November 13, 2025 • 35 mins
On March 14, 1998, 16-year-old Benjamin Urias was shot in the Pico-Union neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA. The shot was not fatal, but Urias was hospitalized for two days. Urius was member of the 18th Street Gang, and told investigators that the shooter walked with a limp and shouted “Burlington Locos,” the name of another Los Angeles gang. Four days before the shooting, Oscar Eagle turned 18 years old. And two days before that, Eagle was shot in the leg. He was walking with a limp, and the since disgraced CRASH Unit targeted Eagle. A corrupted photo lineup and identification, coupled with egregiously ineffective counsel resulted in Eagle’s conviction for attempted first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
On March eighth, nineteen ninety eight, seventeen year old Oscar
Eagle was shot in the leg in Los Angeles' Peico
Union neighborhood. Six days later, sixteen year old Benjamin Eureus
was also shot, a non fatal wound that police believed
was in retaliation for Oscar's shooting. Soon police arrested Oscar Eagle,
(00:27):
but the charges were dropped when Eureus failed to appear
in court. Then something changed. Eureas suddenly became confident that
Oscar was the shooter, even though he'd always said the
gunman had run to and from the car. But with
Oscar's debilitating leg injury, could he really have done that?
(00:51):
This is wrongful conviction. The Fox Foundation is proud to
support this episode of wrongful conviction and the work of
After Innocence, a nonprofit that helps hundreds of people nationwide
rebuild their lives after wrongful incarceration. Each year, innocent people
(01:13):
are released after spending years behind bars for crimes they
didn't commit. Nearly all of them leave prison with nothing
more than the clothes on their backs, with no help
or compensation from the state, as they face the steep
challenges of rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment. After Innocence
is changing that After Innocence helps exoneries get and make
(01:35):
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that no one released after wrongful incarceration is left behind.
(01:57):
Learn more at After Dash Innocence Ditte and join After
Innocence to support exoneries as they rebuild their lives. Welcome
back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Lauren Bright Pacheco,
(02:19):
and I'm so glad to be back for another season.
And we're starting off in Los Angeles in the late
nineteen nineties, a time to find by gang hysteria and
the sweeping mass incarceration that followed. Joining me today is
someone who lived through it as a kid, Oscar Eagle.
Oscar welcome, thank you, and to help tell the story.
(02:41):
His attorney from California Innocence Advocates, Megan Bacha welcome, thank you.
So Oscar grew up in the eighties and the nineties
in the Peico Union area of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I had two loving parents, had a sister that lived
with me, and I had a brother that was in
and out of juvenile hall camp. And she was a
lot older than me. It was about ten years older
than me. Yeah, so the family life was comfortable. My
dad after work, he came straight home and we wait
at the dinner table in the living room. It was
a good time growing up in the house. But outside
(03:15):
of my house was the projects in the Pickle Union.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Which was the main hangout for a gang called the
Burlington Locos.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
So I wouldn't stand growing up looking out my window
watching them, you know, riding on the walls. And I
love art, you know, I love drawing, and probably like
ten years old, I got into graffiti that had to
continued when I got involved with gangs.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oscar's graffiti tag was clown and graffiti really was the
extent of his criminal activity.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I believe that drew a lot of attention to me.
Growing up in Pickle Union, I was always getting haarressed
by these cops. At one time when I was younger,
the LPD pulled probably about five of us on in
front of my house and after the cops left. All
my friends they started to leave. I went back to
my house, but in front of how some other kids
that lived in the neighborhood that were not gang members,
(04:04):
they gather up like about four or five Christmas trees
and they put it on fire, and the police showed up.
They took a guest and said, oh, well, Oscar was
just hanging out in front of the house right here.
They arrested me and were saying that they watched me
from across the street burning the Christmas trees.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So this was the first time that Oscar's alleged gang
affiliation led to false charges against him. In Los Angeles,
at the time, there was a specialized unit called CRASH,
short for Community Resources against Street Hoodlums. But as we've
seen in other cities with heavy gang policing, when a
(04:40):
neighborhood is associated with a gang, an alleged member of
the area's gang will usually be targeted for any crime
that occurs in the area, innocent or not. And most
gang members aren't involved in violent crime at all, like
graffiti artists, but they are painted with the same bra
(05:00):
criminal brush.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
That's absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
You know, if every game member was violent, man, it
would be super chaotic out there, but it's only a
small percentage of every gang that has these type of
individuals that are violent, like social paths or whatever you know.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
All So, while on probation, Oscar was targeted again while
at his friend Victor's house. There was a party going
on outside. When LAPD raided the.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Location, an officer put the flash light on me and
I heard him say to another officer that clown is
right here. That's what they used to call me, clown.
And they cut me up and they told me that
I was being arrested for violating my probation for hanging
around with Victor, who is a bursting game member. So
they cut me up. They threw me in that cop car.
As soon as we left eighteen and Union. We headed
(05:50):
down towards Venice and Union, and a guy named one
Carlos and Martha Torres acrossing the street, and one Carlos
was a game member from Drifters them up. They opened
up the truck of the car and they pulled something
out of the car, but there was a bag of something.
I don't know if it was marijuana or what, but
they say you're gonna get arrested. For this, you know,
you said that shit in minds and they're like, get.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
In the car.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And there was two eighty street Game members crossing the street.
They pulled up on them, chased them on foot. They
grabbed a hold of a guy named Weto and another
guy out of what the other guy's name was, and
they threw them in the car. Car with us went
to the police station. There was a lot of activity
going on that day. It was a lot of cops everywhere.
There was a lot of people in there. They were
(06:34):
interested on the guy from at street, the guy named Wetto,
and they started talking to him and they were bragging
about they killed somebody that looked just like him.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And then Crash Unit Officer Nino Durden threatened Oscar with
firearm charges.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Officer Durden, he threw the mem in a room and
started to tell me that I was gonna go down
for some guns and that IU. I guess he wanted
me to admit the guns or something like that. And
I was like, I'm gonna do that. Man like man,
you me for violation probation, Just take me in and ready,
and I went to juvenile hall. Actually got convicted for
the gut charge. I got out of camp around October
(07:09):
of nineteen ninety seven. I believe I was trying to
be more mature at that time. I kept my routine up, exercising,
going to school, going to my community service. And on
March eighth, it was my niece's birthday. We celebrated her
birthday at my house. After that party, Bortom said it
and I said, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
What I'm gonna. I'm gonna go to Peak Co Union.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I took the bus to Pickle Union and I started
walking looking for the guys, and I couldn't find nobody
from the neighborhood. So I started walking towards the bus
stop on Pickle and Union to go home in Easter Day.
And so when I was walking over there, a car
pulled up and started shooting at me and immediately hit
me in my calf.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oscar turned eighteen two days after he was shot, and
the wound made it very difficult for him to walk,
let alone run, which became a very important fact on
March fourteenth, when a sixteen year old kid named Benjamin
Urius was also shot.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
So Arias was a sixteen year old kid who was
just walking in the Pico Union neighborhood of Los Angeles
and a car pulled up. He says that somebody jumped
out of the back seat yelled Burlington Locals, which is
the name of the local gang and one that Oscar
was associated with. He said that the shooter took off running,
(08:25):
which is important, chased after Arias. Arias went to hide
under a nearby vehicle. Ultimately, several shots went off and
one grazed Arisa's chest, in another his leg, and then
the shooter ran back to the car. Again important considering
that Oscar was incapable of running.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Because you're on crutches, right it went into your calf.
The bullet was still lodged there.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, it was still lodge right there.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
And Arias originally told responding officers that the shooter was
wearing shorts. Oscar also had a drain on his legs
where the blood was draining out from the bullet wound,
and Rhea said that he didn't notice anything on the
shooter's leg on the strain would have been very visible.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
But despite these disqualifying elements, they contacted Oscar under the
auspices of his own debilitating shooting.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
March fifteen, I get a call from Detective Caserras. And
I told you guys already that I didn't see who
shot me. I don't have nothing else to say to
you guys. He goes, well, we need to close that
case up and we need you to pretty much like
sign off on it or something like that. And then
on March seventeen, he showed up right away. He looked
at my leg and seeing that I was on crutches,
and he's like, hey, you can't walk, and I go, nah,
(09:37):
could you put your foot to the floor And I
said nah, my calf locked and I wasn't able to
stretch my leg or nothing. He told me, hey, you
know Junior from at Street and I was like no,
and he goes, well, he knows you.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The guy he's calling Junior is Benjamin.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, yes, yes, And I was like, maybe I do
know him. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I grew up right there in people in Union. Maybe
I don't know him personally. Maybe we see each other around.
So he's like, well, he's saying that you shot up.
I go, don't know what it's talking about. So he
was like, I don't think he did, because I'm looking
at your leg and I don't think you're capable of
doing this crime.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It later became clear that neither did the victim, Benjamin Urias,
but Oscar was affiliated with the Burlington Locos, so they
brought him in anyway, and he told them exactly where
he was during the shooting at the hospital with his
friend Becky Chavez, whose friend Susie had gone into an
early and false labor.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I went to the hospital like all day. I remember
going back and forth to drink water. I remember the
camera being right above the water, found it and then
the security I remember him being a short black officer,
So I was like, go talk to that security guard,
go get the camera right there, and didn't do none
of that. They called Becky Chavis, who I was with
that night, so she got down there. They put Becky
(10:51):
in a room, they questioned her, and she just verified
the same thing that I told him, and they came
out and they put me in front of her and
they asked me, you better say you did it, because
if not, Becky, job is going to go down for
this tool. And I was like, man, why are you
doing this to us? She told me like, don't listen
to these cops, you know. So I told Becky, Becky, sorry,
(11:12):
you're gonna have to get arrested too, because you know
I didn't I didn't do this crime.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
And then I've seen her walk out, and then.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It took me a week or two to get a
public defender to come visit me at the Ali County.
It's one of the first things I told him, Man,
go get the footage from the hospital. And my first
two courts, I was going in crutches. And then on
the third court day the case got.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Dismissed because Junior didn't show up.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
He didn't show up.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
In order to indict Oscar again, they were gonna need
the victims cooperation. But there's a record of this new
interaction with ben Urius which appears to shed light on
why he hadn't shown up to the prior court proceedings
and also why he was now open to suggestion.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
So we don't have a recording of the first lineup,
and we don't know precisely what happened there, but it's
really clear from the recording of the second lineup that
police definitely pushed Areas into selecting Oscar.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Ureus also repeatedly asked if they were going to help
him on his other case, and six times the new detectives,
Muriel and Wiseman, assured him they'd get him on home
confinement instead of juvenile camp. Interestingly, these new detectives were
from the homicide unit, even though this wasn't a homicide.
(12:46):
They asked Ureus if he knew his shooter's name, and
Urreus said, quote, they said, Oscar Eagle. Then he's shown
a lineup with Oscar in position four. Urreus denied recognizing
his shooter. Detective Muriel urged him, quote, take a closer
look at it there. Again, Urius didn't make an identification silence.
(13:10):
Then Uria says, quote looks sort of looks. Murl cut
him off, quote like number four.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
And then Oria says the number that they had pointed
to that the police pointed to in the lineup. I
don't know why they were so focused on Oscar or
why police didn't bother investigating other alternative suspects, but it
seems that once they had their eyes set on Oscar,
they just weren't going to take anything else other than Oscar.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So, you know, just to show how crazy this was
at the time of your trial, forget about Becky, They've
pulled in another woman randomly a young woman named Martha
Torres who's twenty years old, just happened to be from
the neighborhood. And now they're claiming that she was driving
the car that you were in the night Junior was shot.
(14:04):
And now they twisted so that the motive is that
you're shooting Junior in retaliation for you being shot, and
that Torres is motivated by the fact that her brother
was murdered by a member of the same rival gang,
and none of it's true.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And her brother was not even a Births and Game member.
Her brother was from another different gang called Drifters, but
they made it seem like he was from a neighborhood too,
and I was like, oh man, this guy's not even
from my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And then the saddest part is she, like you, is
completely innocent, but they talk her into taking a plea
deal for five years.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Yeah, Miss Torres, I think made the right decision. Unfortunately,
even though she was innocent, because she was facing life
as well, I mean, she could have ended up doing
more than twenty six years like Oscar as well. So
she began trial with Oscar. Part Way through the beginning
of trial, she separately took a plea deal, and the
judge had to instruct the jury that they weren't supposed
(15:08):
to draw any conclusions. By Miss Torres no longer being
part of Oscar's trial. You know, Miss Torres still maintains
her innocence and there was no evidence against her. She
had never driven, she didn't have a driver's license, she
didn't know how to drive. Her friend's father happened to
own a vehicle that looked similar to the one Areas described.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So Martha Torres did the math and did not like
her odds. But Oscar's appointed attorney, Patrick Lake, gave him confidence.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
He started to tell me that he talked to my alibis,
he talked to my doctor. He said that they all
confirm and verify my story and that we're good and
we got a strong case right here. And also the
joys that we're going to be in front of is
a band from school or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But it seems like Patrick Lake had given Oscar false confidence.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
So a trial against Oscar. There was the test money
of Benjamin Arias, and by the time of trial he
was much more confident that it was Oscar. He wasn't
cross examined thoroughly. It seems that maybe Oscar's defense council
hadn't listened to the audio recorded police interview, because if
he had, then it's inexplicable why he wouldn't have cross
(16:22):
examined him on the inconsistencies that Rias didn't originally pick
out Oscar, that the police directed him to pick out Oscar.
In fact, they said, how about this one.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
He's the quiet, he's the quiet, and I was like,
the hell, Like, you're not going to speak for me.
And then I told him he is the doctor going
to show up and he goes, oh, he'll be here tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
There was that there was testimony from police officers, including
you know, gang investigators, which is scary for the jury
to hear about gang members in their community.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And I had all two tattoos.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
So when I was in trout, they had like poster
size pictures and that's deftly part of the stand and
starts saying, oh, these are old English type letters, and
you know, she's start telling professional opinion. I was like, oh,
this is they're just trying to just any little things,
just to.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Just anything they could do to make you look.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Bad, just look like an animal. And Patrick Lake, he
doesn't talk again, and I'm like, hey, man, what's going on?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Man?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Go I'm preparing. I'm preparing. So I told me what's
up with the doctors? He's showing up?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And he said, yeah, he'll be here tomorrow and said,
you told me that yesterday. Every day he kept telling
me that, and the next thing know, the cases almost
over with and and I'm like, hey, where's the doctor
at Oh, he's not going to show up.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It sounds like your representation didn't prepare at all. You
only had one witness called in your defense, and that
was Becky. I'm gonna throw it to you, Megan. When
you looked into the witnesses that Patrick Lake claimed to
have contacted for his defense, what did you find.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Well, we spoke to the friend that had false labor
that day that Oscar went to go see in the hospital,
and she absolutely remembered this day she was in the
hospital for false flabor, So that's documented. She said Patrick
Lake had never interviewed her or her mother, and when
Patrick Lake said that he left a message on their
answering machine, she says they didn't even have an answering
(18:13):
machine back then. That she absolutely would have appeared at
trial had she been called to do so, but she
wasn't even interviewed. Quite simply, he didn't interview witnesses. He
didn't call these witnesses that were so crucial. And then
in fact, it's very apparent that he lied to the
court about having interviewed these witnesses. You know, he stood up,
he looked around court and said, I don't see them here.
(18:35):
I don't know why they're not here to testify. Well,
because he hadn't bothered to even talk to them.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And then at one point I think the judge said,
we'll give you twenty more minutes.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
So even when the judge gave an additional twenty minutes,
even if Patrick had called, then she would have been
completely unprepared. She probably in LA. She wouldn't even be
able to get to the courthouse in that amount of time.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
My mom passed me a NOE that morning. She said,
fire your lawyer, like this guy do nothing for you.
He didn't even contact your alibies. I raised my hand
and the judge was like, what are you doing? And
I said, man, I want to fire this guy. And
he's like, well, hold on, hold on, and he took
everybody out the court. Room, and he said, you're doing
a Marston motion or something like that, and I was like,
I'll go I don't know what that is. I just
(19:14):
want to fire this guy because he hasn't been representing me.
And he goes, Oh, you just don't like the way
your trial's going, and so you just want to get
rid of your lawyer. He goes, it doesn't work that way,
you know, sit back down. So I was like, man,
let me take the stand in. I was like, man,
at least let me show the jurors because they're going
to see the whole of my leg and they're going
to be like, oh, man, this guy wasn't able to
do this crime. As soon as I got up on
that stand, I just felt attacked by the DA and
(19:35):
then next thing you know, it was go sit back down.
So I turned around and told the judge, Hey, Judge,
I show my leg to the jurors.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
He said, now go back and sit down.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
Patrick Lake could have asked to show that to the jury,
but Oscar, as the witness at that time, can't just
turn around and ask to judge, hey, let me show
my leg.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
And then a detective takes a stand. He holds up
two pictures. One is you holding a gun, no context
of where or when it was taken. The other one
is you standing next to somebody holding a gun. And
on March twelfth, nineteen ninety nine, you were convicted of
attempted first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison
(20:17):
plus twenty five years.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
At that moment, you know, I was stoic and shocked.
I didn't know how to react, but I.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Just remember my brother. She was right behind me.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, I heard her cry. When I heard her cry,
I turned around. The judge was talking and I didn't
hear nothing at all. I just just my brother. I
was feeling double. She said, she was feeling you know,
they're separating us for life. My mom I stopped drinking
(21:09):
when I was probably about twelve thirteen years old.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
She made me a promise that she wasn't gonna drink
no more. And after I.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Got convicted, I started hearing that she was drinking and
I was like, what the hell there? And I knew
I knew it was it was because of.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
People, because of what was done to you.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
You then ended up entering California's adult prison system as
a teenager.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I got there at nineteen years old. I didn't know
how to sell it at that time. It was twenty
four hour lockdown, sometimes going years and year's lockdown.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It was a biling. It was riots.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
When I got there to Pelican Bay, there was a
big riots and a fair way of two thousand and
I ended up going to the ads say for that
for sixteen months, and then I ended up in ire
Was state prison.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I found a good program right.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
There in a completed computer class, and I started having
a border job.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
And I always been drawing, you know, that was my thought.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So I used to tell my mom those semi money,
just buy me my art supplies and I'll figure out
how to get money.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
While Oscar's early appeals failed, the LAPD was still reeling
from what became known as the Rampart scandal. It began
with a nineteen ninety seven road rage incident, but exploded
the following summer when crash unit officer Rafael Perez was
caught stealing cocaine from an evidence locker and selling it
nearly eight hundred thousand dollars worth to save himself. Perez
(22:41):
turned state's witness and became a whistleblower, exposing everything Oscar
had already experienced and more brutality, planted evidence, perjury, drug trafficking,
bank robbery cover ups, and even ties to organized crime.
Perez also revealed the officers would gather at a bar
near Dodgers Stadium to celebrate their shootings, handing out red
(23:06):
cards for a wound and black cards for a kill.
Perez implicated at least seventy officers, including crash officer Nino Durden,
and how he had engineered the false firearm charge against
then sixteen year old Oscar Eagle, but that was a
different crime, so Oscar remained behind bars for yet another
(23:29):
crime he did not commit.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
My mom died in two thousand and seven, and after
her death, I went into the depression and I couldn't
snap out of it. I was breeving. I started making
poor decisions. Eventually, the squad unit came in and the
gaffled me up. They had searched my cell and they
found an address book. I had an address to Gigi
Gordon that was helping me in my case years prior,
and she happy to have a client that was a
(23:54):
member of the Mexican mafia.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And they said that.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I was using her as a third part dropped to
connect with the mesic of mafia. So they sent me
to the whole You're.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Again like falsely accused and you get thrown pretty much
in solitary for six years.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yes, I just would think that, man, I must be cursed.
You know that that night marries got worse and worse.
And so I was like, man, you guys are just stretching.
You guys are just stretching to validate me or to
break me or something. And I got a visit from
my dad when I was in essay. That was the
last time I see them. I told me that they're
(24:33):
trying to they're trying to break me in here, and yeah,
he just said, he said, oh, you know, don't break.
Just believe in a higher power, man, just don't break.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You mentioned that that was the last time you saw
your father, because unfortunately both of your parents passed while
you were incarcerated. What at that point kept you from
giving up hope completely?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I was in the shoe.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
We end up having a hunger strike, and the result
of the hunger strikes that we went through, they start
to release suspect to the general population. I started to
see the GP as freedom, you know, So I was like,
oh shit, I'm going to go.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Back to the mainline.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I always loved running laps, so I was like, man,
I could go out there and run again, you know,
like I could get into school and try to get
an education, and.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
With greater freedom of movement and access to educational materials.
He was able to submit his case to the Conviction
Review Unit under Jackie Lacy, the LA District attorney at
the time, but citing that it was submitted with no
new evidence, he was denied a reinvestigation, so Oscar had
to wait for the election of George Gascon in order
(25:46):
to resubmit his case, around which point Megan got involved.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I was actually at a transitional house at an event
for other clients, and I was approached by a couple
of Oscar's friends. They had with them an entire file
full of things, and they sat me down and showed me.
During this party, they ended up showing me all this
evidence and how Raphael Press had admitted that they had
(26:14):
essentially placed at false gun charge on Oscar to begin with.
And what really drew me to his case was it
doesn't seem that Arias ever really identified Oscar until the
police pointed him to do so. So I had been
working in other cases with doctor Wicksted. He's an eyewitness
(26:34):
identification expert, and there is a new consensus in the
eyewitness identification scientific community, and I thought that Oscar's case
fell perfectly in line with that. So I was gathering
everything that we needed. I went to the offices of
Gig Gordon, whose Gordon has passed away. I contacted all
of Oscar's prior council and got materials from the California
(26:57):
Court of Appeal. That all takes a lot of time
to gather the materials. In the meantime, the LA District
Attorney's office, well, Oscar was blessed. I'll just say that
because there was a Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles
who is behind I think seven exonerations. Now. She really
(27:18):
believed in these cases and incorporated the eyewitness identification consensus
into most of them. She has now gone on to
become a judge, which is a great loss to the
innocence community. But she ended up looking at the case
as well, so she and I actually ended up working
on the case together. We interviewed witnesses together. I flew
(27:40):
to northern California to interview Benjamin Arius, who was actually
incarcerated at that time, interviewed him with some attorney investigators
as well, and it just seems so clear that there
was no evidence against Oscar. The only evidence was this
quote unquote identification by Arius, which never existed.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Baca and the DA's Habeas Corpus litigation office together filed
a joint writ arguing that Oscar's conviction was the result
of ineffective counsel for all the reasons we've already discussed.
His attorney had failed to impeach Benjamin Urius or Detective Muriel,
with the audio recording of the flawed identification process, ignored
(28:23):
the issue of Urius's unrelated criminal case, did not present
more alibi witnesses or supporting evidence. Most critically, the defense
never introduced proof of Oscar's compromised physical condition or called
his doctor to testify that given his injuries, he could
(28:43):
not have committed this crime.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
So, although the ineffective assistance of counsel is what led
Oscar to be wrongfully convicted in the first place, Elisa
meant that some of this evidence that we were able
to use to prove his innocence wasn't already used in
the past, so that we couldn't, you know, bring that
up again post conviction.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And relatively speaking, once you got involved, it was pretty fast.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
It was really fast. And again that is thanks to
Dia Laura bazign of the LA District Attorney's office. She
was in the conviction integrity unit and then went over
to the habeas litigation unit. And you know, if she
hadn't been working with us jointly, then this would have
taken years and years.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
On July tenth, twenty twenty five, Oscar's conviction was vacated.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Once he was out, we got to meet face to
face for the first time, and now he's my next
door neighbor.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
That's amazing. You know, the Los Angeles Times did basically
where are they now in terms of all the different
people who contributed to this wrongful conviction and the LAPD
spokesperson had no comment on it. Others denied wrongdoing. You know,
(30:04):
even Patrick Lake, your attorney, who claims he doesn't even
remember your case. I want to ask about accountability. What
does accountability mean in a case like this.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I just don't see them taking accountability. I should think,
like man, I wonder sooner or later are they going
to step up and say, you know what, I did
something wrong back then. You know, I gotta get off
the streets in But I'm not the only one. There's
other guys still stuck in there from the rap par scandal.
I would love to see these officers have integrity and
(30:38):
do the right things, but I don't think it's going to.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Happen no matter how we hold the people responsible to account.
Oscar lost his entire twenties and thirties to prison. He
wasn't there when either of his parents passed away, and
there's absolutely nothing to get him that time back. I
think that the state bar should take these cases more
seriously when they is such egregious, ineffective assistance, just simply
(31:04):
no evidence put on that was very apparent and readily available.
I also think that qualified immunity is a huge issue.
I don't see how prosecutors or police can ever really
be held accountable so long as there's this immunity. I
(31:25):
also think that even all of these years later, even
when district attorney's offices are willing to do the right thing,
and they you know, they get so much credit for me.
I'm so grateful to them. You know, even in Oscar's case,
the elected DA of La County showed up and appeared
on the record in his case, which is huge. However,
you know, the police still aren't held to account for
(31:48):
the wrongdoing. And the problem is the police are the
investigating agency for the District Attorney's office. I mean they
work together, they work hand in hand. Police unions don'tate
to prosecutorial elections. Aside from overhauling the system completely, I
don't know how we can ever prevent this sort of
(32:08):
thing from happening again, considering that they work so closely together.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And when people say, oh, well, they're settlements and there's
money paid, that money is not coming from the people
who caused the wrongful conviction. That's not accountability. That's society
basically trying to pay off to protect the people in power.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Right right, That's coming from the taxpayers.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
So with that, we're going to close out this interview
by asking our audience to support Megan's organization. They're out
there doing the work necessary to finally bring about some
measure of justice in these cases. So we're going to
link California Innocent's advocates in the episode description. Please donate,
follow them on social media, or otherwise get involved. And
(33:02):
now I'm just going to thank you both for sharing
this story with us before I leave the floor to
you for any final thoughts.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Yeah, I will say that I am consistently shocked by
how little evidence needs to be put on for a
jury to convict. I don't think that people understand the
burden of beyond a reasonable doubt. And when the crime
is allegedly gang motivated and they have gang investigators coming
(33:31):
up and testifying, it just sort of scares the jury
into let's lock up whoever, because it sounds like, you know, hoodlums.
It's all these hoodlums out there destroying our communities, like
the crash units.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I was just about to say, like the crash unit
street hoodlum.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
That's right, even though in Oscar's case, what he was
doing was artwork on walls. He was doing graffiti. You know,
he wasn't out shooting people. But they lump them all
into being sort of the same, and that, you know,
anybody that's getting associated just having grown up in that neighborhood,
they're necessarily evil and violent.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I just want to let people know that, you know,
our system is bad, you know, like they don't need
concrete evidence or direct evidence to find you guilty. Here,
it's like they don't take a human life serious, you know.
And I just tell people just to be more open
minded and look beyond somebody's image because it's easy for
(34:32):
a district attorney, it's easy for a police officer to
draw a negative image to somebody.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
That's understand.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
We take their word as gold, and they got to
be able to see behind the words. When you make
a person into a monster and an animal, it's real
easy to convict them as soon as you have that
thought in your mind.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
early and add free by subscribing to Lava for Good
Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production team,
Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers
Jason Vlahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
(35:22):
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
On March eighth, nineteen ninety eight, seventeen year old Oscar
Eagle was shot in the leg in Los Angeles' Peico
Union neighborhood. Six days later, sixteen year old Benjamin Eureus
was also shot, a non fatal wound that police believed
was in retaliation for Oscar's shooting. Soon police arrested Oscar Eagle,
(00:27):
but the charges were dropped when Eureus failed to appear
in court. Then something changed. Eureas suddenly became confident that
Oscar was the shooter, even though he'd always said the
gunman had run to and from the car. But with
Oscar's debilitating leg injury, could he really have done that?
(00:51):
This is wrongful conviction. The Fox Foundation is proud to
support this episode of wrongful conviction and the work of
After Innocence, a nonprofit that helps hundreds of people nationwide
rebuild their lives after wrongful incarceration. Each year, innocent people
(01:13):
are released after spending years behind bars for crimes they
didn't commit. Nearly all of them leave prison with nothing
more than the clothes on their backs, with no help
or compensation from the state, as they face the steep
challenges of rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment. After Innocence
is changing that After Innocence helps exoneries get and make
(01:35):
good use of essential services like health care, dental care,
mental health support, legal aid, financial counseling, and more. Since
twenty sixteen, they've brought that help to more than eight
hundred exoneries across forty six states, working tirelessly to ensure
that no one released after wrongful incarceration is left behind.
(01:57):
Learn more at After Dash Innocence Ditte and join After
Innocence to support exoneries as they rebuild their lives. Welcome
back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Lauren Bright Pacheco,
(02:19):
and I'm so glad to be back for another season.
And we're starting off in Los Angeles in the late
nineteen nineties, a time to find by gang hysteria and
the sweeping mass incarceration that followed. Joining me today is
someone who lived through it as a kid, Oscar Eagle.
Oscar welcome, thank you, and to help tell the story.
(02:41):
His attorney from California Innocence Advocates, Megan Bacha welcome, thank you.
So Oscar grew up in the eighties and the nineties
in the Peico Union area of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I had two loving parents, had a sister that lived
with me, and I had a brother that was in
and out of juvenile hall camp. And she was a
lot older than me. It was about ten years older
than me. Yeah, so the family life was comfortable. My
dad after work, he came straight home and we wait
at the dinner table in the living room. It was
a good time growing up in the house. But outside
(03:15):
of my house was the projects in the Pickle Union.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Which was the main hangout for a gang called the
Burlington Locos.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
So I wouldn't stand growing up looking out my window
watching them, you know, riding on the walls. And I
love art, you know, I love drawing, and probably like
ten years old, I got into graffiti that had to
continued when I got involved with gangs.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oscar's graffiti tag was clown and graffiti really was the
extent of his criminal activity.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I believe that drew a lot of attention to me.
Growing up in Pickle Union, I was always getting haarressed
by these cops. At one time when I was younger,
the LPD pulled probably about five of us on in
front of my house and after the cops left. All
my friends they started to leave. I went back to
my house, but in front of how some other kids
that lived in the neighborhood that were not gang members,
(04:04):
they gather up like about four or five Christmas trees
and they put it on fire, and the police showed up.
They took a guest and said, oh, well, Oscar was
just hanging out in front of the house right here.
They arrested me and were saying that they watched me
from across the street burning the Christmas trees.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So this was the first time that Oscar's alleged gang
affiliation led to false charges against him. In Los Angeles,
at the time, there was a specialized unit called CRASH,
short for Community Resources against Street Hoodlums. But as we've
seen in other cities with heavy gang policing, when a
(04:40):
neighborhood is associated with a gang, an alleged member of
the area's gang will usually be targeted for any crime
that occurs in the area, innocent or not. And most
gang members aren't involved in violent crime at all, like
graffiti artists, but they are painted with the same bra
(05:00):
criminal brush.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
That's absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
You know, if every game member was violent, man, it
would be super chaotic out there, but it's only a
small percentage of every gang that has these type of
individuals that are violent, like social paths or whatever you know.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
All So, while on probation, Oscar was targeted again while
at his friend Victor's house. There was a party going
on outside. When LAPD raided the.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Location, an officer put the flash light on me and
I heard him say to another officer that clown is
right here. That's what they used to call me, clown.
And they cut me up and they told me that
I was being arrested for violating my probation for hanging
around with Victor, who is a bursting game member. So
they cut me up. They threw me in that cop car.
As soon as we left eighteen and Union. We headed
(05:50):
down towards Venice and Union, and a guy named one
Carlos and Martha Torres acrossing the street, and one Carlos
was a game member from Drifters them up. They opened
up the truck of the car and they pulled something
out of the car, but there was a bag of something.
I don't know if it was marijuana or what, but
they say you're gonna get arrested. For this, you know,
you said that shit in minds and they're like, get.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
In the car.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And there was two eighty street Game members crossing the street.
They pulled up on them, chased them on foot. They
grabbed a hold of a guy named Weto and another
guy out of what the other guy's name was, and
they threw them in the car. Car with us went
to the police station. There was a lot of activity
going on that day. It was a lot of cops everywhere.
There was a lot of people in there. They were
(06:34):
interested on the guy from at street, the guy named Wetto,
and they started talking to him and they were bragging
about they killed somebody that looked just like him.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And then Crash Unit Officer Nino Durden threatened Oscar with
firearm charges.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Officer Durden, he threw the mem in a room and
started to tell me that I was gonna go down
for some guns and that IU. I guess he wanted
me to admit the guns or something like that. And
I was like, I'm gonna do that. Man like man,
you me for violation probation, Just take me in and ready,
and I went to juvenile hall. Actually got convicted for
the gut charge. I got out of camp around October
(07:09):
of nineteen ninety seven. I believe I was trying to
be more mature at that time. I kept my routine up, exercising,
going to school, going to my community service. And on
March eighth, it was my niece's birthday. We celebrated her
birthday at my house. After that party, Bortom said it
and I said, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
What I'm gonna. I'm gonna go to Peak Co Union.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I took the bus to Pickle Union and I started
walking looking for the guys, and I couldn't find nobody
from the neighborhood. So I started walking towards the bus
stop on Pickle and Union to go home in Easter Day.
And so when I was walking over there, a car
pulled up and started shooting at me and immediately hit
me in my calf.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oscar turned eighteen two days after he was shot, and
the wound made it very difficult for him to walk,
let alone run, which became a very important fact on
March fourteenth, when a sixteen year old kid named Benjamin
Urius was also shot.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
So Arias was a sixteen year old kid who was
just walking in the Pico Union neighborhood of Los Angeles
and a car pulled up. He says that somebody jumped
out of the back seat yelled Burlington Locals, which is
the name of the local gang and one that Oscar
was associated with. He said that the shooter took off running,
(08:25):
which is important, chased after Arias. Arias went to hide
under a nearby vehicle. Ultimately, several shots went off and
one grazed Arisa's chest, in another his leg, and then
the shooter ran back to the car. Again important considering
that Oscar was incapable of running.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Because you're on crutches, right it went into your calf.
The bullet was still lodged there.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, it was still lodge right there.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
And Arias originally told responding officers that the shooter was
wearing shorts. Oscar also had a drain on his legs
where the blood was draining out from the bullet wound,
and Rhea said that he didn't notice anything on the
shooter's leg on the strain would have been very visible.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
But despite these disqualifying elements, they contacted Oscar under the
auspices of his own debilitating shooting.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
March fifteen, I get a call from Detective Caserras. And
I told you guys already that I didn't see who
shot me. I don't have nothing else to say to
you guys. He goes, well, we need to close that
case up and we need you to pretty much like
sign off on it or something like that. And then
on March seventeen, he showed up right away. He looked
at my leg and seeing that I was on crutches,
and he's like, hey, you can't walk, and I go, nah,
(09:37):
could you put your foot to the floor And I
said nah, my calf locked and I wasn't able to
stretch my leg or nothing. He told me, hey, you
know Junior from at Street and I was like no,
and he goes, well, he knows you.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The guy he's calling Junior is Benjamin.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, yes, yes, And I was like, maybe I do
know him. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I grew up right there in people in Union. Maybe
I don't know him personally. Maybe we see each other around.
So he's like, well, he's saying that you shot up.
I go, don't know what it's talking about. So he
was like, I don't think he did, because I'm looking
at your leg and I don't think you're capable of
doing this crime.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It later became clear that neither did the victim, Benjamin Urias,
but Oscar was affiliated with the Burlington Locos, so they
brought him in anyway, and he told them exactly where
he was during the shooting at the hospital with his
friend Becky Chavez, whose friend Susie had gone into an
early and false labor.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I went to the hospital like all day. I remember
going back and forth to drink water. I remember the
camera being right above the water, found it and then
the security I remember him being a short black officer,
So I was like, go talk to that security guard,
go get the camera right there, and didn't do none
of that. They called Becky Chavis, who I was with
that night, so she got down there. They put Becky
(10:51):
in a room, they questioned her, and she just verified
the same thing that I told him, and they came
out and they put me in front of her and
they asked me, you better say you did it, because
if not, Becky, job is going to go down for
this tool. And I was like, man, why are you
doing this to us? She told me like, don't listen
to these cops, you know. So I told Becky, Becky, sorry,
(11:12):
you're gonna have to get arrested too, because you know
I didn't I didn't do this crime.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
And then I've seen her walk out, and then.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It took me a week or two to get a
public defender to come visit me at the Ali County.
It's one of the first things I told him, Man,
go get the footage from the hospital. And my first
two courts, I was going in crutches. And then on
the third court day the case got.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Dismissed because Junior didn't show up.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
He didn't show up.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
In order to indict Oscar again, they were gonna need
the victims cooperation. But there's a record of this new
interaction with ben Urius which appears to shed light on
why he hadn't shown up to the prior court proceedings
and also why he was now open to suggestion.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
So we don't have a recording of the first lineup,
and we don't know precisely what happened there, but it's
really clear from the recording of the second lineup that
police definitely pushed Areas into selecting Oscar.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Ureus also repeatedly asked if they were going to help
him on his other case, and six times the new detectives,
Muriel and Wiseman, assured him they'd get him on home
confinement instead of juvenile camp. Interestingly, these new detectives were
from the homicide unit, even though this wasn't a homicide.
(12:46):
They asked Ureus if he knew his shooter's name, and
Urreus said, quote, they said, Oscar Eagle. Then he's shown
a lineup with Oscar in position four. Urreus denied recognizing
his shooter. Detective Muriel urged him, quote, take a closer
look at it there. Again, Urius didn't make an identification silence.
(13:10):
Then Uria says, quote looks sort of looks. Murl cut
him off, quote like number four.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
And then Oria says the number that they had pointed
to that the police pointed to in the lineup. I
don't know why they were so focused on Oscar or
why police didn't bother investigating other alternative suspects, but it
seems that once they had their eyes set on Oscar,
they just weren't going to take anything else other than Oscar.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So, you know, just to show how crazy this was
at the time of your trial, forget about Becky, They've
pulled in another woman randomly a young woman named Martha
Torres who's twenty years old, just happened to be from
the neighborhood. And now they're claiming that she was driving
the car that you were in the night Junior was shot.
(14:04):
And now they twisted so that the motive is that
you're shooting Junior in retaliation for you being shot, and
that Torres is motivated by the fact that her brother
was murdered by a member of the same rival gang,
and none of it's true.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And her brother was not even a Births and Game member.
Her brother was from another different gang called Drifters, but
they made it seem like he was from a neighborhood too,
and I was like, oh man, this guy's not even
from my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And then the saddest part is she, like you, is
completely innocent, but they talk her into taking a plea
deal for five years.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Yeah, Miss Torres, I think made the right decision. Unfortunately,
even though she was innocent, because she was facing life
as well, I mean, she could have ended up doing
more than twenty six years like Oscar as well. So
she began trial with Oscar. Part Way through the beginning
of trial, she separately took a plea deal, and the
judge had to instruct the jury that they weren't supposed
(15:08):
to draw any conclusions. By Miss Torres no longer being
part of Oscar's trial. You know, Miss Torres still maintains
her innocence and there was no evidence against her. She
had never driven, she didn't have a driver's license, she
didn't know how to drive. Her friend's father happened to
own a vehicle that looked similar to the one Areas described.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So Martha Torres did the math and did not like
her odds. But Oscar's appointed attorney, Patrick Lake, gave him confidence.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
He started to tell me that he talked to my alibis,
he talked to my doctor. He said that they all
confirm and verify my story and that we're good and
we got a strong case right here. And also the
joys that we're going to be in front of is
a band from school or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But it seems like Patrick Lake had given Oscar false confidence.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
So a trial against Oscar. There was the test money
of Benjamin Arias, and by the time of trial he
was much more confident that it was Oscar. He wasn't
cross examined thoroughly. It seems that maybe Oscar's defense council
hadn't listened to the audio recorded police interview, because if
he had, then it's inexplicable why he wouldn't have cross
(16:22):
examined him on the inconsistencies that Rias didn't originally pick
out Oscar, that the police directed him to pick out Oscar.
In fact, they said, how about this one.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
He's the quiet, he's the quiet, and I was like,
the hell, Like, you're not going to speak for me.
And then I told him he is the doctor going
to show up and he goes, oh, he'll be here tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
There was that there was testimony from police officers, including
you know, gang investigators, which is scary for the jury
to hear about gang members in their community.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And I had all two tattoos.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
So when I was in trout, they had like poster
size pictures and that's deftly part of the stand and
starts saying, oh, these are old English type letters, and
you know, she's start telling professional opinion. I was like, oh,
this is they're just trying to just any little things,
just to.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Just anything they could do to make you look.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Bad, just look like an animal. And Patrick Lake, he
doesn't talk again, and I'm like, hey, man, what's going on?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Man?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Go I'm preparing. I'm preparing. So I told me what's
up with the doctors? He's showing up?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And he said, yeah, he'll be here tomorrow and said,
you told me that yesterday. Every day he kept telling
me that, and the next thing know, the cases almost
over with and and I'm like, hey, where's the doctor
at Oh, he's not going to show up.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It sounds like your representation didn't prepare at all. You
only had one witness called in your defense, and that
was Becky. I'm gonna throw it to you, Megan. When
you looked into the witnesses that Patrick Lake claimed to
have contacted for his defense, what did you find.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Well, we spoke to the friend that had false labor
that day that Oscar went to go see in the hospital,
and she absolutely remembered this day she was in the
hospital for false flabor, So that's documented. She said Patrick
Lake had never interviewed her or her mother, and when
Patrick Lake said that he left a message on their
answering machine, she says they didn't even have an answering
(18:13):
machine back then. That she absolutely would have appeared at
trial had she been called to do so, but she
wasn't even interviewed. Quite simply, he didn't interview witnesses. He
didn't call these witnesses that were so crucial. And then
in fact, it's very apparent that he lied to the
court about having interviewed these witnesses. You know, he stood up,
he looked around court and said, I don't see them here.
(18:35):
I don't know why they're not here to testify. Well,
because he hadn't bothered to even talk to them.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And then at one point I think the judge said,
we'll give you twenty more minutes.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
So even when the judge gave an additional twenty minutes,
even if Patrick had called, then she would have been
completely unprepared. She probably in LA. She wouldn't even be
able to get to the courthouse in that amount of time.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
My mom passed me a NOE that morning. She said,
fire your lawyer, like this guy do nothing for you.
He didn't even contact your alibies. I raised my hand
and the judge was like, what are you doing? And
I said, man, I want to fire this guy. And
he's like, well, hold on, hold on, and he took
everybody out the court. Room, and he said, you're doing
a Marston motion or something like that, and I was like,
I'll go I don't know what that is. I just
(19:14):
want to fire this guy because he hasn't been representing me.
And he goes, Oh, you just don't like the way
your trial's going, and so you just want to get
rid of your lawyer. He goes, it doesn't work that way,
you know, sit back down. So I was like, man,
let me take the stand in. I was like, man,
at least let me show the jurors because they're going
to see the whole of my leg and they're going
to be like, oh, man, this guy wasn't able to
do this crime. As soon as I got up on
that stand, I just felt attacked by the DA and
(19:35):
then next thing you know, it was go sit back down.
So I turned around and told the judge, Hey, Judge,
I show my leg to the jurors.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
He said, now go back and sit down.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
Patrick Lake could have asked to show that to the jury,
but Oscar, as the witness at that time, can't just
turn around and ask to judge, hey, let me show
my leg.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
And then a detective takes a stand. He holds up
two pictures. One is you holding a gun, no context
of where or when it was taken. The other one
is you standing next to somebody holding a gun. And
on March twelfth, nineteen ninety nine, you were convicted of
attempted first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison
(20:17):
plus twenty five years.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
At that moment, you know, I was stoic and shocked.
I didn't know how to react, but I.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Just remember my brother. She was right behind me.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, I heard her cry. When I heard her cry,
I turned around. The judge was talking and I didn't
hear nothing at all. I just just my brother. I
was feeling double. She said, she was feeling you know,
they're separating us for life. My mom I stopped drinking
(21:09):
when I was probably about twelve thirteen years old.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
She made me a promise that she wasn't gonna drink
no more. And after I.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Got convicted, I started hearing that she was drinking and
I was like, what the hell there? And I knew
I knew it was it was because of.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
People, because of what was done to you.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
You then ended up entering California's adult prison system as
a teenager.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I got there at nineteen years old. I didn't know
how to sell it at that time. It was twenty
four hour lockdown, sometimes going years and year's lockdown.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It was a biling. It was riots.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
When I got there to Pelican Bay, there was a
big riots and a fair way of two thousand and
I ended up going to the ads say for that
for sixteen months, and then I ended up in ire
Was state prison.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I found a good program right.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
There in a completed computer class, and I started having
a border job.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
And I always been drawing, you know, that was my thought.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So I used to tell my mom those semi money,
just buy me my art supplies and I'll figure out
how to get money.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
While Oscar's early appeals failed, the LAPD was still reeling
from what became known as the Rampart scandal. It began
with a nineteen ninety seven road rage incident, but exploded
the following summer when crash unit officer Rafael Perez was
caught stealing cocaine from an evidence locker and selling it
nearly eight hundred thousand dollars worth to save himself. Perez
(22:41):
turned state's witness and became a whistleblower, exposing everything Oscar
had already experienced and more brutality, planted evidence, perjury, drug trafficking,
bank robbery cover ups, and even ties to organized crime.
Perez also revealed the officers would gather at a bar
near Dodgers Stadium to celebrate their shootings, handing out red
(23:06):
cards for a wound and black cards for a kill.
Perez implicated at least seventy officers, including crash officer Nino Durden,
and how he had engineered the false firearm charge against
then sixteen year old Oscar Eagle, but that was a
different crime, so Oscar remained behind bars for yet another
(23:29):
crime he did not commit.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
My mom died in two thousand and seven, and after
her death, I went into the depression and I couldn't
snap out of it. I was breeving. I started making
poor decisions. Eventually, the squad unit came in and the
gaffled me up. They had searched my cell and they
found an address book. I had an address to Gigi
Gordon that was helping me in my case years prior,
and she happy to have a client that was a
(23:54):
member of the Mexican mafia.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And they said that.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I was using her as a third part dropped to
connect with the mesic of mafia. So they sent me
to the whole You're.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Again like falsely accused and you get thrown pretty much
in solitary for six years.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yes, I just would think that, man, I must be cursed.
You know that that night marries got worse and worse.
And so I was like, man, you guys are just stretching.
You guys are just stretching to validate me or to
break me or something. And I got a visit from
my dad when I was in essay. That was the
last time I see them. I told me that they're
(24:33):
trying to they're trying to break me in here, and yeah,
he just said, he said, oh, you know, don't break.
Just believe in a higher power, man, just don't break.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You mentioned that that was the last time you saw
your father, because unfortunately both of your parents passed while
you were incarcerated. What at that point kept you from
giving up hope completely?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I was in the shoe.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
We end up having a hunger strike, and the result
of the hunger strikes that we went through, they start
to release suspect to the general population. I started to
see the GP as freedom, you know, So I was like,
oh shit, I'm going to go.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Back to the mainline.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I always loved running laps, so I was like, man,
I could go out there and run again, you know,
like I could get into school and try to get
an education, and.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
With greater freedom of movement and access to educational materials.
He was able to submit his case to the Conviction
Review Unit under Jackie Lacy, the LA District attorney at
the time, but citing that it was submitted with no
new evidence, he was denied a reinvestigation, so Oscar had
to wait for the election of George Gascon in order
(25:46):
to resubmit his case, around which point Megan got involved.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I was actually at a transitional house at an event
for other clients, and I was approached by a couple
of Oscar's friends. They had with them an entire file
full of things, and they sat me down and showed me.
During this party, they ended up showing me all this
evidence and how Raphael Press had admitted that they had
(26:14):
essentially placed at false gun charge on Oscar to begin with.
And what really drew me to his case was it
doesn't seem that Arias ever really identified Oscar until the
police pointed him to do so. So I had been
working in other cases with doctor Wicksted. He's an eyewitness
(26:34):
identification expert, and there is a new consensus in the
eyewitness identification scientific community, and I thought that Oscar's case
fell perfectly in line with that. So I was gathering
everything that we needed. I went to the offices of
Gig Gordon, whose Gordon has passed away. I contacted all
of Oscar's prior council and got materials from the California
(26:57):
Court of Appeal. That all takes a lot of time
to gather the materials. In the meantime, the LA District
Attorney's office, well, Oscar was blessed. I'll just say that
because there was a Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles
who is behind I think seven exonerations. Now. She really
(27:18):
believed in these cases and incorporated the eyewitness identification consensus
into most of them. She has now gone on to
become a judge, which is a great loss to the
innocence community. But she ended up looking at the case
as well, so she and I actually ended up working
on the case together. We interviewed witnesses together. I flew
(27:40):
to northern California to interview Benjamin Arius, who was actually
incarcerated at that time, interviewed him with some attorney investigators
as well, and it just seems so clear that there
was no evidence against Oscar. The only evidence was this
quote unquote identification by Arius, which never existed.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Baca and the DA's Habeas Corpus litigation office together filed
a joint writ arguing that Oscar's conviction was the result
of ineffective counsel for all the reasons we've already discussed.
His attorney had failed to impeach Benjamin Urius or Detective Muriel,
with the audio recording of the flawed identification process, ignored
(28:23):
the issue of Urius's unrelated criminal case, did not present
more alibi witnesses or supporting evidence. Most critically, the defense
never introduced proof of Oscar's compromised physical condition or called
his doctor to testify that given his injuries, he could
(28:43):
not have committed this crime.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
So, although the ineffective assistance of counsel is what led
Oscar to be wrongfully convicted in the first place, Elisa
meant that some of this evidence that we were able
to use to prove his innocence wasn't already used in
the past, so that we couldn't, you know, bring that
up again post conviction.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And relatively speaking, once you got involved, it was pretty fast.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
It was really fast. And again that is thanks to
Dia Laura bazign of the LA District Attorney's office. She
was in the conviction integrity unit and then went over
to the habeas litigation unit. And you know, if she
hadn't been working with us jointly, then this would have
taken years and years.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
On July tenth, twenty twenty five, Oscar's conviction was vacated.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Once he was out, we got to meet face to
face for the first time, and now he's my next
door neighbor.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
That's amazing. You know, the Los Angeles Times did basically
where are they now in terms of all the different
people who contributed to this wrongful conviction and the LAPD
spokesperson had no comment on it. Others denied wrongdoing. You know,
(30:04):
even Patrick Lake, your attorney, who claims he doesn't even
remember your case. I want to ask about accountability. What
does accountability mean in a case like this.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I just don't see them taking accountability. I should think,
like man, I wonder sooner or later are they going
to step up and say, you know what, I did
something wrong back then. You know, I gotta get off
the streets in But I'm not the only one. There's
other guys still stuck in there from the rap par scandal.
I would love to see these officers have integrity and
(30:38):
do the right things, but I don't think it's going to.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Happen no matter how we hold the people responsible to account.
Oscar lost his entire twenties and thirties to prison. He
wasn't there when either of his parents passed away, and
there's absolutely nothing to get him that time back. I
think that the state bar should take these cases more
seriously when they is such egregious, ineffective assistance, just simply
(31:04):
no evidence put on that was very apparent and readily available.
I also think that qualified immunity is a huge issue.
I don't see how prosecutors or police can ever really
be held accountable so long as there's this immunity. I
(31:25):
also think that even all of these years later, even
when district attorney's offices are willing to do the right thing,
and they you know, they get so much credit for me.
I'm so grateful to them. You know, even in Oscar's case,
the elected DA of La County showed up and appeared
on the record in his case, which is huge. However,
you know, the police still aren't held to account for
(31:48):
the wrongdoing. And the problem is the police are the
investigating agency for the District Attorney's office. I mean they
work together, they work hand in hand. Police unions don'tate
to prosecutorial elections. Aside from overhauling the system completely, I
don't know how we can ever prevent this sort of
(32:08):
thing from happening again, considering that they work so closely together.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And when people say, oh, well, they're settlements and there's
money paid, that money is not coming from the people
who caused the wrongful conviction. That's not accountability. That's society
basically trying to pay off to protect the people in power.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Right right, That's coming from the taxpayers.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
So with that, we're going to close out this interview
by asking our audience to support Megan's organization. They're out
there doing the work necessary to finally bring about some
measure of justice in these cases. So we're going to
link California Innocent's advocates in the episode description. Please donate,
follow them on social media, or otherwise get involved. And
(33:02):
now I'm just going to thank you both for sharing
this story with us before I leave the floor to
you for any final thoughts.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Yeah, I will say that I am consistently shocked by
how little evidence needs to be put on for a
jury to convict. I don't think that people understand the
burden of beyond a reasonable doubt. And when the crime
is allegedly gang motivated and they have gang investigators coming
(33:31):
up and testifying, it just sort of scares the jury
into let's lock up whoever, because it sounds like, you know, hoodlums.
It's all these hoodlums out there destroying our communities, like
the crash units.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I was just about to say, like the crash unit
street hoodlum.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
That's right, even though in Oscar's case, what he was
doing was artwork on walls. He was doing graffiti. You know,
he wasn't out shooting people. But they lump them all
into being sort of the same, and that, you know,
anybody that's getting associated just having grown up in that neighborhood,
they're necessarily evil and violent.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I just want to let people know that, you know,
our system is bad, you know, like they don't need
concrete evidence or direct evidence to find you guilty. Here,
it's like they don't take a human life serious, you know.
And I just tell people just to be more open
minded and look beyond somebody's image because it's easy for
(34:32):
a district attorney, it's easy for a police officer to
draw a negative image to somebody.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
That's understand.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
We take their word as gold, and they got to
be able to see behind the words. When you make
a person into a monster and an animal, it's real
easy to convict them as soon as you have that
thought in your mind.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
early and add free by subscribing to Lava for Good
Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production team,
Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers
Jason Vlahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn. The
music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
(35:22):
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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