the er. She was wrapped in a cord
from the window blind.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
They alleged that Angela had tied up one of her children.
There's lots of testimony that shows why she might have
ended up bound in those blinds. There was testimony from
the firefighters that they actually came in and they used
a tool to knock out the windows and knock down
all the blinds and curtains, and so those blinds would
have landed on her child. The firefighter then scooped her
(16:13):
up with the blinds, went outside with her, handed her
to an EMS worker, who then handed her to someone else.
And so it's easy to see how during this whole
process she may have become entangled in the blinds.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
The prosecution also alleged that Angela wasn't reacting properly at
the hospital, that she wasn't behaving the way a grieving
mother should.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
You know, that's something that's really interesting about this case
because originally what the witnesses that the scene were saying
was that Angela was hysterical. She was sitting on the ground,
she was rocking back and forth. You know, she was
screaming about her children. Really, you know, couldn't be consoled
and when she was interviewed at the hospital by the
firefighters and the police detectives, they wrote up a report
(16:58):
said nothing about her demeanor thing out of sorts. Later,
after they changed the fire to incendiary, they went back
and added a report about their reflections of her demeanor
that night in the hospital and said that she was
too calm.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
When the defense presented their case, they didn't call any
witnesses to testify.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
What they did was aggressively cross examine the state's witnesses.
So these trials happened in two thousand and two thousand
and one, and by then fire science was starting to evolve.
This guide that fire investigators use n FPA nine to
twenty one had started to debunk some of these long
held myths, and so the defense at trial really used
(17:40):
that to cross examine the fire investigators about, you know,
all these things that they were relying on that weren't
supported by science.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
The first trial ended in a hung jury. A few
months later, there was a second trial, which started in
January of two thousand and one. The same judge and prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
For the second trial, the state presented much of the
same evidence they did at the first, but then also
brought in a jailhouse informant.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That informant's name was Tanya Lanham.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Tanya and her husband Tim were arrested for passing bad
checks and they hit the jail at the same time.
He was on the men's side. She was on the
women's side with Angela, and so then she would later
testify that Angela confessed to her during that time.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And as we've seen in so many wrongful conviction cases,
that jailhouse confession never actually happened.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Years later, Tim would write a letter to Angela indicating
that you know that was a lie, and what he
said was that the police approached them. After her first
trial about testifying against Angela.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
The prosecution denied that Tanya and Tim had been offered
any kind of deal, but after she gave that information
to the police, Hanya received a sixty day suspended sentence
for the bad checks charge. That second trial also ended
in a mistrial. The jury couldn't reach a verdict there either,
but the state just would not give up.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
By the time we got to the third trial, the
prosecution had completely changed its prosecutors. They really enhanced their
evidence about the financial motives. It really became a trial
almost entirely about that. And they also alleged that in
between the second and third trial, they had discovered a
second area of origin for the fire in the house,
(19:38):
So now they were saying this didn't just start in
the dining room. There was also a poor pattern on
the stairs, and so the state's theory was an accidental
fire couldn't start in two different locations. They also brought
on and this is kind of maybe one of the
more shocking parts of the third trial, they had a
firefighter testify that he was at the scene the night
(20:00):
of the fire and that on the stairs he found
an intact bit lighter that he didn't photograph, didn't tell
anyone about. He just looked at it, put it back down,
and never said anything until trial number three. And then
the other thing the defense did in the third trial,
which they hadn't done in the first two is they
called an expert witness. So they brought in doctor Richard Roby,
(20:24):
who was a chemical engineer and an expert on fire science,
and he testified that the fire investigators had relied on
outdated signs of arson. He really debunked a lot of
what the state's evidence was. He described this concept of
flashover that really changes how fire investigations should be conducted.
(20:45):
And so he was really kind of ahead of his time.
And the state at the third trial called him junk
science and said that he had kind of created a
quote miracle theory of flashover and tried to discredit him,
and they effectively so, and Angela was convicted at the
end of that trial.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
By the time my second trial happened, I just I
really believe that, you know, I had two hung juries. Okay,
they're gonna let me go, because why would you still
why would you still keep trying me? And it's like
mentally it starts to weigh you down, and you know,
(21:28):
hearing people say things about me that's not true, or
you know, certain people call me a predator, and you know,
all these different type of names and stuff like that.
So I was really going through it and I just
had like this overwhelmingly tired feeling, you know, I was.
(21:49):
I was just so overwhelmingly tired.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Joana. I feel like we'd think after one or two
mistrials they would just let this go, but they did not.
The state kept coming for Angela. Was there something else
going on?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (22:07):
I think that there's certainly Racism and misogyny are a
big factor in Angela's conviction. You know, we often see
this with women who are wrongfully convicted of killing their children.
This idea that they're a horrible mutter is running throughout
their trial, right And in Angela's trial, there's also a
(22:28):
huge degree of racism the way she was characterized throughout
the trial. Angela's Puerto Rican She was referred to as
a predator, as an animal. They suggested that her family
were engaged in fraudulent business or fraudulent practices without any
proof of that. Jurors were interviewed after the first and
(22:48):
second trial, and we know that the deliberations often broke
down along racial lines, and so I think race was
a huge undercurrent in this trial.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Angela was convicted of three counts of arson, two counts
of murder, and four counts of aggravated murder. She was
given two life sentences. She would not become eligible for
parole for almost fifty years. When they convicted you, what
(23:23):
did you think? I mean, that was the moment that
it all became pretty real.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Do you know I wasn't in like a state of shock,
because when I got found guilty, I didn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
I didn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
How do you send someone innocent to prison when you
know I didn't do this. I was like in never
never Land, like I was in a world by myself,
in my own head, because I just could not believe
that these people are sending me to prison for forty
nine and a half the life life. When I was
(24:24):
in prison, you know, sometimes women can be very cruel,
you know, and people would say, oh, I would have
died with my kids, I would have did this, and
I would have did that. But you know, at the
end of the day, no one could honestly say what
they would or wouldn't do.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
And so what was life like for you in prison
before this happened? You were going to school? Were you
able to continue with that when you entered prison?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So initially I was doing forty nine and a half
the life, so I wasn't able to go to school.
So I just kind of like had nothing to do
for the most part. And so until I Gentleman as
he was a teacher there. He helped me a whole lot,
and he taught me a whole lot of like by
construction and things like that. And Blue Princess just like
a lot of different things, and so like he let
(25:10):
me become his aid for the class, and he let
me take an apprenticeship, and so he let me weld
and stuff like that. So if it wasn't for him,
I don't know what I would have been doing in there,
because it's so easy to get caught up in drama
and all type of other stuff. So that kind of
kept me out the way.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Some Judy, your two nieces died and then your sister
is arrested for their deaths. What were you thinking when
all of this was happening.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
For one, I used to live in that house and
there was already issues going on with the electrical, and
there was already issues going on. Everyone already knew that,
you know. The first thing my dad said, oh my god,
the electrical. You know, I should have got the guys
in there. And electrician actually went in there. He told Angela,
I'll be back. So many people have guilt over this.
The guy that's supposed to come back to the electricity,
(26:06):
he had guilt. Everyone felt I had some sort of
guilt over this. You know, I did, because usually I
get the kids on the weekends, and I didn't have
the kids that day. I don't know what happened, but
I didn't have the kids that weekend.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
When she was in prison. Were you guys still close?
Did you talk often? Oh?
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Yes, one hundred and ten percent. We was going every weekend. Wow,
until they changed the visitation and it got to the
point where the guards knew us. They would be like, hey,
how you doing, Hi? I see it from Yeah, it
got to that point. But we was there all the time.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
You know, I didn't ask her, and I usually do,
but did she struggle in prison? Did she ever tell
you about any really hard times she was having in there?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
She didn't want us to know anything that was going on.
You know, I don't ask any questions. I told her,
whatever happened in here, leave it there. Don't nobody want
to relive that. You know, if she wants to share,
whenever she's ready, she can share. But I told her,
when you come home, you leave that there.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Angela's family continued to support her and believe in her innocence,
and so did the fathers of Naima and Nija.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Both my daughter's fathers did yes anything I needed.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
They were there for me. Even after we had children together.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
We still we had a good relationship, and I've talked
them through my whole the whole time I was in prison.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
In two thousand and nine, Angela applied for assistance to
the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Ohio Public Defender's Office.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
We had just started that year, in fact, and so
it was one of our very first cases that we
really dug into. And what we did is we had
some expert witnesses look at the fire in light of
new evidence and particularly the shift in science related to
fire investigation.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
One of those witnesses was the renowned fire expert John
de Haan. His expertise has been key in reinvestigating many
other Arsen convictions, including Karen Bow's and Deborah Nichols. We've
covered them both on previous episodes.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
What he found was that, again the state really relied
on unreliable factors, unscientific signs of arson. He also noted
that there were other potential accidental causes of the fire
that the state completely failed to consider.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And one of those possible causes ties in with something
Judy told us about earlier.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
They found pretty compelling proof that this was actually an
electrical fire. There was what they called like an unsystemic
mix of wires and that was visible in the ceiling
of the basement, the floor of the dining room, and
there's evidence that there was like a low burning, sustained
fire in that section. They were also able to use
(28:51):
fire toxicology, which wasn't really used in fire investigation in
nineteen eighty nine, to show that there couldn't possibly have
been a second poor pattern on the stairs. So with that,
we filed emotion asking for Angela to have a new trial,
and we are actually supposed to have a hearing on
that in May twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
And then on the morning of the hearing, there was
a surprise development.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
The prosecution came in and they offered Angela a plea
deal and essentially what they said is plead guilty to
a lesser offensive involuntary manslaughter, will let you go home
from prison in five years.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
This type of plea is known as a dark plea.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Dark plea is a term that Ohio Supreme Court Justice
Michael Donnelly actually coined after learning about Angela's case, and
he uses it to refer to please that happened exactly
like how angelus did. So we think about plea bargaining
in the system, and we usually think about it before trial, right,
somebody decides to enter into a plea instead of going
(29:58):
to trial. A dark plea is one that happens after
an individual has already been convicted. They're incarcerated, and they've
found proof of their innocence, and they're asking for a
new trial, and that dark plea offer comes right at
that time. The danger in it is that it's incredibly
coercive because this person has been convicted, they're living in prison,
(30:22):
they've lost their liberty, and what they're looking at is
take a risk, take a gamble on my future and
hope that the system that has wrongfully convicted me gets
it right, or have this certain freedom and justice. Donley
describes it as essentially negotiating with a gun to your head.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I always said that I'm innocent and I would never
plead anything.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Nope, I'm going to fight, fight, fight.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
However, as time go on, I stepdad, past, my moms,
getting older, you know, you start thinking differently.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
So Joanna said, hey, they offered you something.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
I'm like what she was like, I don't know what
to do.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
And it was like a last minute thing they gave her,
you know, didn't even give it time to think about anything,
but what ten minutes, fifteen minutes, not even you know,
there was like make a decision to make it now?
You know, come on, does somebody's life you don't just
tell them, make a decision to make it now.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I cried so hard, and I remember praying to God
and asking God, like, whatever you want me to do,
I'll do. I can't do this on my own. I
need you, you know. And that's the one time in
my life that I was all by myself.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
But I didn't feel alone.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
And I'm not a very like religious person, but I
felt like God's spirit with me because I just I
had to make a decision within a couple of minutes
that was gonna end change the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
This deal.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I told her, Angela, you have all the people standing
behind you.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
We had the.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Workers, the kids' fathers all standing behind her. But Angela
was frightened. She was scared.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I think I was forty at the time and don't
have to worry about doing another thirty seventhing years in
prison for something I didn't do.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
And then, you know what makes it.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Even worse for me is that I didn't take my
children's lives, and now here I am.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
I did the one thing that I said I would
never do.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I took the tlee that morning. Rather than face a
fourth trial, Angela pled guilty to one count of aggravated
arson and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Under the Plea agreement,
her sentence was reduced to twenty two years. She would
be out in less than six years.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I didn't have time to think about, Oh, when you
get out, you're gonna be a convicted felon.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Angela was finally released in January of twenty twenty two,
but life isn't exactly back to normal with the felony
convictions still on her record. Even the most basic things
in life can be a challenge when.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
You get out.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
You can never get an apartment because they don't rent
apartments to convict the felons. You know how hard it
is to get a job having a record. You know,
it's so many different things that I didn't get a
chance to think about, you know, And then now I
you know, of course, now I think about, like, did
I make the right decision?
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Well, do you regret doing it?
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Sometimes I do? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I wish I
had the courage to fight.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
But you know, all the things that I've seen that
happen in the courtroom, and I was scared, did I
have the mental strength to go through all that again?
Did I want to take my mom through all that again?
Or anybody else in my family, you know? And I
just figured, like, if I took this plea, like I
could be home. I could be home my mom. I
(34:18):
could take her out to eat, you know, and I
can lay to bed with her and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
When Angela first got out of prison, adjusting to her
new life was harder than she expected.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
When I first got locked up, I had to figure
out prison. I had to figure out how and what
I had to do to survive.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
And it's like kind of the.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Same concept, but being free, it's not like the prison
or anybody says, you know, hey, listen, here's a manual.
This is what this is, this is life, this is
what you need to do. This is how things are
going to be. You know, you don't get that.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
When I I came home, it was weird being around
my friends because we were all once young.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Now they're older women, and not only are they older women,
but their grandmas. Sometimes I will you go out with
my friends, and I will feel out of place, because
it's just like I think that, like when you're in prison,
especially for a long time, it's like that's how you
picture them.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Even with my mom, Like my mom's.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
In her seventies now, but I still picture her as
this forty seven year old woman, you know, And so
like sometimes I look at my mom and she'll do
something and I'll be.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Like, man, my mom's old lady now.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
But Angela, still in the prime of her life and
with a renewed sense of purpose, plans to get married
and start a nonprofit organization like a.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Sober living home to help people that have been in prison,
let them have a place to come to.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
So I've been trying to work on that.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
And just trying to work on myself and just trying
to become a better me, a better daughter.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
A bet it's still a better ant.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
You're still quite young, do you do you want to
have kids or adopt kids or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
I'm young.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
I think you're forty six.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, and I can know fifties doors like, come on in, No,
I can't have any more children.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
After I had my children, I had complications. And that's
another reason why my daughters meant so much to me
because I just felt like God gave me these two.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
So let me ask you. I mean, this is so
hard to talk about, so how come you do talk
about it?
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I talk about it because my situation can happen to
anybody else out there, and I want people to be
aware of the things that.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Happened to me and to many others. I want people to.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Understand that our judicious system is not always right, and
our judicial system.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Is not always fair.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And you know a lot of people are not aware
of all the people that have been wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
It's my same situation. Could be your daughter, your mother,
your sister. You know, it could happen to anybody.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I want people to understand that everybody that takes it
plea is not guilty.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freelink.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
and Kevin Wortis, as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea,
producer Kathleen Fink, story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels.
(38:11):
Mixing and sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional
production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in
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
(38:33):
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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