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The title is a bit dramatic. It never got to a trial, because his alibi checked out.
One of the factors was him walking into frame of a taping of Curb your Enthusiasm. The main factor was his cellphone placing him at that location after answering a call that pinged off a tower near the stadium 20mins before the murder which was 20 miles away. There was also footage from the stadium that showed a person in his seat, but resolution was not good enough to be dismissed from that alone. Even the shows footage did not clear him from charges, it was the cellphone location data.
The real tragedy was the clerical error:
"Due to a clerical error, he had to report back to county jail two days later."
On the positive: "In 2007, Juan received $320,000 in a settlement of his civil lawsuit against the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles for false imprisonment, misconduct and defamation."
This should be disturbing.
If there is a true alibi exonerating someone, then there would have been no truthful evidence against him. And yet, a man without truthful evidence against him was almost put to death row. Why is that? Have we stopped caring about Blackstone's Formulation in our zeal to imprison everyone even possibly guilty?
He was not "almost put to death row". There was no trial for that to even be a possibility. Instead, a man without truthful evidence against him had the charges dismissed.
Yes, but, the case was only dismissed when he had a positive alibi against the charges, when the charges should only happen when there is positive evidence against him
Aren't there cases whose innocence has been discovered after they have been on death row?
> If there is a true alibi exonerating someone, then there would have been no truthful evidence against him.
You mistake evidence for proof. Evidence is stuff like a witness that saw someone similar at the crime scene, a motive, the accused's DNA at the crime scene (left there before the crime, e.g. during a benign visit), an injury that could have been sustained during the struggle that led to a murder (but was actually sustained in an unrelated bar fight..), owned the same kind of unusual knife the victim was stabbed with (but lost it the night of the murder), etc. It suggests guilt, but leaves room for doubt.
If 'truthful evidence' only existed against the guilty, then the single tiniest bit of evidence would be enough to convict.
The quickest fix is to get rid of the death penalty
How does getting rid of the death penalty address the parent’s concern about false imprisonment? I understand the philosophical and practical arguments against the death penalty, but getting rid of it won’t forestall zealous prosecutors.
The innocence project has an interest in showing the justice system to be more capricious and random than it really is. The guy was exculpated by the evidence, and the system worked as intended.
Yes it has problems but the headline and story are obscuring what really happened here. The guy was nowhere near death row.
But only because of a pure fluke. If not for that extraordinary evidence, would they have been exonerated? I'm not saying justice is useless and broken (at least not in this way), but innocent people being found guilty on insufficient evidence does happen and far more often than people would think. It's a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but the people it happens to are usually the kind of people who others are already biased against and are unlikely to want to help, e.g the poor, drug addicts, and minorities.
I was helping with a murder case, it was a little over five years since the crime, and the defendant asked me if I knew if there was a way to get cellphone location data as he said he had left the scene of the crime about an hour before the incident was held to happen, and returned about an hour afterwards.
Nobody had thought to get this data before. I called Verizon but I was told they only hold location data for five years and had already erased it.
For other reasons I believe the defendant to be innocent. He was put to trial three times for the crime; his first two guilty verdicts were overturned on appeal before he plead guilty to the minimum to get the process over with and have a near release date.
Good lord, they keep 5 years of location data!? That's excessive.
Pretty sure it's a legal requirement. In large part for the purpose of proving/disproving crime.
Should call up the spooks -they probably keep it forever.
It's not dramatic at all. Without proof of his innocence, it could very well have gone to trial and resulted in a conviction, thanks to people's belief in the reliability of "eyewitness testimony". This case alone should show just how useless and flimsy eyewitness testimony is.
> It's not dramatic at all.
It was not the show that "saved" him; it was cellphone location data that got the charges dismissed. He was never on trial with the possibility of death row because it never got that far.
He was in jail for a month, all because some idiot thought he looked like the killer. He could have gone on trial, and much worse, if he didn't have solid evidence proving it wasn't him.
Countless people have been imprisoned and executed just because of eyewitness testimony. How many black men have been killed because some white person who thinks they all look alike said on the stand "it was him!"? Eyewitness testimony shouldn't even be allowed, because it's so unreliable.
He was never facing death row; there was no trial for that to be a possibility. The unnecessary speculation of death row has no barring on this story.
There are real cases that have made it to trial where your argument is better suited. He was in jail for a month, but not prison (there is a difference here) and nowhere near death row. I didn't see where the reason was, my guess is he could not afford bail (a separate problem altogether from this story). Prosecutors had reason to believe it was him; not only from an eye witness but because he had a record and had motive.
>> "..Martha Puebla, who had recently testified at a preliminary hearing about a gang murder in which Juan’s brother Mario was charged as an accessory. (Mario was convicted and is currently serving time.) Authorities argued that Juan — who had been in the courtroom during the hearing — had killed Puebla in retaliation for cooperating with police."
The NYPost article hints all the drama over this case is for a Netflix documentary:
>> "As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
If not for the involvement of Curb Your Enthusiasm and a documentary, this would simply be another case that got dismissed from an alibi checking out and never making so much as a local community newsletter. Thus, the title is dramatic as it does not accurately summarize the truth of the story.
TV footage seems like a WAY better alibi than cell phone pings.
Not when it was taped an hour and 22 minutes before the murder
> "The discovery seemed a home run for Juan, who by then had been in jail over a month. Still, the prosecutor argued that the footage was from 9:10 p.m. — and the murder had occurred at 10:32. Juan ostensibly could have left early, driven to the scene of the crime, and still had time to kill Puebla."
It shows how useless and flimsy the jury system is also.
Please explain; the fact that a single eyewitness is unreliable (and I agree that they are,) does not mean that the consideration of a jury of one’s peers would be.
First I'd point out that people living in the same city as someone accused is not necessarily a peer, even if they are considered as such for the purposes of a jury. Are a bunch of subtly racist blue collar white voters the peer of an Oxford educated immigrant Kenyan doctor? Just to use a clear example.
That aside, people are notoriously uninformed, and notoriously lack basic critical reasoning skills. Look at the sheer number of people who voted the way they did in the last US election because they incorrectly correlated cheaper prices with the guy who was president at the time.
Odds are a jury is unreliable because they aren't going to put in the effort to properly evaluate the evidence and lack the knowledge and motivation to make a truly impartial and educated conclusion.
Not to mention the way a judge will deliberately limit the information a Jury has access to, and not always ethically, such as barring mention or education about jury nullification being an option.
It was actually a very disturbing case because of police misconduct. Watch the documentary. They built a strong case out of nothing, and they were never punished. So, it's really a story about technology advancing and professionals going above and beyond to help this guy escape what had become a guilty until proven innocent case.
Couldn't he have just given his cell phone to someone else that night?
More details along with a still: https://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved...
> They had been stopped by a production assistant so as not to interrupt filming. But for some reason, the PA had a last-minute change of heart and let Juan and little Melissa walk to their seats — and into the background of the show’s action.
> “Can you imagine had Melissa not asked for a snack?” Juan marveled.
(…)
> Juan was released, but couldn’t catch a break. Due to a clerical error, he had to report back to county jail two days later. The tombs had just been rocked by racial unrest after a murder inside, and Juan was actually afraid “I would be killed.”
> Melnik had assumed it would be cleared up in 24 hours. Instead, Juan, a declared-innocent man, was there for two hell-filled weeks.
> In 2007, Juan received $320,000 in a settlement of his civil lawsuit against the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles for false imprisonment, misconduct and defamation.
> They had been stopped by a production assistant so as not to interrupt filming. But for some reason, the PA had a last-minute change of heart and let Juan and little Melissa walk to their seats — and into the background of the show’s action.
Why is a PA able to stop a ticket holder from going to their seats just cause a show is filming at the same time a game is on? Seems shitty for anyone that bought a ticket that day.
I guess this was coordinated with the event organizer; perhaps the filming happened in a way that wouldn’t interfere with watching the actual event; and the ticket holders were instructed to follow the PA’s guidance.
Related:
> Once a friend of mine called me excitedly after she attended a football game in Massachusetts. There were signs everwhere that announced that they were filming the crowd for a Warner Brothers Music video and by giving your ticket for entry you are giving permission for your image to appear in this video.
Source: https://www.quora.com/How-did-directors-film-scenes-in-packe...
> perhaps the filming happened in a way that wouldn’t interfere with watching the actual event;
A PA being able to stop ticket holders from going back to their seats because they got a snack sounds like a lot of interference to me.
What happens if you dont accept a settlement for something like false imprisonment?
a settlement just short circuits the process. Without a settlement, it goes to court and, depending on the jurisdiction and case details, decided by a judge or a jury, and again depending on the jurisdiction and case details, penalties are decided by a judge or a jury.
Really it's pretty similar to criminal court with the exception that neither party will have a criminal charge or criminal judgement against them at the end of it. No one will go to jail.
It is worrisome someone would have to prove innocence to remain off death row.
I am firmly in the camp of the justice system should never execute anyone. It's a one way door that presumes the system is infallible and we've had proof after proof of cases where the system failed.
All sentences are a one-way door. You don't get years of your life back, or the skills that atrophy in jail if you had any before.
If you are sentenced falsely, would you liked to be killed or you would choose to spend some time in jail and be released when proved innocent?
What you are giving here is really false equivalence which contributes absolutely nothing to the conversation.
Not even sentences. I've known multiple people who have been incarcerated over a decade on allegations in pre-trail detention ("jail"). You don't need a sentence to lose years of your life.
Indeed. But a death penalty can't even give you back your remaining ones once you're found innocent, so it's worse in some sense.
The land of "human rights": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolutions_concerning_death_p...
The justice system relies on the concept of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. That standard doesn’t mean “proved to be impossible to be innocent.”
In a system that is in a population of millions of people, there are bound to be edge cases where there’s a lot of damning evidence and people look guilty who just aren’t.
It’s one of the many arguments against capital punishment. It can’t be undone.
> The justice system relies on the concept of guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Does it, in reality? With trials and layers being life destructibly expensive?
>It’s one of the many arguments against capital punishment. It can’t be undone.
Neither can time spent behind bars.
The time served can’t be undone but the incarceration can.
This, IMHO, is the biggest argument against the death penalty. "Gung-ho" prosecutors with eyes on the political ladder will always call for the death penalty to further their career.
End it and lock them up for life. You can always release them if new evidence comes to light that proves their innocence. You can't bring back to life someone who's been executed.
We haven't sent anyone to the gallows since the 1960s. The EU doesn't either.
> Los Angeles police have reassigned a detective who told a gang member he had been identified as a killer by a Sun Valley girl who was later murdered by another member of the gang. [1]
> Deputy Chief Charlie Beck says Martin Pinner will no longer work homicide cases. [1]
https://www.courthousenews.com/parents-say-l-a-police-lies-l...
It really sounds like the prosecution had exactly zero evidence that this man was guilty, but determined to prosecute him anyway, rather than “lose”. Disgusting.
Unfortunately this is quite common in some legal jurisdictions.
Funnily enough this sounds like a 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' plot.